Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies (5 page)

But Obama broke the pledge again with the mad rush to pass his trillion-dollar, pork-stuffed stimulus package full of earmarks he denied existed. Jim Harper of the Cato Institute reported in April 2009:

Of the eleven bills President Obama has signed, only six have been posted on
Whitehouse.gov
. None have been posted for a full five days after presentment from Congress.... The President has signed most bills within a day or two of their presentment from Congress, violating his campaign promise. He has signed two bills more than five days after presentment, but—ironically, because it preserves the broken promise—not posted them on
Whitehouse.gov
.
¹⁵

It’s this utter disregard for taxpayer accountability that prompted hundreds of thousands of citizens to take to the streets on Tax Day 2009 for Tea Party protests. The trampling of transparency in the stimulus debate inspired signs that read: “No legislation without deliberation” and “READ THE BILL FIRST.” Obama’s response was first to claim that he hadn’t even heard of the Tea Party movement and then, on his 100-day celebration, to deride all those Americans he is supposed to represent for “playing games.”
¹⁶
Projection, anyone?

Despite his crusading on disclosure of campaign bundlers, Obama refused to supply occupation and employer information for his top fundraisers (McCain provided the data). And he carried on the tradition of late-night document dumps to minimize scrutiny of his wealthiest Cabinet members. Moreover, in a grand end-run around the public confirmation process, President Obama created a “historic” and “unprecedented” number of “czar” appointments through executive orders—essentially creating a shadow cabinet of secretaries overseeing every aspect of domestic policy with unchecked powers beyond congressional reach.

Environmental czar Carol Browner, former auto czar Steven Rattner, and health czar Nancy DeParle all have extensive financial ties to the industries they were assigned to oversee—ties that would have progressive supporters of Obama’s “new politics” screaming bloody murder if they had been Republican nominees.

Urban czar Adolfo Carrión is in a class of his own. As Borough President of the Bronx, he specialized in cash-and-carry deals with developers seeking approval for projects in his district. He received tens of thousands of dollars in donations from the real estate firms just before and after the developers snagged lucrative deals or crucial zoning changes for their projects. In turn, he made millions in public tax dollars available to his cronies. In one case, he arranged for a developer to renovate his front porch and failed to pay him until after his czar appointment. The Hope and Change administration blew off Carrión’s critics.

On the Obama-Biden
Change.gov
website, the ethics agenda page enshrines a famous quote:

I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists—and won. They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president.
¹⁷

Obama made this bold promise in Des Moines, Iowa, in November 2007. He made the same pledge to wild cheers in San Francisco (“They will not work in my White House!”). A year later, he threw open his transition office and the Oval Office to the nation’s leading lobbyists and influence peddlers:

• Tom Daschle was a lobbyist in everything but technical terms;

• Attorney General Eric Holder was registered as a lobbyist at Covington & Burling as recently as 2004;

• Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor who is Obama’s Agriculture secretary, was a registered lobbyist for the National Education Association in 2007;

• Ron Klain, chief of staff to Vice President Biden, was a K Street lobbyist at O’Melveny & Myers until 2004;

• Leon Panetta was a lobbyist-lite who raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporations in consulting fees;

• Patrick Gaspard, former chief lobbyist for the Service Employees International Union’s behemoth New York health care affiliate, Local 1199, served as Obama’s campaign national political director and transition deputy director of personnel;

• David Hayes, deputy secretary of the Interior, was a lobbyist at Latham & Watkins through 2006;

• William Corr, executive director of the nonprofit Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and a registered lobbyist until September 2008, was Obama’s choice for deputy Health and Human Services secretary;

• Former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson was tapped by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for chief of staff;

• William J. Wilkins, a former lobbyist for the Swiss Bankers Association, serves as general counsel of the Internal Revenue Service;

• Michael Taylor, a former vice president for public policy at Monsanto, is deputy commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration; and

• William J. Lynn III, a former lobbyist for Raytheon, is Obama’s deputy defense secretary.

In the first year alone of his administration, no-lobbyist Obama had made more than forty exceptions to his no-lobbyist rule.
¹⁸
Yet in his January 27, 2010, State of the Union address, Obama asserted, “We’ve excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs.” Timothy Carney, columnist for the
Examiner
, followed up:

I asked the White House if he chose his words poorly, but the media affairs office defended the president’s statement: “As the President said,” a spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail, “we have turned away lobbyists for many, many positions.”

So, the country may have heard, “we haven’t hired lobbyists to policymaking jobs,” but the White House tells us Obama meant, “we only hired some of the lobbyists who applied for policymaking jobs.” In other words, they’ve excluded some lobbyists.

And this was in the context of reducing the “deficit of trust.”

And that’s not counting the spouses and relatives of many of Obama’s top officials involved in the favor-trading trade (including Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and environmental czar Carol Browner’s husband) whom I document in this book.

In short: this is a government of the crony, by the lobbyist, and for all the well-heeled, well-connected people Barack Obama spent his entire campaign demonizing.

Obama’s defenders will, of course, resort to moral equivalence games. But what about Jack Abramoff? But what about Bush’s cronies? But what about Sarah Palin’s clothes scandal? But what about John McCain’s seven houses? But what about corrupt pay-for-play Republicans like Ted Stevens and former Connecticut Governor John Rowland?

Funny they should ask. Jack Abramoff is a slimeball serving five to ten at a graybar hotel in Maryland. George W. Bush and his cronies—many of whom I vigorously investigated
¹⁹
and criticized publicly
²⁰
during the last eight years—are no longer in office. Taxpayers didn’t foot the bill for Sarah Palin’s wardrobe. Or John McCain’s seven houses. And the same kind of arrangements involving home renovation freebies from corporate suitors that urban czar Adolfo Carrión got away with resulted in multiple criminal convictions for Stevens
²¹
and Rowland.

Fortunately, not everyone on the Left remains paralyzed in an irreversible state of Obama inebriation. This book would not have been possible without the contributions of some brave and lonely liberals—whistleblowers at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), independent journalists and government watchdogs—who rejected the excuse-making and whitewashing of Obama’s culture of corruption. While Obama sycophants in the mainstream media celebrated his “hipness”
²²
and his “swagga,”
²³
a few principled progressives finally began to question the cult.

But they are still in the minority. And there will be more predictable excuses. As I document in this book, Obama’s cronies of color (beginning with his own wife) reach for the race card when their dubious judgment is questioned. And when all else fails, there’s always the “I inherited the problem” alibi.

To which I reply: Read the book. Barack Obama owns this cabinet of tax cheats, crooks, and cronies. It is his and his alone. In the era of “new politics,” judge him as you would judge other mere mortals. Judge him not by the company that preceded him.

Judge him by the company he keeps.

* BONUS CHAPTER FOR THE PAPERBACK EDITION *

OBAMA’S WAR ON WHISTLE BLOWERS

T
he era of Hope and Change came wrapped in a pair of giant brass knuckles. Among the most vulnerable targets of the bully boys of the Obama administration? Independent government watchdogs and whistleblowers.

On June 11, 2009, Gerald Walpin, a federal inspector general investigating the possible misuse of AmeriCorps funds, received an ominous call from the White House. Norman Eisen, Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, offered Walpin a choice either to resign within one hour or be fired. Walpin refused to step down. Within an hour, he was terminated.
¹

Just five months earlier, President Obama had come to Washington promising he would end “Washington games.” But the firing of Walpin reeked of the old, familiar scent of cronyism, corruption, and cover-up.

Former President George W. Bush appointed Walpin to head the Inspector General’s office overseeing Americorps in 2007. Like other Inspectors General, his job was to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in government programs. He served well, honorably, and effectively. Too effectively. His removal came as he was contesting the propriety of a lenient settlement between the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento and that city’s mayor Kevin Johnson regarding alleged misuse of AmeriCorps funds.
²

Johnson, the Democrat mayor of Sacramento, is a popular former NBA basketball star and Barack Obama booster. In a May 2009 report, Walpin’s office blew the whistle on a highly politicized U.S. Attorney’s Office settlement with Johnson and his deputy, Dana Gonzalez. The pair exploited nearly $900,000 in AmeriCorps funding for personal and political gain. Based on Walpin’s investigation, the parent entity of Americorps—the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS)—had suspended the duo’s access to federal funds after determining that the two city officials were using AmeriCorps members for political activities in connection with a Sacramento School Board election. Johnson and Gonzalez were also found to have assigned AmeriCorps members to perform services personally benefiting Johnson, such as washing his car.
³

In addition, Walpin’s investigators uncovered allegations of sexual misconduct by Johnson toward several female St. HOPE students—allegations that Walpin cited in his referral to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. A Joint Staff Committee report issued by whistleblower advocates Senator Charles Grassley (Republican, Iowa) and Congressman Darrell Issa (Republican, California) provided further details:

Mr. Johnson’s attorney, Kevin Hiestand, approached at least one of the students describing himself only as “a friend of Johnson’s,” and “basically asked me to keep quiet.” According to her interview with OIG [Office of the Inspector General] investigators, about one week later, Kevin Johnson offered her $1,000 a month until the end of the program, which she refused to accept. Moreover, the OIG uncovered evidence of two other female St. HOPE students reporting Johnson for inappropriate sexual conduct towards them. These are not the first such allegations. Johnson was also accused of fondling a young woman in the mid 1990’s, but no charges were ever filed.

Walpin included details about these allegations in his criminal referral to the U.S. Attorney’s office because they, “seriously impact . . . both the security of young [AmeriCorps] Members placed in the care of grantees and... the ability of AmeriCorps to continue to attract volunteers.” The facts outlined in the referral give rise to reasonable suspicions about potential hush money payments and witness tampering at a federally funded entity. Yet, it is unclear what, if anything, the U.S. Attorney’s office did to investigate these allegations or whether the White House obtained a copy of the referral from CNCS or the Justice Department during the course of its review.

These serious allegations, and the evidence for them cited in the referral, provide important context for Walpin’s insistence that the St. HOPE matter should not have been settled without further inquiry....