By Matt Taibbi:
Among the measures proposed: new restrictions on lobbying, including a five-year ban on White House and congressional officials becoming lobbyists after leaving office.
Months later, with the self-proclaimed "existential threat" to special interests in office, the "establishment" has it better than ever. Not only has the money-over-principle dynamic not changed inside the Beltway, it's ascendant. Under "outsider" rule, Washington has never been more Washington-y.
Tuesday, for instance, Trump signed a repeal of a bipartisan provision of the Dodd-Frank bill known as the Cardin-Lugar Amendment. The absurd history of this doomed provision stands as a perfect microcosm of how Washington works, or doesn't work, as it were.
The election of a billionaire president who killed the anti-corruption measure off is only the brutal coup de grace. The rule was stalled for the better part of six years by a relentless and exhausting parade of lobbyists, lawyers and other assorted Beltway malingerers. It then lived out of the womb for a few sad months before Trump smothered it this week.
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Ask Trump supporters about this episode, and many would say they won't weep for the loss of any government regulation.
But they should ask themselves if, when they were whooping and hollering for the man who promised to end special interest and lobbyist rules in Washington, they imagined the ExxonMobil chief in charge of the State Department cheering as the new president wiped out anti-bribery laws. The "establishment" sure is on the run, isn't it?
The Full Story (February 16, 2017)
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