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Washington revolving door speeds up as Obama officials head for lobbying jobs
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)


The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers), March 7, 2015
Posted: June 15th, 2015
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/07/washington-re...

Washington has long been notorious for its revolving doors. Politicians, regulators and other officials spin out of one capital building only to return at another as highly paid lobbyists. Leading the pack of former White House staff [now] accepting the corporate shilling is Jay Carney, President Obamas former White House press secretary, who this week joined Amazon as its head of global corporate affairs. Carney follows David Plouffe, Obamas former campaign manager and senior White House adviser, who quit the White House in 2013 and joined Uber. Others to have left the Obama administration for the serious cash of the corporate world include Samuel Maruca, who was director of transfer pricing (multinational company taxation) at the Internal Revenue Service, [and] Shara Aranoff, [former] chair of the US International Trade Commission. Bill Allison, senior fellow of the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit that campaigns for open government, said the number of senior government officials switching to lobbying roles in big companies poses a huge problem for transparency". Obama was very clear he didnt want people to switch between lobbying and the government, but thats what is happening. When he took office, Obama signed an order that the White House said: closes the revolving door that allows government officials to move to and from private sector jobs in ways that give that sector undue influence over government.

Note: For more on this, see Glenn Greenwald's excellent article.


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