Trump Is Too Low A Bar To Measure Anything... Ever. Biden Needs To Measure Himself Against FDR

 

Except for the friends who didn't vote, I'm the only one of my friends who didn't vote for Biden. I didn't argue with them or criticize them or even feel any negativity towards them. The Orange Fascist Menace had to be defeated and they did what I just could not bring myself to do. Now however, and I bet you're noticing it too, sane progressives are trying to turn a holding-your-nose vote into a mental exercise that turns Biden into our hero. Please get over that fast if it's infecting you. He isn't. He's another president, likely to do more bad than good-- sure better than Trump, but as I always tell Nicole Sandler and David Feldman on their radio shows: a pile of runny diarrhea is better than Trump. The bar is too low to be meaningful.

Take the old video above, for example. I had hoped I'd never have to use it again... but knew I would be forced sooner or later. It's sooner and here he goes, following the instincts he's honed for more decades than many of us have been on earth.

"Lobbyists," he began, "aren't bad people." He's wrong; they are. And that includes the members of his own family and inner circle who have used their connections to make fortunes as lobbyists. He should stay the hell away from lobbyists. But, who could imagine Joe Biden staying away from lobbyists. He'd rather throw away good will with the American people-- who hate lobbyists more than they hate politicians-- than keep lobbyists at arm's length.

Today, Wall Street Journal reporters Chad Day and Andrew Restuccia wrote that Biden had already granted waivers to lobbyists so they can serve on his transition team, jeopardizing the natural goodwill millions of Americans feel towards a new president. What an idiot! And what an idiot Ron Klain must be to have allowed Biden to step into that pile of Trump. Day and Restuccia wrote that at least 40 people serving on Biden’s transition team are or were once registered lobbyists. The promise was that his administration would limit the corrupt influence of lobbyists, but-- exactly like the system Trump set up to replace the swamp with a cesspool, Biden's ethics rules "don’t impose a blanket ban on lobbyists, but they require individuals who are registered lobbyists, or have registered as lobbyists within the past year, to get approval from the transition’s general counsel to serve on the team."

Biden announced over 500 members of his transition team, which is tasked with implementing his "policy agenda, working with career government staffers to get up to speed on key issues and eventually embedding in agencies ahead of the inauguration. Five people on the teams-- Andrea Delgado, who is currently registered as a lobbyist for the United Farm Workers Foundation; Celeste Drake, who is currently registered as a lobbyist for the Directors Guild of America; Josh Nassar, who is currently registered as a lobbyist for the United Auto Workers; LaQuita Honeysucker, who was registered as a lobbyist for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union until earlier this year; and Scott Frey, who was registered as a lobbyist for the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees until earlier this year-- are currently registered as lobbyists or were registered within the last year... All five received waivers to serve on the agency review teams."

A statement from the transition team could have easily have come from the Trump Regime:

"Agency review team members are well-respected in their fields and for their extensive experience in the federal agencies they review. We have granted a limited number of authorizations...

The same official admitted that other transition officials have also received waivers, but refused to tell Day and Restuccia their names of even how many of them there are. The Journal also "identified 35 people who had registered as lobbyists prior to this year and who do not need special approval to work on the transition. Those individuals lobbied for a range of companies, unions and advocacy groups-- from BP America, Inc. and a company that owns private prisons to the Environmental Defense Fund and the American Federation of Teachers. Some haven’t lobbied for more than a decade, while others lobbied in recent years." I wonder what the fella from BP is working on.

Political candidates of both parties have grappled with what role former lobbyists should play in their campaigns and administrations. President Trump came under criticism in 2016 for tapping lobbyists to work on his transition team, and he later installed them in senior positions at many federal agencies. During his 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump had pledged to “drain the swamp” in Washington.

A analysis by ProPublica and the Columbia Journalism School [almost a year old] in 2019 found more than 280 lobbyists had served in positions in the Trump administration.

My old friend, Jonathan Tasini, a labor-oriented podcaster and author, is starting a newsletter, Working Life, which you can find here. This afternoon he launched it with an assertion that Biden would have won Florida if he had run as a populist. He contends that Floridians are looking for candidates who want to put more money in peoples’ pockets, makes it possible for people to make a decent living and narrow the inequality gap. "What they want to see is simple: is what you are proposing going to help me pay the bills?"

What really grabbed my attention in the Florida results was a relatively unremarked upon, at least nationally, Florida victory-- the passage of Amendment 2, which will raise the state minimum wage to $15-an-hour by 2026. (Side point for now: keep in mind that $15-an-hour, though a huge leap above the putrid federal minimum wage of $7.25-an-hour, is still below what the minimum wage, federal or state, should be... at least $20-$22-an hour).

The vote on the initiative was overwhelming: 6,377,444 in favor (60.8 percent) and 4,111,094 opposed (39.2 percent) [votes are as of November 11th 2020]. That is a winning margin of over 2.2 million votes.

The presidential election results: Trump 5,658,847 (51.2 percent) versus Biden 5,284,453 (47.9 percent). That is a winning margin of just 374,000 plus votes out of more than 10.9 million votes.

I decided to look county-by-county at the Florida Trump vs. Biden race compared to the Yes-No vote on Amendment 2. In virtually every county, Amendment 2 outperformed Biden’s numbers-- in some cases, by a lot (20-70 percent)-- and that was true in counties that voted for Trump and even in counties where Amendment 2 lost but still tallied more votes than Biden.

Consider these examples, looking at the total votes cast and the percent differences, and the “under-performance” of Biden versus Amendment 2:

Miami Dade County

• Biden: 617,201 (53.4 percent)
• Trump: 532,409 (46.1 percent)

Amendment 2—

• Yes: 751,866 (70.55 percent)
• No: 313,922 (29.45 percent)

[Biden “under-performance”: 134,665]

Palm Beach County

• Biden: 429,856 (56 %)
• Trump: 332, 760 (43.4 %)

Amendment 2—

• Yes: 503,661 (68.61%)
• No: 230,457 (31.39%)

[Biden “under-performance”: 73,805]

Broward County

• Biden: 617,689 (64.6 %)
• Trump: 332, 960 (34.8 %)

Amendment 2—

• Yes: 666,522 (75.24%)
• No: 219,328 (24.76%)

[Biden “under-performance”: 48,833]

Duval County

• Biden: 251,952 (51.2 %)
• Trump: 233,316 (47.5 %)

Amendment 2—

• Yes: 278,164 (58.1 %)
• No: 200,624 (41.9 %)

[Biden “under-performance”: 26,212]

Hillsborough County (Tampa—the fourth most populous county in FL)

• Biden: 375, 714 (52.8 %)
• Trump: 326,158 (46 %)

Amendment 2—

• Yes: 402,095 (60.3 %)
• No: 267,685 (39.97 %)

[Biden “under-performance”: 26,381]

Pinellas County (Tampa Bay-St. Pete area)

• Biden: 277,191 (49.6 %)
• Trump: 275,949 (49.4 %)

Amendment 2—

• Yes: 312,569 (59.65 %)
• No: 211,452 (40.35 %)

[Biden “under-performance”: 35,378]

... [T]he above differences in the numbers are pretty stark—and raises a legitimate argument that Biden should have put a wildly popular Amendment 2 at the forefront of his campaign in Florida, ESPECIALLY in communities where he had perceived weaknesses or a lack of excitement for his candidacy. And even if Biden still fell short in the state, a full-throated embrace of a stark, pocket-book appeal would likely help win other down-ballot races and, long-term, help the party build.

Second point: I don’t share the progressive knee-jerk argument that polling shows the majority of the American people support progressives ideas like “Medicare For All” and, so, you just have to roll these ideas out and, presto, the people will vote in favor.

That’s rubbish-- because (a) polling questions are very dodgy in how they can be framed [as an aside: it’s amusing to hear my fellow progressives denounce polls…and at the same time use polls to back up a central argument…makes for great fundraising emails, though!] and (b) polling never can factor in a brutal, well-funded, pro-corporate anti-campaign once an idea hits the streets.

And that’s the point going forward: Progressive ideas are big winners BUT you need good organizing to win.

Reforming Government-- Raúl Grijalva Wants To-- Pelosi And Her Team Want To Pretend They Do Too... But They Don't

 

McConnell's never going to allow the Senate to debate it and even if he did and it passed, Trump would never sign it. But that didn't stop Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) from introducing new legislation to end the common practice of hiring lobbyists in a revolving door scheme that swampifies the executive branch-- and it's not just something corrupt Republican do. Corrupt Democrats do it too. Last week, writing for the American Prospect, David Dayen showed how Grijalva is forcing corporate conservative Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party "to take a stand on whether they will hold a potential Joe Biden administration to at least the same anti-corruption standard that Barack Obama held for himself as president."

Grijalva's new bill would "deny confirmation of any nominee to an executive branch position who is currently or has been a lobbyist for any corporate client or officer for a private corporation, in this or any future administration. That would include all Cabinet officials, and any of the roughly 1,200 Senate-confirmed positions throughout the federal government. The letter, endorsed by Demand Progress, the American Economic Liberties Project, the Revolving Door Project, and the Sunrise Movement, represents a baseline request for personnel in the next administration. Groups had proposed something similar to this for months, but not this sweeping a ban, and not with the full-throated support of a House committee chair."

The Grijalva rule is a stronger version of President Obama’s lobbyist ban. Under Obama, any registered lobbyist was barred from government service in the issue area where they lobbied until they had been unregistered for two years. On the way out, these officials couldn’t lobby the government for the remainder of the administration. Obama’s rule was a little leaky, as it didn’t apply to unregistered, de facto lobbyists who were obviously engaged in influence-peddling, lobbyists registered outside the two-year ban, or lobbyists hired for a government job outside their lobbying area.

It’s been long forgotten and is now somewhat risible, but Donald Trump also has a lobbying order in place, which replaced his predecessor’s. The Trump rule allows lobbyists into the government as long as they recuse themselves from anything they lobbied on for two years. It also allegedly bans former executive branch members from lobbying the government for five years, though it only applies to the agency where they worked.

According to one count, 281 lobbyists had worked in the Trump administration as of last October, including the secretaries of defense, interior, energy, labor, and homeland security, along with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler. In addition, several former Trump officials found a way around the modest post-government lobbying ban.

The Grijalva rule tightens the Trump and even the Obama standard significantly. Not only is there no safe-harbor period for former lobbyists-- they’re out of government no matter how long ago they lobbied-- but the rule includes all officers of private corporations, of which there have been many in the past two administrations.

...Biden hasn’t committed even to restoring the weaker Obama-era order on lobbying, despite promising a kind of Obama restoration throughout his campaign. Numerous business types have been pitched for top slots in a Biden administration, and his transition team includes former Apple lobbyist Cynthia Hogan, Facebook director Jessica Hertz, and Jeffrey Zients, former Facebook board member and president of Cranemere, a conglomerate that buys and sells businesses. TIAA-CREF CEO Roger Ferguson and co-CEOs of Ariel Investments John Rogers and Mellody Hobson have also been mentioned as potential Cabinet-level officials.

Yesterday Grijalva told me that "No democracy can survive if it has one set of rules for the public and another for insiders. Americans have seen decades of special corporate favors and billion-dollar giveaways, and they won’t accept that as the natural state of things any longer. If we’re going to restore faith in our government, we have to end the revolving door, not just reverse it, and we have to end corporate government once and for all." We need to ask ourselves what the leaders of both parties find unacceptable about that premise-- and why they are so doggedly in favor of the status quo. 

Wednesday, the Washington Post ran a Pelosi-generated piece on House Democrats' unveiling "a sweeping package of reforms... designed to strengthen Congress’s ability to check the executive branch and prevent abuses of power, especially by the president." No mention of Grijalva or his proposal-- just more bullshit from Pelosi and her disgustingly GOP-like, corrupt leadership team. "The package," wrote Karoun Demirjian, "which its architects have informally referred to as “post-Trump reforms,” includes measures to restrain the president’s power to grant pardons and declare national emergencies, to prevent federal officials from enriching themselves, and to accelerate the process of enforcing congressional subpoenas in court. It also includes provisions to protect inspectors general and whistleblowers, increase penalties for officials who subvert congressional appropriations or engage in overt political activity, and safeguard against foreign election interference. Taken together, the proposals represent the Democrats’ long-awaited attempt to correct what they have identified as systematic deficiencies during the course of President Trump’s tenure and impeachment, in the style of changes Congress adopted after Richard Nixon left office. Unlike the post-Watergate reforms, however, which took years to enact, today’s House Democrats have collected their proposed changes under one bill reflecting several measures that have been percolating piecemeal through the House."

It's all about Trump and doesn't touch any of the systemic corruption that has made DC one of the swampiest cities on the planet. Pelosi and Hoyer should have learned a lesson from all the millions of Americans who voted for Trump in 2016. They're incapable of learning any such lesson.

Shahid Buttar is the San Francisco reformer running for Pelosi's seat in November; there's no progressive, just a contest between a corrupt garden variety Democrat and a real fighting progressive. Today, Buttar told me that "Unfortunately, Democrats have followed the Republican playbook in Washington for years. The bipartisan revolving door between K St. and Capitol Hill is the dirty secret of Washington-- and a big part of the reason why our government has grown so unresponsive to the needs of voters struggling to endure the compounding crises of our times."

He said he's "running to replace the leading corporate Democrat in part to help the party grow more responsive to grassroots concerns, and to help make our government more responsive to We the People. I’d be eager to support Rep. Grijalva’s bill in Congress, and to promote other checks and balances to limit and counteract corporate influence peddling in Washington."

Demirjian continued that "In a joint statement, seven committee chairs [though not Grijalva] signaled their legislation is intended to 'prevent future presidential abuses, restore our checks and balances, strengthen accountability and transparency, and protect our elections. It is time for Congress to strengthen the bedrock of our democracy and ensure our laws are strong enough to withstand a lawless president,' the statement says. 'These reforms are necessary not only because of the abuses of this president, but because the foundation of our democracy is the rule of law and that foundation is deeply at risk.' All good stuff... except for the steaming pile of hypocrisy sitting in the middle of the room in plain view.

Nate McMurray is the progressive Democrat in western New York taking on the newest slimy little Trumpist in Congress, hereditary multimillionaire Chris Jacobs, a complete knee-jerk kind of politician. Nate, in contrast, is an independent-minded leader who told me yesterday that "The Democratic leadership is not really well connected to working people and communities. And it really shows-- Democrats lost a lot of ground over the years at the state and local level. But the situation is fixable. The grassroots of the Democratic party has bold initiatives that excite and inspire voters to get involved, and the Democratic Leadership would do well to really listen."

Liam O'Mara is running for a southern California seat occupied by one of the most overtly corrupt members of Congress, Crooked Ken Calvert. When Fox News was looking for a corrupt slimebag to use as an example of DC corruption, they did a Mike Wallace special on Calvert's corruption. This morning Liam told me to call him old-fashioned or "an idealist; call me whatever you like-- but I believe that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people ought to serve only the people-- not corporations and wealthy special interests. Our elections need to be publicaly funded, and all lobbying, in the sense of contributions, needs to end." The topic boils his blood. He continued:

Lobbying used to mean catching someone in the lobby and pressing your case-- that's it! And advocates for bills make perfect sense to me. But when someone can come at you flush with cash from a corporation and say, please vote for things we like, and here's a million bucks to keep your job... that shit needs to be illegal. Now. Right fucking now.

We have hundreds of congresscritters taking vast amounts of cash for their campaigns, and that should be understood as bribery, plain and simple. A bribe is something offered in exchange for a decision in your favour. What else can we call it when someone takes a corporation's money, then votes to advance that same corporation's interests? It's a damned bribe!

I don't care which party you call home-- if you take a big wad of cash from someone and then push their legislative agenda, you are violating your oath to serve the people and the Constitution of this country. It's way past time for some changes. We need to apply the laws properly against bribery, pass a total ban on cash lobbying, introduce publicaly-funded elections, and, as the president disingenuously put it, drain the swamp!

 

Ohio's House Speaker Just Got Caught In A $60 Million Bribery Scam But His Backward District Is So Right Wing That He Would Win Again If He Could Run From Prison

One Ohio legislator told me that watching Householder shovel food into his maw was one of the most disgusting sights she had ever experienced

It's not nice to call anyone a putrid bag of shit. But Sheldon Silver is a putrid bag of shit. I couldn't cover up the stink if I tried. And we've never tried. We've been covering his political demise since January of 2015 when the powerful and incredibly corrupt Democratic Speaker-for-life of the New York state Assembly was arrested and forced to resign from the speakership and then his Assembly district. He was 71 back then and his lawyers argued-- unsuccessfully-- that he should not be found guilty because the southern District of New York (when it was still a law and order operation instead of a Trump Mob arm) was charging him with activity that state legislators routinely engage in and are not thought of as criminal, i.e., bribery. Now the Yeshiva boy is 76 and has still not served a day in prison. Presumably that will end in late August when he starts serving his six and a half year prison sentence, having been sentenced to that-- and a million dollar fine-- on Monday.

Having denied, denied, denied for years, Silver told the judge on Monday that "My use of my office for personal gain was improper, selfish and ethically indefensible... I'm sorry." The judge pointed out that he had been using his office for corrupt purposes for at least 15 years, taking money from real estate developers-- Glenwood Management and the Witkoff Group-- in return for favorable treatment and special legislation to help their businesses.

That was Monday. The next day, a very similar kind of action exploded in Ohio, where Republican putrid bag of shit/Speaker of the House, Larry Householder, was arrested. He had served as Speaker from 2001 to 2004 but had only been Speaker time time since January 2019. He represents the 72nd state House district east of Columbus-- Coshocton and Perry counties and part of Licking County. The district is 96% white and solidly Republican. Trump's 2016 vote in each of the counties should tell you all you need to know about the people who put Householder in office:

• Coshocton- 69.4%
• Licking- 62.1%
• Perry- 68.1%

And then came the big blue wave of 2018... and no one told the folks in this backward part of Ohio. Sherrod Brown, who won statewide, didn't do as well in the 3 Householder counties:

• Coshocton- 39.5%
• Licking- 43.0%
• Perry- 40.0%

During his first speakership, Householder, a notorious anti-LGBTQ bigot and hate-monger, was best known for passing the first legislation anywhere in America defunding Planned Parenthood-- and for passing a concealed-carry gun law, making it easier for Buckeyes to kill each other. He nearly went to prison in 2004-- for the same kind of monkey business he was arrested for yesterday-- money laundering and bribery. He was arrested by the Feds Tuesday morning at his farm and taken into custody as part of a $60 million bribery scheme that bailed out two nuclear power plants while gutting subsidies for renewable energy projects and increasing rate-holders power bills substantially.

Reporting for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Andrew Tobias wrote that federal prosecutors charged Householder with conspiracy to commit racketeering in connection to the nuclear bailout bill he shepherded through the state legislature last year right after he became speaker. He faces up to 20 years in prison and a quarter million dollar fine-- same as former Ohio Republican Party Chair-turned-lobbyist Matt Borges, prominent lobbyist Neil Clark, FirstEnergy Solutions lobbyist Juan Cespedes and Householder aide Jeff Longstreth.

Householder is one of Ohio’s most powerful politicians, and the investigation against him, news of which broke Tuesday morning, sent shockwaves through Ohio political circles.

...Prosecutors did not seek a monetary bond, although as a condition of their release, Bowman ordered them to surrender their firearms, to remain in the Southern District of Ohio, and to not have contact with other defendants or potential witnesses. This would mean Householder, one of the state’s most powerful politicians, could not travel the entire state or have contact with lobbyists or conceivably even other state lawmakers.

Democracy At Stake In South Florida

A famous poem by T.S. Eliot states that the world would not end with a bang, but with a whimper. Well, it looks like that is how democracy could end as well. If you listen carefully, you can hear that whimper being carried to your ears by a soft, South Florida ocean breeze.

This cycle-- once again-- a battle for the soul of democracy is being waged in Florida.

Florida Senate District 39 stretches from Key West through the Florida Keys and up into South Miami-Dade. It is one of the most diverse districts in the country by almost any measure, with distinct voting blocs comprised of various races, cultures, nationalities, ages, and political affiliations. It is one of the most closely watched and hotly contested state legislative races in the country, by political insiders and corporate interests.

Florida Republicans are desperate to maintain their legislative majority in both state legislative chambers. Senate District 39 is a highly flippable district where the Republican incumbent has termed out. To replace her, the Republicans have cleared the way for Ana Maria Rodriguez. Ana Maria is a career lobbyist who doesn’t live in the senate district. She currently represents a blatantly gerrymandered district that covers slivers of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Collier county on the other side of the Metro. The Republican Party-- and the corporate cronies that fund it-- are supplying Ana Maria with campaign cash by the truckload.

So what does incoming Senate minority leader Gary Farmer do to counter this move by the Republicans? He recruits Javier Fernandez, his own career lobbyist candidate, of course!

The similarities are striking. Like Ana Maria, Javier is a longtime lobbyist for big corporate interests. And he doesn’t live in the district either. And he was recently elected to represent an outlying district before turning carpetbagger for the senate seat.

It gets worse. Javier doesn’t just play nice with Republicans. He gives them money and helps them get elected. His finance records show that he has even given a maximum personal contribution to the REPUBLICAN PARTY OF FLORIDA.

And this is exactly what our corporate overlords dream of. Hiring and grooming lobbyists-- the most distrusted group of people by American voters-- to push their interests at every level in government, then funding their campaigns to help them corrupt our democracy from within. Why even bother using lobbyists to buy off politicians when you can just get the lobbyists elected? Cut out the “middle man!”

But it turns out that Gary Farmer can’t even rig a primary correctly. A Democrat challenger entered the race and he has real connections to the community he’s running to represent. Gary must be pissed.

Meet Daniel Horton-Diaz-- Dan. This guy has connections all over the district and a great personal story. He overcame a childhood of poverty and went to law school in the district. While in school, he was the president of the law school student body and received a ton of awards and recognition for community service. Then, right out of law school, he ran against a Republican incumbent and a status quo Democrat in a state house district that covers the Florida Keys and South Miami-Dade. Just looking through his campaign Facebook pages, you can clearly see he knows how to tell a story (take a look at his 2016 campaign video up top) and speak in public. Plus, he advocates for progressive values without apologizing or waffling.

Even though the other guy grew up in the district and had more money to spend, Dan beat him by double digits. He had less than $25,000 and eventually lost to the Republican incumbent, but she had to spend $500,000 to beat him…and he still beat her in the Miami-Dade portion of the district!

After that loss, Dan dusted himself off and took a job working for State Senator Annette Taddeo in the Florida Senate. He went from there to running a voting rights nonprofit, which enabled him to work with the League of Women Voters to open up an early voting site at his alma mater. Then, he became the district chief of staff to Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in Florida Congressional District 26, which completely overlaps with Florida Senate District 39.

So, you’ve got a guy who: (1) lives in the district, (2) went to law school in the district, (3) ran for office in the district, (4) won a primary in the district, (5) worked in the legislative body that he’s running for, (6) ran a voting rights nonprofit that directly helped the young voters in his district, and then (7 ran the entire congressional district that completely overlaps with the senate district he’s running for.

That sounds like the best candidate that the Florida Democratic Party could dream of. But no., not to the corrupted and inept Florida Democratic establishment whose specialty is losing election after election after election.

No, Dan is not Gary Farmer’s guy, so he's not the "party's" candidate. Javier Fernandez is. And Dan doesn’t have corporate lobbyist money pouring in. Javier Fernandez does.

You see, I think the Democratic Establishment learned a lesson after AOC’s surprise win-- a wrong lesson, but the only one they're capable of learning. If you don’t take out the progressive candidates early, they tend to beat the bought-and-paid-for candidates that the Florida Democrats love to support. Who would have thought?? If you'd like to help restore the roots of Florida democracy, click on the 2020 Blue America state legislative thermometer on the right. As you'll see, the Florida state legislature is becoming quite the battleground for us this cycle... and Dan Horton-Diaz has just become our third insurgent candidate. Please consider giving him-- along with Angie Nixon and Bob Lynch-- a hand.

Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Lobbyists

In the 1970s, Gallup began polling to see what Americans think of honesty and ethics in various professions. Generally speaking, nurses have toped the list. And towards the bottom have been business executives and stockbrokers (each with a 32% low or very low rating), advertising practitioners (37%), car salespeople (44%) telemarketers (56%), and members of Congress (58%).

In 2007, they may have been looking for a profession with even less regard than members of Congress, so they added lobbyists. It didn’t work, generally speaking lobbyists tied members of Congress for being the most distrusted and unethical. These were the scores in December of 2017:

• Members of Congress

Very high- 2%
High- 9%
Average- 29%
Low- 36%
Very Low- 24%

• Lobbyists

Very high- 2%
High- 6%
Average- 31%
Low- 33%
Very Low- 25%

The public perception is certainly borne out by the facts. Remember lobbyists like Jack Abramoff, Adam Kidan and Ralph Reed? It doesn’t come much lower? However, corporate lobbyists don’t get much better than that either, although most have managed, one way or the other, to avoid prison. One of the shadiest of the current crop is Michael Esposito, president of Federal Advocates, which he founded in 2006. While Obama was president, he tried passing himself off as a Democratic lobbyist, His newest self-penned bio reads: “Esposito has spent nearly two decades as a federal lobbyist and is a major player in Republican party politics. In that time, Esposito has secured consistent achievements for clients while providing unmatched access to high-level decision makers, including those within the Administration and Congress. Esposito has successfully achieved groundbreaking legislation and regulatory action in addition to billions of dollars in federal funding. He is nationally recognized as an expert in the legislative and regulatory processes and is often engaged to speak at corporate events. Esposito serves on the Republican National Committee Chairman’s Advisory Board. He is an integral part of the senior-most leadership of the RNC and directly advises the Chairwoman on issues of significance to the nation. Along with offering vital counsel, Michael supports the RNC’s national leadership by serving as its eyes and ears on issues across the country and providing key in-depth insight for the RNC’s ultimate mission: exemplary governance. Esposito is a member of the Trump Victory Finance Committee.” He also claims to be close with Eric Trump and with Kushner-in-law.

The other day, Trump claimed he never heard of Esposito, whose lobbying clients include Orange County (California), Polk County (Iowa), the American Distilled Spirits Association, Huawei Technologies USA, Inc., Cargill, Lyft, Xerox, the National Independent Automobile Dealers Association, and at least 10 California cities (Brentwood, Rancho Palos Verdes, South Pasadena, Thousand Oaks, Pittsburg, Richmond, Laguna Nigel, Garden Grove, Antioch and Desert Hot Springs. Esposito’s company grew exponentially since Trump moved into the White House, with a profit of over $4.6 million in 2018, which was $3.75 million more than it made in 2016.

In November, when it was already clear Esposito would be going to prison, Trump decided it was time to distance himself from this particular lobbyist:

On Friday, the FBI raided Esposito’s home and office. He has been accused of lying about close ties to Trump in order to score lucrative contracts for his firm. The FBI was looking for evidence of financial fraud. Because Polk County is one of his big clients-- $720,000 a year-- the Des Moines Register has taken a particular interest in the case.

After a Post story in November on how Esposito tripled his business while claiming close ties to Trump and his administration, the FBI began investigating Esposito to see whether he may have defrauded clients or engaged in any other financial fraud, The Post reported.

Trump tweeted Nov. 4 that he has no ties to Esposito or his firm. The FBI declined to comment to Post reporters about the raids.

Esposito did not return a Des Moines Registerphone call Friday to his office seeking comment.

The Post reported that there were Rolls-Royce and Lincoln SUVs parked in front of Esposito’s suburban Washington home, which the FBI raided Thursday. On social media, he has posted photos of himself in other luxury cars and wrote of the pleasure he takes in buying and selling them.

Polk County first hired Federal Advocates a decade ago for $5,000 a month. Polk supervisors agreed to pay the firm much more in 2016 as it sought help with an IRS audit that found revenues generated by the county-run Prairie Meadows gambling and entertainment complex that should have been reported as taxable income.

The IRS said Prairie Meadows owed nearly $60.5 million in back taxes, fees and interest from 2012 through 2014.

Gary Palmer, president of Prairie Meadows, said the casino and racetrack won its appeal after hiring a top Washington tax attorney. He told Watchdog that Federal Advocates did nothing to help with that legal battle.

Although the county also ostensibly was paying Federal Advocates to try to secure legislation in Congress that would better protect the casino’s nonprofit status, no such bill has surfaced.

Dick Gephardt And Status Quo Joe Are A Certain Kind Of Democrat-- One Where A "P" Works Better Than A "T" As A final Letter

These people all belong in prison-- but only because no one would ever agree their crimes are capital offenses

Dick Gephardt’s dream was to be President or Speaker of the House or very wealthy; he never made it beyond majority leader, but he sure did become very wealthy, selling access to his friends in office to the highest bidders. Now he’s one of the nation's most contemptible Goldman Sachs and PhRMA lobbyist scumbags. Believe it or not, he was once an actual contender for president (of the United States). First elected to Congress by the St. Louis Democratic Machine, he never experienced one moment of politics that wasn’t drenched in corruption, criminality and convenient flip-flopping on any issue he needed to switch positions on. People outside DC sensed he was a piece of shit and-- like Biden-- all his attempts to run for president, starting in 1987 were smartly rebuffed.

After he helped Bush and Cheney trick Congress into declaring war on Iraq (2002), his political career as a Democrat was pretty much done. He didn’t run for a 15th term in Congress but he switched from anti-Choice to “pro”-Choice and tried to run for president again. That’s how I allowed myself to interact with him, against my own better judgment. I’ll make the story of how, as short as I can. The RIAA had paid a huge bribe to the Democratic Party in order to get Congress and President Clinton to go along with some internet publishing deal. But they wanted a president of one of the labels to go thank Clinton personally and there was no one else among the label presidents who had ever experienced the internet, so I was chosen. Therefore they put the bribe in my name, without even asking me-- of even telling me. I’ll skip over the Clinton part and how he and Charlie Rangel tried shaking me down for more cash and go right to the Gephardt story.

By the 2004 campaign my name was on all the political fundraising call lists as a mega-donor because of that RIAA bribe I had nothing to do with. The good news was that I got calls from some cool people, like Howard Dean, but the bad news is that I got attention from the shady characters like Al Gore-- I’ll never forget his wife, who I loathed for her censorship attempts, asking me while I was dancing with my boyfriend at the White House if I would become a Gore bundler-- and Dick Gephardt. Gephardt insisted on meeting me in person even after I told him bluntly that I was firmly and irrevocably backing Howard Dean because he was opposed to the war Gephardt helped Bush start. So I met him. Terry McAuliffe was there too. I felt like I was drowning in a cesspool of the kind of criminality that was destroying politics. Once I made it clear to Gephardt that I wouldn’t give him 5 cents if his life depended on it, he dismissed me and I knew without a doubt I would never hear from him again. (His last campaign puttered out after one of his staffers called a Dean aide a “faggot” and punched him.) Among Gephardt’s endorsers were Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, Sherrod Brown, and lots of Blue Dogs who were soon defeated in their own reelection attempts. Gephardt, who had once won the Iowa caucuses, came in 4th in 2004 and that was that. He has devoted the rest of his life to crime, handing out bribes on behalf of corporations instead of taking them for himself from corporations the way he used to.

He immediately went to work for them after losing his presidential bid

So why bring this turd up? He led the battle against the public option in 2009 and has worked diligently to keep drug prices high by pushing to extend patents and block generic drugs from coming to market. It’s largely due to the efforts of Dick Gephardt that drug prices are often TEN TIMES higher in the U.S. than in other countries. And, as Lee Fang, just reported for The Intercept Gephardt is still helping PhRMA rip off the American public as he nears his 80th birthday. Ironically, for me at least, the lead picture in Fang’s article is Gephardt and McAuliffe. Today-- no surprise-- Gephardt is paid to act as a general in the war against Medicare-for-All.

Fang noted that the mere prospect of single payer has elicited swift derision from some corners of the Democratic Party, with Dick Gephardt “laughing off the idea at a health insurance conference earlier this month. ‘Not in my lifetime,’ scoffed Gephardt, when asked if the United States will ever adopt such a system. Gephardt, who serves as a Democratic ‘superdelegate’ responsible for choosing the party’s presidential nominee, was asked about the possibility of single payer at the Centene Corporation annual investor day conference at The Pierre, a ritzy five-star hotel in New York City. ‘There is no way you could pass single payer in any intermediate future,’ Gephardt declared. America, he added, has the ‘greatest health care system in the world, bar none.’ And while single payer would provide universal coverage, there would be less quality and innovation without the ‘involvement of the private sector.’ Haley Barbour, the former Republican National Committee chair, another speaker at the event, chimed in to agree. ‘Hear, hear. Put me down as agreeing with Leader Gephardt as usual,’ Barbour chuckled.”

The claim that single payer suppresses innovation is an old argument that does not stand up to scrutiny. Most medical innovation in the U.S. are already government funded, through universities receiving federal subsidies and grants, as well as through the National Institutes of Health. A single-payer insurance system, like Medicare, would simply negotiate for lower prices from providers, and would likely steer savings towards greater investments in research and development. Claims about lower quality care are also highly disputed, given that countries with single payer and tightly regulated universal health systems perform much higher than the U.S. in a range of health outcomes.

Despite well-entrenched opposition from much of the private health care industry, political momentum for single payer has enjoyed a rapid boom of late.

Does it make your blood boil? It does mine. It makes me want to commit myself to electing Bernie to the presidency and progressives to Congress even more. I spoke with some of the congressional candidates who are running on Medicare-for-All platforms and asked them how they deal with political opponents who use these same manufactured lies about Medicare in their campaigns. Eva Putzova isn’t from the Dick Gephardt wing of the party. She served as a Bernie delegate from Arizona to the Democratic National Convention in 2016 and she’s been fighting for working families every since. The revolving door between politics and corporate lobbyists is not something she looks at kindly, primarily because the results are horrifically damaging to the people she is running to represent in Congress. “We need to implement a single payer, Medicare for All system that will remove the profit-making insurance and pharmaceutical industries from the influence and control they presently exert on health care policy, and policy-makers,” she told me earlier today. “In no other industrialized nation do these profit-making interests have such influence as in the U.S. We need to chase these ‘money lenders from the temple’ as rapidly as possible in order to provide good, quality, universal healthcare to all Americans.”

Massachusetts progressive Brianna Wu addressed her comment directly-- “Here’s what I have to say to those elected officials and candidates who don’t support Medicare For All-- you’re simply not spending enough time listening to your constituents. I can’t count how many people in my district have told me they have no healthcare or inadequate health care. They don’t go to a doctor when they get sick because they just can’t afford it. Some have gone bankrupt because of obscenely high medical bills. These are real people who work hard for themselves and their families. In one of the wealthiest countries on Earth, it isn’t just unfair, it should be criminal. My opponent, Rep. Stephen Lynch, has said that he isn’t yet convinced that Medicare For All would be a good idea. I’m sure that’s true. He enjoys his cadillac insurance plan as a congressman. So do his campaign donors who work for the insurance industry. It’s clear that Rep. Lynch isn’t spending enough time listening to his constituents. If he and other establishment-backed elected officials did listen, they would learn that their days in office are numbered, and that we need Medicare For All. Now.”

Heidi Sloan has a keen understanding of how congressional agendas need to be analyzed. A TX-25 progressive, she is campaigning heavily on Medicare-for-All and for cleaning up campaign finance corruption and the revolving door between congressional offices and lobbying firms. "The most effective piece of the Affordable Care Act was the Medicare expansion, and now we have a movement of people demanding the expansion of Medicare to every person in this country. We have real enemies in this fight, people like Roger Williams who oppose us because his class interests conflict with the goal of single-payer universal healthcare. The ruling class is smart enough to realize that workers who don't depend on employers for healthcare are a lot more likely to go on strike or walk away from a lousy job. Besides, even one of the richest members of Congress doesn't want to lose contributions after the for-profit industry funding his campaign is abolished. He'd rather corporations profit off of the denial of healthcare than to have less industry money to run on. Roger Williams has got to go, and all of the crooked politicians who take corporate money have to go with him."

David Scott stays quiet in Congress-- a career-long backbencher and Blue Dog with a tendency to back Republicans back in Georgia. This year there’s a strong progressive contesting the right to represent the suburban district south and southwest of Atlanta-- Dr. Michael Owens. Yesterday he told us that his platform has "included Medicare for All since day one of my campaign-- which is in stark contrast to my opponent’s stance. This is very unfortunate especially when you consider that there are parts of my district that rank among the least insured in the whole state. This is typical of Scott. He has consistently not supported Medicare for All. In the 114th, 115th and now in the 116th Congress, Scott hasn’t backed Medicare-for-All legislation. I would have signed on as an original cosponsor of Pramila Jayapal’s H.R. 676.  Remember, Georgia currently has the highest maternal mortality rate in the United States-- 46.2 deaths per 100,000 live births. More than 60 of Georgia’s 159 counties do not have a pediatrician. My opponent’s solution is the same that it has been over the last 15 years-- to host a one-day ‘health fair.’ This is a far cry from the bold health care solutions we need. 'Affordable and accessible health care' is a term we should learn to not trust. We also shouldn't trust an elected official who has received over $400,000 from the insurance industry over the last 4 election cycles. The women, children and men of my district and of this country need a single payer system, specifically Medicare for All, to ensure that all Americans have healthcare. Not 'affordable and accessible' healthcare via insurance companies whose goal is to maximize profits and deny and delay coverage. Healthcare is an an American crisis and we must put the need of the people over the greed of the health insurance industry."

Rachel Ventura’s New Dem opponent, Bill Foster, is a total DC insider who plays all the lobbyist games that see congressmen betraying the interests of their constituents for the interests of their campaign donors and other insiders. It might not be as bad if he lived in the district and met some of the folks he’s supposed to be representing. Last night, Rachel told us that “In 2018, Americans spent an all-time high of $360 billion on prescription drugs! Bill Foster won’t support Medicare for all because he supports a tiered healthcare system for those who can afford better insurance. We all deserve to have quality healthcare! Dick Gephardt and my political opponent have one thing in common. They are both part of our political past. Gephardt’s candle is fading quickly and it won’t be long before we are passing single-payer healthcare. We will do things different when I am elected to represent the people of Illinois’ 11th congressional district. There is an intelligent group of young people running for office this cycle, and we are going to win. We will join those who are already reshaping the political landscape in Washington and fighting to represent people over corporations. Change starts in the political campaign. I won’t be taking a penny from big PhRMA or from the for-profit healthcare system. I will have no problem hanging a “not for sale” sign on my office door and refusing meetings with those who have corrupted our political system to a point where voters, in desperation, choose a chaotic outsider like Donald Trump. It’s time to put the past behind us. The old way of doing things and the old players who are still scrapping for relevancy in this changing system will one day be written about as the dark ages in American history.”

Sleaze Ball Lobbyists Work With Corporate Conservatives From Both Parties To Kill Medicare-For-All

You may have read some of the coverage about how anti-Medicare lobbyists are writing OpEds for conservatives willing to undercut Medicare-for-All messaging. Obviously, the willingness of the legislators to run the anti-healthcare OpEds under their own names comes with gratitude and pay-offs (bribes in the form of campaign contributions and, in some cases, worse).

Yesterday progressive congressional candidate Morgan Harper called my attention to a specific case in Ohio, where right-wing state Senator Stephen Huffman of Miami County gave a lobbyist-penned OpEd to the Sidney Daily News denouncing Medicare-for-All (and government involvement in healthcare). The OpEd was written by shady lobbyist Kathleen DeLand who was paid by the even shadier Partnership for America’s Health Care Future.

Miami County, north of Dayton, is a red hellhole. The county gave Trump a landslide 70.6% to 24.9% victory over Hillary in 2016. Last year, in the midst of a national anti-red wave, the politically backward county only gave Sherrod Brown 35.3% of it's vote. And gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray fared even worse-- 27.0%. The county performance for garden variety Republican Congressman Warren Davidson was R+46. FDR won the county once and LBJ beat Goldwater; other than that it's been a GOP bastion within the lifetimes of everyone alive today. Every single member of the county board of commissioners is a Republican, as is every elected judge. All of their elected state and national representatives are Republicans. So... it's amazing that the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future felt they had to spend money to push its anti-Medicare-for-All messaging even in this blood-red an area. By the way, the thermometer below leads to a contribution page for candidates who are campaigning for Medicare-for-All. By all means, avail yourself of it and contribute to these men and women who will make the difference in passing what I like to call "original Medicare before conservatives cut it to pieces."

Luke Darby, writing Monday for GQ explained why. "Single-payer health care is increasingly popular among American voters. Poll numbers fluctuate depending on how the question is asked, but findings consistently show majority support for a single-payer program like Medicare for All. One 2018 poll showed support was as high as an astonishing 70 percent."

Eva Putzova is the former Bernie delegate running for Congress in an Arizona district held by Blue Dog and "ex"-Republican Tom O'Halleran, a fake-Dem who normally votes with the GOP. Needless to say, he does not support Medicare-for-All. Eva does. "The revelation that the for-profit healthcare industry is ghost writing anti Medicare-For-All op-eds for politicians to publish in the newspapers under their names is despicable but not surprising. A majority of the public supports Medicare-For-All and that terrifies the health insurance industry, pharmaceutical industry and lobbyists who profit from our wasteful, expensive, and often cruel system. They know that their profits will vanish when all Americans are covered by a universal, single-payer system without co-pays, deductibles, or out of pocket payments. My opponent takes money from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries and his anti Medicare for All position reflects those industries point of view, whether he writes an op-ed penned by someone in those industries or not."

The Partnership for America’s Health Care Future and their fat-cat lobbyists have been chipping away at that number. Darby reported that a Kaiser Family Foundation survey from the very end of November found that Medicare for All had just the slimmest of majority support, at 51 percent and that while Bernie and Elizabeth have been pushing single-payer health-care plans, the anti-working class candidates like Status Quo Joe and Mayo Pete have come out strongly against any policies that would undermine private health insurance companies. Fat cat Democratic strategists and insiders find it convenient-- and profitable-- to tell media they think strong social programs that benefit the working class, like universal health care, will hurt the party in the long run. Last month, Pelosi said she's "not a big fan of Medicare for all," and has kept Pramila Jayapal's Medicare-for-All bill-- which has 118 co-sponsors-- bottled up in the House Commerce and Energy Committee, where the grotesquely corrupt chairman, Frank Pallone (NJ) has indicated Medicare-for-All will pass over his dead body.

State-level lawmakers are also jumping into the debate. Democratic and Republican legislators have been publishing op-eds suggesting either very mild adjustments to U.S. health care, or attacking single-payer outright. And, it turns out, some of them are relying on feedback from the heath-care industry.

The Washington Post obtained private e-mails of multiple lawmakers, showing that they ran their op-eds by health-care industry lobbyists before publishing them. Montana representative Kathy Kelker and state senator Jen Gross, both Democrats, included language from John MacDonald, a lobbyist who reached out on behalf of Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, an industry group founded in 2018 and funded by hospitals, private insurers, drug companies and other private health-care firms. Among other edits, MacDonald apparently deleted a table from one of the op-eds showing that Americans spend more per capita on health care than France, Germany, Norway, and Switzerland.

Kelker and Gross both told The Post that they weren't aware that MacDonald was a lobbyist, and that they've received some push back from their constituents over the op-eds. But after Kelker's op-ed ran, she emailed MacDonald, writing, "At church, I received many favorable comments--mostly from Republicans!"

An aide to Ohio state senator Steve Huffman, a Republican, also confirmed that Huffman's recent op-ed attacking Medicare for All was written with help from Ohio-based lobbyist Kathleen DeLand. DeLand would neither confirm nor deny to The Post that she also worked for Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, but her e-mails to Huffman's staff included the group's acronym in the subject line: "PAHCF op-ed - OH - Huffman[3]. docx." The Partnership linked to these op-eds in e-mails to reporters, citing them as evidence that "voices throughout the nation" oppose Medicare for All.

In a story from November, Politico detailed the rise of the Partnership from a coalition of groups representing the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to a multi-million dollar juggernaut aiming to oppose any major expansion of government-financed health care in D.C. and across the country. The organization promotes the talking points that a single-payer heath-care system would empower "bureaucrats" to force Americans into a "one-size-fits-all" plan, taking away their "choice" and "control." According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 156 million Americans, or 49 percent of the country's population, rely on employer-provided insurance, so how much "control" they have over their health care is debatable.

As The Post's Jeff Stein noted Monday evening, "The revelation comes amid a fierce debate among Democrats nationwide about the best way to address health-care concerns. Health care remains a top issue for many voters, and industry groups and moderate [Stein, like most Beltway reporters, refers to conservatives as "moderates," a term preferred by conservatives because its more comforting and palliative to voters] politicians have warned that the ideas pursued by Warren and Sanders could be viewed as too extreme and lead Democrats to lose in the 2020 election. But the ideas are also very popular among many Americans, and the health-care industry has taken notice."

The emails offer a glimpse into the industry mobilization against both single-payer and a “public option," a government-run insurer that would compete with private plans. A change could redirect trillions of dollars in spending, with insurers, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies all directly affected.

The Partnership for America’s Health Care Future has spent more than $1 million on television advertisements since August warning against Medicare-for-all and other changes to the health-care system, according to Advertising Analytics, a firm that tracks TV spending. The Partnership has recently expanded its operations to the state level, and has heavily targeted voters in early primary states and battleground states, according to Politico.

...Single-payer supporters say the lobbyists’ role in crafting the op-eds bolsters their argument that their opponents are parroting talking points from industry groups that profit off the current health-care system.

“These secret emails blow open what I saw firsthand and revealed as a health insurance whistleblower: These companies and their lobbyists will stoop to whatever it takes, no matter how grotesque, to deny people the lifesaving coverage they need," said Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive who is now president of Business for Medicare for All. “This is just the latest reason we need to reform this broken system where greedy corporations determine who can get medical treatment in America.”

The emails raise troubling ethical implications about the undisclosed involvement of private interests in lawmakers’ public statements, said Larry Noble, who served as general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center and the Federal Election Commission.

“It’s disturbing,” Noble said. “I think there’s a certain ethical obligation to be upfront about who wrote the editorial.”

Riverside County, California progressive congressional candidate Liam O'Mara told us last night that two things bother him in this debate, as they do in so many issues in U.S. politics. "The first is the naked corruption that squeaks through, with corporate and special-interest lobbyists handing not just OpEds, but actual legislation, over to self-serving shills who then pass it on as their own in exchange for money. Public service is supposed to be about helping everyone-- about ordinary Americans-- not about doing the bidding of an aristocracy. And it certainly should not be a way to enrich oneself, as so many of these people do. The other issue that stands out to me is rhetorical. Medicare for All is not extreme, it is the default position throughout the developed world. It is cheaper, more efficient, and gives the consumer far more freedom and control over their own care. Yet the right dominates the conversation and uses cold, hard cash to buy the air-time and spread their message. This media influence allows people with clearly conservative views, and sometimes farther right from that, to claim the label of "moderate" solely on account of their servile approach to corporate power. How do we fight a slick messaging machine that does not care about facts, only about profit? This to me is the real problem we face. The power of moneyed élites over our political system has created what Sheldon Wolin famously called an inverted totalitarianism. If we are to get a government back that will serve the interests of citizens, we need to take big money out of politics completely. So long as corporations can buy our representatives, we will continue to fall behind the rich world, losing our health, our freedoms, and our democracy in the process."

Brianna Wu, the progressive taking on New Dem Stephen Lynch in the Boston area, is an enthusiastic Medicare-for-All backer. "Of course," she said, "lobbyists for the insurance industry are fighting against Medicare For All!  They make their money on the status quo. They are not interested in what's best for the American people. I'm running as a Medicare For All candidate. My opponent, Rep. Stephen Lynch, does not support Medicare For All. Why? Because he is part of the status quo, and he relies on the insurance industry for his campaign contributions. It really is as simple as that. Stephen Lynch claims to support unions and was a union member himself. And yet, union leaders are increasingly supporting Medicare For All because they understand that health care increasingly consumes contract negotiations for their members. The premiums, deductibles, and copays that union members still pay for their health insurance often negatively impacts any wage increases they may receive through collective bargaining. I support the Massachusetts AFL-CIO which recently passed a unanimous resolution to endorse a presidential candidate only if that candidate supports Medicare For All. Unions have built and supported working families in this country for decades, and they continue to do so. Medicare For All will benefit all Americans, union and non-union alike. Leave it to unions to lead the way, yet again. When I get to Congress, working families will know I am unequivocally with them."

This is a topic near and dear to the heart of Will County board member and congressional candidate Rachel Ventura. "With the astronomical amount of money that insurance companies and Big Pharma are dumping into democratic campaigns," she wrote last night, "it is easy to understand why corporate Democrats are now using Republican talking points on healthcare. I guess the new Republican and corporate Democrats' healthcare plan is like Alan Grayson said, 'Don’t Get Sick! And if you do get sick, die quickly.'

I recently co-hosted a healthcare townhall meeting with fellow congressional challenger, Robert Emmons Jr. We heard testimony from a union member who was paying more than 28% of his income in healthcare costs. A single-payer program could be funded by replacing all private insurance expenses, co-pays and deductible costs with an estimated 9% payroll tax. Currently Americans already pay 2.9% in Medicare taxes and a smaller amount to Medicaid, depending on the state one lives in but can’t take advantage of Medicare until age 65. Thus, we are looking at replacing 28% of one’s paycheck with a 9% payroll tax. We did the math for this union member and he would have saved more than $19,000 a year by moving to a single-payer Medicare for All program.

We also heard a really tragic situation from a woman who shared the story of her 38-year old cousin. He had insurance coverage, but the company refused to cover a simple laparoscopic procedure to repair his hernia, determining it was not medically necessary. After being told several times that his procedure would not be covered by his insurance, he went home from work one day when he started to bleed. He attempted to stop the bleeding on his own with towels and sheets. He was found deceased two days later; he had bled to death.

Why do corporate Democrats like Bill Foster and some of the presidential candidates want to leave insurance companies in charge of making healthcare decisions? Healthcare decisions should be left to patients and their doctors, not people who make a profit by denying care.

The simple answer is that their corporate donors in the for-profit healthcare industry are more important than their constituents who need healthcare.

My opponent has taken more than $600,000 from Big Pharma, insurance companies and the for-profit healthcare industry. I don’t know how much money presidential candidates are taking from the industry, but I do believe that their smears on Medicare for All are more than simple ideological difference. I think they are bought and paid for or feel threatened by groups like The Partnership for America’s Health Care Future.

Trump's Swamp Is Worse Than Even Harding's And Grant's Administrations Combined!

Last year USA Today columnist Paul Brandus reminded his readers that "We’ve had presidents who were used by members of their own family for personal gain, like Ulysses S. Grant. We’ve had presidents who stocked their Cabinet with greedy, self-serving mediocrities who took advantage of the public trust, like Warren G. Harding. We’ve had presidents who swore to 'preserve, protect and defend' the Constitution, only to then abuse it, like Richard Nixon. And we’ve had presidents who, thanks to a presumptive sense of entitlement, lived slimy private lives, using countless women before tossing them aside-- Harding again, plus John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton."

But Trump, he continued, "falls into every single sleazy category, squarely and shamelessly... Much worse than Richard Nixon... A grifting family. A sleazy what’s-in-it-for-me Cabinet. Trampling on our beloved Constitution. And all these women. All the boxes, checked."

Last month David Mora, writing for ProPublica, attempted to examine one contour of the ever-expanding fetid Trump Swamp: lobbyists. He wrote that at the halfway mark of Trump’s occupation of the White House, "his administration has hired a lobbyist for every 14 political appointments made, welcoming a total of 281 lobbyists on board, a ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Investigations analysis shows. With a combination of weakened rules and loose enforcement easing the transition to government and back to K Street, Trump’s swamp is anything but drained. The number of lobbyists who have served in government jobs is four times more than the Obama administration had six years into office. And former lobbyists serving Trump are often involved in regulating the industries they worked for."

Even government watchdogs who’ve long monitored the revolving door say that its current scale is a major shift from previous administrations. It’s a “staggering figure,” according to Virginia Canter, ethics chief counsel for the D.C.-based legal nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It suggests that lobbyists see themselves as more effective in furthering their clients’ special interests from inside the government rather than from outside.”

We tracked the lobbyists as part of an update to Trump Town, our database of political appointees. We’ve added the names of 639 new staffers with the administration and the financial disclosures of 351 political appointees who have filled different positions over the past year, and we tracked the careers of 338 who departed government during the same period.

The full extent of the lobbying industry’s influence is hard to measure because federal agencies decline to share details of recusals granted to officials who disclose potential conflicts with their new government roles.

Consider Colin Roskey. Days after leaving a two-decade career as what one former employer called the “smartest” health care lobbyist, he joined the Department of Health and Human Services in January. As deputy secretary for legislation for mandatory health, he headed the portfolio that he tried to influence for most of his career.

HHS declined to reveal any recusals he signed while appointed. A spokesman said that “all employees are expected to abide by the ethics rules.”

Just days before joining HHS, Roskey listed among his clients major dialysis providers that receive federal payments through Medicare, including Fresenius Medical Care-- an industry juggernaut, with more than 330,000 patients in thousands of dialysis clinics in the U.S. A third of the company’s billion-dollar revenue comes from Medicare. A recent revamp in the dialysis industry ordered by Trump, expected to shift millions of dollars from dialysis centers to cheaper home-based options, put Roskey’s office at the heart of regulating how much profit or loss some of his former clients will see in coming years. Roskey said in an interview that he recused himself from this matter.

Public records show that Roskey lobbied for at least 27 clients between January 2017 and December 2018 on an array of issues other than dialysis involving public health care programs, from prescription drugs to palliative care.

In early October, Roskey stepped out of government and went straight back to work for his old lobbying firm, Lincoln Policy Group, which specializes in health care policy. “Spending time at HHS will make [Roskey] even more valuable to our team-- and we are so excited to have him back,” the lobbying firm announced in a statement.

Roskey said he had no knowledge of how the new kidney care regulations will be implemented.

After his monthslong stint with the Health Department, Roskey said he plans to lobby the legislative branch, which is not prohibited by the current ethics rules. “While working with the government I gained knowledge and background, intellectually and professionally, and I intend to unapologetically utilize those skills for my employer and clients,” he said.

The senior-level appointment of a key lobbyist raises concerns for ethics experts like Canter. “There’s no way [he would’ve been hired under Obama] because Trump dropped a key provision of the Obama ethics pledge,” she said.

Indeed, an Obama-era ethics pledge clause absent in Trump’s prevented registered lobbyists from seeking or accepting employment with any executive agency that they lobbied the two years prior.

Federal laws forbid government employees who have served as registered lobbyists in the two years prior to their appointment from handling the particular matters or the specific issue areas that they used to lobby. Similarly, after leaving the government, all appointees-turned-lobbyists are barred from seeking to influence their former agencies and engaging in behind-the-scenes work with other senior officials across the administration.

The revolving door, of course, has been spinning since well before the Trump administration. In 2009, after President Barack Obama took office, ProPublica built a smaller version of Trump Town. During his administration, government watchdog groups also decried the conflicts of interest brought by some political appointees, and the Washington Post tallied 65 lobbyists among Obama’s ranks in five years.

One Obama-era alum, for instance, has gone on to lobby for the nation’s largest pharmaceutical industry trade group, according to public records. Bridgett Taylor, who occupied Roskey’s position until Trump took office, left the government to lobby Congress and federal agencies on matters related to those she oversaw at HHS. Taylor declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Taylor’s employer, said that “her lobbying contacts have been confined to Congress,” and that she has not lobbied HHS in her new role.

If it’s certainly not new, the enforcement of ethics provisions has lagged under Trump. In governmentwide surveys conducted by the Office of Government Ethics, federal agencies reported only 106 registered lobbyists who joined the administration. In their answers, ethics officers argued that they “don’t know” how many registered lobbyists had been hired or that they didn’t “track the number of individuals who fell into this category.” When asked about referrals for further enforcement of ethics violations, an officer admitted that they “don’t maintain a centralized database of the bases of proposed disciplinary actions.”

Jeff Hauser, who heads the Revolving Door Project at the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research, contends that “Trump has organized the executive branch as a mechanism to reward allies and their political power. Lobbyists are hired not because they’re great at the specific matter that they lobby for but because their specialty is delivering political results.”

Corporations also see value in hiring former government staffers, as they bring connections within the agencies and exceptional knowledge about regulation. Among the staffers who recently left their administration positions, 29 went to work for K Street firms-- as registered lobbyist or not. At least 59 former employees have done so over the past three years.

One is Laura Kemper, a former HHS senior official who, within days of leaving her post in March, was hired by Fresenius. Now vice president for government affairs, Kemper heads the company’s policy group.

According to lobbying records, she is listed among the in-house lobbyists who have visited Congress, the White House and HHS since March, pushing everything from reimbursement for dialysis services to home dialysis. The records show Fresenius shelled out more than $2.2 million for lobbying activities during the first half of the year.

Kemper had also spent years lobbying Congress and federal agencies on behalf of health care companies before joining HHS in March 2017.

Her pass through the revolving door tests the boundaries of ethics rules. Indeed, Trump’s pledge prohibits staffers-turned-registered lobbyists from advocating for the special interests of their corporate bosses before the agencies where they used to work for at least five years. It also restricts former employees from behind-the-scenes lobbying with any senior federal official for the remainder of Trump’s presidency. Kemper signed that pledge.

Kemper declined to comment. In a statement, Fresenius said Kemper “has strictly followed her legal and ethical obligations and has not been involved in lobbying the administration or anything related to the Executive Order.” Disclosure forms filed by Fresenius “cite the general activity of a team and do not ascribe any particular lobbying activity,” according to its statement.

Recently, during an earnings call to investors, Fresenius CEO Rice Powell said that the company has talked to the “appropriate people in Washington,” without naming any particular Fresenius or government staffer. “We are in the midst of commenting and asking questions” with HHS officials, he added.

As ProPublica has reported, political appointees who return to lobbying have found ways to tiptoe around ethics rules. Some register as lobbyists but limit their interactions to Congress, leaving colleagues to lobby the executive branch. Ethics restrictions don’t apply to congressional lobbying.

One such case is Geoffrey Burr, a lobbyist who joined the Labor Department early in the Trump administration. More recently, he was chief of staff to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. He left the Transportation Department in January and soon became policy director at one of the nation’s largest lobbying firms.

According to records, Burr now lobbies for clients with a stake in transportation issues, including The Northeast MAGLEV, the company behind what would be the first high-speed train in the U.S. A January press release announcing his hiring praised Burr’s “high-level involvement with Transportation and Labor [that will] provide clients with the strategic guidance they need to navigate business issues with the administration.”

Burr signed the ethics pledge and, according to records, lobbies only Congress, abiding by the rule of not contacting the executive branch. Other partners at his firm lobby the Transportation Department and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

The Transportation Department didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Burr declined to talk.

There are also former Trump administration staffers who go back to K Street but don’t register as lobbyists-- the Lobbying Disclosure Act only requires those who spend 20% or more of their time lobbying to register.

Rebecca Wood and Brooke Appleton held senior Trump administration positions for more than a year at the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department, respectively. Both left the administration and returned to their former employers-- this time, in more senior positions.

Wood now leads the food and drug practice at Sidley Austin, a powerful law and lobbying firm in Washington, where her colleagues lobby the FDA for various clients. Appleton went from being director to vice president for public policy for the National Corn Growers Association; she leads at least six people lobbying the Agriculture Department and other federal agencies.

And, of course, it isn't just Trump on his own. His congressional allies are behaving just as corruptly. J.D. Scholten, the Iowa progressive running against neo-fascist Steve King pointed out that in terms of his district, the "administration is full of oil lobbyists that have created policy that clearly has benefited the oil industry while hurting farmers and rural America. Their actions in August alone depressed corn prices by 10%, a record drop for that month."

Julie Oliver, a progressive reformer taking on Trumpist used car salesman Roger Williams in a gerrymandered district (TX-25) that stretches from Burleson, split between Tarrant and Johnson counties south of Fort Worth, straight down into the heart of Austin. "Congress," she told his today, "is supposed to represent people-- real human beings. Not corporations, not lobbyists, not PACs, not special interests. There's a reason for the dysfunction and mistrust we feel about Congress-- just look at how bought-and-paid-for our congressman is. Roger Williams doesn't sit on the Rural Broadband caucus. He doesn't sit on the Beef caucus. He sits on Finance, where he looks out for big banks, and big money. Most of his contributions come from PACs. A lot of Democrats claim to not take corporate PAC money-- but we don't take a single dime from any PAC. It's because you have to know that when I'm in Congress, and I'm considering legislation on taxes for corporations, or pharmaceutical pricing, or Medicare for All, I can't have my arm twisted. We have to end the cancer of public corruption in our politics and get corporations and big money out of Congress."

Kara Eastman, the progressive Democrat taking on Trump enabler Donald J Bacon in Omaha has a very similar perspective: "I have rejected all corporate PAC contributions, and will continue to do so once in office. In contrast, my opponent, Rep. Don Bacon, votes entirely with his corrupt donations at the forefront. The most egregious example occurred in early 2019. As the House contemplated voting to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, Rep. Bacon was a supporter. But then, when it came down to a final vote, he voted 'no.' We later learned that this was due to the fact that the reauthorized legislation contained improvements to protections afforded to victims where their abusers owned or possessed firearms. The National Rifle Association opposed these protections, and communicated this displeasure to Don Bacon. Then, he voted no. It's well-documented that the NRA has sent him over $25,000 in direct contributions, plus more by way of independent expenditures in his races for Congress. It's this kind of pay to play that I oppose and will fight strongly against in Congress."

Kathy Ellis is running in a deep red southeast Missouri district which both parties take for granted. But no one likes corruption. "Representatives should be accountable to their constituents-- not their corporate donors and lobbyists," said Kathy this morning. "My opponent, Rep. Jason Smith, is open about his corporate ties. Just this cycle, he’s taken thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from organizations like ExxonMobil and the Koch Brothers. His loyalty lies with them-- not with the people of the 8th District-- and his votes against healthcare access, the rights of working-class people, and human rights clearly demonstrate this. My vote can’t be bought, and I’m not taking a single dime of corporate PAC money. My loyalty lies with my neighbors in the 8th District."