As Congress desperately tries to pass legislation to bail out Wall Street and restore confidence in the American economy, it is also managing to allow tax credits for renewable energy to expire at the end of the year. According to Robert Pear's recent New York Times article: "The House and the Senate conceded Monday that they were in a stalemate over proposals to provide tax incentives for the production and use of renewable energy, leaving the future of the nascent industry in limbo."

Unfortunately, this tax incentive has gotten caught up in congressional tax policy gridlock - no one thinks this policy is a bad idea, but it's basically the hostage of a broader debate on the budget and tax policy.  read more »

OXFORD, Miss.—Eames Henley, a 20-year-old civil engineering major at Ole Miss, was standing in the University's mall, called "the Grove," listening to bluegrass and wearing a pin that said "I'm Anti-Socialism."

I asked him what he thought of the Bush administration's bailout plan.

"It seems a little socialistic," he said.

So, did he oppose it?

"No, because the economy's about to collapse. Something needs to be done."

Asked whether he thought John McCain, whom he supports, helped or hindered the chances of a plan passing, he said, "It seems like he's doing his job," he said. "Taking care of business."

In May, The Observer's Felix Gillette looked at HBO's hiring of former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown and The New York Times' Frank Rich as "creative consultants."

At the time, he wrote:

Ms. Brown said that since January, she’s pitched two projects—an idea for a series and an idea for a movie—that the HBO executives liked and are in the process of 'taking a little further.'... 'If I collide with some interesting material, I’ll call or e-mail them. Sometimes it’s something I’m interested in doing. Sometimes it’s something I think they should know about. Richard wants to encourage people who have good relationships with the creative community to simply be thinking about HBO when they’re out and about.

According to Variety, Ms. Brown is honing in on some of that "interesting material," namely, a series based on Tom Wolfe's four year old novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons.  read more »

Debate over how to resolve the nation’s financial emergency is taking a salutary direction for the moment, as politicians of both parties refuse to be herded by the Bush White House into a ridiculous $700 billion swindle. Before Congress approves such a stunning expenditure to save the undeserving hides of the super-rich, they may at least create provisions for independent oversight, new regulation, public equity and homeowner relief.

There is one more thing that should not be neglected, however. Before this is over, we will need a special prosecutor with an ample budget to find, prosecute, imprison and ultimately deter the criminals responsible for this disaster.  read more »

Here's a picture, from the official city Web site, of Michael Bloomberg greeting George W. Bush at J.F.K. Airport yesterday.

When Bloomberg greeted Bush last year during a visit to New York, photographs weren't made available.

Anyone want to bet that if Bloomberg pushes back term limits and runs again, this image won't be prominently featured in a Weiner-for-mayor spot?

UPDATE: A reader emailed a link to an AP photograph of Bloomberg greeting Bush when he came to the city on 9/24/07. That photograph isn't on the mayor's web site. But they do have a shot of the mayor and the president at an education event two days later.
 

On Tuesday , I posted a column urging Barack Obama to emphasize John McCain's long history of support for Social Security privatization – a position that looks even more embarrassing today than a few weeks or months ago. For some time, McCain has been trying to revise his own history and pretend that he “never” supported privatization (or what he and other Republicans daintily refer to as “personal accounts”). Obama shouldn't let him get away with it.

Within a day following my post—by pure coincidence, needless to say—the Obama campaign aired an ad on the privatization theme in Michigan, as my former Observer colleague  read more »

GOLDEN, Colo.—After spending most of yesterday on the stump and the airwaves attacking Republican stewardship of the economy and promising more financial heartache under John McCain, Barack Obama today sought to articulate in stark and substantive terms why his proposals would have averted the financial crisis and will return stability to Wall Street.

Speaking in a college gym, Obama said, “Since this turmoil began over a year ago, the housing market has collapsed. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had to be effectively taken over by the government. Three of America’s five largest investment banks failed or have been sold off in distress.  read more »

CHICAGO--Barack Obama is expected to frame the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the sale of Merrill Lynch as indicative of the mismanagement of the economy by Republicans over the last eight years at a campaign stop in Grand Junction, Colorado today. The remarks are part of a more aggressive stance the Obama campaign is taking this week, with vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden arguing that John McCain has changed for the worse and a new ad calling the McCain campaign dishonorable. Obama's remarks, according to Obama staff on the campaign plane, will seek to make the point that with Wall Street imploding, McCain’s stewardship of the economy will be similar George Bush’s.  read more »

From the Wall Street Journal this morning:

The next U.S. president will be confronted with slow growth, high unemployment and an economy teetering toward recession, say 51 private economists ... The respondents saw a 60% chance of an outright recession, expect the economy to shed 19,000 jobs a month for a year, and say the jobless rate, which jumped in August to 6.1%, will keep rising, to 6.4% by midyear, passing the 6.3% seen after the last recession.

Eight years ago, when he first sought the presidency, John McCain presented himself to the country much the way he is presenting himself now—as a battle-scarred American hero who had endured unspeakable physical and mental abuse for his country and who had emerged from it to pursue a life of courageous and principled public service.

Only back then, the Republican establishment, which just spent the last three nights in St. Paul feting him as living shrine to all that is righteous and noble about this country, didn't see him in such glowing terms. They called him a Democratic plant, challenged his heroism narrative, and rallied around—like their lives depended on it—a well-connected son of privilege who had shown exactly zero interest in serving his country in Vietnam, preferring the comparative light-lift of the Texas National Guard.  read more »