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The Stench of the Potomac
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Magazine


New York Magazine, August 1, 2013
Posted: August 12th, 2013
http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/this-town-washington-lobbyi...

The tale of how the Obama economic team was recruited en masse from Robert Rubin acolytes who either facilitated Wall Streets pre-crash recklessness while in the Clinton administration or cashed in on it later (or, like Rubin, did both) never loses its power to shock. Michael Froman, Rubins chief of staff as Clinton Treasury secretary, not only served as the Obama transition teams personnel director but moonlighted as a Citigroup managing director while doing so. Obama essentially entrusted the repairing of the china shop to the bulls whod helped ransack it, [Jeff] Connaughton writes [in The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins]. [In This Town Mark] Leibovich updates the story of the tacky prehistory of the Obama White House with its aftermaththe steady parade of Obama alumni who traded change we can believe in for cash on the barrelhead as soon as they left public service. The starry list includes, among many others, Peter Orszag (director of the White Houses Office of Management and Budget, now at Citi), Jake Siewert (the Treasury Department counselor turned chief flack for Goldman Sachs), and David Plouffe (the campaign manager and senior presidential adviser who did consulting for Boeing and General Electric). When I am president, Obama had said in 2008, I will start by closing the revolving door in the White House thats allowed people to use their administration job as a stepping-stone to further their lobbying careers. Puzzling over how so many colleagues have strayed from this credo, the former press secretary Robert Gibbs has theorized that either somehow we have all changed or, alternatively, maybe Washington changed us.

Note: For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.


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