Obama Agenda: Ethics

Today we continue our walk through Obama’s agenda by examining the issue of ethics. Stop laughing. Obama, like every other recent administration, promised to be the most ethical administration in history -- a pledge he broke, like his predecessors, the minute his implant-laden booty hit the big chair. Now, he’s paying a heavy price for this, as ethics have climbed to the top of voters concerns about his administration.

Promises Ignored

Let’s knock out the easy ones first. These are the promises Obama made that he ignored after he took office, i.e. no action taken:

• To issue an executive order that requires all new hires to affirm that no political appointee offered them the job “solely” on the basis of political affiliation or contribution.

• Issue an executive order banning registered lobbyists from giving gifts in any amount or in any form to executive branch employees.

• To end “the abuse” of no-bid contracts by requiring that all contracts be competitively awarded.

• To require his appointees to conduct significant business in public, so that any citizen can see in person or watch on the internet.

• To create a “contracts and influence” database that will disclose to the public how much federal contractors spend on lobbying.

• To create a central database of lobbying reports, ethics records and campaign finance filings, so that people can easily see what is going in their government.

• To seek an independent watchdog agency to investigate congressional ethics violations.

Promises Broken

Now let’s look at the more problematic ones. These are the ones where Obama took action, but not the kind he said he would. These are the ones he’s been breaking left and right. Most of these deal with lobbyists or transparency:

• Obama promised he would not accept contributions from Washington lobbyists and political action committees.

But he did. In fact, he received a ton of money from these very people. For example, among his list of “bundlers” (i.e. people who gather contributions from groups of people or organizations (think "personal PAC")), you would find directors of Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Capital Partners, Landmark Partners, various hedge funds, Merrill Lynch, New Century Financial, and UBS among many others.

And Obama wasn’t shy about rewarding his top donors with VIP access to the White House, private briefings with the administration advisors and invitations to events. Examples of the privilege that came with giving bribes. . . er contributions, include:

USB CEO Robert Wolf, Obama’s top contributor, who got to golf with Obama in Martha’s Vineyard. Thirty-nine donors who were treated to a lavish St. Patrick’s Day celebration. One donor got a birthday visit to the Oval Office. Another got to take his family bowling in the White House. Others get to watch movies with Obama. No word if they all snuggled together as Obama picked $1,000 bills out of their underwear, but it sounds likely. Other donors received a personal visit from deputy chief of staff Jim Messina who flew to Los Angeles and San Francisco to provide in-person briefings on Obama’s health care plans.

Obama assigned Chicago lawyer David Jacobson to dole out ambassadorships to his most prolific donors. Jacobson asked each to provide a list of their top six choices and then sorted out the list. Some examples include: music executive Nicole Avant, who became ambassador to the Bahamas, and fundraiser Alan Solomon who got Spain.

Other contributors were appointed to presidential commissions and advisory panels, like the president’s Economic Advisory Board (Pritzker, Wolf) or the Commission to Study the Potential Creation of a National Museum of the American Latino (Lopez, Pollak). Penny Pritzker, by the way, the Obama campaign finance chair, is the former CEO of a defunct bank that was deep into a subprime lending scam in Chicago. Pritzker wasn’t charged with a crime, but “voluntarily” paid the government $460 million to defray the government’s losses.

On this whole issue, the White House has gone from saying it wasn’t happening, to suggesting that these donors were invited by people other than Obama and the DNC to laughably saying: “I would say that from our reckoning, our research, there are fewer donors getting fewer things, whatever you may call them, from this White House than from any White House in memory.”

• Close the revolving door on former and future employers. And I quote: “No political appointees . . . will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.”

This was the cornerstone of Obama’s ethics platform, and he’s broken it repeatedly.

Team Obama granted three waivers to former lobbyists, allowing them to serve in the administration (e.g. former Raytheon lobbyist William Lynn, who is now deputy secretary for defense; Jocelyn Frye, a lobbyist for the National Partnership for Women; Cecilia Muñoz, a lobbyist for the National Council of La Raza). Moreover, they’ve let them work in areas from wence they came.

But this doesn’t tell the whole story. In some instances, Team Obama hasn’t bothered with the waivers, relying instead on the lobbyist-turned-appointee to recuse themselves from matters on which they worked as lobbyists. This includes, for example, Mark Patterson, the chief of staff to Tim Geithner, who worked as a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs in 2008 and has never obtained a waiver. Determining the exact extent to which Obama has broken this promise is not easy as Team Obama has played games with releasing information about the waivers they’ve granted and the recusals supposedly undertaken.

Now Team Obama is singing a different tune. Apparently, they’ve discovered that some lobbyists are good people and many others bring expertise that you just can’t find elsewhere. Compare that to Obama’s campaign stump speech:

“Make no mistake: We need to end an era in Washington where accountability has been absent, oversight has been overlooked, your tax dollars have been turned over to wealthy CEOs and the well-connected corporations. You need leadership you can trust to work for you, not for the special interests who have had their thumb on the scale. And together, we will tell Washington, and their lobbyists, that their days of setting the agenda are over. They have not funded my campaign. You have. They will not run my White House. You'll help me run my White House.”

Not a true word in the bunch.

Even where Obama appeared to take a tough stance on lobbyists, he ultimately didn’t. Like those serving on the Industry Trade Advisory Committees, which give business leaders a voice in U.S. trade policy. Obama claimed his lobbyist rules applied to these boards. But rather than remove the lobbyists, Obama allowed the lobbyists on these boards to simply drop their certification as lobbyists and stay on the Board.

• Require Congress to post bills on line for 72 hours before voting on them and will make them available to the American public for five days before signing them.

Obama and the Democrats have broken this on virtually ever major bill on which they’ve worked, from the credit card bill to the CHIPs bill to the health care bill. In some instances, they haven’t even given the representatives 72 hours to examine the bill before the vote.

• Make White House communications public.

Obama hasn’t done this either. In fact, they’ve gone out of their way to hide visitor logs (something they used to attack Dick Cheney for).

• Nullify Bush attempts to make the release to presidential record more difficult.

Obama hasn’t done this either. In fact, they’ve flat out refused to release Bush-era documents about TARP bailout, and they’ve struggled against FOIA requests by anyone they don’t like.

Further Ethical Deficits

But even beyond his promises, Obama has had serious ethical lapses.

In April, Obama met repeatedly with lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry, the AMA, AARP, the American Cancer Society, the Business Roundtable, Family USA, and the SEIU. All sides officially claim there was no quid pro quo, these groups suddenly decided to support ObamaCare and Obama suddenly decided that they needed tax breaks, needed to have their monopolies protected, needed an additional $250 billion for doctors under Medicare, and needed various other things that Obama handed out like well-paid-for candy. Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that advocates for greater transparency and ethics in government said the meeting “raises issues.”

An interesting side outcome of this meeting was that these groups ended up paying two firms to produce ads. One of these firms, AKPD Message and Media, was founded by David Axelrod, employs one of Axelrod’s sons, and still owes Axelrod $2 million. Smell like bribe?

Team Obama also has been beset by hypocrisy problems. For example, despite his enthusiasm for class warfare, Obama’s cabinet is packed with millionaires, as is 44% of the Congress, compared to 1% of the population at large. Clinton’s net worth is $21 million, SEC Chairwoman Mary Shapiro’s net worth is $26 million. Obama himself is worth $4 million.

Even as late as November 2009, Obama was still appointing officials with tax problems. Obama’s nominee for undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs, Lael Brainard, was the fifth Obama nominee who failed to pay her taxes. She joins Tom Daschle, Timothy Geithner, and others.

Team Obama also has shown an inability to be truthful, like when it was discovered that at least 20% of the 700,000 jobs they claim were “saved or created” were fictitious.

The Democrats Aren’t Helping Either

Nor have the Democrats provided much of an example to offset Obama’s problems. In October, we learned that more than 30 House members, most of them Democrats, were under scrutiny for ethics violations. . . Democrats like Maxine Waters (D-Cal), who used her influence to help a bank in which her husband owned large amounts of stock. Laura Richardson (D-Cal) who received special treatment from a lender. Others were accused of steering appropriations to clients of lobbying firms, from whom the Congresscritter had received a bribe. . . er, campaign contribution. This included nearly half the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. Some of these names included Frank Murtha (D-Pa), Peter Visclosky (D-Ind) and James Moran (D-Va).

And, of course, you had Chris Dodd (D-Conn), who got a sweetheart deal from Countrywide, a mortgage company which he regulated. You had Charlie Rangel (D-NY) who apparently doesn’t pay taxes. He’s also under investigation for his travel, his financial deals, his fundraising and his financial disclosures. And let’s not forget William Jefferson (D-La), who went to prison with a 33 year sentence for bribery, fraud and money laundering.

Basically, you can’t swing a dead voter without striking a Democrat under investigation for corruption. The problem, of course, is that the weasels are investigating themselves.

The effect of all of this is that Obama may go down in history as the most corrupt administration of all time. U.S. Grant must be smiling.