If your first guess was that the Ethic’s Czar chair is vacant because The Most Ethical Administration in History has no ethics violations, you should immediately tell your doctor that you need your medication increased. Delusions that severe can have long lasting effects.
The Huffington Post reports:
President Obama has nominated his “ethics czar” as ambassador to the Czech Republic, the White House announced on Monday. The White House won’t say whether it plans to replace him.
The story continues:
Eisen’s first act as special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform was to gather up Obama’s campaign promises about battling special interests in Washington and to bundle them into an executive order banning lobbyists from serving in the administration, which Obama signed on his first day in office.
Apparently the Huffington Post’s website does not command enough bandwidth to add the fact that Obama violated this Executive Order less than a day after signing it by hiring former lobbyist William J. Lynn III as his Deputy Defense Secretary which, if we’re not mistaken, establishes a new record for presidential promise breaking.
Nevertheless, the article’s unabated hilarity continues:
Under Norm Eisen’s leadership, the Administration has had a remarkable first year making our government more accessible and accountable, including reducing special interest influence in Washington,” said a White House official. “Among other accomplishments, as government watch-dog groups have recognized, the President’s revolving door lobbying ban for officials leaving government is ‘the most-far reaching ever adopted’; the President’s ‘reverse’ revolving door rules for officials entering government are the ‘first-ever’ and ‘innovative’; and the President’s open government initiatives are ‘unprecedented’ and ‘go well beyond any efforts undertaken by previous administrations.’
Well, yes, they are the “most-far reaching” damn rules ever. The problem is that the whole Executive Order is basically a joke that is violated almost daily in the Obama White House via a liberal use of waivers. The White House is in fact so darn friendly to lobbyists that we are surprised the Vice-President isn’t a lobbyist. But at least his son is.
So it’s not the empty Ethics Czar Chair that’s a problem. It’s the empty ethics promises.
Source: Huffington Post
