Amazon will have not one, but two seats on the transition teams. Tom Sullivan, Amazon’s director of international tax planning, will sit on Biden’s Department of State team. In addition to Sullivan, Mark Schwartz, an “enterprise strategist” for Amazon Web Services, will serve on the extremely powerful Office of Management and Budget (OMB) team. The OMB oversees the $5 trillion federal budget and exerts influence across a broad range of federal regulatory frameworks.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos congratulates Biden
as the president-elect packs his transition
teams with servants of the corporate
oligarchy
Amazon oligarch and COVID-19 profiteer Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, congratulated president-elect Joe Biden following the declaration four days after the November 3 vote that Biden had won the US presidential election.
“Unity, empathy and decency are not characteristics of a bygone era,” Bezos wrote on Instagram, congratulating Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. “By voting in record numbers, the American people proved again that our democracy is strong.”
This sentiment was echoed on November 7 by the Business Roundtable, including Bezos as well as the chief executives of Apple, Cisco, Microsoft and Salesforce. The big business organization issued a statement that said: “Business Roundtable congratulates President-elect Biden on his election as 46th President of the United States. We also congratulate Vice President-elect Harris on her historic accomplishment as the first woman, Black woman and person of South Asian descent to be elected Vice President of the United States… We look forward to working with the incoming Biden Administration and all federal and state policymakers.”
Last week, Biden’s transition team posted the names and most recent employers of members of its agency review teams on the website buildbackbetter.org. Given the composition of these teams, it is easy to see why Bezos and his fellow oligarchs are in a congratulatory mood.
The individuals who have been appointed are listed alongside the company for which they most recently worked, and organized into “teams” based on the government operations they are tasked with reviewing, such as the departments of Commerce, Defense, Education, Labor, State and Homeland Security.
The composition of these agency review teams demonstrates the intersection, if not outright integration, of the technology monopolies, academic aristocracy, beltway think tanks, trade union bureaucracies, giant law firms and the military-intelligence apparatus of war and repression at home and abroad.
Amazon will have not one, but two seats on the transition teams. Tom Sullivan, Amazon’s director of international tax planning, will sit on Biden’s Department of State team. In addition to Sullivan, Mark Schwartz, an “enterprise strategist” for Amazon Web Services, will serve on the extremely powerful Office of Management and Budget (OMB) team. The OMB oversees the $5 trillion federal budget and exerts influence across a broad range of federal regulatory frameworks.
In addition to figures from Amazon, Nicole Isaac, senior director of North American policy at LinkedIn, will sit on the Department of Treasury team. Brandon Belford from Lyft will serve on the Office of Management and Budget team, along with Divya Kumaraiah from Airbnb.
Shara Mohtadi of Bloomberg Philanthropies, which is funded by the donations of billionaire oligarch Michael R. Bloomberg, will sit on the Council on Environmental Quality. And no less than four individuals, serving in various capacities, are drawn from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which is co-owned by Facebook oligarch Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.
Arun Venkataraman from Visa will sit on the team tasked with reviewing the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which will also review the US International Trade Commission and the US Trade and Development Agency. This team will also include Ted Dean from Dropbox.
The labor bureaucracies will also have seats at the table, demonstrating their complete integration into the apparatus of capitalist rule. Beth Antunez, Shital Shah and Marla Ucelli-Kashyap of the American Federation of Teachers, together with Donna Harris-Aikens of the National Education Association, will sit on the Department of Education team.
The labor bureaucracies are also represented by LaQuita Honeysucker from the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, who will be on the Department of Agriculture review team, while Josh Nassar of the United Auto Workers will sit on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau team.
Brad Markell of the AFL-CIO will sit on the Department of Energy Team. His name appears right before that of Trisha Miller from the venture capital firm Gates Ventures.
On the Department of Labor team will be Jennifer Abruzzo of the Communications Workers of America, Dora Chen of the Service Employees International Union, Jessica Chu of the Amalgamated Transit Union International, Nadia Marin-Molina of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), and Shaun O’Brien of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, among others.
The major academic institutions represented on the list include Harvard Law School, the University of Michigan Law School, New York University School of Law, Duke University, Stanford University, Georgetown University and others. Major law firms and consulting firms include Deloitte Consulting; DLA Piper; Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; Sidley Austin; Covington & Burling; and Latham & Watkins.
The racial and identity politics promoted by the Democratic Party did not fail to be reflected on the list, with Bonnie Jenkins appointed to the Department of State team from an organization titled Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security. Jenkins, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, previously served as the coordinator for threat reduction programs in the Obama administration’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation.
The Department of Defense team will be led by Kathy Hicks from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who will be joined by Melissa Dalton and Andrew Hunter, also from the CSIS; Stacie Pettyjohn, Christine Wormuth and Terri Tanielian from the RAND Corporation; Ely Ratner from the Center for a New American Security; and Lisa Sawyer of JPMorgan Chase, among others.
The composition of Biden’s agency review teams exposes and refutes all of the pseudo-left and opportunist groups in the orbit of the Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracies, which have throughout the year attempted to persuade American workers that Biden, the Democratic Party and the unions represented some sort of channel through which they could advance their own independent interests.
The parade of lobbyists, servants and agents of the capitalist class into the incoming Biden administration prompted a defensive article in the New York Times on Thursday, titled “Progressives Press Biden to Limit Corporate Influence in Administration.”
The title of the article essentially acknowledges that “corporate influence” (i.e., corruption) is playing a pervasive role in the formation of the incoming administration, and suggests “limits” on that influence.
The article concedes that “Mr. Biden’s team included executives from Amazon Web Services, Lyft, Airbnb and a vice president of WestExec Advisors, a Washington consulting firm whose secretive list of clients includes financial services, technology and pharmaceutical companies.”
The Times then points to the efforts of “progressive Democrats” who are advocating “for tighter ethics rules.” This is nothing but a fig leaf for the otherwise naked domination of the Democratic Party by the interests of the military-intelligence-corporate-financial oligarchy.
The facts presented in the Times article themselves paint a devastating picture of how the so-called “left” wing of the party is being shoved aside as the fat cats shoulder their way into the new administration. In a joint letter sent Thursday, a number of organizations associated with the so-called “progressive wing” of the Democratic Party pleaded with Biden not to “nominate or hire corporate executives, lobbyists, and prominent corporate consultants,” and to adopt “ethics” rules to limit corruption.
These and other feeble efforts by the “progressive Democrats” are being unceremoniously ignored. The Times itself was compelled to acknowledge that “Mr. Biden has not always shared the left’s concerns about lobbying.”
Tendencies like the Democratic Socialists of America were used by the Democratic Party during the election campaign to further the Democrats’ electoral prospects, but within days of the vote they were tossed aside and roundly denounced for having supposedly cost the Democrats votes and positions with their “radical” and “socialist” rhetoric.
These “socialist” elements had been promised “space” in a Biden administration, but they showed up after the election only to find their “Green New Deal” and other promised reforms piled up in trash bags by the curb.
There is nothing unexpected about the emerging right-wing, pro-war, pro-Wall Street composition of the incoming Biden administration. Biden himself spent decades in Washington as a corrupt bag-man for wealthy interests in the state of Delaware, the legal headquarters of hundreds of thousands of corporations that take advantage of its business-friendly laws.
As vice president, Biden was reportedly opposed even to the barebones rules against corruption that were imposed during the Obama presidency. In the words of the Times: “When he was vice president under Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden bristled at the strict lobbying rules, which he contended would deprive their nascent administration of experienced talent.”
From the moment Biden secured a lead in the voting results, the Democratic Party swung viciously to the right, attacking “socialism” and the “left” in general. On a conference call with House Democrats after the election, former CIA agent Abigail Spanberger, now a representative from Virginia, shouted: “We need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again.”
While the “socialists” have been escorted out of the back door, the front door has been thrown open to corporate executives, lobbyists and consultants to staff the new administration.
Despite his
Wall Street, big business, Big Tech, and billionaire donations, Biden has
attempted to portray himself as a small-town fighter from Scranton,
Pennsylvania.
US food banks and homeless
shelters struggle to meet record demand ahead of Thanksgiving
With
the Thanksgiving holiday less than two weeks away, food banks and homeless
shelters across the United States are struggling to meet the growing demand
caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In
Dallas, Texas, thousands of people lined up in their cars in what has been
described as the largest mobile food distribution in history. The North Texas
Food Banks handed out 7,000 turkeys and 600,000 pounds of food on Saturday.
Organizers said it was enough to feed 25,000 people.
The
state of Washington has seen the number of people who rely on food banks double
from one million to 2.2 million this year. Linda Nageotte, the CEO of Food
Lifeline, told the Seattle Times that she expects that “by the end of this year
one in five Washingtonians could be facing hunger.”
People line up and check-in for a food giveaway at Harlem's
Food Bank For New York City, a community kitchen and food pantry, Monday, Nov.
16, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
The
pandemic has also placed an extra burden on food bank workers, who now need to
prepare and box food packages together before they can be distributed. It is
labor intensive work that is even more difficult during a health crisis. In an
attempt to lighten the load on food banks, the Washington National Guard has
sent 550 soldiers to 26 distribution sites to help.
In
Rochester, New York, the food bank Foodlink is working to feed a line of 50-100
people on any given day. The organization Dimitri House, which operates a food
pantry and homeless shelter in Rochester, has had similar issues and has also
decided to prepare meals ahead of time and distribute them to families for pick
up.
Laurie
Prizel, the executive director for Dimitri House, told ABC13 WHAM that “we’re
getting a large number of working poor individuals coming through as well, not
just the typical somebody on a fixed income trying to survive. It’s people who
are holding down two jobs or lost their jobs. We’re saving the average family
at least $100 on a Thanksgiving meal, and it’s allowing at least the families
to come together.”
Every
year, thousands of volunteers in Albany, New York work to feed thousands of
people in need. This year, however, the Equinox Thanksgiving Day Community
Dinner has found a creative solution to the problem of social distancing.
Instead of hosting a large event, the organization raised $100,000 to deliver
meals directly to the homes of people in need. To accomplish this the
organizers will work with restaurants to purchase and prepare food, enabling
them to feed needy people and support local businesses in the process.
In
Santa Rosa, California, the Redwood Empire Food Bank has done what it can to
keep up with the significantly higher demand than usual. During a normal year,
the food bank would hand out around 11 million meals. This year, however,
Redwood has already produced 22 million meals.
The
wealth disparity in Santa Rosa, 55 miles north of San Francisco, in
California’s wine country, has been rising for years, resulting in a poverty
rate of 11.5 percent. According to the Census Bureau, the top 5 percent of
households make an average of $331,000 a year, with the bottom 20 percent
making just $16,000. It is no wonder that food banks in this area would see
such high demand for food assistance.
The
San Francisco Bay Area has some of the highest levels of income inequality in
the country. In San Francisco County the top 5 percent earn an average of more
than $800,000 a year while the bottom 20 percent average just over $16,000. The
San Francisco-Marin Food Bank is currently providing food aid to 55,000
households—nearly double its pre-pandemic total—and is planning to give away
1,000 turkeys to families in need on Thanksgiving.
Similarly,
the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley has reported a 53 percent increase in demand
in Westchester County, New York. Food shipments used to arrive twice a month,
now they come once a week and are still barely keeping up with the need.
Westchester
is often mistaken as a wealthy county with pockets of poverty, but it is
actually the opposite. Islands of ultra-wealthy neighborhoods inflate the
general cost of living, making otherwise typical working class wages barely
enough to survive on.
The
pandemic has made it especially difficult to operate homeless shelters and
offer large communal Thanksgiving meals for the homeless. Restrictive capacity
requirements to limit the number of people interacting indoors have forced
shelters to limit the amount of beds they can fill.
In
many cases, shelters and food aid organizations have moved their events
outdoors to compensate for the restrictions on indoor events. In
Charlottesville, Virginia, the organization Volunteers from Charlottesville is
making “blessing bags” that will include a Thanksgiving meal and materials to
help people survive the winter.
After
almost canceling the event, the organizers decided to push through and host it
outdoors at Washington Park, where they plan to hand out 100 bags the Sunday
after Thanksgiving.
Albany’s
Capital City Rescue Mission in New York has done its best to continue with
indoor activities throughout the pandemic. Doing its best to maintain social
distancing and mask wearing, the organization has continued sheltering and
feeding those in need and expects to feed thousands this holiday season.
The
need to provide meals to struggling families and the homeless grows every year,
but the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic has placed a demand on
charity organizations that can barely be kept up with. Such immense social
distress, even as Wall Street soars to record highs and trillions in bailouts
have been handed over to the banks and corporations, is a damning indictment of
the capitalist system and the two parties who represent it, the Democrats and
Republicans.
Without
the intervention of the working class to shut down non-essential production and
demand full pay for workers to stay home in order to suppress the pandemic, the
need will only grow as the ruling class continues to pursue its murderous “herd
immunity” policy, which has already killed more than 250,000 Americans and
pushed millions into poverty.
THE
BIDEN AMNESTY
…or will it be continued
non-enforcement? No matter, Wall Street will write it!
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/11/bidens-plan-to-fix-americas-jobless.html
THE BIDEN AMNESTY - Migration also allows investors and CEOs to skimp on labor-saving technology, sideline U.S. minorities, ignore disabled people, exploit stoop labor in the fields, shortchange labor in the cities, impose tight control and pay cuts on American professionals, corral technological innovation by minimizing the employment of American graduates, undermine labor rights, and even redirect progressive journalists to cheerlead for Wall Street’s priorities. NEIL MUNRO
WHY DOES JOE BIDEN WANT TO
IMPORT THOUSANDS OF MUSLIMS?
Biden has pledged a staggering 700 percent increase in refugees from
the most violent terrorist hotspots anywhere on earth. RAYMOND IBRAHIM
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/11/murdering-muslims-every-day-these.html
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden promised on Wednesday that Muslim Americans would serve at “every level” of his administration. In a video message to civil rights organization Muslim Advocates, Biden repeated his pledge to repeal the Trump administration's travel ban on his first day in office. The former vice president added that he would push for legislation to fight a rise in hate crimes in the United States, according to media reports. “As president, I'll work with you to rip the poison of hate from our society, honor your contributions and seek your ideas,” Biden said in the video address. “My administration will look like America, Muslim Americans serving at every level,” he added. RAYMOND IBRAHIM
Tech Elites Endorse Joe Biden to Secure More Foreign Workers for U.S. Jobs
SERVING
THEIR RICH - If Biden and Harris win, the country will devolve to a kingdom
of state and regional duchies composed of often
semi-hereditary rulers in the pay of the rich, donor class, the clerisy (media
scribblers, complaisant judicial appointees and academic rent seekers who promote
favored policies and shut out the dissenters), an impoverished, smaller, and
powerless middle class and a vast layer of muzzled, docile poor serfs
(ILLEGALS). CLARICE FELDMAN
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/11/biden-minister-of-propaganda-neo.html
Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires & Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are ScrewingAmerica's Best & Brightest
By Michelle Malkin and John Miano
Analysis conducted in 2018 discovered that 71 percent of tech workers
in Silicon Valley, California, are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the
San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward area is made up of 50 percent foreign-born
tech workers. Up to 99 percent of H-1B visa
workers imported by the top eight outsourcing firms are from India.
Joe
Biden’s Donor List Includes More than 30 Executives Tied to Wall Street
JOSEPH
PREZIOSO/AFP/Getty Images.
2 Nov
2020601
2:52
Democrat presidential
candidate Joe Biden has more than 30 business executives on his donor list that
have connections to Wall Street.
Analysis of Biden’s more than 800 big donors,
those who have bundled contributions for his presidential bid against President
Trump, found that more than 30 of the executives listed have ties to Wall
Street.
CNBC reports:
CNBC reviewed a new
list of more than 800 Biden bundlers who raised at least $100,000 for the
campaign, and found that several of them had links to financial firms. A few had been
mentioned on the initial list of Biden fundraisers that was released in 2019
during the Democratic primary contests. [Emphasis added]
…
Beyond those from Wall
Street, Biden’s campaign saw fundraising help from leaders in Silicon Valley, including LinkedIn
co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Ron Conway. [Emphasis added]
Those executives with ties to Wall Street
funding Biden’s campaign include:
Frank Baker, Brett Barth, Jim Chanos, Mark
Chorazak, David Clunie, William Derrough, Roger Altman, Blair Effron, Jon
Feigelson, Mark Gallogly, John Rogers, Jon Gray, Tony James, Jon Henes, Sonny
Kalsi, Orin Kramer, Brad Krap, Brian Kreiter, Marc Lasry, Nate Loewenthall,
Eric Mindich, Kara Moore, Charles Myers, Alan Patricof, Deven Parekh, Robert
Rubin, Evan Roth, Faiza Saeed, Rajen Shah, Jay Snyder, Rob Stavis, and Jeff
Zients.
As Breitbart News
reported, Biden’s campaign is being backed by nearly “all the big banks” on
Wall Street, according to CNN analysis, and Wall Street
executives and employees have donated more than $74 million to elect the former
vice president.
Trump, on the other hand, has accepted far less
money from Wall Street — taking just a little over $18 million dollars from
financial firms. This is a whopping $56 million less than what Biden has
accepted from Wall Street.
Despite his Wall Street, big business, Big
Tech, and billionaire donations, Biden has attempted to portray himself as a
small-town fighter from Scranton, Pennsylvania.
In a post on Sunday, Biden
wrote that “Donald Trump sees the world from Park Avenue,” whereas he sees the
world “from where I came from: Scranton, Pennsylvania.” In fact, Biden has raised over $1 million
from wealthy Park Avenue donors, more than eight times the less than $130,000
that Trump has taken from Park Avenue residents.
John Binder is a
reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter
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