Trump and swamp drainage

That doesn't really strike me as all that problematic. A lobbyist is a mercenary. He'll argue whatever you pay him to argue. But, when he's not getting checks anymore, he doesn't give two ***** about you or your policy preferences. What a corn syrup lobbyist has is a background on the rules and the issues. He might be a corn syrup true believer just like anyone else can be a corn syrup true believer. He's not any more likely to be because he lobbied for corn syrup, though. The one place I do see an ethics risk is that a corn syrup lobbyist is going to have a lot of relationships with corn syrup executives and it is possible that he could be offered a quid pro quo for favorable regulation -- be nice to us now and when the Democrats come back and you're out on your ass, we'll give you a new sweetheart contract. That can really happen with anybody, but industry lobbyists have more relationships to make it easier to happen. But this isn't what I see as the problem. The problem is that the appointments are ideologically motivated to put people in place that will undermine the regulatory function that these agencies were intended to serve. They're appointing people with experience in the nexus between industry and government. But, if they weren't able to appoint such people, they would find some other corn syrup true believer to serve that role and we'd be in the same spot. Trump intends to reduce regulatory intervention in business by appointing people that won't get in anyone's way. He's the president and the boss of all of these agencies, so he is going to succeed at that.

 

This Admin is full of conflict of interest. The right doesn't give a care anymore. Power corrupts.

 

But he's working for free because he believes in the united states! how can this be?

 

I don't know why we make lobbyists the boogeyman. Where else are you going to get people who both know the government ropes and have deep industry knowledge? If Trump hired no lobbyists, no corporate lawyers, no one from a think tank, no one from his campaign, and no one from a political nonprofit, where the hell would he hire anybody from? You can't poach at Best Buy to fill these roles.