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November 11, 2022
Watchdog Groups Call On The FTC To Release Documents Shedding Light on Phillips Conflicts of Interest
On November 10th, eight groups sent a letter to Chair Khan urging the FTC to release documents shedding light on Commissioner Noah Phillips potential conflicts of interest as
November 11, 2022
What Tasty Egg On Our Faces!
Democrats defied expectations, including ours. But why do we have these expectations in the first place?
November 09, 2022
"Aggressive Mundaneness" Doomed Democrats, Government Watchdog Argues
The Project’s memo argues that Democrats did not clearly articulate what they stand for by making unpopular enemies and provoking fights with specific, unpopular villains.
November 04, 2022
Hackwatch BankingCongressional OversightConsumer ProtectionExecutive BranchFinancial RegulationIndependent Agencies
Corporate Scammers Aren't Independent Voices
White collar crooks are behind the campaign to kill the CFPB, but don’t expect the mainstream media to tell you that.
November 03, 2022 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Biden Can Make Change by Fixing Federal Contracting
If the Trumpiest predictions for the midterms come true next week, and Republicans sweep Congress, opportunities for implementing progressive policy priorities – and Biden’s campaign promises – will disproportionately fall to the strategic maneuvering of the executive branch. From climate action to stopping runaway corporate profiteering to defending the working class from exploitation, the executive branch holds immense power with which it can tangibly better the lives of everyday Americans even amidst a sure-to-be-hostile potential Republican-controlled Congress.
November 01, 2022
Gina Raimondo Should (Still) Fire NHC Acting Director Jamie Rhome
Last month, Jamie Rhome, the current Acting Director of the National Hurricane Center (NHC), effectively rejected settled climate science while discussing the then-potential severity and impact of Hurricane Ian. In that interview, Rhome said he would “caution against” linking the intensity of Hurricane Ian to climate change. To be clear, there is no question or ambiguity on this link. The worsening severity of extreme weather events as a result of climate change is something that has been firmly established, for years, by other federal agencies – like NASA – and also by international research bodies – like the National Academies – which makes Rhome’s refusal to do so all the more baffling.
October 31, 2022 | The American Prospect
How Governing Can Motivate Politics
An alternate vision for how Democrats could bring the fight to the midterms by taking action in Congress and the White House
October 31, 2022
Blog Post Congressional OversightDepartment of Homeland SecurityDepartment of JusticeEthics in Government
A Crisis Of (Un)Accountability: Amidst Profound Political Cruelty, Ethics Matter More Than Ever
The news was flooded in September with images, reports, and increasingly abhorrent context for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ trafficking of migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard as a political stunt. DeSantis’ actions, and those of his aides, are of course potentially illegal, as was asserted by a Texas sheriff who opened a criminal investigation into the spectacle. This latest sadistic political posturing came at the cost of real people fleeing real persecution, but there is also a crucial piece of this awful puzzle that hasn’t been fully explored. Why did Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents, funded by federal dollars, allegedly forge documents for migrants knowing (even if the migrants themselves didn’t) that their flights were not destined for the locales DHS agents made their immigration proceedings beholden to?
October 28, 2022
Hack Watch: Debunking the Big Budget Bogeyman
It seems pretty incontestable that a big part of the media’s job is “informing the public of things they need to know.” Accordingly, the media’s coverage of how the government spends money is a spectacular example of how it fails. Congress has enabled a vacuum of sensible, accessible information about the appropriations bills it’s supposed to pass each year to fund government activity, and the media has not stepped in to fill the void.
October 26, 2022 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Politicking Is Storytelling; Stories Need Conflict
Much has been made of recent polls showing the erosion of support for Democrats ahead of the midterms, tied to voters’ profound economic pessimism. As always, wading through the morass of bad takes (looking at you, Ross Douthat) can put many off the task of meaning-making about public political opinion altogether. Our line of thinking in these final weeks before the election remains much the same as it was back in January, when our Jeff Hauser and Max Moran outlined an argument for what Biden’s message should be.
October 24, 2022 | The American Prospect
The Unlikely Origins of the Chamber-Chopra War
Big business could soon get their chance to kill the CFPB for good, thanks in part to former Obama aide William Daley.
October 21, 2022
Big Real Estate's Hackery On Housing
The news media keeps citing industry PR flacks, not tenants, as experts on the housing crisis.
October 21, 2022 | Common Dreams
Kroger Goes From Supermarket to Superpower
Is the corporate media doing a good enough job of explaining the machinations and implications of a merger between the nation’s two largest grocery chains?
October 19, 2022 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Biodiversity Is A Government Afterthought
Last week, a new comprehensive study of almost 32,000 populations of 5,230 species around the world estimated that wildlife on earth has decreased by almost 70 percent since 1970. The mind can’t really wrap around the scale of loss conveyed by this number.
October 17, 2022
Independent Agency Update Summer 2022
Personnel is policy, which means that the people who make up our federal institutions matter. Which means that the partisan Republican assault on the staffing up of the federal agencies that regulate so much of the public’s everyday life also matters greatly. Unfortunately, as we have highlighted for months and will continue to highlight for as long as it persists, the federal government is being gutted from the inside out by a blockade of overdue qualified leadership.