A Thousand Points of Blight

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American Spectator:

A Thousand Points of Blight
By David Catron on 3.10.11 @ 6:08AM

In a 2006 speech to the National Press Club about lobbying reform, Illinois Senator Barack Obama waxed eloquent about the malevolent influence of special interests on Beltway politics: "The American people are tired of a Washington that's only open to those with the most cash and the right connections. They're tired of a political process where the vote you cast isn9;t as important as the favors you can do." And, alluding to that infamous hive of scum and villainy, the Bush administration, he added: "When big oil companies are invited into the White House for secret energy meetings, it's no wonder they end up with billions in tax breaks while Americans still struggle to fill up their gas tanks and heat their homes." It appears, however, that talk is a good deal cheaper than political influence.

Four years later, Obama had long since moved to Pennsylvania Avenue and was receiving frequent visits from people with more than a passing resemblance to the iniquitous special interests whose influence had once filled him with righteous indignation. Not only did he conduct intimate tête-à-têtes with energy executives, meetings that outraged more than a few progressive advocacy groups, he was receiving a steady stream of visitors with much at stake in the health care reform legislation that was being hotly debated in Congress and in the public square. Many conservatives and libertarians worried that secret deals were being cut, and this anxiety was by no means ameliorated when we learned Richard Trumka was getting more face time with the President than was Mrs. Obama.

Then the other shoe dropped. Last October, it came out that the Obama administration had been issuing ObamaCare waivers to a list of unions and corporations that correlated rather suspiciously to the donor rolls of the Democratic National Committee. The indignation caused by this news increased proportionally as the total number of special dispensations grew to 111 by November and to twice that amount in December. And there was general outrage when an additional 507 new waivers were posted to the approval list the day after Obama's State of the Union Address. The list now includes more than 1,000 unions and other entities. Thus, several Republican committee chairmen in the House are interested in all of those visits the President received during the run-up to the final ObamaCare vote.