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The Revolving Door Project, A Government Ethics Watchdog, Alerts Media Of Possibility That CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam Is Considering Leaving Government To Cash Out In Private Industry

This story has been retracted.

These corporate shills are not “positive pragmatists”, no matter what the mainstream media tells you.

Ever wonder who’s behind gross smear campaigns to sink qualified Biden administration nominees? Look no further than the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a little-known rightwing opposition research organization housed under the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) umbrella. The oppo shop was founded in 2021 with a simple goal: “to take a big handful of sand and throw it in the gears of the Biden administration.” Since then, AAF has targeted over twenty nominees with slanderous, bad-faith attacks. The strategy has been relatively successful thus far, especially in derailing racial and ethnic minority and female nominees, including Saule Omarova, Sarah Bloom Raskin, Carlton Waterhouse, and Gigi Sohn.   

“It pales in comparison to the millions of deaths he was responsible for,” progressive foreign policy expert Matt Duss observed Thursday, “but Kissinger was also a pioneer in the normalization of corruption.”

This week’s newsletter looks at executive branch attempts to counteract concentrated corporate power across our focus areas – from consumer protection in Big Tech, to housing, to climate regulation. While the FTC and DOJ antitrust division continue to be present in important fights to support consumers and tenants, proactive climate policy continues to be absent, as Biden’s rhetoric regarding challenging climate change rings hollow in areas where the president has considerable discretion.

Revolving Door Statement on Crypto proponent Larry Summers joining the board of Sam Altman’s OpenAI

In efforts to reduce average emissions across the incredibly pollutive transportation sector, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a new tailpipe emissions standard. The new rule functionally mandates automakers to electrify portions of their fleets in order to comply with a reduced average emissions standard for vehicles starting with 2027 new vehicle classes. The proposal, while one of the most significant of the administration’s forays into regulating pollution reductions, has also faced steep criticism from some environmentalists for not going nearly far enough in achieving the 75 percent pollution cut necessary to actually address the climate crisis. On July 11, 2023, however, the American Petroleum Institute (API) led a sign-on letter campaign asking the EPA to roll over to industry on the rule. For far too long corporate feedback has been hugely – and disproportionately – influential for regulators. It shouldn’t be.

TIME released its inaugural TIME100 Climate list last week, which included an eclectic list of business leaders, politicians, artists, and other “leaders” that TIME reporters and editors (and Deloitte, their sponsor) sought to elevate and celebrate for “making significant progress in fighting climate change by creating business value.” 

On November 7th, Atlanta saw nearly 60 people arraigned on an assortment of charges, including racketeering. The arraignment is the next step in the legal process begun last month when Georgia’s Republican State Attorney General Chris Carr filed racketeering charges against 61 people, most of whom were or are associated with the 2020 George Floyd protests in Atlanta and/or the Stop Cop City movement in the city.

The Court wrote a new ethics code for itself. It’s all but meaningless.

Thoughts on the summer of strikes, the rise of the machines, and coming attractions.