Damned If You Do, Etc.

On May 30, FN posted this charming item (the headline originally said "restrict", but that wasn't quite incendiary enough, so FN changed it to "muzzle"):

From the post:

A new White House policy on permissible lobbying on economic recovery and stimulus projects has taken a decidedly anti-First Amendment turn. It's a classic illustration of Big Government trying to control every aspect of a particular activity and in the process running up against civil liberty.

Check out this passage from a post on the White House blog ... (emphasis added):

"First, we will expand the restriction on oral communications to cover all persons, not just federally registered lobbyists. For the first time, we will reach contacts not only by registered lobbyists but also by unregistered ones, as well as anyone else exerting influence on the process. We concluded this was necessary under the unique circumstances of the stimulus program.

Sounds pretty bad, you'll agree. But if you read the actual White House memo this was taken from—as, of course, no FN readers will—there's no muzzling (or even any restricting) going on:

[T]he President’s March 20, 2009 Memorandum required all oral communications between federally registered lobbyists and government officials concerning Recovery Act policy to be disclosed on the Internet; barred registered lobbyists from having oral communications with government officials about specific Recovery Act projects or applications and instead required those communications to be in writing; and also required those written communications to be posted on the Internet.

So there's no restriction on communications; they just have to be disclosed on the web so we can all see them. In other words, it's a sunshine provision. This generates many predictable comments about how our new fascist/communist government is trampling on the Constitution in pursuit of its goal of destroying America, yada yada yada.

But now for the good part. On June 2, just three days later, FN posted this gem:

Again from the post:

Roll Call ... says that the administration lifted bans on lobbyists that have some part of spending "stimulus" funds. So now getting hooks into bloated federal spending is open season for the very lobbyists that Obama pretended to disdain only months ago.

So much for hopinchange.
...
Additionally, the administration is still also pretending at "transparency" because one of the new rules is that there be "immediate internet disclosure" of this renewed contact that lobbyists are to have with federal agencies. Not that such a thing is anywhere near de rigueur at this point... but, um, you know how hard The One is working, right?

You've jumped ahead to the punch line, haven't you? That's right, these are the very same rules that they were going nuts about three days earlier. They were outraged when the rules were announced, and outraged again when they were retracted (actually, they weren't retracted, just reduced in scope a bit). Commenters cheerily note that the "congenital liar"/"Chicago hood" Obama is moving right along with his "plan to tear down America."

Stop it, guys. You're killing me.

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Originally posted in Just Weird Stuff June 6, 2009.