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Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Lobbyists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lobbyists. Show all posts

Thursday, March 29, 2018

Government watchdog files 30 ethics complaints against Trump administration

Julia Manchester
The Hill
Originally posted March 26, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

"The bottom line is that neither Trump nor his administration take conflicts of interest and ethics seriously," Lisa Gilbert, the group's vice president of legislative affairs, told the network.

" 'Drain the swamp' was far more campaign rhetoric than a commitment to ethics, and the widespread lack of compliance and enforcement of Trump's ethics executive order shows that ethics do not matter in the Trump administration."

NBC News reports Public Citizen filed complaints with the White House Office of Management and Budget, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Health and Human Services, Commerce and Interior, among others.

Trump signed an executive order shortly after he took office in 2017 that was aimed at cracking down on lobbyists' influence in the U.S. government.

The order allowed officials who departed the administration to lobby the government, except the agency for which they worked, and permitted lobbyists to enter the administration as long as they didn't work on specific issues that would impact former clients or employers for two years.

The article is here.

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Ethics office rejects White House attempt to halt inquiry into lobbyists

Associated Press
Originally posted May 23, 2017

Donald Trump’s administration says the government ethics office lacks the authority to force the president to reveal how many waivers he’s granted to ex-lobbyists in his new administration.

Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, is asking that the office of government ethics (OGE) director, Walter Shaub, halt his inquiry into lobbyists-turned-Trump administration employees. Mulvaney wrote in a letter last week to Shaub: “This data call appears to raise legal questions regarding the scope of OGE’s authorities.”

Shaub fired back Monday that OGE’s request was well within bounds. The ethics director says he expects to see the waiver information within 10 days.

The article is here.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Trump moves to block ethics inquiry centered on ex-lobbyists

Brandon Carter
The Hill
Originally published May 22, 2017

The White House is looking to block an effort from the government’s top ethics office to disclose the names of former lobbyists who have been granted waivers to work in the federal government, according to a new report.

The New York Times reports that the White House sent a letter to the head of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) challenging its legal authority to request that information.

“It is an extraordinary thing,” Walter Shaub Jr., the director of the ethics office, told the Times. “I have never seen anything like it.”

The letter sent by Mick Mulvaney, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, questions whether the ethics office has the authority to demand information regarding ex-lobbyists who are currently working in the federal government.

The article is here.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

White House may have violated its own ethics rules with Trump's executive-branch hires

Sonam Sheth
Business Insider
Originally published April 16, 2017

The Trump administration may be entangling itself in another ethical landmine.

In this case, the White House could have violated its own ethics rules with at least two hires, a New York Times and ProPublica investigation found.

One potential conflict involves Michael Catanzaro, who is the White House's top energy adviser. Until last year, The Times and ProPublica found, Catanzaro was working as a lobbyist for the fossil-fuel industry and had clients like Devon Energy of Oklahoma and Talen Energy of Pennsylvania.

Those two companies were stalwart opponents of President Barack Obama's environmental regulations, like the Clean Power Plan, which sought to promote the use of alternative energy sources. Trump signed an executive order undoing the plan in March. As the White House's top energy adviser, Catanzaro will handle many of those same issues.

The article is here.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Is the Trump Administration Skirting Its Own Ethics Rules?

The hiring of three former lobbyists to work in the White House raises questions about the president’s executive order on ethics.

Justin Elliott
The Pacific Standard
Originally published on March 7, 2017

The Trump administration appears to be either ignoring or exempting top staffers from its own watered-down ethics rules.

As we have detailed, President Donald Trump in January issued an order weakening Obama-era ethics policies, allowing lobbyists to work at agencies they had sought to influence. The Trump order did limit what lobbyists could do once they entered government, banning them from directly handling issues on which they had lobbied.

But the administration may not be even following that.

We’ve found three hires announced this week who, in fact, are working on the same issues on which they were registered lobbyists while in the private sector.

The article is here.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

How Corrupt Is Your State?

by AJ Vicens
Moyers and Company
Originally posted November 10, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

That’s according to the State Integrity Investigation, a sweeping project released today by the nonprofit investigative reporting group the Center for Public Integrity. The Washington, DC-based Center worked with experienced journalists in every state (but not the District of Columbia) to assess state government rules and systems that were in place between January 2013 and March 2015. The journalists combed through records and laws, using 245 specific “indicators” that measured transparency and accountability, for example public access to information or state lobbying disclosure laws. Good government experts in each state, and later editors at Global Integrity, a government watchdog that tracks governmental accountability around the world, then reviewed the assessments for consistency and accuracy. Each state was assigned an overall letter grade, but also scores on 13 subcategories that include political finance, election oversight, lobbying, and ethics, among others.

The entire article is here.