Ethics in Government

“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.”

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.

Today’s so-called Supreme Court `Code of Conduct’ comes with no enforcement mechanism. This unenforceable public relations document serves absolutely no purpose other than to permit the media to revert to pretending that our unaccountable and unethical Supreme Court retains legitimacy.

Revolving Door Project research reveals that right-wing elites in the Horatio Alger Association stand to benefit from a lawsuit attempting to destroy the CFPB. The group has close ties to Clarence Thomas.

In response to the news that Clarence Thomas participated in the Supreme Court decision to deny cert in the first of three challenges of New York City’s rent control law, Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser released the following statement.

Corporate predators and their Republican lackeys want our corrupt Supreme Court to make fraud legal again. Their greed could yield catastrophic economic damage.

Corrupt Supreme Court Justice should not participate in case that would benefit his wealthy benefactors.

More problematically, conflicts of interest have plagued the USPTO, including at the highest levels. Trump-era USPTO director Andrei Iancu was far too cozy with patent law firms while he served in government. Iancu came in via the revolving door from patent litigation firm Irell & Manella, where he earned $4,733,748 as a managing partner in the year before he was nominated, and went out the door and back to the firm when his term was up. He is now a partner in Sullivan & Cromwell’s patent practice.

With Labor Day now behind us, Hot Labor Summer has come to a scorching end, but the labor movement is alive and well with several heavyweight bouts looming on the horizon. This transition time is the perfect moment to take stock of the Biden administration’s labor allyship — applauding recent rulemaking efforts, highlighting some shortcomings, and previewing some potential labor strikes coming this fall.

The Revolving Door Project’s Ananya Kalahasti and Will Royce released the following statement regarding the US Chamber of Commerce’s lawsuit regarding the Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare prescription drug negotiation program, and a financial conflict of interest regarding the judge in the Southern District of Ohio.