It looks like ethics and transparency are yet again taking a back seat at the Obama White House, this time with the little-noticed news that the president’s ‘ethics’ czar, Norm Eisen, is leaving to become a foreign ambassador and will not be replaced. Instead, his responsibilities (which included oversight of transparency and accountability, among others) are being handed over to White House counsel Bob Bauer. According to the Huffington Post, critics say Bauer is not the kind of guy one would want in charge of ensuring good, ethical government: “Our priorities are different,” …
As a candidate, President Barack Obama promised to “Shine the Light on Washington Lobbying” by creating “a centralized Internet database of lobbying reports, ethics records, and campaign finance filings in a searchable, sortable and downloadable format.” That database will be completed any day, we’re sure, but President Obama has definitely already “shined a light” on how Washington really works. Consider Obama’s failed Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Tom Daschle. As the New York Times reported this February, in the four years since he left the Senate, Daschle managed to …
Despite his solemn promise to the American people to keep lobbyists out of his Administration, two more have slipped in. The Hill reports: The waivers were provided for Jocelyn Frye, director of policy and projects in the Office of the First Lady, and Cecilia Munoz, director of intergovernmental affairs in the executive office of the president. … Munoz was a senior vice president for the National Council of La Raza, where she supervised all legislative and advocacy activities on the state and local levels. Munoz was heavily involved in the …
DENVER — One of Barack Obama’s only legislative accomplishments in the U.S. Senate is the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act, which passed in September 2007. When he announced his candidacy in Springfield, Ill., Obama called the bill “the most sweeping ethics reform since Watergate.” Critics from left and right, however, have called it a chilling threat to free speech. This is something to boast about? Obama’s ethics bill sounds good on paper: “strict bans on receiving gifts and meals from lobbyists; new rules to slow the revolving door between public …
