Tempering my praise for Ashton Carter's appointment...

... as head of Weapons Procurement for the Pentagon, about ten days ago when I praised the administration in part based on this paragraph from Stars & Stripes:

Unlike most of his predecessors, Carter has no professional ties to America’s arms makers or manufacturing industry, nor has he spent his career in procurement, according to the report. Instead, from his perch at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Carter has been criticizing the Pentagon for buying too much armament it does not need.

Unfortunately, as Economic Policy Journal discovers, it's never so simple among the power elite:

In addition to other roles, his bio lists him as a consultant to Goldman, Sachs. Imagine my surprise.

In other words, he's not a lobbyist for the defense industry, he's a defense consultant to one of major investment houses that bankrolls them.

On some level I think this is symptomatic of the incestuous nature of the big-Government/big-corporate leadership cadre in this country.

But on the level of transparency and operating with a new sensitivity toward ethical issues, this is just one more foot-soldier (or should I say, paymaster?) in President Obama's army of lobbyists that is somehow going to wipe out the impact of lobbying on government.

This one's for you, Nancy. You don't tolerate this kind of thing no matter who does it.

But from our other friends on the left--again and again--not a peep.