James Fallows shoots-and-scores (again) while lamenting U.S. news media's lack of curiosity or outrage: Peter Orszag: The Shoe That Didn't Drop

Sometimes, when you least expect it, the Blogger Dashboard located on my blog -under thehood, as it were, which tracks the various blogs and websites I'm subscribed to- hits a grand slam so obvious that you just know that when you see it list something as being only two minutes old at a little past midnight, your intuition, your internal news director, tells you that it will be THE must-read article the rest of that day.

And so it was just an hour ago when I was going thru my eclectic list of reading material before going to sleep. Or so I thought.
But here I am, blogging at 1:15 a.m. Eastern, Hallandale Beach temperature 45 F.

There it was under The Atlantic's James Fallows' blog: Peter Orszag: The Shoe That Didn't Drop.

Hallelujah!!!

Trust me, you'll thank me later.
Really.
That's why he's James Fallows, and there is no substitute. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Fallows

And why I've been reading him in his various media manifestations, legacy media and new media, prescient overseas dispatches and domestic cultural and political analysis, since I was at IU.

And bought his books.

The Atlantic Online
Peter Orszag: The Shoe That Didn't Drop
By James Fallows
December 15 2010, 11:33 PM ET

I made a mistake several days ago when lamenting Peter Orszag's decision to take a senior job with Citibank, reportedly for several million dollars per year, so soon after leaving a senior Obama Administration post. Over the past two-plus years, Obama (and GW Bush) policies played a crucial role in saving Citi -- and in not holding its executives (or other senior financial-world figures) accountable for polices that brought on the world financial crisis or reining in top-end pay as profitability has returned. Now a senior member of the Obama team -- Orszag was budget director -- was going straight to one of those top-end jobs, even as his former colleagues in the administration have their hands full fighting the social, economic, and political effects of the crisis on "ordinary" Americans who can't find jobs or are losing their homes.

Read the rest of this fabulous post at: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/12/peter-orszag-the-shoe-that-didnt-drop/67869/

See also this excellent essay by Fallows in the June 2010 issue of The Atlantic:
How to Save the News
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/06/how-to-save-the-news/8095/

James Fallows archives from The Atlantic at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/james-fallows/

ProPublica: Check Out the Obama Team’s Financial Filings

Great very interesting news today from the fine folks at

ProPublica.com, Journalism in the Public Interest:

financial disclosure information on the Best and Brightest

of 44.

H-m-m-m...

I wonder how City of Miami mayor Manny Diaz would've

explained that whole curious restaurant deal of his on

these forms if he'd been named to the Obama Administration,

as the Herald kept suggesting for months?

Guess we'll never know now.

And good thing, too!

The idea of a mayor who governs a sleepwalking downtown

and a city without even one general interest bookstore,

being someone in charge of Urban Affairs, was laughable on

its face, and would've likely have been the most laugh-filled

congressional confirmation hearing in years.

At least since Sally Adams was confirmed as U.S.

Ambassador to Lichtenburg.

And we all recall how that ended, don't we?

The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce really dodged

a PR bullet with Diaz being over-looked!

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http://www.propublica.org/article/check-out-the-obama-teams-financial-filings-408

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

Check Out the Obama Team’s Financial Filings

by Christopher Weaver, ProPublica - April 8, 2009 1:30 pm EDT

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Administration officials and high-ranking executive branch employees are required to disclose the intimate details of their financial lives. The disclosures made include stock holdings, previous salaries and even book deals, such as Assistant Treasury Secretary Alan Krueger's advance of at least $180,000 (plus royalties) from MacMillan, the publisher of his textbook, "Explorations in Economics." ProPublica is collecting these disclosures, and today, we're sharing what we've got.

We've flipped through the disclosures of 179 officials, ranging from the White House social secretary to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the documents are rich with interesting details. Help us parse the disclosures and post your discoveries in the comments section below.

Here's an example of what we've found so far: On paper, Susan Rice looks like she belongs at the Treasury, rather than the State Department. The new United Nations ambassador's disclosure lists 10 individual stock holdings, largely in Canadian companies, that total at least $4.25 million.

The disclosures are a matter of public record. But the government insists on giving them out by request only. We’re cutting out the middleman: Dig into the documents yourself.

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Last link above is at: http://www.propublica.org/special/the-obama-teams-disclosure-documents-407