Obama Lifts Ban on Lobbyists! Back to Business as Usual

[Terminator]

Roll Call is reporting that during the typical Friday afternoon document dump — a practice used to hide actions that might prove somewhat embarrassing to the White House — the administration quietly announced that some of the former restrictions on lobbying ballyhooed about during the late campaign have been lifted.
Let special interests ring!
Roll Call says that the administration lifted bans on lobbyists that have some part of spending “stimulus” funds. So now getting hooks into bloated federal spending is open season for the very lobbyists that Obama pretended to disdain only months ago.
So much for hopinchange.

The ban on oral communication now applies only to competitively bid applications on the stimulus package and it applies equally to lobbyists as well as non-lobbyists, according to a White House blog post written by ethics official Norm Eisen.

Additionally, the administration is still also pretending at “transparency” because one of the new rules is that there be “immediate internet disclosure” of this renewed contact that lobbyists are to have with federal agencies. Not that such a thing is anywhere near de rigueur at this point… but, um, you know how hard The One is working, right?
So why the reverse? According to Roll Call:

The decision to change the policy follows the 60-day review period that the Obama administration set for the Office of Management and Budget to review the new lobbying rules. Several watchdog groups and lobbying entities, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American League of Lobbyists and the AFL-CIO, raised concern over the recently imposed rules.

[BigDawg]

Not ANOTHER campaign promise thrown out!!!! Not Mr. Change himself!!!!

[213th]

Really? Seriously? Of course this only further cements the statement displayed on my shirt (I was anti-Obama before it was cool)

[TXCharlie]

Lobbyists aren't all bad - They are an educational necessity, really.

The truth is that without lobbyists on both sides of an issue to explain the facts of life to the politicians, most members of Congress WOULD NOT HAVE A CLUE on the things that they vote on.

For example, oil company lobbyists are always despised by the public, but the truth there is that without them, Congress would have done some very foolish things, like price controls which would have resulted in extreme energy shortages last summer-

I remember sitting in line at the gas pumps for two hours back in the late 1970's, then being allowed to only buy two gallons of gas because Congress refused to believe the oil company lobbyists when they warned Congress that OPEC would not sell us oil at an artificially low price - Duhhh.

[Terminator]

While lobbyists are a necessity, being able to pinpoint the facts from bullshit to get what you want, is a must for Congress.

[ex401mp]

Just think , of all those people that got suckered into voting for him must be feeling pretty damn proud of all that change.