The WonkLine: October 16, 2009

The Obama administration “scored its first financial regulation reform victory in months” yesterday, as a bill spearheaded by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) to regulate the over-the-counter derivatives market passed the House Financial Services committee by a 43-26 vote.

Administration “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg “pushed outgoing Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Kenneth D. Lewis into giving back about $1 million he received so far this year and forgoing the rest of his $1.5 million salary for 2009,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

Federal prosecutors yesterday announced charges “against 41 lenders, lawyers and others in the real estate industry who they said used fraud to obtain more than $64 million in loans connected to more than 100 residential properties in New York State.”

It’s expected that DHS will report this morning that a few local police agencies have dropped their controversial 287(g) agreements with immigration authorities that allows them to enforce immigration law, but that won’t outweigh the addition of 13 police and sheriff’s departments.

CNN has refused to an air an ad paid for by immigrant advocates and Media Matters during its presentation of its special, “Latinos in America,” which slams CNN’s Lou Dobbs’ anti-immigrant coverage.

The Harvard Undergraduate Legal Committee has canceled Minuteman leader Jim Gilchrist’s invitation to speak at its forum on immigration, citing that his participation is “not compatible with providing an environment for civil, educational, and productive discourse on immigration.”

“Congressional budget analysts have given House leaders cost estimates for two competing versions of their plan to overhaul the health-care system, concluding that one comes within striking distance of the $900 billion limit set by President Obama and the other falls below it,” the Washington Post reports. The report from the Congressional Budget Office “puts the cost of one plan at $859 billion over the next decade and the other at $905 billion.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that “Senate Democrats may widen insurance coverage in sweeping health legislation, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said Thursday, but they face a struggle to come up with ways to pay for the extra spending.”

How wellness initiatives allow employers to “drive some workers out of their health plans.”

The Wall Street Journal reports “U.S. spy agencies are considering whether to rewrite a controversial 2007 intelligence report that asserted Tehran halted its efforts to build nuclear weapons in 2003.”

AFP reports that President Barack Obama’s national security advisor Jim Jones has made a new call to revive talks on setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel. “The time has come to relaunch negotiations without preconditions to reach a final status agreement on two states,” he said.

Haaretz reports “despite commitments Israel made to President Barack Obama’s administration last month, widespread building activity commenced three weeks ago in at least 12 settlements” in the West Bank. “This work is not part of the projects that Israel and the United States had reached an understanding on.”

Steven Pearlstein discusses “three embarrassing truths” about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce exposed by corporate defections because of its “continued opposition to doing anything about global warming.”

California’s “top water official said Thursday night that he is bracing for another year of drought and for even bigger challenges from climate change in the years ahead,” threatening the future of the nation’s top agricultural state.

Steve Colbert praised Bonner & Associates for “representing a oft-ignored constituency, non-existent Americans” by forging letters on behalf of the coal industry.

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