While President Obama campaigned on transparency and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged this would be the "the most ethical Congress ever," it seems those promises were only words. Today, The Washington Examiner's Timothy Carney reports on the Administration's decision to get rid of the position dedicated to transparency.
The Sunlight Foundation, a bipartisan organization dedicated to tranpsarency listed just a few of the transparency promises the Administration has failed to follow through on, "including earmark transparency, a single Web site (ethics.gov) with all ethics and accountability information and better lobbying disclosure, among others."
See a beginning excerpt of the Examiner piece:
President Obama has abolished the position in his White House dedicated to transparency and shunted those duties into the portfolio of a partisan ex-lobbyist who is openly antagonistic to the notion of disclosure by government and politicians.
Obama transferred "ethics czar" Norm Eisen to the Czech Republic to serve as U.S. ambassador. Some of Eisen's duties will be handed to Domestic Policy Council member Steven Croley, but most of them, it appears, will shift over to the already-full docket of White House Counsel Bob Bauer.Bauer is renowned as a "lawyer's lawyer" and a legal expert. His resume, however, reads more "partisan advocate" than "good-government crusader." Bauer came to the White House from the law firm Perkins Coie, where he represented John Kerry in 2004 and Obama during his campaign.