Latest Appointment Makes Obama a Hypocrite
So it's "do as i say and not as I do..."
One Sentence Summary: Obama made a big point of banning lobbyists and former lobbyists from contacting and severely restricting employment in his administration, yet turns around and appoints a lobbyist as the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
Sam Stein of HuffingtonPost.com writes...
"The nomination of William Lynn as Deputy Secretary of Defense has placed Barack Obama under the burn of political heat just days into the presidency.
"Having lobbied the government on behalf of the defense industry giant Raytheon, Lynn's appointment violates the newly-instituted ethics guidelines that the president applied to his staff shortly after taking office. Questioned about the transgression, the White House said Lynn was being granted a waiver.
"But there is a second layer to the Lynn issue that also is leaving a bad taste in the mouths of Democrats, good government groups and Republicans eager to cry hypocrisy. Raytheon is no mom-and-pop defense contractor shop. It is the type of industry behemoth that protesters of the Iraq invasion bemoaned for profiting off of the war and encouraging militarization. And as the man who led "the company's strategic planning and [oversaw] the government relations activity," Lynn was intimately involved.
"A former employee of DFI International -- a D.C. consulting firm -- Lynn joined Raytheon in August 2002 and was elected an officer in May 2005. The firm and its subsidiaries are a major force on Capitol Hill, having spent more than $14.5 million on federal lobbying activities during the six years Lynn was working there, according to a review of lobbying records. Raytheon worked to lobby the House, Senate, DARPA, Defense Department, Energy Department, Treasury Department, State Department, and others on issues ranging from long-range guided munitions, sea based missile defense and joint standoff weapon systems.
"The government outreach efforts seemed to pay dividends. Raytheon Company received more than $54 billion in contracts from the federal government during that time period, according to fedspending.org, a project of OMB Watch. This doesn't include the potentially billions more that the company was awarded as a subcontractor or part of a group contract."
Obama has already put the kibosh on several of George W. Bush's final laws, and righted the ship on other wrongs of the previous administration. However, some of the appointments Obama has made have been awful choices, not just Lynn but also Secretary of the Treasury Geithner, who not only didn't pay taxes for years, but ran his the New York Federal Reserve Bank as his personal printing press - printing up money at will, which helped further devalue the U.S. Dollar and largely contribute to the current mess. Nothing Geithner did at the his bank makes one think he is qualified to be top dog. In fact, Geithner is so incompetent and unqualified, it smacks of a George W. Bush move.
Now we have Obama laying down the law one day ridding Washington and the White House of lobbyists, then ignoring his own policies not 24 hours later and appointing a lobbyist/insider to a crucial position and saying 'it's ok, I approve him.'
I like Obama, voted for him, support him still. But if he does something stupid or wrong I will stand up and make my displeasure known. It's important that we as citizens and voters don't let anyone go unchallenged when they make bad decisions or go back on their word, regardless of who it is.
