IF HE WERE AN HONEST POLITICIAN, HE’D STAY BOUGHT: Sneaky Dodd Slips Bank Pay Limits Into Porkulus Bill. Of course, if a lot of bank executives jump ship and the banks crash, they can be nationalized and staffed with political loyalists, so it’s all good. . . . Some related thoughts here.

Dodd, Senate Banking Committee chairman, was a “friend of Angelo” as in Angelo Mozillo, the former CEO of Countrywide. As such Dodd received mortgage loans at favorable interest rates.

Being a one-time friend of Angelo’s has made Dodd seem much less a friend of the people. Quinnipiac University has a recent poll that suggested that Dodd could be vulnerable. . . . The Dodd provision in the stimulus legislation will certainly give Dodd a way to change the subject when Republicans hit him with the “friend of Mozillo” charge when his re-election campaign gets into high gear next year.

Seems to me that it’s a demonstration of double-ended opportunism, but I guess Dodd’s hoping the voters are too dumb to notice.