Rahm Emanuel’s Brother Joins White House Team

By GottaLaff

The Emanuel brothers

Rahm-apalooza:

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a prominent bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health–and the brother of incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel–will serve as a senior counselor at the White House Office of Management and Budget on health policy, two Democratic officials said Thursday.

Zeke Emanuel will work closely with Department of Health and Human Services secretary-nominee Tom Daschle to formulate a national health insurance program and to try to curb the swelling cost of health insurance without adversely impacting health care.

Two Emanuels in the White House might sound like a voluble combination, given Rahm Emanuel’s penchant for yelling, but his brother is known for being suave and soft-spoken.

Here's his impressive bio.

Bush Labor Department misled Congress in effort to privatize jobs

By GottaLaff

Is there any area in which they didn't mislead us?

President George W. Bush's Labor Department misled Congress in an effort to prove outsourcing jobs to private companies was more efficient than assigning the jobs to government employees, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Monday.

The report (pdf here) found that the Department used fictional projected numbers to improve "savings reports" -- even when real numbers were already available. And when the government did find private firms to take a government job, that employee generally was either reassigned to another task with the same title or promoted.

The effort was called "competitive sourcing," aimed to increase government efficiency by having federal and private organizations compete for providing services. [...]

An investigation revealed, however, that the Labor Department -- under direction from Bush budget officials -- deliberately withheld information about true costs. [...]

The report noted that this approach was consistent with "guidance" given by the Administration's Office of Management and Budget.

In addition, the report found the Department's "savings reports" were "not reliable: a sample of three reports contained inaccuracies, and others used projections when actual numbers were available, which sometimes resulted in overstated savings."

Most workers were also demoralized as the government tried to find private firms to take over their jobs, the probe found. [...]

Since implementation, 22 employees were laid off or demoted, all of them African American.