The White House on Friday announced the third departure of a high-level aide to first lady Michelle Obama.

Camille Johnston, Obama's director of communications, "will be leaving the White House for a position in the private sector," an official White House statement said, without saying where she was going.

An official Siemens Corp. statement described Johnston's new position as its vice president, corporate affairs, effective Sept. 7:

"In this position, she will be a member of the U.S. leadership team and will be responsible for developing, leading and implementing a comprehensive and integrated media plan for Siemens Corporation," which it says is moving its U.S. headquaters to D.C. from New York City.

The White House statement included this praise:

" 'Camille has become a trusted advisor to me and to the entire East Wing,' said First Lady Michelle Obama. 'From our first day in the White House when we opened the doors and greeted visitors, she has led a communications team that has developed creative and effective strategies for the Let's Move! campaign, our work on behalf of military families, arts and cultural events in the White House and our international agenda. Her dedication, calming presence and expertise have been invaluable. She will be missed, but we wish her all the best.' "

The White House statement also quotes Johnston:

' 'Being invited by Mrs. Obama to be a part of her East Wing team was a privilege for which I am incredibly grateful. It has been an honor and a pleasure to serve the First Lady and the President and to be a part of this historic Administration.' "

Johnston previously served as communications director to Tipper Gore and was senior vice president of communications for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The earlier East Wing departures included Michelle Obama's first chief of staff, Jackie Norris, who left in June 2009 with little explanation, and her first social secretary, Desiree Rogers, who departed earlier this year after a couple crashed a White House party.

What is Siemens? The Germany-based company describes itself this way: "Siemens Corporation is a U.S. subsidiary of Siemens AG, a global powerhouse in electronics and electrical engineering, operating in the industry, energy and healthcare sectors. For more than 160 years, Siemens has built a reputation for leading-edge innovation and the quality of its products, services and solutions. With 405,000 employees in 190 countries, Siemens reported worldwide revenue of $104.3 billion in fiscal 2009."

“In a statement, Democrat Andrew Romanoff, who rankled President Barack Obama's White House, said Obama's deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina tried to prevent Romanoff from challenging incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.),” The Hill reports.

“The Colorado Democrat who is trying to oust incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet in that state’s hotly contested primary has confirmed that a top White House official effectively dangled three administration posts in an attempt to deter him from seeking the seat,” Roll Call writes.

As Republicans try to paint Obama as a “Chicago-style” politician, here’s the White House’s statement on the Romanoff flap: “Andrew Romanoff applied for a position at USAID during the Presidential transition. He filed this application through the Transition on-line process. After the new administration took office, he followed up by phone with White House personnel. Jim Messina called and emailed Romanoff last September to see if he was still interested in a position at USAID, or if, as had been reported, he was running for the US Senate. Months earlier, the President had endorsed Senator Michael Bennet for the Colorado seat, and Messina wanted to determine if it was possible to avoid a costly battle between two supporters. But Romanoff said that he was committed to the Senate race and no longer interested in working for the Administration, and that ended the discussion. As Mr. Romanoff has stated, there was no offer of a job.”

On the Chicago politics charge: This is something John McCain pounded daily during the presidential campaign and was litigated in the press during the campaign. Obama may have lived in Chicago, but he was outside the Chicago power structure; he even lost a congressional bid -- badly -- to Bobby Rush. It wasn't until he got OUT of Chicago that he had real political success.

BP and others in the oil and gas industry have paid for dozens of trips and meals for officials at federal agencies deeply involved in Washington’s response to the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill,” The Hill writes. “A review by The Hill of gift reports on file at the Office of Government Ethics shows oil and gas companies picked up the tab for tours by federal officials of offshore oil rigs in the Gulf along with oil facilities in Alaska.”

The New York Daily News profiles BP CEO Tony Hayward with a headline calling him “The Most Hated Man in America.” More: “After a series of gaffes - including dismissing the amount of oil in the Gulf of Mexico as ‘tiny’ compared with all that seawater, and then whining that ‘I want my life back’ - calls are growing for the British oil titan's head to roll.”

“The leading edge of the BP oil slick began menacing Florida's Panhandle beaches Wednesday as President Obama declared it is time to roll back tax breaks for oil companies,” The New York Daily News writes. “Trying to harness public anger over the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, the President said the nation must transition to other forms of energy, both to safeguard the environment and to stop sending billions to unfriendly oil-producing countries.”

Israel's defiant prime minister said yesterday his country is the victim of ‘an international campaign of hypocrisy’ -- and the Gaza-bound ship stormed by his commandos ‘was no Love Boat -- this was a hate boat,’ the New York Post writes.

The only thing more blatant than the fraud and corruption that is killing our country is our current leaders' unwillingness to stop it.

Now, as we are faced with the unspeakable damage from both the Gulf oil spill and the financial crisis, our leaders still insist that the best people to deal with the aftermath are the very people who caused it in the first place.

Imagine how silly this reasoning would sound if we decided to let the spouses of murder victims be in charge of the crime scene. After all, they know the area the best and are very familiar with the victim. By our current leaders' reasoning, these criteria alone would make this the best person to do a thorough investigation and bring the perpetrator to justice.

This kind of bizarre ignorance of incentives is now displayed by our current President, who often appears to think that government works best when it is subservient to Corporations under even the most dubious circumstances. So far, it seems like the only entrenched power that our President is interested in fighting was the Democratic Party machine that wanted him to wait his turn back in the primaries. This from a man that so many hoped would be an antidote to the horrendous Corporatist reign of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Nowhere is this attitude more on display than in the Gulf right now. Perhaps operating under the fear of that "if you try to actually fix something, you own it politically," our government continues to abdicate its responsibilities in the ongoing disaster.

Instead, it prefers to blindly trust the Corporation that is largely responsibility for the problem in the first place, regardless of the fact that the Corporation has a history of safety mishaps and makes "covering-up" the basic tenet of its overall marketing plan.

Meanwhile, the Corporation prevents tankers from cleaning up, scientists and engineers from researching, journalists from reporting and Americans from witnessing, all while the oil spill pumps into the gulf at an alarming rate for what could potentially be another 30 years before running dry.

I'm not sure what is more a sign of the times - having a Democratic White House claim that they couldn't possible infringe on the rights of a private Corporation that is destroying public water and land while a Republican Senator rightly demands a Government takeover, or Sarah Palin and Robert Gibbs having a flame war over who is more on the take from said Corporation (the answer - both).

This dynamic is not new to those who have been following the Government's response to a financial crisis that continues to let the Banksters ruin our economy while they line their pockets.

Our current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the one who handed billions of tax dollars to a Corporation now under federal fraud investigation, is spearheading the government's fiscal response and financial "reform" efforts even though he may eventually be charged as well.

Meanwhile, Larry Summers, Director of the White House's National Economic Council, has responded to the financial thievery by fighting against real derivative reform, which isn't surprising considering he was a chief architect of the dangerous system that tanked our economy in the first place. Of course, Larry also made millions off of the very derivatives he helped legalize.

That just leaves us to rely on the "independent" Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, who seems more interested in using his endless money-printing hose to try to delay the pain (and blame) of the fire that he helped start until after he's long gone.

So while real regulators and proven advocates of the People like William Black and Eliot Spitzer are relegated to the sidelines, we are left with a paltry $8 million dollar "investigation" by Phil Angelides. So who should step into the void? That's right, the very Corporations who caused the collapse are now running the cleanup effort.

As bad as government can be (and, as we know in New York, it can be very bad), our leaders are trying to tell us that Corporations have your interests at heart as much as government does. But Corporations do not work for the general public, nor are they set up that way - they work for money.

As grim as all this may sound, let's not forget that corrupt politicians, bankers and yes, even media figures are nothing new. However, a vast, unstoppable flow of the truth brought on by amazing advances in technology, and a country that still counts each person's vote equally, allows its citizens the right to speak freely and decide how and where to spend its non-taxed money -- is a stiff antidote to this age-old problem.

I believe we are already well on our way to righting this ship. Recent primaries point to a deep rumbling in the sleeping giant for a shared value that offends us all deeply regardless of political affiliation -- the basic issue of fairness and its obvious betrayal by our previous and current Government.