Matt Yglesias’ fight to protect “normal” Americans by crusading for more corporate influence
Matt Yglesias’ new piece is longing for more corporate influence. No surprise. But his line, “But Joe Biden’s administration, unlike Barack Obama’s or Bill Clinton’s, hasn’t included any businesspeople in the cabinet” threw us for a loop; “had Biden somehow reshuffled his cabinet over the weekend without us noticing?” we found ourselves asking, perplexed by such a seemingly obvious factual error. Had something else happened? Have we been living in a parallel universe since January 20th 2021? The answer is no. We should have known, Yglesias is just lying. Again.
Despite Yglesias portraying the Biden administration as so ideologically anti-business that it would make Mao blush, the Biden administration has a lot of officials with business ties. Since we actually cite our sources (AHEM) let’s do an examination of his claim.
First up, let’s talk about White House Chief of Staff Jeffrey Zients. While Yglesias may try to pretend his claim was just about Cabinet Secretaries, the White House says he’s part of the club. That’s good enough for us.
Zients has had a long career in private industry. Both as a CEO of a private equity firm (the Cranemere Group), as a board member at Facebook, the managing partner at investment firm Portfolio Logic, Chairman of home health firm PSA Healthcare and at many other firms before that.
Next up is Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. To keep this short, we recommend you read David Dayen’s (of The American Prospect) Twitter thread on the subject. In brief, Blinken (and much of the Biden foreign policy staff) come from one corporate lobbying firm called WestExec.
On to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Austin is obviously a career soldier, but did you know that after leaving the Army in 2016 he joined the Board of Directors of Raytheon and was a partner at an investment firm specializing in military suppliers?
Attorney General Merrick Garland has been out of private work for a long time, but since Yglesias seemingly thinks nobody in the Biden administration has ever held a job in private industry, it is worth mentioning Garland was a partner at Arnold & Palmer.
Next up is Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture. We won’t fault Yglesias for not knowing about him, as he often flies under the radar. Vilsack has made big money at both Dairy Management Inc. (amazingly a real company and not the name of an Ag company in a lazily-written screenplay) and at Purdue Pharmaceuticals.
Now we’re getting to possibly the most clearly “businessperson” in the whole cabinet; Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. Raimondo is a venture capitalist by trade. She started out working at one VC firm before founding her own, Point Judith Capital, in 2001. In an example of revolving door conflicts being important, the state of Rhode Island pension fund invested in Raimondo’s VC. The ensuing mess when the fund started by a high-up state official performed poorly was… not good.
Next up we’ve got Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. Remember the meme about him working for a company fixing bread prices?
It comes from a NYT writer asking about his job in the private industry for McKinsey & Co.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas is another Big Law alumnus, having worked at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr and for O’Melveny & Myers LLP.
SBA Administrator Isabel Guzman worked as the director of strategic initiatives at ProAmerica Bank.
This is just a few appointees in the Biden administration, far from a comprehensive list. Just a quick fact check on a fact-averse claim. These jobs in the private sector obviously range from normal to the abnormal and from normal experience to influence peddling. This thread isn’t meant to be an argument that none of these people should hold jobs in the Biden administration. We’re just trying to figure out where Yglesias gets his information. Does someone only count as a “businessperson” if they come from the business person region of Wall Street? What would you call someone who has worked for business for a substantial part of their career?
And we would be remiss not to point out that Yglesias’ piece today also contradicts his piece from just last week (must be a flip-flop record time even for Yglesias). Did he somehow forget what he wrote just last week?
