Obama Lobbyist Policy Doing More Harm Than Good
Ryan Grim has an excellent story in The Huffington Post spelling out in some detail what’s been a mounting problem with the Obama administration—the ban on lobbyists is having perverse consequences for staffing:
Lobbyists who for years have fought for workers’ rights, environmental protection, human rights, pay-equity for women, consumer protection and other items on the Obama agenda have found the doors to the White House HR department slammed shut. In the past, several progressive lobbyists explained, there was no reason not to register if there was a slim chance that the law might require it. Obama’s new policy changes the calculus, leading folks to deregister as federal lobbyists or consider other employment while they wait out the policy’s required two-year separation from lobbying.
Way back in August 2007 I criticized Obama’s lobbyist pledge as “meaningless grandstanding.” That turns out to have been too optimistic as Tom Malinowski and other well-qualified individuals who registered as lobbyists while working for progressive non-profits find themselves shut out of jobs, and the administration finds itself understaffed.
The problem here has always been that the lobbyist/non-lobbyist distinction doesn’t track any meaningful goals. Goldman Sachs’ lawyer, for example, is not a lobbyist, and therefore not banned from office. A “lobbyist” is just someone who talks to members of congress about legislation. You can be a corrupt special interest and not be a lobbyist, and you can be a lobbyist who only works for good causes.
But dumb as the pledge was, it’s dumber still to stick with it. Flip-flopping will look bad, but nobody will care in 2012 about an old flip-flop. By contrast, lots of people will care by 2012 if we’re in the midst of a prolonged depression. The premium has to be on getting smart, effective people in place in order to frame and implement smart, effective policy. At the moment, Obama is still floating on a positive image and the fact that people rightly blame his predecessor for the current situation being so bad. But that brand isn’t going to be worth anything in a couple of years unless he brings back growth. He should admit that the initial pledge was ill-considered and a bit cynical and that it would be even more cynical to stick with a mistaken promise merely in order to avoid the need to admit a mistake.
55 Responses to “Obama Lobbyist Policy Doing More Harm Than Good”
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March 6th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Similarly, the Obama campaign refused not only donations but any help at all from PACs, even if the organizations in question were small grassroots groups (independent DFA groups, for example). Later in the campaign, the snubbing of PACs was relaxed, and even MoveOn’s help was accepted. The donation ban continues and has spread to the DNC, but that’s not as big a deal.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Why reinforce the conservative mantra that everything said by President Obama comes with an expiration date.
Should someone in the campaign thought about the long term impact of the policy. If Obama’s advisors could not see the problems of such a promise, what makes anyone think that they can see the long term consequences of their economic, environment, financial, and other regulatory schemes.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Why not simply amend the pledge so that it doesn’t apply to nonprofit lobbyists?
March 6th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
It’s worth taking the minor short term hit to keep your word. In 2010 these same people who are ineligible will be able to join the administration. Obama is right to govern like he is going to be there for 2 terms, not sweat 2 months of staffing problems.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
What Matt said.
Probably the single worst aspect of contemporary American liberalism is its tendency to engage in futile, and even dangerous, moral preening. I’m not saying that symbolism doesn’t matter, mind you. I’m just saying you’ve got to be awfully careful about what types of symbolism you engage in. How about instead of banning lobbyists, they simply ban corrupt people?
March 6th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
It’s worth taking the minor short term hit to keep your word.
I’ve never understood this reasoning. It’s one thing to break a promise doing so provides personal gain. It’s another thing entirely when doing so helps the country. Not having a sufficiently staffed administration hurts the country. Also, although you can look at it as a matter of word breaking, it’s also not unreasonable, I’d say, to look at it as a matter of policy adjustment. You know, we announced a policy. Now it looks as though that policy hurts the national interest. So we’re going to change it.
Obama is right to govern like he is going to be there for 2 terms…
There’s not going to be a second term if the economy isn’t experiencing robust growth by the middle of 2012.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
What Jasper said.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Your right and your wrong here YM. There are thousands of competent people to fill these posts but for better or for worse they are not members of the culture. They are unknowns. They have few allies. They have no power base. Often they have no drive for power. If you do not have that drive you can’t drive others. You will be ignored or eaten alive.
They system, the culture, cannot dismantle itself. Only a revolution can do that. FDR presided over a minor revolution and that was possible because by the time he arrived the old power had become bankrupt. That was an historical accident.
Obama the day after the election should have begun to take an ax to every Wall Street attached person in the government. In the inaugural he should have denounced them as FDR denounced them. Instead he dithered.
A political and policy disaster of monumental proportion has occured. Only by forcefully overthrowing the old order could he have made room for truly new blood. It didn’t happen. It’s too late now.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
There’s not going to be a second term if the economy isn’t experiencing robust growth by the middle of 2012.
And robust growth is dependent on the Undersecretary of Blahblahblah? The solution to staffing these jobs is to get competent people who may not have elite credentials (Obama sometimes forgets he started at Occidental College) and move forward. The Bulls won 6 rings with the likes of Jud Buechler playing key minutes. Team Obama just needs to roll the ball out and play. You don’t need an all-star team but you do need 5 players on the court. Just pick the fat kid with glasses and let’s play.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
God dammit, he said a ban on CORPORATE lobbyists. Non-corporate lobbyists should be fair game.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Rules should only apply to BAD people, not to GOOD people. Good people should be allowed to do whatever they want, because they are, by definition, good.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
The important policy at Treasury is being set by Geithner and executed by Paulson’s still in place Goldman Sachs and Wall Street boys. They don’t need any undersecretaries of this and that sticking their noses in.
It is blindingly obvious by the late date of even making the nominations that it was policy to keep the staff skeletal.
All this stuff should be looked at from a forensic perspective. The greatest heist of all time is occurring. The robbing and bankrupting of the Treasury of the United States.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
It sucks for the people who can’t get jobs they would probably do well. But the idea they are the only people who can do these jobs is preposterous.
There were literally MILLIONS of people who worked at least a little bit on the Obama campaign. Smart, talented folks from a wide variety of backgrounds. Many of them are not lobbyists, but are perfectly capable of government work. The think-tank-lobby-Congressional staff-nonprofit-executive branch merry-go-round is just a bit incestuous.
No offense to you think-tankers, Matt.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
One thing people are missing from the post is that the ban on lobbyists still doesn’t prevent corrupt non-lobbyists from getting their hooks in.
What we need is a rule that will work when applied broadly. Barring that, there should be no rule. I’m not smart enough to come up with one, and I don’t think it would really be feasible.
Good post on this, MY.
March 6th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Treasury is the worst. It’s starting to look like people don’t want to work for Geithner
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19723.html
If President Barack Obama wants to boost confidence in his economic recovery plan, he’s going to have to assure the markets that there isn’t just one guy working on it.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is trying to stabilize the nation’s banking industry, implement a housing rescue plan and prop up a plunging stock market – all with about 18 vacant senior positions, virtually the entire upper echelon of his department.
The staff is so faceless that lobbyists have begun trading jokes about a “ghost” bureaucracy, given the many empty picture frames hanging on the department’s walls.
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Thing I find interesting is that Treasury should have been Priority One and they’ve had four months to work on it
March 6th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Maybe Treasury is more a reflection on Geithner maybe not being ready for prime time than a lobbyist ban.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/obamas-economic-saviour-savaged-as-keating-lets-rip-20090306-8rk7.html?page=-1
A fantastic choice,” said a Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi analyst, Chris Rupkey, as the Dow rose by nearly 6 per cent. Even one of Obama’s political rivals, the hard-bitten Republican senator Richard Shelby, agreed Geithner was “up to the challenge”.
If anyone in the US media had thought to ask a former Australian prime minister for his assessment, they would have heard a different view. And they would not have been so surprised at Geithner’s performance since.
In a speech to a closed gathering at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Thursday, Paul Keating gave a starkly different account of Geithner’s record in handling the Asian crisis: “Tim Geithner was the Treasury line officer who wrote the IMF [International Monetary Fund] program for Indonesia in 1997-98, which was to apply current account solutions to a capital account crisis.”
In other words, Geithner fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. And his misdiagnosis led to a dreadfully wrong prescription.
Geithner thought Asia’s problem was the same as the ones that had shattered Latin America in the 1980s and Mexico in 1994, a classic current account crisis. In this kind of crisis, the central cause is that the government has run impossibly big debts.
But Geithner, through his influence on the IMF, imposed the same cure the IMF had imposed on Latin America and Mexico. It was the wrong cure. Indeed, it only aggravated the problem.
Keating continued: “Soeharto’s government delivered 21 years of 7 per cent compound growth. It takes a gigantic fool to mess that up. But the IMF messed it up. The end result was the biggest fall in GDP in the 20th century. That dubious distinction went to Indonesia. And, of course, Soeharto lost power.”
Exactly who was the “gigantic fool”? It was, obviously, the man who wrote the program, Geithner, although Keating is prepared to put the then managing director of the IMF, the Frenchman Michel Camdessus, in the same category.
Worse, Keating argued, Geithner’s misjudgment had done terminal damage to the credibility of the IMF, with seismic geoeconomic consequences
As for The New York Post’s claim that Geithner was the hero who cajoled those quarrelsome Asians into agreeing to a $US200 billion rescue, the key fact burned into the minds of Asian elites is that the US was deaf to requests for funds. Washington did not contribute a cent of its own money to any of the emergency packages. Japan and Australia were the only nations that made loans to all three of the stricken Asian countries.
Keating went on to argue that, by frightening the Chinese into building their vast $US2 trillion foreign reserves, Geithner was responsible for the build-up of tremendous imbalance in the world financial system. This imbalance, in turn, according to Keating, contributed to the global financial crisis which has since devastated the world economy.
March 6th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Dear Campesino:
Thanks. That’s most informative. I had never heard of Geithner’s role in that before.
March 6th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
There were literally MILLIONS of people who worked at least a little bit on the Obama campaign. Smart, talented folks from a wide variety of backgrounds. Many of them are not lobbyists, but are perfectly capable of government work.
I think one problem with going after more obscure people is the challenging of vetting them. Presumably people who have risen to a certain professional level wouldn’t have arrived there if they had major skeletons in their closets. This obviously isn’t full-proof, as recent events attest — but at least picking a prominent person means you’ve got a fighting chance of avoiding major league embarrassment. Choosing a truly obscure person for a prominent administration role surely is risky. Also, if they’re so talented, why haven’t they risen higher in life?
And boy oh boy do I bet Obama wishes he had dumped Geithner when he had the chance. Before long he may have no choice but to cut his losses and tap Volcker for the post as caretaker.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Steve Sailer Says:
March 6th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Dear Campesino:
Thanks. That’s most informative. I had never heard of Geithner’s role in that before.
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I was just amazed at the vitriol in Keating’s description of the whole thing
March 6th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
And boy oh boy do I bet Obama wishes he had dumped Geithner when he had the chance. Before long he may have no choice but to cut his losses and tap Volcker for the post as caretaker.
==========================================================
Don’t think that will happen. Volcker appears to be “outside the tent pissin’ in” as LBJ used to say.
=========================================================
Among the harshest critics of Treasury’s leadership vacuum is Paul Volcker, an Obama economic adviser and former Federal Reserve chairman who last week called the situation “shameful.”
“The secretary of the treasury is sitting there without a deputy, without any undersecretaries, without any, as far as I know, assistant secretaries responsible in substantive areas at a time of very severe crisis,” Volcker said. “He shouldn’t be sitting there alone.”
The White House took issue with Volcker’s statement, saying Geithner has plenty of able staffers. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser, has worked closely with Geithner for years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/05/AR2009030501358_pf.html
March 6th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
I don’t buy for one nanosecond that Geithner is floundering because he doesn’t have enough deputy assistant whatevers. He’s got Summers and Summers’s staff, as well as career civil servants, to help him get any actual work done. No, the problem is that neither he nor his mentor Summers know what to do about this mess or rather desperately want to avoid the only thing that can work, and so they’re stalling (very expensively) hoping something will turn up. All the staff in the world won’t solve THAT little problem.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Yeah, if he doesn’t give a shit about his trade-pact-related campaign promises, why should he bother with keeping *this* one?
On the other hand, if this just means Geithner can’t have more help making excuses for opposing nationalizing obviously insolvent banks and other financial institutions, then sure, it sucks, but it may not actually be making some things all that much worse.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
On one hand, maybe I’ve spent too much time in the DC metro area, but it’s gotten to the point where I just don’t see lobbyists as bad people as individually, or even unusual. People have to work for a living and plead with their Congressmen to get laws passed the way they want.
On the other hand, really, I find it difficult to believe that there are no civil servants and other qualified administrators who haven’t spent their entire lives in Washington available to fill these positions.
That said, I expect Slate to start a “Geithner Resignation Countdown” feature soon.
March 7th, 2009 at 12:46 am
Where I am deeply concerned about the Federal Government is not so much the absence of political appointees, which is normal at this stage of every administration, but the hollowed out federal bureaucracy.
I worked for the federal government during the administrations of Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan. Even during the Reagan administration there were many efforts to purge competent career civil servants and replace them with political appointees. This trend became exponentially worse during the regime of George Bush.
Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest” shows how the hollowing out of the State Department by purging the China hands that occurred durin the McCarthy years, was a significant factor in the bad decisions that led to Viet Nam. Today, almost every federal agency is filled with hacks, chair warmers and people who were chosen for their poltical conservatism. By the time I left federal service in disgust in 1987, most of the dedicated civil servants that I knew were bailing out. Some did remain, and I still know a few civil servants who are very good at what they do. Unfortunately, the civil service is where the real work gets done, and for the most part it isn’t equipped to do it.
March 7th, 2009 at 3:44 am
In your original post on this matter you criticized Hillary’s initial criticism of this measure. It looks like she was actually right though. I actually think this did her significant harm, but in a way it was pretty courageous for her do defend lobbyists. Also I want to point out that it was Edwards who initially created this issue. Just a reminder of what a jerk he was.
March 7th, 2009 at 3:45 am
Got to love the conservatives response that you can’t ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ lobbyist is an arbitrary distinction. In point of fact, people are arguing for a distinction between corporate lobbyist and lobbyist for non profits. The whole problem with corporate lobbyists is that they are encourage policy making for an extremely narrow segment of the populace. Basically, those guys are lobbying for the financial interests of the executives of the companies they represent. They’re not even representing the shareholders, since we know that executives don’t care about shareholders. And we can be pretty sure that they’re only representing financial interests, because that’s the job that executives understand themselves to be pursuing. Their might not be a clear registered/non-registered line there, but there is certainly a meaningful distinction beyond just ‘your’ guys versus ‘my’ guys.
March 7th, 2009 at 4:18 am
You can be a corrupt special interest and not be a lobbyist, and you can be a lobbyist who only works for good causes.
Ahh, so liberal lobbyists are “good” lobbyists, and conservative lobbyists are “bad” lobbyists, I take.
And liberals accuse conservatives of ideological fixation; well, this isn’t fixation alright, this is cowardice.
What utter bullshit. Couldn’t even pass the laugh test.
March 7th, 2009 at 4:22 am
One Administration’s bad lobbyists is another Administration’s good lobbyists, and vice-versa.
Well said. While Obama might view environmental lobbyists as desirable, a Republican administration might view petroleum lobbyists as even more desirable. Who’s to say? Where does it say in the Constitution that tree-huggers are good and oilmen are bad?
Screw liberal hypocrisy.
March 7th, 2009 at 4:37 am
Myles, I think that’s an unfair take on what MY said. Nowhere does he say one is good and the other’s bad, just that some of the people who contribute to the corruption of the federal government don’t qualify as lobbyists.
March 7th, 2009 at 5:05 am
just that some of the people who contribute to the corruption of the federal government don’t qualify as lobbyists.
I don’t see how working as Goldman lawyer not dealing with and influencing Washington legislators is corrupting government.
In any case, I don’t think liberals have the moral high ground here. I find teachers’ union lobbyists equally as despicable and rotten as any industrial special interest, if not more so.
March 7th, 2009 at 6:03 am
See, this is why talking about politics on the Internet sucks. Sailer and Myles aren’t disagreeing with Matt on the merits of his post (that the ban on lobbyists is shutting out a lot of qualified people while not really doing anything to make the process less corrupt), they’re just picking a fight to be churlish.
March 7th, 2009 at 6:04 am
Barry already took the heat for granting waivers to lobbyists so I doubt that accounts for his staffing problems.
Didn’t a proposed Geithner assistant just withdraw her name, no explanation offered?
And whats up with Not A Real Doctor But Plays One On Television Gupta?
It is far more likely that competent people just don’t want to get their deckchair on the ObaTitanic (or like all good Dems they have trouble paying their taxes) and the alternative of staffing his administration with ecoterrorists and affirmative action hires is simply counterproductive.
Seriously, what did you think would happen when they decided to let the Black Guy oversee the looting of the Treasury?
March 7th, 2009 at 6:17 am
Sailer and Myles aren’t disagreeing with Matt on the merits of his post (that the ban on lobbyists is shutting out a lot of qualified people while not really doing anything to make the process less corrupt), they’re just picking a fight to be churlish.
Actually, no. I wouldn’t mind at all if Mr. Obama limits the ban on lobbyists. I don’t even mind if he decides to appoint people from the Sierra Club, as much as I disagree with them. The point I do mind is one of fairness; if lobbyists for environmental, labour, and other groups are to be allowed, so must be lobbyists for corporate and financial firms. Otherwise it is simply ideological hypocrisy and puritanical preening.
March 7th, 2009 at 6:20 am
Now he probably won’t actually appoint any corporate lobbyists. That is fine with me.
But if he were to limit the ban on his favoured lobbyists, whatever sort they might be, he must not be allowed to hold onto his pretence to moral rectitude of “banning corporate lobbyists”. To do otherwise is rank hypocrisy.
March 7th, 2009 at 8:18 am
The point I do mind is one of fairness
How about this compromise: if you’re being paid less as a lobbyist than you would be for the public-sector job, then you’re okay?
And Miley Fink-Nottle, he of the ever-changing nym and never-changing pretension, can fop right off.
March 7th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Shorter Myles: Obama is a hypocrite for doing in my mind what I think he might do!
March 7th, 2009 at 11:27 am
If Obama’s lobbyist hiring policies mean the nation ultimately collapses due to lack of adequate talent so be it. I for one would sleep soundly under a bridge knowing there were thousands of unemployed lobbyists losing the shirt off their backs because of the economic apocolypse. That and their tainted spawn were suffering, too.
March 7th, 2009 at 11:29 am
That makes no sense, Tyro. What if that which I presume he might do is, indeed, hypocritical? Just because I think something does not make it hypocritical or not hypocritical.
And no, the compromise would be bullocks. That would simply block the lobbyists of the most resourceful firms and organisations; I am not aware of any inherent between level of resources and moral rectitude.
March 7th, 2009 at 11:42 am
I don’t find this convincing yet. Yes, the easy conclusion is that a lobbyist ban is making it difficult to staff the White House. And that’s exactly what you’d figure a whole lot of pissed off lobbyists would say.
March 7th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Myles, because you’re imagining that the President and liberals might do something and then calling them hypocrites for doing that only occurred in your imagination.
JMG seems to be the only person here who’s realized that the problem is that no one thinks there’s any available talent outside of the “think-tank-lobby-Congressional staff-nonprofit-executive branch merry-go-round.”
March 7th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
No, it’s exactly how I feel, and it’s completely obvious as a possible answer once you ask the basic question “Why would people be saying that it is impossible to run a government if you don’t fill it with lobbyists?”
March 7th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
As many are pointing out, “lobbyist” shouldn’t be considered identical with “high in life”. Not even in the non-profit world.
I think that when your job nets you a 14-room mansion in Arlington, VA or whatever other place lobbyists live in, and tab status at Michelin restaurants, you have risen pretty “high in life.”
March 7th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Myles,
You are just dead wrong. There would be nothing wrong with a corporate lobbyist ban. Their is an enormous fundamental difference between the motivations of individuals representing a for profit company and any sort of non profit or public advocacy group. The employees of a for profit company are specifically disallowed by the parameters of their job to make any considerations for the wellfare of the general public in the conduct of their business. They have a very narrow focus. With any non profit or other advocacy group there is a principled motivation for their advocacy. Whether you agree with it or not, it’s what at least some people think would be good in a general sense. A corporate lobbyist could be doing what he thinks he is ethically obliged to do and not be able to offer such a defense.
March 7th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
The employees of a for profit company are specifically disallowed by the parameters of their job to make any considerations for the wellfare of the general public in the conduct of their business. They have a very narrow focus. With any non profit or other advocacy group there is a principled motivation for their advocacy.
Perhaps you are right. But I invite you to test your thesis hereiwth: will you not be clamouring for a lobbyist ban against, say, non-profit Christian evangelical lobbyists, in a Republican administration? And perhaps more importantly, you state that “The employees of a for profit company are specifically disallowed by the parameters of their job to make any considerations for the wellfare of the general public in the conduct of their business. They have a very narrow focus.” I think the same could perhaps be said of teacher unions’ lobbyists lobbying against education reform.
March 7th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
If only lobbyists from non-profit or charitable groups were acceptable, we’d see the creation of even more corporate-founded non-profits and “charitable” groups to do their lobbying for them.
I.e., instead of being a lobbyist for Exxon, you’d be from the Foundation for a Rational Petroleum Policy, etc., ad nauseum.
March 7th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Should someone in the campaign thought about the long term impact of the policy. If Obama’s advisors could not see the problems of such a promise, what makes anyone think that they can see the long term consequences of their economic, environment, financial, and other regulatory schemes.
March 7th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
There is nothing particularly ethical about the non-profit world. It’s simply another way of organizing your taxes. There are plenty of 501c3 organizations that do good and plenty that are vipers. In the eyes of the IRS, the United Way and the Federalist Society are the same kind of tax entity. Good vs. bad has no analogy in for-profit vs. non-profit.
March 8th, 2009 at 8:52 am
Obama has had no problem finding “exemptions” for lobbyists abd tax cheats in his administration. He just labels them “uniquely qualified” or “the only one who can do the job” and appointes them.
March 8th, 2009 at 9:31 am
There’s a simple answer. Why not just split lobbyists into 2 groups. “Lobbyists” and “Friends of Obama Lobbyists” and then exempt the second group from any restrictions? It’ll probably happen anyway. What do you expect from an untalented empty suit who has never had a real job but for whom central planning and great theories are the driving force of an ideology where the genuine welfare of the country is a fleeting secondary consideration. If it wasn’t so serious it would be a joke.
March 8th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Finally.
I am a conservative and always enjoy rational and logical debate with my brothers and sisters of the liberal slant. I am secure in my beliefs and always willing to open them to others to challenge them based on logic and rational thought – not emotions.
I congratulate all who post here for their logical and rational posts – I enjoy reading them. While we may not always agree on the issues, we can express our opinions without resorting to name calling.
Again, thank you for you informed and honest post – even though I may not agree with your conclusions.
April 7th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
BOTH PARTIES WORK FOR THE SAME PEOPLE,THE BANKER,ROCKEFELLERS,ROTHSCHILDS,JP.MORGAN FAMILY,ALL ZIONIST,AND NEOCONS.THIS IS ALL A TWO PARTY SCAM.BOTH PARTIES ARE TO BLAME FOR THE PROBLEMS WE HAVE.THE NEW WORLD ORDER MUST BE TAKEN OUT.