Slashdot Mirror
Ex-Googler Obama Appointee Gets Buzz'ed
theodp writes "Hillicon Valley reports that Rep. Darrell Issa of the House Oversight Committee is pressing White House Deputy CTO Andrew McLaughlin to explain his relationship with Google, where McLaughlin was employed as Google's chief lobbyist. 'The American people have a right to expect that White House employees are working to advance the public interest and not the interests of the lobby shops who formerly employed them,' Issa noted in the letter. 'The use of a Gmail account to communicate with lobbyists and evade transparency laws is at odds with President Obama's promises to limit the influence of lobbyists.' Concerns emerged after screenshots of McLaughlin's Google Buzz account emerged showing that a number of the search giant's top employees subscribed to the deputy Web chief's updates."
How many former lobbyists have been exempted from the no lobbyist rule now?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
> ... is at odds with President Obama's promises
Reality is at odds with (many of) President Obama's promises.
Details at 11.
Maybe the automatic opt-in of Buzz isn't so evil after all!
--Kim
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
No one mentioned anything regarding illegal activities. The congressmen is simply asking Mr. McLaughlin to explain himself. There's no accusation of criminal activity at all in this case.
No, the big question is whether he used his personal account to circumvent rules regarding communications made in his official capacity.
The sad thing is people don't expect this at all. They hope for it, but they certainly (mostly) know better than to expect it. Obama's brand of change is no different than the brand of change pushed by any politician who's ever promised "change." The only difference is more people are willingly allowing the proverbial wool to be pulled over their eyes.
On the contrary, doing that in a public, official way IS making such an accusation. Reporting it in this way is a means of making the current administration look corrupt. The entire thing is most likely going to come to naught (but hey, if it turns out the guy is dirty, great), but any time it can be stuck into the back of people's minds that "Obama is corrupt", there are many people who will attempt to do so. If there is nothing to it, nobody will ever hear about it again anyway.
This is not new, nor is it unique to Obama. For some reason people seem much more eager to jump on any potential issue, no matter how trivial, with him than most, but the principle is the same.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
WTF? The fuss makes no sense for a number of reasons: 1) A former high-level Google official has emailed other high-level Google officials through his Gmail account, and is probably friends with them.
2) High-level Google officials will be interested to see what the CTO of the Executive Branch is up to, no matter who that CTO is.
3) This needs to be kept an eye on, but is not indicative of endemic corruption by any stretch. Get a grip, folks!
What's this? Another weblog? On transit?
"1) You seem to think that the current administration ISN'T corrupt.'
I've seen nothing to credibly indicate that it is particularly corrupt. Corruption is nearly universal to social constructs, including governments, businesses, clubs, schools, consortiums, and even informal groups of friends... it is, in some form, almost omnipresent. The question isn't whether or not the current administration is corrupt, it is to what extent it is corrupt, and to what extent it is more or less corrupt than others. In my opinion, there is insufficient credible evidence to conclude that it is notably more corrupt than other presidential administrations I can recall. This is not even remotely the same thing as concluding that there is no corruption.
"2) The political news media types jump on any potential issue, no matter how trivial, and no matter who it's about, because scandal brings ratings"
Yes, that was pretty much what I said... How am I fooling myself again?
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
If Bush/Cheney did it, does that somehow make what McLaughlin allegedly did okay?
Not only is this President putting out scripts just like the last President (and quite honestly, every President since before FDR), but a good chunk of the press not only prints it, but eats it up. I've never seen as much press love for a President as I've seen with the current one. The same people that are supposed to help hold the government accountable and keep them at least semi-honest are really just reporting what the talking heads are saying. You want to talk about the media questioning anything. First off, the media was all over Bush for most of the 8 years. The boy didn't do a thing without people questioning his motives, for better or worse. Some of it was well warranted questioning, and some of it was just smear campaigns run by the opposing party. This time around it's much different. Almost all of the reporting about Obama on virtually all of the news networks is basically how the mean Republicans are being mean to him and how he's just trying to be a nice man. Some things Obama is getting attacked on by the conservatives are justified, and then some is typical bias smear. But really, you don't see many people honestly and openly questioning anything this current government does, and the ones that are, mainly conservative news outlets, are getting smeared for trying to keep people at least semi-honest, regardless of their own motives (it's well documented that media outlets themselves are only semi-honest at best and have their own agendas, so let's not have that argument). I miss the days when the media was a watchdog against abusive government, and not a cheerleader for it. Those days are long gone, obviously.
Please don't try to pretend that somehow the media is being fair and aggressive in keeping the current administration honest, and also don't try to pretend that the media wasn't all over Bush pretty much from day one, but especially after the Iraq invasion. The man could've saved puppies from a burning tree, and the media would've tried to make him out to be a tyrant for it. The man fucked up plenty, and he did plenty that he was also made to appear to fuck up on and really didn't deserve flak for, but for all of the media reporting you'd have to be really kidding yourself to think that somehow the media gave him a pass on anything. I mean, seriously, please tell me you aren't that naive, are you?