paulsons' first contracts are full of redacted( blacked out ) passages.Mostly covering compensation to the administrative fat cats...taser1 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/treasury-blacks-out-key-p_b_136030.html As flagged by BailoutSleuth.com, Paulson is blacking out the sections of government contracts that spell out how much private firms will be paid for their services in administering taxpayer money. Here's a page from the compensation part of a contract with Bank of New York, which has been hired to do some of the bookkeeping (because, of course, the Bush administration is happy to privatize that function):
Time to write my congress-critters again.... Dear Sen. Cornyn: When the Treasury Department's bailout czar provided an update this week on the government's $700 billion plan to rescue troubled financial institutions (which you voted for, against the wishes of the vast majority of your constituents), he vowed that it would be an "open and transparent program with appropriate oversight.'' The next day, the Treasury Department put out an announcement about a major bailout-related contract with Bank of New York Mellon Corp. that fell short in the transparency department. The copy of the agreement that was made public had blacked-out paragraphs in the section covering Bank of New York Mellon's compensation. If the Treasury Department is unwilling to disclose the particulars of that contract -- or even the general outline of the compensation scheme -- that raises questions about how it will treat disclosure of other bailout transactions. One thing that the critics and supporters of the bailout agree upon is that transparency is one of the keys to winning public trust in the taxpayer-funded program. Would you please see that these heavily redacted documents are released with all their information available to the taxpayers who are, after all, stuck with the bill. Or are the taxpayers of Texas going to get the "same old - same old" from the federal government again? Sincerely, Mr. & Mrs. Jonas Parker Deep East, TX
