Revolving Door

This week: inflation hawks double down on brutal rate hikes that will harm workers and the mainstream media goes out of its way to undermine rail workers.

Rattner has ridden his seven months in the Obama White House to an extremely influential punditry career, in addition to the millions he rakes in as Bloomberg’s money manager.

There are numerous ways for the Biden administration to implement these safeguards. One option would be to issue a broad executive order that sets a path to restore public trust in the Patent Office. This order would require that the USPTO create a publicly available record of intervention in appeal proceedings by staff other than APJs, and outline new ethics practices that would ensure key USPTO staff recuse themselves from matters involving prior clients or former employers, and refrain from representing clients or working for companies whose cases they decide for at least three years.

Government officials in Congress and at independent agencies like the CFTC should focus on protecting consumers and ignore any entreaties from their former colleagues who now represent the industry’s interests.

It is a significant victory for the rule of law that former FDIC Chair Jelena McWilliams doesn’t get to just nullify the lawful vote of the Board even when she lost.

The public hearings conducted by the House Select Committee have exceeded many Democrats’ expectations, not only as conversation-changing political theater, but also as a venue to uncover vital information. For example, the country now knows that Secret Service text messages from January 6th were deleted from phones shortly thereafter in what the agency has called a “planned migration.” This is what congressional oversight activities should do: extract truths from the halls of power and pursue public accountability accordingly.

“If the White House is taking its ethical obligations seriously and recusing Dunn from all policy areas where she has money in the game, well, what will she even be doing?”

Earlier this month, The New York Times broke the story that former FBI director James Comey and his former deputy director Andrew McCabe, both loathed and eventually fired by President Trump, also both underwent rare and intensive tax audits under the National Research Program, which studies tax compliance and calculates the “tax gap” (the difference between legally owed tax and what is actually paid). Out of around 154 million annual tax returns, the National Research Program selected just 5,000 tax returns in 2017 and 8,000 in 2019 to audit. Neither man knew the other had undergone the same audit until a Times reporter told them.

Despite a disclosure law, the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, only one of 56 retiring members of Congress has filed reports on their potential new jobs this election cycle.

In another notable swing through the revolving door between government and BigLaw, two top Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement officials recently joined Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP as partners. They join former SEC general counsel Robert Stebbins and former CFTC commissioner Christopher Giancarlo as government alumni at the firm. 

The Department of Commerce is currently conducting digital trade talks with nations from the Indo-Pacific and Europe, with negotiations led by its secretary, Gina Raimondo. Through her role as lead negotiator in President Biden’s newly established Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and one-year-old U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC), Raimondo is poised to influence global trade policies.

We are firmly on track toward an unlivable world. And a man whose entire career is marked by hubris and greed, who touts the false benefits of methane gas and makes millions from fossil fuel firms and their allies, is being raised as a candidate for White House National Climate Advisor. To put our position plainly, “No.” 

The news today that Anita Dunn will return to the White House as a senior advisor makes clear that her involvement with this administration was never credibly temporary.