Originally published July 20 2013
Obama repeatedly awarding coveted ambassador posts to large campaign finance bundlers
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) Hope and change. That was Barack Obama's initial campaign slogan, in a nutshell. Obama was supposed to be the man who unified the country through hope and brought much needed change to the way Washington did its business. Now, less than a year into Obama's second term, all he has done is left tens of millions of Americans hoping he will change.
Remember when, as a candidate, Obama - during the nomination speech he gave at Denver's Invesco Field - said it was time for the country to move on from the "broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush?" No more pay-for-play politics, the president pledged.
That was then. Since Obama has been president, he's done exactly what most who came before him, at least in the modern era, have done: reward those that helped put him in office, even at the expense of what's best for the country.
Nowhere is this more prevalent than in foreign policy - an area where this president has bungled more often than he's succeeded (think Benghazi, the Egyptian mess and his inability to get a grip on the Syrian civil war). Maybe that's because Obama is more interested in giving plum diplomatic posts to big campaign donors and bundlers.
It's good to be a 'friend of Obama'
From US News & World Report, circa June 2010:
President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have promised to put more career diplomats into cherished ambassadorial jobs, but the group that represents the Foreign Service says it's not happening. In a new memo they're showing to friendly lawmakers, the American Foreign Service Association says Obama is rewarding donors and campaign "bundlers" just as past presidents did. "It's the same old, same old," says a diplomat.
The magazine went on to say that, just two years into his first term, Obama had "perfected the game of giving political allies and donors key ambassadorships in countries like England, France, Japan, Spain, Finland, and Australia." Foreign Service pros at the time observed that Obama was the worst abuser of the pay-for-play system, putting political pals in 44 percent of the top 185 ambassador positions (by comparison Bush put allies in 30 percent of the top spots, Bill Clinton 28 percent).
A year later, in 2011, the Center for Public Integrity reported that nearly 200 of Obama's supporters had landed cushy jobs in his administration, further solidifying the fact that the only "change" his regime represents is that he is doubling down on the nepotism. Per the report. And, as CBS News noted, citing the report:
Like many candidates, President Obama depended on large donations to win the 2008 election. But as the iWatch news report notes, Obama frequently campaigned on a promise to abolish the practice of rewarding special interests in exchange for cash.
When he kicked off his campaign February 10, 2007, Obama slammed "the cynics, the lobbyists, the special interests," who had "turned our government into a game only they can afford to play."
And handing plum jobs to top donors - you know, "the cynics, the lobbyists, the special interests" and others who "can afford to play" the game of presidential politics - continues within the regime to this day.
No 'change' here
In fact, CNS News reported July 10 that Obama just nominated a pair of major campaign bundlers to two of the most choice ambassador positions in the U.S. government - London and Rome - "part of a pattern that has seen him reward at least 18 top fundraisers with plum diplomatic positions since 2009," the news service said.
If he's confirmed by the Senate - and he will be - the London post will go to "Matthew Barzun, an Internet pioneer and investor who served as the Obama campaign finance chairman in 2008, as ambassador to Sweden from 2009-2011, and then again as finance chairman for the president's 2012 campaign," CNS News reported.
The Rome posting will go to Washington lawyer and chairman of the president's committee that selects White House fellows, John R. Phillips. It should be noted that Phillips is married to Linda Douglass, a former network journalist who now conveniently serves as Obama's communications director for the Obama White House's Office of Health Reform.
So you see, after all his polished speeches and holier-than-thou rhetoric, Obama is just another two-bit president who likes to reward his friends and supporters with jobs paid for by the hard-pressed (and dwindling) taxpayers.
So much for hoping for change.
Sources:
http://cnsnews.com
http://www.usnews.com
http://www.cbsnews.com
http://www.publicintegrity.org
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