Democrats cheered when Senator Barack Obama promised them that if he were elected President, no lobbyists would “work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.”
On his first day in office, President Obama propagandized this campaign deceit with a press conference broadcasting him signing an executive order to that effect.
Back in the Oval Office, President Obama’s team devised a scheme to circumvent this “promise.” That scheme became “The Waiver.”
Americans were promised that presumably unscrupulous, untrustworthy and despicable lobbyists would be banned from influencing policy under Obama.
What most Americans don’t know is that Obama shrewdly broke his promise to them on just his third day in office by appointing William Lynn, a former lobbyist for Defense contractor Raytheon, to Deputy Secretary of Defense.
This is not just some little government job. This is a major position.
Obama justified this with a “waiver” that says, well, this guy is an exception. He’s really smart, so just this once, okay?
Within one year in office, he appointed not only three Cabinet Secretaries and the Director of Intelligence who were all lobbyists, but over 30 lobbyists as political appointees.
By the end of 2013, over 50 Obama appointees were former lobbyists.
That’s quite a few waivers. Some didn’t even have waivers to get the job. Being a Democrat seems to help quite a bit.
Have you noticed the silence from liberals on this extraordinary violation of trust they extended him?
His reported preference for John Ashton as Secretary of Defense should be no surprise, as his employment record fits Obama’s mold for appointing high-dollar lobbyists to important cabinet positions.
Remember, the disgraced Eric Holder was a lobbyist at Covington and Burling, whose client list includes legal, defense and civil servant organizations.
Mr. Ashton has an impressive resume: bachelor’s degrees in physics from Yale, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa, a Rhodes Scholar doctorate in theoretical physics at Oxford where he also taught physics. He’s worked on defense matters with Democrats and Republicans from Clinton to Bush.
Mr. Ashton is certainly a qualified and bipartisan choice for Secretary of Defense, but his selection is another blatant Obama corruption of his promise to voters.
If a Republican who made the same promise as Obama were in the White House, every mainstream news program, online news site and Sunday news show would be splattered with partisan outrage that this President just cannot keep such an important promise as keeping lobbyists out of the administration.
Why?
The Washington Times writes:
“Mr. Carter received almost as much money from defense consulting work as he did from Harvard University before he joined the Obama Administration in 2009...”
According to the waiver, he ‘provided specific business advice’ on a weapons system called the Sensor Fused Weapon. The last year of Defense funding for the weapon system was in fiscal 2007.
In 2011, a White House spokeswoman said Mr. Carter would be recused from two years from participating in matters involving Harvard because he resigned his tenured position there in 2011.”
There is a photo from 2008 in which Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi promised “the most ethical” administration and Congress in history while standing at a podium in front of a gigantic poster that reads, “Honest Leadership. Open Government” that is now priceless as a laugh-out-loud, self-mocking satirical commentary on what has become one of the most corrupt and unethical presidencies in history.
This Ashton incident is really just a small example of President Obama’s audacity of smoke and insincerity.
Rick Jensen is Delaware’s award-winning conservative talk show host on 1150AM WDEL and 93.7FM HD3, Streaming live on WDEL.com from 1pm - 4pm EST. Contact Rick at rick@wdel.com, or follow him on Twitter @Jensen1150WDEL