On the take...

On Monday I had a wise-crack, in response to a comment from Atrios.

It's been said a million times, but for the millionth+1 time, the problems we have are solvable. Our elites are evil and/or stupid, depending on your take...

 I believe a more appropriate sentence construction would be "depending on their take."

God I can be insufferable. Well, as it turns out, one person's smart-ass-wise-crack is another person's well-founded suspicion.

And the other Republicans on the commission knew how bogus Wallison’s stuff was. They even worried that Ed Pinto, who was responsible for the data, might have been on the take:

Maybe this email is reaching you too late but I think wmt [William M. Thomas] is going to push to find out if pinto is being paid by anyone.

Good Stuff. Now there is no evidence that Pinto was on the take; nor, really, does his being paid or not paid really determine whether he was on the take/not take, or whether he just likes to play with numbers until he achieves an outcome that massages his priors. But there is a level of willful dishonesty (as opposed to my more noble reluctant dishonesty?) in knowing a report to be false, in coordinating the release of this report so as to strengthen your political coalition's operatives, all the while having a slight anxiety not that the person generating the report might be receiving outside funds to produce a false report but that the Vice-Chairman of the committee, W. M Thomas, might inquire into the matter. From Rortybomb:

Two days later, Mr. Brill followed up with another e-mail to the Vice Chairman’s special assistant relaying a conversation in which Vice Chairman Thomas expressed concern that Mr. Pinto might be receiving outside funds for his efforts to influence the Commission...

Wallison’s argument is the argument for the conservative right on the crisis, echoing through their networks.  Yet behind closed door the Republicans on the FCIC are in damage control mode.  They can’t find a way to deal with Wallison and this argument and they are actively working to play him and his research partner against each other.  They are even so confused as how someone could buy the entirety of this argument that they are worried that it was planted by a paid interest and that their fellow member is a “parrot” for those interests.