This is an excerpt from an article that first appeared on The Huffington Post.
With this Cabinet, it is a virtual certainty that the Trump administration will be the most corrupt and scandal-prone in American history.
And it is absolute certainty that, by design, they will pursue a policy agenda that serves the interests of the corporate class against and does deep harm to the American people.
To understand the scope of what we are facing, it’s useful for a moment to step back and consider not just one or two of Trump’s nominees, but the totality of his handover to corporate interests:
In any prior administration, it would have been a tempest if even one of these individuals had been named to the Cabinet. The totality of the harm these individuals can inflict on America is hard to overstate.
Click here to read the whole article.
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| Source: CBS News |
And it is absolute certainty that, by design, they will pursue a policy agenda that serves the interests of the corporate class against and does deep harm to the American people.
To understand the scope of what we are facing, it’s useful for a moment to step back and consider not just one or two of Trump’s nominees, but the totality of his handover to corporate interests:
- Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who has strong ties to Koch Industries and raked in eye-popping sums from the finance sector, construction industry, pharmaceutical industry and chemical industry.
- Rex Tillerson, Trump’s secretary of state pick, spent his entire career at ExxonMobil, which is not just among the world’s largest oil companies, but the corporation most responsible for spreading climate denial and intimidating climate activists.
- Steven Mnuchin, treasury secretary nominee and longtime Goldman Sachs executive, through a hedge fund took over the failed IndyMac, turned it into OneWest and went on a foreclosure rampage, engaging in robosigning and other abuses such that one judge found the bank to have engaged in practices that were “harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive.”
- Gen. James Mattis, the pick for secretary of defense, has spun through the revolving door, leaving the military to serve on the board of General Dynamics, a multinational military contractor, and the scandal-ridden Theranos, a startup company that misled investors and consumers about its blood-testing technology.
- US Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), under consideration for attorney general despite a racist record that disqualified him from a federal judgeship three decades ago, and who has a record of gentle treatment of the finance, tobacco and other industries.
- Betsy DeVos, named to be education secretary, is a billionaire scion and whose husband is heir to the Amway fortune, is a purveyor of extremist education privatization proposals and has herself invested in for-profit education companies.
- Elaine Chao, up to run the US Department of Transportation, who served on the board of directors of Wells Fargo during the cross-selling scandal, as well as a half-dozen other corporate boards.
- Former Goldman Sachs executive Gary Cohn, slated to head the National Economic Council, who led Goldman Sachs as it profited off the housing market collapse in part by misleading its own clients.
- Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Trump’s pick to the run the US Environmental Protection Agency, believes climate science is “far from settled,” has repeatedly sued the agency he will be tasked with leading and as Oklahoma attorney general sent letters to federal agencies that were literally drafted by Devon Energy, one of the state’s largest oil and gas corporations.
- Steve Bannon, a special adviser to Trump who once ran and may maintain undisclosed business or other ties with Breitbart.com, a far-right, racist website, and is a former Goldman Sachs executive.
- Linda McMahon, picked to run the Small Business Administration, who as World Wrestling Entertainment CEO helped ensure the wrestling industry remained largely unregulated, putting the health and safety of wrestlers at risk.
- Andy Puzder, who is to head the US Department of Labor, the longtime mogul in charge of the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. fast-food chains, companies known for being anti-worker and anti-union, and who opposes many or all of the most important, recent pro-worker initiatives of the Obama Labor Department, including a rule to ensure that worker are properly compensated for overtime.
- Wilbur Ross, a billionaire whose firm has profited from buying distressed firms and cutting workers’ benefits, named to take the post of secretary of the US Department of Commerce.
- Carl Icahn, named as Trump’s “special advisor on regulatory affairs,” is the emblematic corporate raider and epitomizes predatory corporate capitalism, with financial holdings that give him a direct stake in many of the matters about which he will be advising the president.
In any prior administration, it would have been a tempest if even one of these individuals had been named to the Cabinet. The totality of the harm these individuals can inflict on America is hard to overstate.
Click here to read the whole article.
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