Clinton Flip Flops on NYC Tax Issue

U.S. Secretary of the State Hillary Clinton, and former NYC Senator has come under fire from the city’s mayor for supposedly “stabbing the city in the back.” According to recent reports Mayor Bloomberg has accused Clinton of changing her views on tax exemptions for diplomats staying in NYC, which has resulted in nearly $250 million dollars in losses for the city.

The mayor said it is not only a double cross but also a double flip-flop. As New York's junior senator, Clinton fought to make diplomats pay up. And he said her reversal changes a longstanding policy.

"Since 1873 they've been saying this is taxable," Bloomberg said.

What's more, the mayor predicted that -- freed of paying property taxes -- some governments would see it as a business opportunity to buy up properties and make money renting them out.

"It's just patently unfair to New Yorkers and Americans and it contravenes established policy for 130-odd years and it just doesn't make sense," Bloomberg said.

The 50 Women to Watch 2008

From the Wall Street Journal:

In her concession speech in June, Hillary Clinton lamented that she wasn't able to "shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling," but she said it now has "about 18 million cracks in it."

Indeed, women played a defining role in this year's historic election, whether as candidates, spouses or comedians.

But in the corporate world, the notion of "18 million cracks" remains something of a pipe dream. While women have made great strides professionally in the past two decades, their numbers in the upper echelons of corporate America have stagnated in the past few years.

On Wall Street -- possibly the toughest ceiling to crack -- two of the most high-profile women made an exit in the past year: Citigroup's Sallie Krawcheck and Morgan Stanley's Zoe Cruz.

But out of the ashes of the economic meltdown, some new stars have emerged -- most notably Sheila Bair, No. 1 on this year's Women to Watch list, who has been thrust into the spotlight in her bank-rescue role as a hard-charging regulator at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Barbara Desoer, No. 3 on this year's list, has risen to a pivotal role at Bank of America as president of mortgage, home equity and insurance services.

Senator Clinton Calls for Renewed Bipartisan Action on Economic Crisis

From Yonkers Tribune.com:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton today underscored the need for quick bipartisan action to halt the growing economic crisis. In a conference call with media, Senator Clinton said the economic impact of failing to address the crisis would spread well beyond Wall Street and seriously damage Main Street as well. Senate Clinton said jobs, family incomes, and the broader economy is at risk if nothing is done to stem the crisis. She described the bipartisan plan narrowly rejected by the House of Representatives yesterday as a flawed but necessary compromise and a major improvement over the Bush Administration’s initial proposal.

“I understand the deep skepticism surrounding the proposal, and clearly I was against the original plan sent over from the Treasury because it was a blank check giving Treasury virtually unlimited powers to do whatever they saw fit,” Senator Clinton said. “But we have negotiated through the Congress on a bipartisan basis a better alternative that installed taxpayer protections, asserted oversight and accountability, and came up with the checks and balances we should have had rather than the blank check.”

Senator Clinton urged her colleagues to set aside their differences and make hard compromises for the good of the nation.

“We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good, or in this case the enemy of what’s necessary,” Senator Clinton said. “We have to go back and in a bipartisan fashion, face up to the difficult decisions ahead of us.”

Obama to Drop Biden?

Over the past week there have been rumors circulating that Sen. Barack Obama might seek to drop Sen. Joe Biden as running mate and replace him with Sen. Hillary Clinton. Many agree that these are in fact just rumors, and there is little evidence to support that this is a move Obama is actually considering. However, there have been a few events in the past few weeks that have led people to question whether Biden even supports Obama’s agenda.

According to FOXnews.com, “Barack Obama and Joe Biden stepped out of sync again Tuesday, as the Democratic presidential nominee criticized his running mate for voicing opposition to the government bailout of American International Group early last week.

It was the third off-message moment for the Democratic team in two days. Biden had to ratchet back his own rhetoric Monday after an interview aired in which he called one of his own campaign ads “terrible” and said that he did not support clean coal technology – even though Obama is a big proponent.

The lack of harmony suggests the Obama team, for months a rancor-free institution, is running into the kind of message discipline problems that John McCain’s campaign faced before he started to cut back his interaction with reporters.”

Also adding fuel to the fire, Biden was as quoted as saying, "make no mistake about this, Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Let's get that straight. She's a truly close personal friend, she is qualified to be president of the United States of America, she's easily qualified to be vice president of the United States of America and quite frankly it might have been a better pick than me. But she's first rate.”

However, when Bill Clinton appeared on “The View” he claimed that Hillary did not want to be Vice President. When NBC'S Today Show's Matt Lauer asked her about what Bill said, Hillary replied, “you know, Matt, there's no point in going back and, you know, talking about something that didn't happen. I want to keep focused on the future and to talk to those people who are worried about their jobs, their home, affording gas and groceries, you know, thinking that the government has just turned its back on them, making them feel almost invisible.”

So does Obama feel his choice was a mistake? And more importantly, will Joe Biden drop out of the race? With the election only six weeks away it does seem rather unlikely, but only time will tell.