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Rachel Maddow and Matt Taibbi on the Obama administration's lastest nominee for the number two spot at Treasury, Neal Wolin.

MADDOW: Irony alert, jobs at President Obama‘s Treasury Department have been hard to fill. In the worst job market in at least 27 years, some jobs, like the job of cooling the economic meltdown, apparently have not been seen as worth taking.

Nine days ago, the president told “60 Minutes” that essentially, he couldn‘t give top treasury jobs away. People kept backing out because of expected scrutiny or embarrassment or low pay or all of the above.

But tonight, good news-bad news developments here. First the good. In the last week or so, the president has announced six new picks for top treasury jobs. Now choices for 10 of the top 23 treasury jobs have been announced, nominated or confirmed, which I think means they‘re running ahead of the Republican National Committee on that.

The bad news? One of the newly announced job candidates, the guy tapped to be the deputy secretary of the treasury, the second in command to Tim Geithner - he has a worrisome line on his very distinguished resume.

While serving as general counsel in the Clinton Treasury Department, Neal Wolin reportedly played a role in the drafting of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1989. Gramm-Leach-Bliley overturned Depression-Era regulations and wisdom and made it OK for commercial banks and investment banks and insurance companies to all be the same thing, to merge with one another.

After decades of that being against the rules, Gramm-Leech-Bliley let giganto-mega companies form in the financial sector, companies that were essentially too complex to police well and also too big to fail.

Gramm plus Leech plus Bliley in 1999 equals trillion-dollar bailout 10 years later. Reporter Greg Sargent at “The Plum Line” reports that Stuart Eisenstadt, a deputy treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, confirmed that as treasury‘s general counsel at the time, Neal Wolin, quote, provided the technical and legal drafting for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

And now, with the seminal act of today‘s global crisis on his resume, Neal Wolin is on track to be the deputy secretary of the treasury. A Treasury Department spokesman did not refute the report about Mr. Wolin today but told us that “Plum Line” took the quote about him from Stuart Eisenstadt out of context.

The treasury secretary today told us, quote, “Mr. Wolin supervised a few of the lawyers who worked on it but he didn‘t do any of the legal writing or drafting of the legislation.”

So Mr. Wolin supervised the writing of this deregulation that effectively mugged the country but he didn‘t personally write it. He supervised the writing. He didn‘t write it. That‘s going to be the only defense here?

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h/t The Political Carnival and The Plum Line

Joe the Plumber gets called out for being the clueless shill he is. He hasn't read the bill and can't answer questions about it, but he's more than happy to take someone's money to go out there and campaign against it. There's the face of the Republican Party, folks. Doesn't have a friggin' clue and willing to say anything for money.

From The Plum Line, whose title I stole for this post and could not have stated any better:

Oof. Looks like Joe the Plumber’s campaigning against the Employee Free Choice Act in Pennsylvania didn’t go so well.

Mr. Plumber, whose appearances were organized by the anti-EFCA group Americans for Prosperity, admitted he knew “little” about the legislation after being confronted with questions at one of the events yesterday in Harrisburg by a Pennsylvania progressive group. He was also heckled by dozens of Pennsylvania union workers, according to a local report.

And after his rough time in Harrisburg, he skipped a subsequent rally in Philadelphia, according to union officials who were there.

Here’s some video of the grilling Mr. Plumber took from the group, Keystone Progress, which prompted the irritated plumber to respond: “I know a little about a lot of things. But I don’t know a lot about everything.”

Pressed on the specifics of the law, Mr. Plumber repeatedly refused to answer, and finally lost his cool, telling his questioner: “Drop it, brother, drop it. I never said I was an expert, man.”

Not an expert indeed.

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Keith talks to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh about the Dick Cheney "stay behinds" he discussed in his recent interview with NPR. Some of that transcript from Think Progress:

GROSS: Are you saying that you think Vice President Cheney is still having a chilling effect on people who might otherwise be coming forward and revealing things to you about what happened in the Bush administration?

HERSH: I’ll make it worse. I think he’s put people left. He’s put people back. They call it a stay behind. It’s sort of an intelligence term of art. When you leave a country and, you know, you’ve driven out the, you know, you’ve lost the war. You leave people behind. It’s a stay behind that you can continue to contacts with, to do sabotage, whatever you want to do. Cheney’s left a stay behind. He’s got people in a lot of agencies that still tell him what’s going on. Particularly in defense, obviously. Also in the NSA, there’s still people that talk to him. He still knows what’s going on. Can he still control policy up to a point? Probably up to a point, a minor point. But he’s still there. He’s still a presence. And again, because of the problems this administration’s having filling jobs, a lot of people who served in the Bush Cheney government, particularly even in the White House people on most sophisticated staffs are still there. You simply can’t get rid of everybody, you may not even want to. Some are professional people. But Cheney is, I would never call it admiration, but, you know, formidable, yeah, this guy. This guy is the real McCoy.

They also discuss Hersh's recent article in the New Yorker, Syria Calling: The Obama Administration’s chance to engage in a Middle East peace.

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David Letterman gives Bill O'Reilly a hard time over the thought of his son possibly growing up to be like O'Reilly. Dave pointed out how cute O'Reilly looked in the photo on his book cover and that it reminded him of his son now. They sparred over whether Rush Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Glenn Beck actually believe what they say while they're on the air. As Dave pointed out, all of them are too smart to believe what they say, with the exception of Glenn Beck IMO, who may just belong in the flat out crazy column. O'Reilly tries to claim that unlike the others Letterman mentioned, he's a journalist. Riigghhttt. Sorry Bill, but that degree you mention as proof of why you're different from the others does not excuse what you think passes for "journalism" now on that ambush show of yours.

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The cast of The West Wing has come to Washington DC to support the Employee Free Choice Act. Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff weigh in with David Shuster on the need to debunk some of the myths being put out there well funded anti-union campaigns being run by right to work groups and corporate America. They note the importance of being allowed to form a union without fear of being fired or retribution from ones' employer as we have now and hope to put some real faces on those types of stories which are all too common when workers try to organize.

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David Shuster's Hypocrisy Watch for March 31, 2009.

Chris Matthews brings on Cliff May and Joe Conason to discuss Sy Hersh's recent allegations that Dick Cheney told the Israelis that President Obama was "pro-Palestinian" and described him as someone who would "never make it in the major leagues" while the incoming administration was trying to broker a cease fire.

The best May can muster to defend Cheney? Well maybe Sy Hersh's reporting is wrong. Cliff May has been an apologist for everything done by any of his fellow neo-cons at every turn. Let's see how long it takes him to do a one eighty on this one if he's proven wrong and take to defending Cheney's actions instead.

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Good to see. Sam "Joe the fake Plumber" Wurzelbacher was met by some real plumbers in Pittsburgh. His latest gig is attacking the Employee Free Choice Act for the anti-labor group Americans for Prosperity. Hopefully Mr. Wurzelbacher is continued to be greeted as warmly on the rest of his stops.

Think Progress has more. The report is from local affilitate KDKA. At the end of the segment they claim that Wurzelbacher supports union members but just not their leadership. Anyone who would say something like that obviously doesn't understand anything about unions because you cannot separate the two.

March 30, 2009 News Corp

Dave N: I'm sure Glenn Beck will take comfort in the serene knowledge that his own ratings are kicking those of Joe Scarborough's "Morning Joe," but it must still be somewhat disconcerting for him to see the conservative Republican ex-congressman break into uncontrollable gales of laughter upon viewing a compendium of Beck's greatest hits of the past couple of months at Fox.

On the other hand, it's comforting to know we aren't alone in being astonished by the bizarre, slow-motion train wreck that has been Beck's show. Indeed, no one on the "Morning Joe" panel seemed inclined to defend Beck's bizarre behavior, except to note that his ratings speak for themselves.

Scarborough tries to ameliorate his derision once he regains control, but the damage was done. Anyone want to wager whether Beck responds?

March 30, 2009 C-SPAN