Lincoln Blog
July 21, 2010:
We have yet another broken promise from Barack Obama.
The presidential candidate who campaigned on the theme of bringing a new era of bipartisanship to Washington, D.C., and who pledged to run an open and transparent administration, has none neither.
President Obama has rammed bill after bill through congress on party-line or virtual party-line votes. The latest being "financial reform" legislation and an extension of unemployment benefits. So much for a "new era" in inter-party cooperation.
As for transparency; not only has he not run an administration that is more transparent, he is actually shutting off the lights on some of the policies of the Bush Administration aimed at making the federal government more open and accountable.
The latest is a decision by the Defense Department to water down the financial disclosure rules required of former high ranking military officials who retire and then become consultants to the government.
According to printed reports, those consultants will no longer be required to disclose their business ties or their finances to the public.
That means we will have no way of knowing whether or not these hired guns are acting in the public interest, or whether they are serving special interests that also pay them for their work.
Candidate Obama took the high road on transparency; President Obama has reverted to his sordid Chicago roots and is busy turning off the lights of disclosure and returning government to the dark, smoke-filled back rooms.
