
September 23, 2021
The Other Ethics Issues At The Fed Regional Banks
Kaplan and Rosengren’s scandals aren’t the only ethics questions surrounding the Fed leadership’s conduct which merit greater scrutiny.

September 17, 2021
Powell's Carlyle Past Meets The Fed's Ethics Scandal Present
For those less familiar with the Carlyle Group, the private equity firm where Powell was a partner and senior lawyer from 1997 – 2005, here’s a quick overview of their history with capitalizing on political connections and the revolving door.

September 16, 2021
Fed's Powell Must Place Embattled Bank Presidents On Leave, Ethics Watchdogs Write In Letter
It really shouldn’t surprise anyone that a former Carlyle Group executive — a firm whose whole profit strategy is based on exploiting insider connections in the federal government — hasn’t prioritized ethics and oversight in running the nation’s largest stockpile of potentially market-moving information.

September 16, 2021 | The American Prospect
Closing the Revolving Door in Antitrust
Economic consulting firms hire former officials to undermine antitrust efforts. Here’s how to stop that.

September 09, 2021
Northwestern University Must Change Ethics Regime To Disclose Professors' Big Tech Ties, Letter Argues
The letter calls on the university to implement fair disclosure requirements for its faculty and condemn the unethical practices of former Pritzker Dean Dr. Daniel Rodriguez.

September 07, 2021 | American Prospect
A Fintech Fox In The Regulatory Henhouse
Apparently, Harris just doesn’t get why regulators have to be so skeptical of the industry all the time—which makes sense, coming from a fintech executive who’s advocated for the industry on both sides of the revolving door.

September 01, 2021 | Sludge
Biden Oil Envoy Advised Emirati Gas Firm and Owns Stock in Human Rights-Violating Companies
A financial disclosure reveals that Special Envoy for Energy Affairs Amos Hochstein operated a shadow consultancy with foreign fossil fuel clients.

September 01, 2021 | The New Republic
Big Tech’s Attacks on Biden’s Anti-Monopoly Regulators Are a Joke
In a move cheered by progressives and antitrust reformers, President Biden has nominated Jonathan Kanter to serve as assistant attorney general for antitrust. Kanter’s nomination, alongside that of Lina Khan to lead the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year, is the latest sign that this administration is, for the first time in generations, fiercely committed to enforcing antitrust laws. However, this generation’s most notorious monopolies—Amazon, Facebook, and Google—are making it vividly clear that they will try anything to retain their power. That apparently includes lobbing poorly reasoned, transparently bad faith calls for their newly anointed foes to recuse themselves from relevant cases.

August 31, 2021
Biden Must Prioritize Rural Development To Help Rebuild The Heartland
With the right staff at the helm, USDA’s Rural Development Division could be the key to rebuilding rural America.

August 05, 2021
NSO Group Knew Who To Call In Washington
SKDKnickerbocker more or less specializes in running interference for deeply awful companies when a Democratic administration might be inclined to have them face consequences for the harms they cause.

August 05, 2021 | Talking Points Memo
Institutionalism Can’t Save Us Now
We have no shortage of information about how historically bad an Attorney General William Barr was. His tenure was marked by attacks on LGBTQ rights, immigrants, and peaceful protestors. His overt politicization of the investigations into Russian interference in the election, the Mueller report, and Roger Stone’s sentencing are well-documented, and in a continuing headache for the Biden Administration’s DOJ, Barr’s Justice Department’s intervened to protect Trump against E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him just two months before the election. And yet, as we saw this week following revelations that his DOJ declined to prosecute Commerce Department officials for lying about the provenance of the Census citizenship question, what we know merely scratches the surface.

July 28, 2021
Revolver Spotlight: Elizabeth Fowler
Fowler, a former Johnson & Johnson executive, is the latest Biden hire to spin through Pharma’s revolving door.

July 20, 2021
FERC Nominee Must Be Independent From Utilities Driving Climate Crisis And Hurting Consumers
June 30th marked the last official day of Republican Neil Chatterjee’s term as a commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Despite FERC’s obscurity, it is a critically important independent agency of the federal government that regulates the interstate transmission of oil, gas, and electricity, and reviews proposals to build gas terminals and pipelines. As of July 1st, a new commissioner nominated by President Biden and confirmed by the Senate could have stepped in, giving the five-seat board a Democratic majority. Biden has thus far failed to begin that process, so Chatterjee will remain serving an expired term until Biden appoints and the Senate confirms someone new.

July 14, 2021
Recent Leaks And Ongoing Litigation At The EPA Highlight The Importance Of Government Transparency
The Biden Administration has a historic opportunity to reverse the executive branch’s long-standing war on whistleblowers, and end the all-too-common (and sadly bipartisan) practice of villainizing whistleblowers and leakers to avoid accountability for government wrongdoing revealed by these actors.

July 06, 2021
Anita Dunn Paid To Evade Transparency, Undermining Trust In Government
The Annual Report on White House Personnel has confirmed what we’ve long suspected: Anita Dunn took an anomalously low salary to shield her financial information from public view. In essence, Dunn purchased the right to secrecy.