The NYTimes is reporting that “Warren [Will] Unofficially Lead Consumer Agency“:
Elizabeth Warren, who conceived of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will oversee its establishment as an assistant to President Obama, an official briefed on the decision said Wednesday evening.
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The decision, which Mr. Obama is to announce this week, would allow Ms. Warren, a Harvard law professor, to effectively run the new agency without having to go through a potentially contentious confirmation battle in the Senate…
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Ms. Warren will be named an assistant to the president, a designation that is held by senior White House staff members, including Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff. She will also be a special adviser to the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, and report jointly to Mr. Obama and Mr. Geithner. The financial regulation law delegated to the Treasury Department the powers of the bureau until a permanent director was appointed and confirmed by the Senate to a five-year term.
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The decision does not preclude the possibility that Ms. Warren could eventually be named director, and at the least, she would play a pivotal role in deciding whom to appoint to the job, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt the formal announcement…
And Gail Collins sends her new column from Anchorage:
… Scott McAdams, the Democratic candidate, is introducing himself to the voters. This will take some time because McAdams’s big claim to fame is being mayor of Sitka, a town of 8,700 with no road access…
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The mayor’s big adventure began when it was Sitka’s turn to hold the Democratic state convention this year and the delegates were looking under every rock, melting glacier and sleeping walrus for a respectable candidate to face Murkowski. Voilà! A star was born, sort of. For weeks, McAdams ran in obscurity with no staff and a budget adequate to cover a meal for four at Red Lobster. Then the Tea Party struck, and now he’s Mr. Smith, trying to go to Washington…
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The national Democratic establishment has been ignoring McAdams. So many crazy Tea Party candidates to take advantage of, so little time. If places like the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee forgot about Alaska before this week, they must be totally distracted now that the Republicans in Delaware have decided to nominate a woman who won’t tell anybody where she lives because she’s afraid her political enemies will come and hide in the bushes.
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McAdams may be an imperfect candidate, but he’s also an extremely inexpensive one. An Alaskan political campaign costs less than a tenth of one in big-media states like Florida and New York. He could probably run a competitive race for a million dollars, which is about the equivalent in California of Barbara Boxer’s postage budget.
McAdams is one of the choices on Balloon Juice’s very own ActBlue page, in case you want to show him a little monetary love. Maybe, in honor of the pinnipeds seeking refugee from global warming, we can call it “Walrusbombing“?