Obama’s Lobbyist Slams Mask Big K Street Payday

In his State of the Union speech, the president puffed up his chest, fixed his Mr. Scornful face, and once again pulled out the populist’s handbook to bash those evil, monstrous lobbyists.

Obama mentioned lobbyists seven times in his address and in every case they were used as a scapegoat to explain away Washington’s inability to get one thing or another done.

Obama promised — again and for the thousandth time — to “end the outsized influence of lobbyists” in Washington. He then praised himself for excluding lobbyists from jobs in his administration and he proposed even more limits on them.

This attack on lobbyists is cathartic and makes for great populist boilerplate, of course, but there isn’t much truth in Obama’s attack on them because the fact is K Street — the D.C. street where many lobbying firms are located — has made more money off the Obama Administration than from any previous president.

And Obama has been pretty blatant about ignoring the obvious disconnect between his populist harangues against lobbyists and his coddling and sidling up to them. Obama’s big paydays to lobbyists at nearly every level has been nothing short of breathtaking. It has been like this since day one.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Big Government, Financial Services, influence peddling, K Street
Posted Jan 29th 2010 at 12:51 pm in Congress, Economics, Obama, Politics, federal spending | 6688683 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/wthuston/2010/01/29/obamas-lobbyist-slams-masks-big-k-street-payday/Obama%27s+Lobbyist+Slams+Mask+Big+K+Street+Payday2010-01-29+20%3A51%3A17Warner+Todd++Huston

Obamanomics: Crony Capitalism Disguised as Progressive Reforms

In his new book Obamanomics: How Barack Obama is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses, Timothy P. Carney explains that Barack Obama’s “progressive” rhetoric masks good old-fashioned crony capitalism, in which the favored few and politcally well-connected get all sorts of benefits paid for with public dollars. Whether the area is Wall Street, health care reform, union organizing, or K Street lobbying, the same pattern is everywhere: using the government’s power to distribute goodies and rig markets.

A columnist at the Washington Examiner and a non-partisan reporter, Carney also lays into the Republican Party for its massive contribution to the problem when it wielded power. Carney provides a game plan to take the country back and restore truly free markets that will benefit everyone.

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Tags: Big Business, business bailout, business subsidy, lobbyists, Obamanomics
Posted Jan 22nd 2010 at 9:17 am in Big Labor, Congress, Economics, Environment, Healthcare, Obama, Politics, federal spending | 6364234 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/ngillespie/2010/01/22/obamanomics-crony-capitalism-disguised-as-progressive-reforms/Obamanomics%3A+Crony+Capitalism+Disguised+as+Progressive+Reforms2010-01-22+17%3A17%3A01Nick+Gillespie

DeMint Proposes Constitutional Amendment Targeting Career Politicians

From the Washington Times:

Charles Rangel (D-NY) was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1970.

Sen. Jim DeMint says Washington politicians are like fruit on the vine: the longer they hang around, the more rotten they get.

The South Carolina Republican – hearkening back to the days of the party’s “Contract with America” – on Tuesday offered a fix to the corrupting influence of “permanent politicians,” introducing an amendment to the Constitution that would limit Senate members to three six-year terms and House members to three two-year terms.

“As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to buy off special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork – in short, amassing their own power,” said Mr. DeMint, who is running for a second term next year. (more…)

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Tags: Charlie Rangel, Constitution, Contract with America, Jim DeMint, lobbyists
Posted Nov 11th 2009 at 12:07 pm in Congress | 2910696 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/publius/2009/11/11/demint-proposes-constitutional-amendment-targeting-career-politicians/DeMint+Proposes+Constitutional+Amendment+Targeting+Career+Politicians2009-11-11+19%3A07%3A13Publius