Who Are the Good-Government Advocates in Washington These Days?
On Sunday, Congressional Quarterly’s Brian Friel wrote a New York Times op-ed and joined the latest blood sport among Washington’s insiders and liberals: how to pile on to stop Rep. Darrell Issa and his anticipated congressional investigation of the Obama administration. Issa is slated to be the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which will have very broad investigative powers.
Friel’s advice seemed to be coated with reasonableness. He informs his readers that he relied on 14 independent “good-government” professionals to help him develop a counter list of “Investigations We Could Really Use.” He solemnly calls them “14 good-government watchdogs — veterans of the oversight process, former public officials, and academics.”
Some of the ideas presented by Friel are worthy of consideration. But the Times did not think it was important to inform their readers that the “impartial” group consisted of a current advisor to the Obama White House, two registered lobbyists who actually lobby the oversight committee, and many left-wing partisans.
The most interesting person among the “good-government” types is Patricia G. McGinnis, who currently serves as an unpaid White House advisor to President Obama on leadership programs for presidential appointees. Last July Raw Story revealed that the Washington Post had misleadingly identified McGinnis as an unbiased policy blogger and did not disclose her ties to the White House. As Hot Air reported:
Meet Patricia McGinnis, a contributor to the Washington Post’s policy blogs, and a big fan of Barack Obama. For instance, in January of this year, McGinnis decried the “chilling partisanship” of Republicans objecting to Obama’s agenda in Congress, and offered Obama “high marks for his policy choices” and saluted how Obama has “risen to every challenge by calling on his excellent leadership team.”
So much for McGinnis’s neutrality and objectivity.
This brings us to the second impartial member of Mr. Friel’s good-government posse, David Marin. Mr. Marin is on the payroll of the Podesta Group, one of the largest Democratic lobby and fundraising shops in Washington.
The Podesta Group was founded by Tony and John Podesta in 1988. The Podesta brothers have been uber-partisans in Washington. In the last two years Tony’s lobbying shop spent an impressive $47 million in lobbying money influencing Congress.
Tony’s brother John was the chief of staff for President Bill Clinton and helped create one of the most powerful think tanks in Washington, the Center for American Progress. The Podesta brothers continue to be very close to the Obama administration. The White House logs report that Tony met with President Obama or his staff eight times in the first six months of the Obama administration.
As the Washington Post reported about Tony:
With extensive roots in Democratic politics and fundraising, Podesta has managed to hold his position as one of Washington’s most powerful lobbyists while retaining close ties to the Obama administration.
Tony’s wife Heather has her own boutique lobby shop. According to Open Secrets, in 2009 she reported $6.99 million in lobbying income.
But let us get back to Mr. Marin himself. After all, we shouldn’t besmirch his good-government reputation based on his association with Mr. Podesta. It turns out Mr. Marin is not such a neutral figure concerning the House Oversight Committee. For three years, he served as a Democratic staffer on the same committee Mr. Issa is about to chair. And last year he lobbied hard, representing 30 clients.
For example, Mr. Marin is a registered lobbyist on behalf of — General Motors. Or as some people now call it, Government Motors. And Mr. Marin represented the oil giant BP (that good government icon) in the aftermath of its spill.
Richard,
Anyone who still reads the Daily Duranty isn’t looking for truth. Hiding a lack of fairness, material facts and any semblance of objectivity is no different there than at MSNBC….except for the smudge on your fingers when you are done.
We could contact the ombudsman, but that’s simply chasing an alibi for fraud.
Nobody reads that rag for anything except leftist red meat….vegan style.
The Daily Duranty. I love it! Best name for the Times yet.
Until a constitutional amendment is made to severely restrict the federal governments authority to regulate commerce, the government and ALL those around the governments’ processes will continue to be represented by the corruption of lobbyists representing among the many….”veterans of the oversight process, former public officials, and academics.” In other words all the elitist political hacks representing all their special political, economic, judicial and social ideological interests.
Return the federal government back to the letter of intent of the Constitution and return to the States all their constitutional rights to govern and 99.999% of the federal government created problems abusing the commerce clause and all its bred corruption, will go away….not to mention the size and cost of government and future national debt.
Then, you might find 14 politically unbiased folks around the Washington cess pool sitting around twiddling their thumbs and recounting the good old days of government corruption that made them so rich and powerful.
The libs must be very concerned. No doubt they have good reason for it. I say, let ‘er rip. If Issa gets out of hand and abuses his position the GOP will be punished at the polls. If, on the other hand, he and his committee uncover, as I suspect they will, rampant corruption, the GOP will be rewarded. A lot has been done in secret over the last four years. Time to shed some light on how the Dems have operated – in congress and in the White House.
You have a better chance of finding 14 unicorns. The biases will exist, and need to be exposed.
I have no problem self-identifying as a small-government fiscal conservative. I suspect the government workers and their unions would be opposed to much of what I advocate. Our interests are antagonistic. That’s life.
I do not see the Democrat Party, nor anyone in Congress, Independents and Republicans included, that intend to downsize their powers in any shape or form. They have the Senate Bill S510, the ‘Food Safety Act’, that grants them more rampant authority to regulate/tax/terminate/fine small growers of food stuffs in the United States. This bill is on the floor for vote today.
As per Michael Greer at American Thinker, it’s the ObamaCare for the FDA.
Legislators like Charles Rangel have lived in the realm of corruption, for so many years, they do not believe they are subjects of the same laws that apply to the unwashed masses they represent. And they are not too far wrong. If any one of the readers here were found guilty of any of the felonies Rangel was found guilty of, we would receive prison sentences and fines.
It’s going to take a radical Conservative like Chris Christie, or Sarah Palin, to overturn the frenzied attack these legislators have endorsed on OUR Constitutional Government.
One doesn’t need good people; One can manage quite well with bad people
who practice ‘Honest Graft’, who take their cut from the highest briber,
but see to it that the work is done well, and _wish_to_continue_doing_so.
What D.C. needs is ‘a circulation of men’; The current Congress Critters
are so compromised that they literally cannot see the crash coming.
No, really; the human mind is visually oriented, and can both see things
that are not there, and not see things that are there; The CCC do not,
cannot, look at the future because there is nothing there they want to see.
It’s been said, and truly, that no one could win a scavenger hunt, one of whose items-to-be-found is “an honest man in Washington.”
The problem is independent of party affiliation. The lure of power, particularly power over trillions of dollars taken from taxpayers by force, approaches Lord Acton’s standard for “absolute power.” And we all know what that does.
A trillion dollars – 1 followed by twelve zeroes — would suffice for a spending spree of $13 million per day from the birth of Christ to the present day. And our Congress has elected to spend three and a half of them per year. If anyone can think of a more corrupting influence, I want to hear about it.
Who here is willing to consider the possibility that it’s not the players that are the problem, but the rules of the game?
No, I’m not saying democracy is a bad thing. I’m saying that the US seems to have a few fundamental obstacles to good governance. They’ve been in place since the beginning, but they’re becoming increasingly obvious. Can anyone else here spot any?