You Will Anyway: Ethics: Seriously, No Change

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Ethics: Seriously, No Change

To get rid of him, the White House gave ethics chief Norm Eisen an ambassadorship to the Czech Republic and replaced him with Bob Bauer, White House counsel.

Bauer, a longtime Democratic lawyer, has advocated against campaign-finance reform, and he already has a primary, demanding full-time job as White House counsel. His track record is making good government groups nervous.
[...]
When practicing for the firm Perkins Coie and as counsel to the Democratic Party committees, Bauer advocated against campaign finance regulations and represented politicians who faced ethics charges, such as former Rep. Tony Coelho (Calif.) and former Sen. Robert Torricelli (N.J.).
[...]
“I’m quite confident that Bob already has very full days and I’m not sure that these ethics and transparency issues will get as much attention as I hope and wish,” says Paul Ryan, associate legal counsel for the Campaign Legal Center.
[...]
“It took us ten years to reverse much of the damage that [Bauer] wrought with soft money loopholes,” says Craig Holman, a legislative representative for Public Citizen.
[...]
“Bauer has used his expertise as an attorney to push the ethical limits as far as possible and try to keep people who clearly did unethical behavior out of trouble,” argues [Bill Allison, who works for the Sunlight Foundation]. “And by pushing the limits of how these rules are interpreted, he’s paved the way for more unethical outcomes.” Unlike Eisen, who was popularly described as “Mr. No.” around Washington, “Bauer cares about doing the things you can get away with.”
[...]
And when he replaced Greg Craig as White House counsel in 2009, Bauer was one of a handful of employees granted a special waiver to the new ethics rules established by Obama that prohibit officials in the administration from working on issues affecting their former clients for two years.
Washington Independent

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

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Daily Twain:

And other words of wisdom...

It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others. -- John Andrew Holmes

There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack. -- Molly Ivins

[War] is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious [racket]. ... It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives ... It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. -- Major General Smedley Butler

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe. -- Albert Einstein

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." -- James Thurber

One of the fun aspects of Empire is how many ironies it creates. -- Glenn Greenwald

I had a slightly insane discussion the other day with a winger who wanted urgently for me to understand that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war. Whereas I was trying to point out to him that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war. -- Molly Ivins

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. --George Orwell

I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare. –- Howard Zinn

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it. --Upton Sinclair

If we're the greatest country in the world, then maybe we could have the greatest government. -- Lewis Black

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. -- Aristotle

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who loves his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair. -- H.L. Mencken

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -- James Madison, 4th President of the United States

No nation builds a wall out of strength. They build it out of fear. -- Michael Flynn

They call it The American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. -- George Carlin

Texas justice is Texas justice. -- Victoria Nuland, US State Department spokeswoman

When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, “Except in wartime.” -- George McGovern

Sometimes I go about with pity for myself, and all the while Great Winds are carrying me across the sky. ~Ojibway saying