Revolving Door

With the right staff at the helm, USDA’s Rural Development Division could be the key to rebuilding rural America.

Given a choice between someone who’s dedicated her career to fighting for Social Security recipients, a corporate ally with only a passing interest in the program, and an ethics law violator, Biden shouldn’t have a hard time choosing.

The following points are taken from Revolving Door Project’s extensive research document on Jerome Powell’s private-sector record, which includes work at union-busting and fossil fuel-investing firms.

Personnel vacancies and Big Pharma allies in the Biden administration threaten a landmark executive order on competition.

Hochstein is not even a skeptic of the fossil fuel industry, much less an environmentalist. His life’s work has been planting American flags on global fossil fuel reserves, facilitating the drilling and pumping of their contents, and inflicting pain on anyone who gets in the way.

Today, a coalition of 23 environmental, labor, and good government organizations called on President Biden to remove Thomas Workman from his role as the independent member with insurance expertise on the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), the interagency panel which identifies and addresses systemic risks to the financial system. 

During his time at the Carlyle Group, the firm repeatedly engaged in union-busting layoffs, climate-damaging fossil fuel investment projects, and more. 

For the sake of American workers, racial justice, financial security, and the climate, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell should not be renominated for a second term.

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.

Fowler, a former Johnson & Johnson executive, is the latest Biden hire to spin through Pharma’s revolving door.

If Biden is emerging as an anti-monopoly president, then why is he rewarding Cohen, a fixer for one of the go-to examples of monopoly power in America? More importantly, if he hopes to redeem American democracy from Trumpism, why is Biden rewarding the political strategist for a company that does not care about basic voting rights, especially for Black people?

After months of delay, Biden is rumored to have selected a new Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) acceptable to Delaware Senator Chris Coons. If true, that will mean Biden has sacrificed a critical opportunity to catalyze bold patent reform in the service of political patronage. Reports have indicated that Biden offered Coons, who expressed hope that coronavirus might be a “sword” for stronger IP protections, the power to decide the next USPTO Director as a consolation prize for not having been named Secretary of State.

“As a private corporate attorney, MacBride defended fossil fuel companies, Wall Street giants, Big Tech monopolies, and a myriad of other corporate industries,” the groups wrote. “His past work fighting vigorously and successfully on behalf of corporations against the public interest disqualifies him from a role in the administration.”

Over the course of its decade-long partnership with Facebook, Latham has fought consumer data breach litigation, quashed federal investigations into corrupt practices by Facebook contractors, and advised on mergers and acquisitions that have cemented Facebook’s tech monopoly status (including its highly-controversial 2014 purchase of WhatsApp, a merger that is currently being challenged by the FTC).

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.