In my last column, I reported about Obama’s outgoing administration members’ upcoming difficulties in finding a job. There’s more bad news.
According to The Washington Post’s Catherine Ho, upon his becoming president, Donald Trump’s administration will enact a five-year ban on becoming a lobbyist after one’s government tour of duty is over.
Further, if one wants to join the Trump Administration and one is a lobbyist, one must quit the lobbying game, proving that by signing an affidavit that they have quit and promise to stay quit for five years.
Existing rules for becoming a lobbyist after leaving government already include a cooling off period. Further, longer bans for lobbyists are not new as Obama himself did it. But Obama reversed his own ban on lobbyists after he got sued.
Judge David Tatel said he wasn’t quite sure how “banning lobbyists from committees composed of representatives of the likes of Boeing and General Electric protects the ‘voices of ordinary Americans.'”
Byron Tau of Politico.com in August of 2014 reported that thus the way was opened for “lobbyists for corporations and industry groups” to be allowed to serve “on more than 1,000 industry boards, panels and commissions that give the private sector an advisory role in decision-making across the executive branch, according to a copy of the rule published on the Federal Register site.”
Judge Tatel may have a point if, as he says, those government committees are made of industry titans pushing their own agendas. What’s one more eye of newt in that brew, right?
At the same time, though, Trump’s mantra about draining the swamp is only the first response of the hammer’s slamming the crooked nail.
Hmmmm….The Hammer. I like that name for Trump. I’m going to start using it.
President Donald “The Hammer” Trump.
Yes. Yes, I like it. “The Hammer” sounds like somebody who’ll jump from the top of the ropes, flinging his body toward the masked trio of pretty but mean brothers.
Their linked arms show forceful solidarity for evil plot hatching but are no match for “The Hammer” and he hits the trio like a supersonic bowling ball, crushing the pins at the end of the lane. Still, I don’t want “The Hammer” to get the big head. He must remember this:
The fight for protecting the founding documents of this country will not end at the next inauguration. Let’s hope “The Hammer” doesn’t forget what this fight is all about.
