The Politico looks at Joe Biden’s new chief of staff and observes that the prohibition against employing lobbyists and persons with industry interests in the new administration actually applies only if the lobbyists are directly employed on issues with which they were formerly concerned. If they’re in the next room, it’s ok. Fannie Mae’s friends live on but in other settings.
After leaving the Clinton administration in its waning months, newly tapped Vice Presidential chief of staff Ron Klain lobbied for an asbestos industry bailout package, an airline merger, mortgage regulations to help Fannie Mae and a drug-maker under congressional scrutiny for withholding life-saving drugs from dying patients, among other clients.
Klain’s career as a lobbyist, during which clients paid nearly $700,000 for lobbying in which he participated, ended when he left his partnership at the law firm O’Melveny & Myers in 2005.
That makes him eligible to be the top aide to Vice President-elect Joe Biden under the rules outlined by President-elect Barack Obama, who decreed early in his campaign that lobbyists can work in his administration — just not in areas related to their lobbying within two years of that lobbying.
“This is the strongest ethics and lobbying reform policy in history,” asserted Obama transition spokesman Tommy Vietor. …
From 2002 through 2005, the now-failed mortgage lender Fannie Mae paid as much as $120,000 for an O’Melveny team, including Klain, to lobby Congress and the Housing and Urban Development Department on “regulatory issues.”
A telescope maker in 2002 paid O’Melveny $40,000 for Klain and his crew to push for legislation “that would provide a duty suspension on imports of certain toy telescopes.”
And from 2001 to 2005, AOL Time Warner paid O’Melveny as much as $130,000 for a Klain-led team to lobby Congress and the Justice Department on issues related to “competition in Internet and related computer sciences.”
It’s a job. Besides, lobbyists are people too.
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4 Comments
1. bill-tb:Corrupto-Crats know no limits.
Reject Obamunism and all the misery it portends.
Nov 14, 2008 - 5:55 pm 2. sirius_sir:Pelosi will simplify life for herself as soon as she realizes the Detroit auto makers are merely the conduit through which union auto workers receive compensation (in amounts that–including wages, health care, and pensions–currently average over 72 dollars an hour.)
She has a vested interest in keeping these people happy, not so much keeping the auto makers afloat. So the best solution would be to bail out the workers directly, cut out the middle man and save taxpayers the difference. Perhaps these same workers could be persuaded to stay home or fill their time with other activities for, say, two-thirds of what they make now.
You say you want a revolution
Well you know
We’d all want to change the world…
If we’re gonna have a revolution, let’s at least have a green revolution.
Nov 14, 2008 - 7:00 pm 3. sirius_sir:Well shoot. Now my comment seems mildly demented.
More than usual, I mean.
Nov 14, 2008 - 8:59 pm 4. Aristide:The other night an economist (perhaps Richard M. Ebeling) said that the UAW workers average about $81/hr when all things were considered, while the auto workers in the South totaled about $35/hr.
Later that same evening, on another show, another economist (Dr. Peter Morici), said they made about the same. Now, I don’t know if he was talking base wage or what the hell or if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about!
The first was on Jerry Doyle and the second on Jim Bohannon.
Nov 14, 2008 - 9:40 pmSorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.