Coffee shops used for discreet lobbyist meetings

[Go2Peace]

WASHINGTON — There are no Secret Service agents posted next to the barista and no presidential seal on the ceiling, but the Caribou Coffee across the street from the White House has become a favorite meeting spot to conduct Obama administration business.

Here at the Caribou on Pennsylvania Avenue, and a few other nearby coffee shops, White House officials have met hundreds of times over the last 18 months with prominent K Street lobbyists — members of the same industry that President Obama has derided for what he calls its “outsized influence” in the capital.

On the agenda over espressos and lattes, according to more than a dozen lobbyists and political operatives who have taken part in the sessions, have been front-burner issues like Wall Street regulation, health care rules, federal stimulus money, energy policy and climate control — and their impact on the lobbyists’ corporate clients.

But because the discussions are not taking place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they are not subject to disclosure on the visitors’ log that the White House releases as part of its pledge to be the “most transparent presidential administration in history.”

The off-site meetings, lobbyists say, reveal a disconnect between the Obama administration’s public rhetoric — with Mr. Obama himself frequently thrashing big industries’ “battalions” of lobbyists as enemies of reform — and the administration’s continuing, private dealings with them.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37925385/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/

[avaistheone1]

1. Same old same old stuff from the Obama admin

k&r

[DeltaLitProf]

2. We need DUers to go there and spy on their unsavory deals

I'm serious.

[eShirl]

7. maybe a journalist or two could hang out there taking notes

or go undercover there as an employee

[Autumn]

3. Could this be another promise kept? They are being

kept out of the White House.

[dorkulon]

4. LOL true.

I suppose in a pinch they can make deals through the windows.

[MadHound]

5. More of that hopey-changey thing, oh, wait, it's not.

It's simply more of the same ol' same ol' two party/same corporate master BS. White House advisers just getting the marching orders their boss needs to run this country.

[nilram]

6. The only change you can really believe in -- is in the tip jar.

Put it in the bank. Ooo, no, maybe a credit union.

[eShirl]

8. and people wonder why I only get more cynical as I get older.