New President, Same Practices

Take yourself back to a time when companies like Enron and Halliburton were circulating the news wires. Accusations of corruption and collusion abounded; some of them might have been true.

But in 2007 a new face emerged--a face of "hope", "change", and an honest, transparent government. This new face became President of the United States on January 20, 2009. He assumed office with a Congress full of like-minded people ready to follow him to the ends of the Earth. Every door was wide open.

But yesterday this story came out from the Associated Press. Some very interesting information is coming to light about a newly proposed healthcare overhaul from an administration that said, "We will not take a dime from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs."

The AP story is titled "Firms with Obama ties profit from health push", and includes some interesting facts.

Coalitions of interest groups running at least $24 million in pro-overhaul ads hired GMMB, which worked for Obama's 2008 campaign and whose partners include a top Obama campaign strategist. They also hired AKPD Message and Media, which was founded by David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama's campaign and now to the White House. AKPD did work for Obama's campaign, and Axelrod's son Michael and Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe work there.

it continues...

A larger issue is a network of relationships and overlapping interests that resembles some seen in past administrations and could prove a problem as Obama tries to win the public over on health care and fulfill his promise to change the way Washington works, said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a government watchdog group.

"Even if these are obvious bedfellows and kind of standard PR maneuvers, it still stands to undercut Obama's credibility," Krumholz said. "The potential takeaway from the public is 'friends in cahoots to engineer a grass roots result.'"

So the Democrats went after Bush for his colluding with firms like Enron and Halliburton a few years ago. As a result, the Republicans lost the House and Senate in 2006, and the White House in 2008. Now, only a few years later, parallelable political dealings from the Obama White House are surfacing. What does this say about 2010?