With Barack Obama’s remaining months in office dwindling, his focus is squarely on Paris, where representatives from around the globe will meet in late November and early December to negotiate a climate accord at COP21, the UN’s much-heralded climate summit. Last year was erroneously declared the world’s warmest yet, and 2015 is expected to follow suit thanks to an evolving El Nino. The result is a perfect culmination of rhetorical ammo heading into the summit, and it represents the UN’s best shot yet of finalizing a deal. But regardless of what happens in Paris, Democrats face obstacles in Congress and at the state level, where Republicans will do their best to derail any agreement. Obama is hoping to change that with a little swindle from his friends. The New York Times reports, “[T]he White House has appointed Thomas Reynolds, a top communications strategist at the Environmental Protection Agency and a seasoned political operative, to a new position dedicated solely to messaging Mr. Obama’s global warming agenda.” The two aren’t strangers, either. In fact, Reynolds helped Obama get re-elected, so the move is probably a “thank you” reward, much like appointing a major donor to an ambassadorship. But there’s another peculiar aspect to the Times report: “While Mr. Reynolds’s public relations campaigns elevated the issue of climate change, they sometimes got him into hot water. In trying to build public support for a new clean water regulation, Mr. Reynolds created a Twitter campaign urging people to speak out in favor of the rule. But some legal experts have contended that campaign might have tested the limits of federal lobbying laws, which prohibit a government agency from engaging in grass-roots lobbying for proposed policies or legislation.” So he’s been hired by Obama instead, where he’s shielded from possible ethics violations. It’s shrewd, cynical politics at its worst, and it helps explain why our government is so corrupt.