JOE IS A BILLARY CLINTON DEM FOR BOTTOMLESS BANKSTER BAILOUTS AND BILLIONAIRES FOR OPEN BORDERS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.
OBVIOUSLY JOE, LIKE BARACK AND THE CLINTON CRIME DUAL, ARE NOTHING BUT BRIBES SUCKERS!
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. JOHN BINDER
Biden money machine.”
The Times continued:
From Hollywood to Silicon Valley to Wall Street, Mr. Biden’s campaign has aggressively courted the megadonor class. It has raised almost $200 million from donors who gave at least $100,000 to his joint operations with the Democratic Party in the last six months—about twice as much as President Trump raised from six-figure donors in that time, according to an analysis of new federal records.
Million-dollar donors came from Hollywood (Jeffrey Katzenberg), Silicon Valley (Reed Hastings of Netflix and many others), and high finance. “Top executives with investment, private equity and venture capital firms like Blackstone, Bain Capital, Kleiner Perkins and Warburg Pincus all contributed handsomely,” the Times noted.
While Biden has lately attempted to sound a populist note, claiming that he represents Scranton (his birthplace, a decaying industrial city in northeastern Pennsylvania), while Trump represents the moneyed elite of “Park Avenue,” it turns out that “Scranton” has a different meaning to his campaign finance operation. Any affluent donor who solicits a total of $250,000 in contributions is considered a member of the “Scranton Circle” of elite donors, with special access to top advisers of the candidate. There is also a “Philly Founder” level for those generating $500,000 in contributions and a “Delaware Circle” for those accounting for $1 million or more.
Entering the month of October, the Biden campaign had $180.6 million in cash on hand, while the Trump campaign reported only $63.1 million, one-third of the Democrat’s total. This disparity was despite the Biden campaign’s outspending Trump’s by two to one during the month of September. After raising a record-shattering $365 million in August, the Biden campaign raised an even larger amount, $383 million, the following month.
Trump has not lacked for megadonor support, including $75 million from casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, $21 million from Isaac Perlmutter, chairman of Marvel Entertainment, and $10 million from banking heir Timothy Mellon.
But these sums are dwarfed by the $100 million for Biden from billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who briefly sought the Democratic presidential nomination for himself—and spent $1.1 billion in that effort—and another $106 million from the Future Forward PAC, based in Silicon Valley, whose funding includes $22 million from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, $6 million from Jeff Lawson of Twilio, $5 million from crypto-currency trader Sam Bankman-Fried and $2.5 million from Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google.
Such figures make nonsense of the fascistic rhetoric of Trump, who continually denounces Biden as the tool of socialists, communists and the “radical Left.” Actually, Biden is a tried and tested tool of Wall Street and corporate America, dating back to his days as a senator from Delaware, a center of tax evasion. The tiny state has more corporations headquartered there for tax purposes, over one million, than human beings.
His services to the corporate elite continued through his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration, when he oversaw both the bailout of Wall Street and the bankruptcy restructuring of the auto industry, in which wages for new workers were cut in half.
It was to his supporters in the financial aristocracy, at an exclusive fundraiser last year in Manhattan, that Biden made his notorious pledge—the most truthful declaration of his entire campaign—that if he were elected president, “No one’s standard of living would change. Nothing would fundamentally change.”
The financial constraints on the Trump campaign are unmistakable. In the final week of September and the first week of October, for example, it stopped advertising in four “battleground” states—Iowa, Ohio, Texas and New Hampshire. One advertising industry tally had Biden topping Trump in campaign spending in 72 out of 83 media markets where both campaigns were still competing.
The disparity between the Biden and Trump campaigns has been exacerbated by the timing of their expenditures. Trump spent lavishly in the early months of 2020, even before the Democratic nominee had been determined, and has raised less overall. The result is a cash crunch in the final weeks of the campaign.
Biden began the month of August with a three-to-one advantage in terms of financial resources and has outspent Trump in three critical battleground states—Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—by that margin, $53 million to $17 million. According to figures reported in advertising trade publications, Biden has a 5–1 advantage in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, market, and more than a 2–1 advantage in Detroit and Philadelphia.
In Omaha, Nebraska, where a single electoral vote is at stake in the Second Congressional District, Biden has spent $2 million on advertising, six times the Trump total.
With Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden holding an apparently comfortable lead over Trump in the polls, much of the media attention has shifted to the question of which party will be in control of the Senate after November 3. The Republicans currently have a three-seat majority, 53-47, so the Democrats must gain a net of three seats if Biden wins, as a Vice President Kamala Harris would then have the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. The Democrats must gain four seats if Biden loses, but that combination is highly unlikely, since a Biden defeat would signify a broader Democratic debacle.
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden peeks out of the roof of an SUV as he leaves a fundraiser on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019, in Manhattan Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
In the Senate, the Democrats have outraised Republicans by a margin of more than 50 percent, $767 million to $500 million, despite the Republicans holding 23 of the 35 seats being contested November 3. In the 16 seats considered competitive (two held by Democrats, 14 by Republicans), the Democratic lead is $643 million to $415 million. The average Democrat has a $40 million war chest, while the Republican, usually an incumbent, averages $26 million.
More so than Biden, the Senate candidates have benefited from a flood of small-dollar donations over the internet, which expresses, in a distorted way, the popular hatred of the right-wing policies of Trump and the Republicans. But corporate and billionaire cash also plays a significant role. Both small-dollar and large-dollar donations have fueled a record-breaking third quarter of fundraising for the Democrats, with many challengers doubling or tripling the amount raised by the Republican incumbents.
Ordinarily, incumbent senators have a huge fundraising advantage over their challengers, and this applies particularly to Republican incumbents, who usually have closer ties to wealthy donors. But in 2020 this is not the case, and the disparities are remarkable. There are at least eight Democratic challengers who have outraised their Republican opponents. Three of these Democrats have raked in more than $80 million apiece, an astonishing total for an election in a single state.
Democrat Jaime Harrison reported raising $86.9 million in South Carolina, compared to $59.4 million for three-term Senator Lindsey Graham. The combined total of $146.4 million in a relatively small state, where only 2 million people voted in 2016, means an expenditure of better than $70 a vote.
In an even smaller state, Kentucky, Democrat Amy McGrath has raised $84.2 million for her uphill contest against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has raised $53.4 million. In Arizona, Democratic challenger Mark Kelly has raised $82.8 million and leads in the polls against the incumbent Republican, appointed Senator Martha McSally, who has raised $50.9 million.
Several other Democratic challengers, while raising smaller total amounts, have a much larger percentage edge over Republican incumbents. In Iowa, businesswoman Theresa Greenfield has raised $40.4 million against the $21.8 million raised by first-term incumbent Joni Ernst. In North Carolina, former Army paratrooper Cal Cunningham has raised $43.4 million for his race against first-term incumbent Thom Tillis, who has raised $20.9 million. In Maine, Sara Gideon, the Democratic leader of the state legislature, has raised $63.6 million for her campaign against three-term incumbent Susan Collins, who has raised less than half that sum, $25.2 million.
In Colorado, opinion polls suggest that the contest is a runaway, and political action committees supporting the Democratic candidate, former Governor John Hickenlooper, have pulled out, regarding his victory over first-term Republican Senator Cory Gardner as a certainty. Hickenlooper has outraised the incumbent by $36.7 million to $25 million. And in Montana, Governor Steve Bullock has raised $38.1 million for his challenge to first-term incumbent Steve Daines, who has raised $24.5 million. In Alaska, millionaire orthopedic surgeon Al Gross leads incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan, $13.9 million to $9.3 million.
The most lopsided financial disparity is in Kansas, where no Democrat has been elected to the US Senate in a century, but polls show a close race between former Republican state senator Barbara Bollier, who switched to the Democrats only two years ago, and Republican Congressman Roger Marshall, to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Republican Senator Pat Roberts. Bollier has raised $20.7 million, nearly four times the $5.5 million raised by Marshall.
Georgia has both Senate seats at stake, because of the resignation of Senator Johnny Isakson for health reasons. The Democrats, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, have raised $46 million between them, while the two Republican incumbents, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both multi-millionaires, have raised $45.2 million.
In only one state is there a seeming Republican financial advantage in a contested race. Senator John Cornyn of Texas has the edge over his Democratic challenger, Mary Jennings Hegar, and that is not an overwhelming one, $29.6 million to $20.6 million. And even this apparent advantage is illusory. The Silicon Valley-based political action committee Future Fund is pouring $28 million into the Texas race to support the Democratic candidate, more money than Hegar has raised herself. This advertising blitz will benefit not only Hegar, but also a group of Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives and a Democratic effort to gain control of the lower house of the Texas state legislature.
Of the two Democrat seats in the Senate which are at greatest risk on November 3, one confirms and one represents an exception to this pattern. In Alabama, incumbent Democrat Doug Jones has outraised his Republican challenger, former football coach Tommy Tuberville, by $24.9 million to $7.5 million, but he is nonetheless considered a distinct underdog in the conservative state. In Michigan, Senator Gary Peters is a slight favorite over Republican challenger John James, a former paratrooper, and he holds only a narrow fundraising lead, $35.7 million to $33.9 million. Only three incumbent Republican senators have raised more money than James, who is being promoted by the Senate Republican leadership and Trump as an African American face to disguise their reactionary politics.
Finally, there is the not-insignificant question of what corporate America is buying through this flood of cash into the coffers of the Democratic Senate candidates. The beneficiaries of this corporate largesse are a collection of political reactionaries deeply committed to the defense of American imperialism abroad and big business at home. They differ only at the margins with their right-wing Republican opponents.
Of the candidates already listed, four have military-intelligence backgrounds as their principal credential: Mark Kelly is a career military pilot and former astronaut; Amy McGrath a retired Marine fighter-pilot; Mary Jennings Hegar flew helicopters for the US military in Afghanistan; Cal Cunningham was an Army Ranger, and still teaches new Rangers every year as a reserve officer. These four are the Senate equivalents of the CIA Democrats who played such a prominent role in the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives in 2018.
Other top Senate Democratic challengers include South Carolina’s Jaime Harrison, a longtime corporate lobbyist; Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, a millionaire businesswoman; Al Gross in Alaska, a millionaire surgeon whose father was state attorney general; Montana Governor Steve Bullock and former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, both failed presidential candidates who ran in the right-wing “lane” that produced Biden instead; and Barbara Bollier, who was a Republican state senator in Kansas until switching parties in 2018.
In the House of Representatives, now firmly controlled by the Democrats, 232-197, with five vacancies and a Libertarian, the Democrats are expected to increase their numbers, although by less than the 41 seats they gained in 2018. Republican hopes of retaking control, which would require a net gain of 21 seats, have virtually collapsed, as nearly all the first-term Democrats who won Republican-held seats in 2018 are considered likely victors this year.
The Democrats hold a smaller edge in fundraising for the House of Representatives than in the Senate, having raised $772 million through September 30 according to FEC filings for the 435 seats, compared to $653 million for Republican candidates.
The overall total is less significant, however, because the vast majority of House seats are in districts whose boundaries ensure the victory of one party regardless of how much money the other party spends. Republicans will spend $7 million, for example, in support of businesswoman Kim Klacik against Democrat Kweisi Mfume, in the Baltimore district held by the late Elijah Cummings, and $9.4 million to back millionaire investor Lacy Johnson against Democrat Ilhan Omar in Minneapolis. Both Mfume and Omar will win reelection easily despite being heavily outspent.
The more important figure is how much is raised in more closely contested races, fewer than 100 of the 435 seats in the House. In these contests, there are 85 Democrats who have raised more than $3 million, compared to only 50 Republicans. This includes a number of challengers for Republican seats, including Wendy Davis and Gina Ortiz Jones in the 21st and 23rd congressional districts of Texas, with $7.2 million and $5.9 million respectively, and Nancy Goroff and Tedra Cobb in New York’s Second and 21st congressional districts, with $5.1 million and $5.5 million respectively.
In 41 congressional districts where first-term Democrats are defending seats captured from Republicans in 2018, the fundraising is lopsided in favor of the Democrats: $216.5 million to $98.2 million. Only two of the 41 Democrats have less campaign cash than their Republican challenger.
An especially financially advantaged subset is the group of 11 new Democratic representatives with military-intelligence backgrounds, whom the WSWS identified in 2018 as the CIA Democrats. In their 11 reelection contests, the CIA Democrats have raised $62.5 million. Their 11 Republican opponents have raised only $21.4 million.
All 11 CIA Democrats are favored to win reelection, and they will be joined by at least one military-intelligence candidate who won his primary in the heavily Democratic Fourth Congressional District in Massachusetts, and is a prohibitive favorite, Jake Auchincloss. Several more such candidates are likely to win on November 3: Jackie Gordon in the Second Congressional District of New York; Dan Feehan in the First Congressional District of Minnesota; Sri Preston Kulkarni in the 22nd Congressional District of Texas; and Gina Ortiz Jones in the 23rd Congressional District of Texas.
The result of the election is likely to be a greatly strengthened group of CIA Democrats, including Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, first elected in 2014 and the founder of the VoteVets political action committee that has been responsible for recruiting and funding many of the military-intelligence candidates in the last two elections. Together with the 11 elected in 2018 and another half dozen or so in 2020, this would make a “caucus” of nearly 20, enough to exercise considerable influence in the new Congress and in a future Biden administration.
Biden Slammed Wall Street on UAW Picket Line, Then Jetted Off To Hobnob With Billionaires
President Joe Biden took a dig at Wall Street during a 12-minute appearance at a United Auto Workers picket line last month. But immediately after leaving strikers in Detroit, he jetted off to California, where he raised at least $1.9 million for his campaign at the homes of prominent hedge fund billionaires.
Biden raked in at least $800,000 at the Bay Area mansion of private equity billionaire Mark Heising and his wife Liz Simons on Sept. 26, according to campaign finance disclosures. Biden tallied at least $1.1 million more at a fundraiser the following day in San Francisco at the home of hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer.
Biden’s attendance at the billionaire fundraisers highlights the tightrope he has tried to walk during the UAW strike. While he publicly sides with auto workers, he has cultivated close ties to General Motors chief executive Mary Barra, the highest-paid auto executive in Detroit. Biden has praised Barra for pushing the auto industry towards electric vehicles. That’s an area of concern for auto workers, since electric cars require far less labor to produce.
In Detroit, Biden expressed solidarity with the union, which seeks a 40 percent pay raise from the Big Three automakers. He asserted that "Wall Street didn’t build the country" during an appearance with UAW president Shawn Fain, known for wearing an "Eat the Rich'' t-shirt. Fain also criticized the "billionaire class" in his speech during Biden’s visit.
Biden then flew to Atherton, California, to the home of Heising and Simons. The president spoke for 20 minutes at the fundraiser, which cost between $5,000 and $100,000 to attend, according to reports. Simons is the daughter of iconic hedge fund billionaire James Simons, who settled with the IRS in 2021 over billions of dollars in unpaid taxes. Heising operates the private equity firm Medley Partners, which manages the Simons family’s investment portfolio.
The Democratic power couple runs the Heising-Simons Foundation, which has funded organizations that want to defund police departments. Biden tapped Simons earlier this year to serve on the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Steyer, his wife Kat Taylor, and other family members contributed $1.1 million to the Biden Action Fund. Biden came under scrutiny in August after he stayed at Steyer’s Lake Tahoe resort during a family vacation. Steyer provided the accommodations as his green energy investment firm seeks to "take advantage" of federal climate change spending enacted through Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Biden did not address the UAW strike at the fundraisers, according to reports. He asserted that "Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy this democracy," during remarks at the Heising-Simons fundraiser, according to the Los Angeles Times. He criticized then-House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) at the Steyer fundraiser over a standoff on the federal budget.
The Biden campaign and White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Published under: California , Democratic Donors , Joe Biden , Tom Steyer , UAW , Unions , United Auto Workers
His services to the corporate elite continued through his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration, when he oversaw both the bailout of Wall Street and the bankruptcy restructuring of the auto industry, in which wages for new workers were cut in half.
JOE BIDEN TO HIS BANKSTERS:
It was to his supporters in the financial aristocracy, at an exclusive fundraiser last year in Manhattan, that Biden made his notorious pledge—the most truthful declaration of his entire campaign—that if he were elected president, “No one’s standard of living would change. Nothing would fundamentally change.”
The difference between the campaigns is accounted for primarily by big dollar contributions, with Biden raising far more than Trump. As the New York Times admitted in an article posted on its website Wednesday, “the elite world of billionaires and multimillionaires has remained a critical cog in the Biden money machine.”
Corporate America puts its money on Biden and the Democrats
The final financial reports before the election were filed by candidates for Congress and the White House by Oct. 15 with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), detailing fundraising and spending in the third quarter, July 1 through Sept. 30. These reports are limited to the funds raised directly by the campaigns themselves, and exclude fundraising through supporting PACs (political action committees) usually funded by billionaires. Nonetheless, the FEC data provides some eye-opening insights into the political calculations of the American ruling elite, where there is increasing expectation of a Democratic victory on Nov. 3.
Two preliminary observations can be made. First, large sections of big business favor a shift from Trump to Biden, partly because of differences on foreign and domestic policy, partly because they regard a second Trump term as more likely to provoke an uncontrollable social and political explosion in America. Second, the corporate elite now views Biden and the Democrats as the favorites to win the election, and campaign contributions are a form of political insurance, giving the donors a “seat at the table” when a future Biden administration is staffed and determines its policy priorities.
The Democrats hold a decided edge in fundraising in each of the major sectors of the 2020 political battlefield. In the presidential campaign, Trump’s early dominance is a distant memory. Biden has outraised him beginning in May, and his lead has grown with each passing month.
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden peeks out of the roof of an SUV as he leaves a fundraiser on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019, in Manhattan Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Biden campaign has raised $810 million and supporting organizations have raised $373 million, for a total of $1.183 billion. The Trump campaign has raised $552 million, supplemented by $256 million from outside groups, for a combined total of $808 million.
In the Senate, the Democrats have outraised Republicans by a margin of more than 50 percent, $767 million to $500 million, despite the Republicans holding 23 of the 35 seats being contested on Nov. 3. In the 435 House contests, the Democrats hold a slightly narrower lead, $772 million to $653 million. Both figures represent a sharp departure from recent congressional elections, at least until 2018, in which the Republican Party has generally enjoyed a huge financial edge.
The presidential fundraising figures represent sharp increases from 2016, when Democrat Hillary Clinton raised a combined total of $770 million while Trump raised $433 million. By Oct. 1, the Biden and Trump campaigns had already spent three times the amount expended at a similar point in 2016, a reflection both of the massively increased fundraising and the need to reach early and mail-in voters.
The Democratic Party and the corporate media have generally attributed the Biden campaign’s financial edge to a surge of small-dollar contributions. There certainly has been such a surge, at least compared to the early stages of the Biden campaign for the Democratic nomination, when small-dollar internet contributions went overwhelmingly to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. At that point Biden was sustained by a relative handful of wealthy backers.
But according to a recent tabulation by the Center for Responsive Politics, which maintains the Open Secrets database of campaign finance information, Trump and Biden have raised roughly equal amounts in contributions of $200 or less, between $200 million and $250 million apiece, mainly over the internet.
The difference between the campaigns is accounted for primarily by big dollar contributions, with Biden raising far more than Trump. As the New York Times admitted in an article posted on its website Wednesday, “the elite world of billionaires and multimillionaires has remained a critical cog in the Biden money machine.”
The Times continued:
From Hollywood to Silicon Valley to Wall Street, Mr. Biden’s campaign has aggressively courted the megadonor class. It has raised almost $200 million from donors who gave at least $100,000 to his joint operations with the Democratic Party in the last six months—about twice as much as President Trump raised from six-figure donors in that time, according to an analysis of new federal records.
Million-dollar donors came from Hollywood (Jeffrey Katzenberg), Silicon Valley (Reed Hastings of Netflix and many others), and high finance. “Top executives with investment, private equity and venture capital firms like Blackstone, Bain Capital, Kleiner Perkins and Warburg Pincus all contributed handsomely,” the Times noted.
While Biden has lately attempted to sound a populist note, claiming that he represents Scranton (his birthplace, a decaying industrial city in northeastern Pennsylvania), while Trump represents the moneyed elite of “Park Avenue,” it turns out that “Scranton” has a different meaning to his campaign finance operation. Any affluent donor who solicits a total of $250,000 in contributions is considered a member of the “Scranton Circle” of elite donors, with special access to top advisers of the candidate. There is also a “Philly Founder” level for those generating $500,000 in contributions and a “Delaware Circle” for those accounting for $1 million or more.
Entering the month of October, the Biden campaign had $180.6 million in cash on hand, while the Trump campaign reported only $63.1 million, one-third of the Democrat’s total. This disparity was despite the Biden campaign’s outspending Trump’s by two to one during the month of September. After raising a record-shattering $365 million in August, the Biden campaign raised an even larger amount, $383 million, the following month.
Trump has not lacked for megadonor support, including $75 million from casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, $21 million from Isaac Perlmutter, chairman of Marvel Entertainment, and $10 million from banking heir Timothy Mellon.
But these sums are dwarfed by the $100 million for Biden from billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who briefly sought the Democratic presidential nomination for himself—and spent $1.1 billion in that effort—and another $106 million from the Future Forward PAC, based in Silicon Valley, whose funding includes $22 million from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, $6 million from Jeff Lawson of Twilio, $5 million from crypto-currency trader Sam Bankman-Fried and $2.5 million from Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google.
Such figures make nonsense of the fascistic rhetoric of Trump, who continually denounces Biden as the tool of socialists, communists and the “radical Left.” Actually, Biden is a tried and tested tool of Wall Street and corporate America, dating back to his days as a senator from Delaware, a center of tax evasion. The tiny state has more corporations headquartered there for tax purposes, over one million, than human beings.
His services to the corporate elite continued through his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration, when he oversaw both the bailout of Wall Street and the bankruptcy restructuring of the auto industry, in which wages for new workers were cut in half.
It was to his supporters in the financial aristocracy, at an exclusive fundraiser last year in Manhattan, that Biden made his notorious pledge—the most truthful declaration of his entire campaign—that if he were elected president, “No one’s standard of living would change. Nothing would fundamentally change.”
The financial constraints on the Trump campaign are unmistakable. In the final week of September and the first week of October, for example, it stopped advertising in four “battleground” states—Iowa, Ohio, Texas and New Hampshire. One advertising industry tally had Biden topping Trump in campaign spending in 72 out of 83 media markets where both campaigns were still competing.
The disparity between the Biden and Trump campaigns has been exacerbated by the timing of their expenditures. Trump spent lavishly in the early months of 2020, even before the Democratic nominee had been determined, and has raised less overall. The result is a cash crunch in the final weeks of the campaign.
Biden began the month of August with a three-to-one advantage in terms of financial resources and has outspent Trump in three critical battleground states—Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—by that margin, $53 million to $17 million. According to figures reported in advertising trade publications, Biden has a 5–1 advantage in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, market, and more than a 2–1 advantage in Detroit and Philadelphia.
In Omaha, Nebraska, where a single electoral vote is at stake in the Second Congressional District, Biden has spent $2 million on advertising, six times the Trump total.
With Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden holding an apparently comfortable lead over Trump in the polls, much of the media attention has shifted to the question of which party will be in control of the Senate after November 3. The Republicans currently have a three-seat majority, 53-47, so the Democrats must gain a net of three seats if Biden wins, as a Vice President Kamala Harris would then have the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. The Democrats must gain four seats if Biden loses, but that combination is highly unlikely, since a Biden defeat would signify a broader Democratic debacle.
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden peeks out of the roof of an SUV as he leaves a fundraiser on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019, in Manhattan Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
In the Senate, the Democrats have outraised Republicans by a margin of more than 50 percent, $767 million to $500 million, despite the Republicans holding 23 of the 35 seats being contested November 3. In the 16 seats considered competitive (two held by Democrats, 14 by Republicans), the Democratic lead is $643 million to $415 million. The average Democrat has a $40 million war chest, while the Republican, usually an incumbent, averages $26 million.
More so than Biden, the Senate candidates have benefited from a flood of small-dollar donations over the internet, which expresses, in a distorted way, the popular hatred of the right-wing policies of Trump and the Republicans. But corporate and billionaire cash also plays a significant role. Both small-dollar and large-dollar donations have fueled a record-breaking third quarter of fundraising for the Democrats, with many challengers doubling or tripling the amount raised by the Republican incumbents.
Ordinarily, incumbent senators have a huge fundraising advantage over their challengers, and this applies particularly to Republican incumbents, who usually have closer ties to wealthy donors. But in 2020 this is not the case, and the disparities are remarkable. There are at least eight Democratic challengers who have outraised their Republican opponents. Three of these Democrats have raked in more than $80 million apiece, an astonishing total for an election in a single state.
Democrat Jaime Harrison reported raising $86.9 million in South Carolina, compared to $59.4 million for three-term Senator Lindsey Graham. The combined total of $146.4 million in a relatively small state, where only 2 million people voted in 2016, means an expenditure of better than $70 a vote.
In an even smaller state, Kentucky, Democrat Amy McGrath has raised $84.2 million for her uphill contest against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has raised $53.4 million. In Arizona, Democratic challenger Mark Kelly has raised $82.8 million and leads in the polls against the incumbent Republican, appointed Senator Martha McSally, who has raised $50.9 million.
Several other Democratic challengers, while raising smaller total amounts, have a much larger percentage edge over Republican incumbents. In Iowa, businesswoman Theresa Greenfield has raised $40.4 million against the $21.8 million raised by first-term incumbent Joni Ernst. In North Carolina, former Army paratrooper Cal Cunningham has raised $43.4 million for his race against first-term incumbent Thom Tillis, who has raised $20.9 million. In Maine, Sara Gideon, the Democratic leader of the state legislature, has raised $63.6 million for her campaign against three-term incumbent Susan Collins, who has raised less than half that sum, $25.2 million.
In Colorado, opinion polls suggest that the contest is a runaway, and political action committees supporting the Democratic candidate, former Governor John Hickenlooper, have pulled out, regarding his victory over first-term Republican Senator Cory Gardner as a certainty. Hickenlooper has outraised the incumbent by $36.7 million to $25 million. And in Montana, Governor Steve Bullock has raised $38.1 million for his challenge to first-term incumbent Steve Daines, who has raised $24.5 million. In Alaska, millionaire orthopedic surgeon Al Gross leads incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan, $13.9 million to $9.3 million.
The most lopsided financial disparity is in Kansas, where no Democrat has been elected to the US Senate in a century, but polls show a close race between former Republican state senator Barbara Bollier, who switched to the Democrats only two years ago, and Republican Congressman Roger Marshall, to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Republican Senator Pat Roberts. Bollier has raised $20.7 million, nearly four times the $5.5 million raised by Marshall.
Georgia has both Senate seats at stake, because of the resignation of Senator Johnny Isakson for health reasons. The Democrats, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, have raised $46 million between them, while the two Republican incumbents, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both multi-millionaires, have raised $45.2 million.
In only one state is there a seeming Republican financial advantage in a contested race. Senator John Cornyn of Texas has the edge over his Democratic challenger, Mary Jennings Hegar, and that is not an overwhelming one, $29.6 million to $20.6 million. And even this apparent advantage is illusory. The Silicon Valley-based political action committee Future Fund is pouring $28 million into the Texas race to support the Democratic candidate, more money than Hegar has raised herself. This advertising blitz will benefit not only Hegar, but also a group of Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives and a Democratic effort to gain control of the lower house of the Texas state legislature.
Of the two Democrat seats in the Senate which are at greatest risk on November 3, one confirms and one represents an exception to this pattern. In Alabama, incumbent Democrat Doug Jones has outraised his Republican challenger, former football coach Tommy Tuberville, by $24.9 million to $7.5 million, but he is nonetheless considered a distinct underdog in the conservative state. In Michigan, Senator Gary Peters is a slight favorite over Republican challenger John James, a former paratrooper, and he holds only a narrow fundraising lead, $35.7 million to $33.9 million. Only three incumbent Republican senators have raised more money than James, who is being promoted by the Senate Republican leadership and Trump as an African American face to disguise their reactionary politics.
Finally, there is the not-insignificant question of what corporate America is buying through this flood of cash into the coffers of the Democratic Senate candidates. The beneficiaries of this corporate largesse are a collection of political reactionaries deeply committed to the defense of American imperialism abroad and big business at home. They differ only at the margins with their right-wing Republican opponents.
Of the candidates already listed, four have military-intelligence backgrounds as their principal credential: Mark Kelly is a career military pilot and former astronaut; Amy McGrath a retired Marine fighter-pilot; Mary Jennings Hegar flew helicopters for the US military in Afghanistan; Cal Cunningham was an Army Ranger, and still teaches new Rangers every year as a reserve officer. These four are the Senate equivalents of the CIA Democrats who played such a prominent role in the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives in 2018.
Other top Senate Democratic challengers include South Carolina’s Jaime Harrison, a longtime corporate lobbyist; Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, a millionaire businesswoman; Al Gross in Alaska, a millionaire surgeon whose father was state attorney general; Montana Governor Steve Bullock and former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, both failed presidential candidates who ran in the right-wing “lane” that produced Biden instead; and Barbara Bollier, who was a Republican state senator in Kansas until switching parties in 2018.
In the House of Representatives, now firmly controlled by the Democrats, 232-197, with five vacancies and a Libertarian, the Democrats are expected to increase their numbers, although by less than the 41 seats they gained in 2018. Republican hopes of retaking control, which would require a net gain of 21 seats, have virtually collapsed, as nearly all the first-term Democrats who won Republican-held seats in 2018 are considered likely victors this year.
The Democrats hold a smaller edge in fundraising for the House of Representatives than in the Senate, having raised $772 million through September 30 according to FEC filings for the 435 seats, compared to $653 million for Republican candidates.
The overall total is less significant, however, because the vast majority of House seats are in districts whose boundaries ensure the victory of one party regardless of how much money the other party spends. Republicans will spend $7 million, for example, in support of businesswoman Kim Klacik against Democrat Kweisi Mfume, in the Baltimore district held by the late Elijah Cummings, and $9.4 million to back millionaire investor Lacy Johnson against Democrat Ilhan Omar in Minneapolis. Both Mfume and Omar will win reelection easily despite being heavily outspent.
The more important figure is how much is raised in more closely contested races, fewer than 100 of the 435 seats in the House. In these contests, there are 85 Democrats who have raised more than $3 million, compared to only 50 Republicans. This includes a number of challengers for Republican seats, including Wendy Davis and Gina Ortiz Jones in the 21st and 23rd congressional districts of Texas, with $7.2 million and $5.9 million respectively, and Nancy Goroff and Tedra Cobb in New York’s Second and 21st congressional districts, with $5.1 million and $5.5 million respectively.
In 41 congressional districts where first-term Democrats are defending seats captured from Republicans in 2018, the fundraising is lopsided in favor of the Democrats: $216.5 million to $98.2 million. Only two of the 41 Democrats have less campaign cash than their Republican challenger.
An especially financially advantaged subset is the group of 11 new Democratic representatives with military-intelligence backgrounds, whom the WSWS identified in 2018 as the CIA Democrats. In their 11 reelection contests, the CIA Democrats have raised $62.5 million. Their 11 Republican opponents have raised only $21.4 million.
All 11 CIA Democrats are favored to win reelection, and they will be joined by at least one military-intelligence candidate who won his primary in the heavily Democratic Fourth Congressional District in Massachusetts, and is a prohibitive favorite, Jake Auchincloss. Several more such candidates are likely to win on November 3: Jackie Gordon in the Second Congressional District of New York; Dan Feehan in the First Congressional District of Minnesota; Sri Preston Kulkarni in the 22nd Congressional District of Texas; and Gina Ortiz Jones in the 23rd Congressional District of Texas.
The result of the election is likely to be a greatly strengthened group of CIA Democrats, including Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, first elected in 2014 and the founder of the VoteVets political action committee that has been responsible for recruiting and funding many of the military-intelligence candidates in the last two elections. Together with the 11 elected in 2018 and another half dozen or so in 2020, this would make a “caucus” of nearly 20, enough to exercise considerable influence in the new Congress and in a future Biden administration.
REMEMBER WHEN BRIBES SUCKING LAWYER KAMALA HARRIS SAID OL' JOE'S FINANCES WERE ENTIRELY 'TRANSPARENT'?
This Is How the Left's Power Structure Collapses
Weeks ago, Rush Limbaugh mentioned that the issues defining the election had not come forward yet. He was correct. Not entirely, because all the issues coming out right now have existed. In plain sight.
They just weren't distilled yet.
It's now here, served up on a silver platter. No, not Hunter Biden. This Hunter Biden laptop story simply leads us to the issue. The word. One word that rules them all, and in the darkness binds them.
Corruption.
There it is. That's the issue. To begin, you have the corrupt family Biden. They've been scamming us and our system well for almost fifty years. The man is supposedly worth over 250 million dollars. How is this possible on his salary? It's not. So where did his wealth come from? Not from being a brilliant businessman.
Enter Hunter's laptop. We now know that this is a family steeped in crime and corruption. Ole Corn Pop appears to be awash in money kicked back to him by his family members who have grifted off his reputation for years. Hunter's laptop has betrayed all this and more. Much like Al Capone's bookkeeper. Who would have thought Capone would have been destroyed so completely by a set of crooked books? Such delicious irony. And who would have known that this would become the October surprise of all October surprises?
Corruption. Full grown. Oozing its way into America. It's everywhere on the left. The Biden family. Clintons. The Democratic Party. The FBI. The CIA. The mainstream media. The tech giants. It's a full-out plague, aided and abetted by their demonic philosophy, all of them gone astray.
All of them corrupt.
The New York Post story has been there for about a week now. The Democrat-media complex has ignored it entirely; the tech giants went into overdrive removing all evidence from their platforms. Google. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. The whole lot of them. Covering up a story that deserved universal distribution and condemnation. Instead, they covered up the most damning story to their side, their chosen side. All of them colluded to bury this mounting evidence of wrongdoing.
How far the mighty have fallen. And are falling.
What's the word for a media establishment that won't report this story?
What's the word for the FBI having this laptop for almost a year, watching dispassionately as the Democrats impeached Trump with hard evidence in their hands of his innocence and the Bidens' guilt?
What's the word for the above group of bad actors colluding to forward the Russia lies for almost three years?
What's the word for Director Wray's involvement?
What's the word for CIA director not releasing documents of the Russia hoax, documents that have been available for a long time?
What's the all-encompassing word that has been revealed at the heart of all these colluding to hide the truth from an America that deserves to know?
Corruption.
This is an issue that won't go away. All the attempts to deep-six the truth here are failing, and miserably at that. It's causing a slow-walk of information to drip out to the American public. First the stories of Ukraine. Drip-drip-drip. Then the stories of drugs. Then the sex problems. Then the Chinese stories. The story of kickbacks to Pop.
It's as if all the smartest people in the world colluded to destroy themselves. By purposefully and unanimously excluding all information concerning this story from the American public. The smartest people in the world actually believe they can be successful in spiking one of the biggest stories to pop up in any American election cycle. Their hubris is so advanced, so viral, so awful, that they can't see what they've done to themselves. They really believe they are going to keep a cork on this.
The derogatory phrase for the establishment has been "the swamp." How bad is this, how deep is this, how criminal is this, how horrifying is it to find out the vast amount of corruption and collusion in so many of our institutions and corporations?
It's staggering. It's infuriating.
These are the most powerful among us. All rich. All corrupt. All once respected by Americans of all stripes. And here, in one fell swoop, they reveal themselves to the average American. As arrogant bullies, as deceitful liars, as evil as anything we've seen in our generation. They have revealed themselves as the cabal of darkness. Terrible motives, terrible actions, virtually unforgiveable in what they have done, and yet failed to finish. And due to the hubris of the cabal, the exposé will be slow-walked until the election.
Today, Trump had an exchange with reporters, where he said, "Biden was a criminal."
This shocked the corrupt media. Reverberations rocked the corrupto-sphere. The lion had roared. There is no way the corrupto-sphere keeps this lid on. There is also no way all these corrupt actors go back on their solemn pledge to one another. They are bound together. They're stuck with each other. And it will overwhelm them.
As this careens into the debate, as this careens into voting, as this careens into Election Day, the ultimate narrative will be set. The doomsday clock will start. All the corrupt actors will be pointed out. All of them will rue the day they couldn't get rid of Donald Trump. He, above most anyone, knows just how corrupt these people are. He above anyone knows how to handle them. He, above all, knows what's all coming out in the next weeks.
It's going to be an avalanche of material. It's going to be a number of fires even Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, the DNC, the Bidens, the media, the corrupt government officials, the whole shooting match, will not be able to handle. If they all overtly held emergency meetings with each other, they'd never stop the flood. When Trump roared, you know he had one of his famous moments, that moment when he knows how and when to bring this to a head. Trump the narrative-builder, Trump the destroyer will be unleashing hell on these people.
Anyone who has seen him operate knows. This is his time. This is how the beginning of the end of the swamp, or should I say the sewer, begins. This is the kind of chaos these smartest people in the world, ever, haven't seen before. Algorithms will not help them. Censorship will not help them. It will be a rushing mighty wind, coming to destroy all those who didn't understand that their corruption could be turned on them.
This is going to be epic. Corruption will be their end; it's just a matter of time. And Trump will have four years to finish their corruption.
Biden’s Cabinet: Obama Administration 3.0
While the patriots across the country are running out of nails to bite watching the Trump legal team taking on the swing states voter fraud, most Democrats are praising Biden’s cabinet nominees and appointments. Sure enough, there is a great chance that the truth will prevail, and all those cabinet picks will remain in the dustbin of history, where they belong. At the same time, these people represent the potential trends of the U.S. policy both at home and abroad as the current Democrat establishment sees it.
Joe Biden announced his first round of picks in November, he called his choices “experienced, crisis-tested leaders who are ready to hit the ground running on day one […] These officials will start working immediately to rebuild our institutions, renew and reimagine American leadership to keep Americans safe at home and abroad, and address the defining challenges of our time.” Top Democrats are rushing the Senate hearings for Biden’s cabinet that they want to start before inauguration. Despite the calls for unity and “time to heal,” Biden (whether himself or, most likely, some shadow team of the real decision-makers) is evidently taking a course on radically reversing the Trump administration’s “America First” policies. In the end of November, Biden tapped Obama-era officials for top national security and economic roles -- the same people who were one of the main reasons why it was Trump and not Hillary winning over the White House just four years ago. Let’s meet – or rather, reintroduce -- the key figures.
Foreign policy: the lobbyists-hawks
Antony Blinken, Secretary of State
Dur ing his cam paign, Biden claimed that he intended to end “for ev er wars,” -- many of which he helped start. A nomination of a hawkish Antony Blinken certainly looks like a betrayal of the campaign promises and has attract ed con sid er able crit i cism from both left and right for Blinken’s record of support ing wars and so-called human i tar i an inter ven tions. Blinken was a top aide to Biden when the then-sen a tor vot ed to autho rize the U.S. inva sion of Iraq, and helped Biden devel op a pro pos al to par ti tion Iraq into three sep a rate regions.
As deputy national security advisor, Blinken supported the mil i tary intervention in Libya in 2011. In 2018 he helped launch Wes t Ex ec Advisors, a “strate gic advisory firm” that is secretive about its clients, and still refuses to disclose them. Jonathan Guyer writes in the American Prospect, “I learned that Blinken [and the cofounders who also served in the Obama administration] used their net works to build a large client base at the intersection of tech and defense. An Israeli surveillance start up turned to them… Google bil lionaire Eric Schmidt and For tune 100 com pa nies went to them, too.” Will we find a patriotic Secretary of State in Tony Blinken? Ironically, as Blinken himself once said, “Registered lobbyist is a bullshit distinction. For me it’s: Are you making a living based on monetizing a set of relationships or a policy domain with personal interest?”
Lobbying interests of the foreign entities is something that Biden and his close friends from the foreign-policy team seem to be great at. For example, both Lin da Thomas-Green field, nominated to be a U.N. ambas sador and Jake Sul li van (national secu ri ty advi sor) repeat the pattern of joining international consulting firms whose clients are unknown, but both with substantial capitalization.
Avril Haines, director of national intelligence
Haines served as a deputy director of the CIA and Obama’s principal deputy national security adviser. Haines played a key role in the controversial drone program that cost the lives of up to 807 civilians in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Some critics have accused Haines of complicity in the use of torture or “improved interrogation techniques” by the CIA after 9/11. Haines is also remembered for editing the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the use of torture and approving a panel that ultimately decided not to reprimand CIA agents who spied on the committee’s investigators. She also worked for WestExec.
John Kerry, climate envoy
Obama’s ex-Secretary of State whose family is a close business partner to the Biden family, implicated in the shady business in Ukraine and China, Kerry is a champion of the Paris Climate Agreement, from which Trump withdrew the United States.
Domestic policy: socialism and control
Ron Klain, chief of staff
Known as the “Ebola czar,” Klain is a close confidante of Biden and previously advised President Obama. He has been vocal in his criticism of President Trump -- particularly his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Klain is not a doctor or public health expert; he’s a lawyer with deep experience in politics. Now, Klain is expected to make the virus a top priority. Because, he believes, it was Trump's “slow response” and “downplaying the threat” that devastated the country with businesses’ and schools’ shutdowns and lockdowns -- not the thugs like Cuomo, Newsome, or Whitmer. The threat has proven to be overblown, but I have doubts that Klain will truly listen to the scientists.
Neera Tanden, Office of Management and Budget director
Tanden is a chief executive of the left Center for American Progress. She is not an economist, but a political activist and organizer who worked in the Clinton and Obama administrations (ObamaCare reform), and for Hillary Clinton’s campaigns. If Tanden takes control of the OMB (which is questionable), then the office will be run by someone who believes that the deficits and the debt should be no obstacle whatsoever to further government spending and suggests the “oil rich countries” in the Middle East should cover it. In addition to that, she was accused of becoming physically aggressive toward a CAP staffer who had dared to question Hillary Clinton about the Iraq War, and she once outed an employee who had filed a sexual harassment complaint.
Council of Economic Advisers: chair Cecilia Rouse (served in both Clinton and Obama administrations), Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey (both served Biden during his VP tenure).
Janet Yellen, Treasury secretary
Yellen is a former Federal Reserve chair. During her tenure, the central bank launched experimental programs that ballooned its balance sheet to $4.5 trillion. Stocks soared, but economic growth was below par and wealth disparity hit historic levels. As reported by CNBC, the dichotomy between the market and the economy will be one of the most lasting parts of the Yellen legacy: while the S&P 500 was up about 325 percent since the 2009 lows, wage gains had barely kept up with inflation and income inequality has soared. Talk about taking care of Main Street America!
As we can see, Biden’s presumptive nominees mark a return of the “swamp”-- people with strong relationships in Washington D.C. elite and global capitals. We’ve seen those faces before; we have first-hand experience with their policies that failed America. But it seems that for the Democrat establishment America is not an objective, but a source and object of their power.
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"Along with Obama (LAWYER) Biden (LAWYER), Pelosi and Schumer (LAWYER) are responsible for incalculable damage done to this country over the eight years of that administration." PATRICIA McCARTHY Add the Banksters’ rent boy Eric Holder (LAWYER) and the up and coming Swamp Empress Kamala Harris (LAWYER…but keep counting….(LAWYER) Brian Deese, Obama-Biden’s loot-for-Wall Street guy.
"Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the twin nutters of Congress, were certain they could beat Trump at his own game, but have made fools of themselves, as usual. The stand-off is not over but with each passing day, the Democrats reveal more of their anti-American, pro-illegal immigration agenda. Conservatives have been sounding the alarm for years: Democrats do not care about American citizens!" PATRICIA McCARTHY
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.
Big Tech and Big Law dominate Biden transition teams, tempering progressive hopes
Alexander Nazaryan administration takes office in January.
WASHINGTON — For six years, Brandon Belford worked as an economic policy adviser to President Barack Obama in the White House and federal agencies. He moved to the Bay Area when Donald Trump became president, part of a massive flight of Obama officials from Washington to Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Hollywood. He took high-ranking positions with Apple and then Lyft, where he is currently the ride-sharing company’s chief of staff.
Now Belford is back, as part of one of the “transition teams” named by President-elect Joe Biden to restock a federal government that has been battered after four years of Trump by hiring new officials and advising the incoming administration on what its first governing steps should be.
Those steps could be timid, judging by the composition of those teams, where Obama-era centrism prevails. That has some progressives worried that Biden represents nothing more than a return to normal, at a time when many of them believe the nation is ready to embrace policy ideas well to the left of center.
“The status quo is killing us,” says former Bernie Sanders press secretary Briahna Joy Gray, who now hosts a podcast called “Bad Faith.”
Belford is joined by dozens of other Democratic operatives who have spent the past four years working at prestigious law firms and think tanks. On these “agency review teams” are high-ranking executives from Amazon, partners at white-shoe law firms like Covington & Burling and enough experts from D.C. center-left think tanks — including six from the Brookings Institution alone — to fill a center-left think tank.
Progressives knew this was coming. “I am very concerned about the role Uber executives would play in this administration,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez D-N.Y., told Yahoo News. Even though she also effusively praised the appointment of Ron Klain as the incoming White House chief of staff, Ocasio-Cortez vowed that corporate America would not “pull the wool over our eyes” when it came to crafting the Biden presidency.
Some have put it less bluntly. “Biden’s transition team is full of wealthy corporate executives who are completely disconnected from the struggles of the working class,” complains left-leaning activist Ryan Knight, whose Twitter handle is @ProudSocialist.
App-based drivers from Uber and Lyft protest in a caravan in front of City Hall in Los Angeles on October 22, 2020 where elected leaders hold a conference urging voters to reject on the November 3 election, Proposition 22, that would classify app-based drivers as independent contractors and not employees or agents. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP) (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)More
He was presumably referring to the two dozen agency review team officials who come from law firms like Arnold & Porter. Or to the 40 or so members of the Biden transition who are current or recent lobbyists.
The agency review teams are not exactly settling into their cubicles just yet. For one, President Trump has not yet conceded the election, and the transition has been hindered in part by Republican operatives at the General Services Administration. And agency review is an enormously complex process, one that actually began months ago. The transition teams are supposed to ensure a “smooth transfer of power,” in large part by making sure that capable officials are ready to get to work in their respective agencies the moment Biden lifts his hand from the Lincoln Bible.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, one member of the Biden campaign working on agency-related matters says teams were primarily tasked with surveying the landscape of the federal bureaucracy. She says that the transition teams would make some hiring recommendations, but only as a secondary function.
With a single exception, the agency review team members mentioned in this article did not respond to requests for comment.
One with a typically impressive biography is that of Aneesh Chopra, who served as the U.S. chief technology officer for Obama before starting his own medical data logistics company, CareJourney. Now he is on the transition team for the U.S. Postal Service, where he will presumably work to undo the alleged damage by another logistics maven: Trump appointee Louis DeJoy.
Of course, most progressives are glad that there’s a Biden transition to speak of, instead of a second Trump term. But they also recognize their own role in the Democratic candidate’s victory.
“Everyone fell into line and did everything they could to get Joe Biden elected,” says Max Berger, a progressive activist who worked for Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign and Justice Democrats, the group that helped elect Ocasio-Cortez to the House in 2018.
Berger recognizes that progressives will be a “junior partner” to the establishment Democrats with whom Biden has been ideologically and temperamentally aligned for a good half-century. They want to be partners all the same, not just the loyal opposition.
Many are cheered by some of the agency review teams. For one, they are notably more diverse, a stark contrast to Trump’s reliance on white males for so much of his advice. On the transition team for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is Jedidah Isler, the Dartmouth professor who in 2014 became the first Black woman to earn a doctorate in astrophysics from Yale. The transition team for the Small Business Administration includes Jorge Silva Puras, a political leader in Puerto Rico who also teaches entrepreneurship at a community college in the Bronx.
“The presence of labor officials throughout many of the groups is notable,” says David Dayen, executive editor of the American Prospect. In the Department of Education team, for example, are several executives from the American Federation of Teachers.
He called the Federal Reserve and Treasury teams “all-stars,” a sentiment shared by other progressives interviewed for this article. On the Treasury team is Mehrsa Baradaran, a progressive economist who has written on the racial wealth gap. She is also on the Federal Reserve team, along with Reena Aggarwal, a corporate governance expert.
Progressive strategist Elizabeth Spiers says the finance-related teams are not “not quite Elizabeth Warren levels of aggressiveness but also not stuffed with finance people.” Biden’s advisers appear to have learned the lessons of his former boss. During Obama’s first year, he relied on banking executives to help quell the financial crisis. They did so in ways that steered the new president away from progressive proposals, such as nationalizing those very same banks.
There is not a single current executive from Citibank or Goldman Sachs on any of the transition teams. Bank of America has also been shut out. JPMorgan can boast a single toehold in the agency review process: Lisa Sawyer of the Pentagon team. A spokesman for JPMorgan told Yahoo News that the bank was “following the appropriate election laws” and that Sawyer was “not on an agency review team that will touch any banking issues.”
“I think the Biden administration is going to be surprising to progressives in some ways and disappointing in others, and the agency review teams reflect that,” Dayen says. During the summer, the American Prospect published a lengthy exposé about Biden’s foreign policy advisers’ lucrative foray into corporate America. Many are set to return to the highest echelons of official Washington.
“I have to be cautiously optimistic,” says Waleed Shahid, communications director for the Justice Democrats.
Relatively young progressives like Shahid are less likely to wax romantic about the way things were in Washington. They are less interested in experience than conviction. But for many in Biden’s camp, a lack of experience was among the several fatal flaws of the Trump years.
“Everyone — right or left — has made the mistaken assumption for years that governing is easy,” says “The Death of Expertise” author Tom Nichols, who teaches at the Naval War College and is an ardently anti-Trump Republican.
“After having a bunch of nitwits and cronies loose in the government,” Nichols wrote in an email, “I think a lot of people on the left are really giving in to the assumption that as long as you’re not Trump, or not a complete idiot, anyone can do it.”
Given the title and theme of his book, Nicholas cautioned against that approach. “It’s a childish and silly approach to government, but it’s a bipartisan problem,” he told Yahoo News.
While progressive may not see their stars like Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren occupying the Treasury Department, they do very much hope that a Biden presidency amounts to more than a third Obama term. It was unaddressed economic inequality, they believe, that bred the populist resentment that gave Trump an opening in 2016. The coronavirus has only made that inequality worse. That will only increase populist resentment, they worry, to be exploited by a Trump acolyte — or perhaps Trump himself, again — in 2024.
Addressing that inequality, for now, falls to transition team officials like Mark Schwartz of Amazon and Ted Dean of Dropbox, as well as Arun Venkataraman of Visa and David Holmes of defense contractor Rebellion Defense, in which Eric Schmidt of Google is an investor. Many of these officials are veterans of the Obama administration or Democratic offices on the Hill.
“There is a lot of corporate influence there,” says Maurice Weeks, co-founder of the Action Center on Race and the Economy. “And that is troubling.” But he is encouraged by the presence of “hard-core progressives” like Sarah Miller, a former Treasury deputy who is both an anti-Facebook activist and the executive of the American Economic Liberties Project, which seeks to curb corporate power. She is now on the Treasury transition team.
In some ways, the difference is between former Obama officials who, like Miller, went on to become activists and those who moved on to become rich. The latter did only what many government officials had done before them. But at a time of mass unemployment, a stint at the corporate law firm Latham & Watkins (three transition team members) may not seem as impressive as it may have when Obama was president.
“We don’t just want to rewind the clock by four years,” Weeks says.
For many progressives, Trump was a singular threat to important institutions of the federal government, but rebuilding those institutions is simply not as important as rebuilding entire communities shattered by economic, social and racial inequalities.
It doesn’t help matters that, today, tech giants are distrusted by conservatives and progressives alike. Firms that were run out of Palo Alto garages now chafe at antitrust laws like the railroad companies of a century ago.
And like those companies, they know how to use their influence. In 2019 alone, two of the biggest and most influential technology firms — Amazon and Facebook — each spent $17 million on “government affairs,” better known as lobbying.
Ocasio-Cortez’s reference to Uber may have been a subtle warning to the incoming administration: The brother-in-law of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is Tony West, who worked for the Department of Justice under President Bill Clinton and is now the chief counsel at Uber. Jake Sullivan, another top Biden adviser, also worked for Uber.
The company recently won a major victory in California with Proposition 22, a successful response to legal efforts to make Uber drivers and other “gig workers” employees, not contractors. That’s exactly the kind of labor policy, Ocasio-Cortez says, the Biden administration must avoid.
Many top Obama staffers went to Silicon Valley in 2017. They could be returning to Washington with a new appreciation for free market capitalism at a time when “socialism” is no longer a dirty word.
“Joe Biden’s transition is absolutely stacked with tech industry players,” noted Protocol, an online publication that covers technology.
That’s exactly what worries Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, which tracks what Trump has called, without much affection, “the swamp.” He notes that the transition team for the Office of Management and Budget appears to have borrowed rather avidly from Silicon Valley, with team members hailing from Lyft, Airbnb and Amazon.
The budget office wields an “enormous amount of power,” says Hauser, including in both how congressionally appropriated money is doled out and how certain rules are implemented. Though it had a supporting role in Trump’s impeachment drama over foreign aid, OMB is otherwise obscure, making it a perfect site for covert exercises of federal power.
Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors.
Watching the transition, Gray, the former Sanders adviser, recalled an old saying: “The fish rots from the head.” The head, in this case, is Joe Biden, of whom Gray has long been a skeptic.
“He’s a fundamentally conservative man,” Gray says. She reasons that if Biden was “unmoved by the largest protest movement in American history” to endorse Medicare for All, he can’t be trusted to do much for conservative causes like a $15 minimum wage and the Green New Deal.
Still, she believes that Biden can be made to hear the voices of progressives — if, Gray says, they are loud enough. She points out that there is widespread support for progressive legislation like the $15 minimum wage in Florida, even though Trump won the state.
Biden easily won Oregon, but a push to legalize small amounts of drugs, known as Measure 110, was even more popular than he was.
She sees that as evidence that progressive ideas are more popular than Biden himself. “Progressives should never stop screaming that reality from the rooftops,” Gray told Yahoo News. And she vowed to keep fighting, even with Trump gone and a Democratic president in the Oval Office once again.
“I don’t accept resignation,” she said.
Cover thumbnail photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
THE LONG HISTORY OF OBAMA-BIDENomics:
The “managed bankruptcy” of GM and Chrysler ordered by the Obama administration set into motion the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs, including 35,000 GM production jobs in the US alone, the shuttering of dozens of assembly and parts plants and the closing of more than 1,000 car dealerships. Obama worked with the United Auto Workers to slash the wages of new hires in half, abolish the eight-hour day, ban strikes for six years and relieve the corporations of retiree health care obligations by handing the provision and cutting of retiree medical benefits to the UAW.
The executive from the giant investment firm BlackRock played a leading role in the destruction of autoworkers’ jobs and living standards during the 2009 restructuring of GM and Chrysler.
Who is Biden’s top economic adviser Brian Deese?
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President-elect Joe Biden has reportedly selected Brian Deese, an executive at the Wall Street investment firm BlackRock, as director of the National Economic Council, according to several major news outlets. “In his new post, which doesn’t require Senate confirmation, Mr. Deese will play a lead role in implementing Mr. Biden’s economic agenda,” the Wall Street Journal wrote Monday.
While Deese was not among those Biden introduced Tuesday as his “economic team,” an announcement is expected soon. Deese, the Global Head of Sustainable Investment at BlackRock, would be the second executive chosen by the incoming administration from the world’s largest asset manager, which controls $7 trillion in assets and is a major shareholder in Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, Apple, Microsoft and other global corporate giants.
On Tuesday, Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, a former chief of staff to BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink, was named top deputy to Janet Yellen, the former Federal Reserve Chairwoman who Biden picked for Secretary of the Treasury. Tom Donilon, chairman of BlackRock Investment Institute and brother of Biden’s chief campaign political strategist, had been considered for the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, but the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Donilon decided to stay in the “private sector.”
Brian Deese (Source: BlackRock)
The selection of Deese and Adeyemo—who both previously served in the Obama administration—exemplifies the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington, DC, which operates constantly, regardless of which party controls the White House.
It is a further signal to the financial oligarchy that a Biden administration will dispense with its rhetoric about raising taxes on the wealthy and continue funneling trillions into the stock markets. “By picking folks with deep ties to large asset managers,” Tyler Gellasch, executive director of investor trade group Healthy Markets Association, told the Journal, “the administration can help assuage financial executives’ concerns. It sends a clear signal to the industry to breathe easier: They can plan for stability without likely facing massive new regulatory or tax risks.”
After working on Obama’s 2008 election campaign, Deese was appointed Special Assistant to the President for economic policy and served on the National Economic Council as Obama took over the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) from the outgoing George Bush administration, and pumped massive resources into the same banks and financial institutions whose criminal activities had crashed the economy.
Deese, who had no formal training as an economist, then made a name for himself for being the most aggressive advocate of throwing General Motors and Chrysler Corp. into bankruptcy in 2009.
In a May 2009 New York Times article, headlined “The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M.,” David Sanger wrote, “It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.
BLOG EDITOR: WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT THE PARASITE LAWYERS?!?
“But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.”
Deese was part of the White House Auto Task Force, which was made up of Wall Street asset strippers, including billionaire investor and Democratic Party fundraiser Steven Rattner and Ron Bloom, another Wall Street “turnaround specialist” with a long history of collaborating with the unions during the bankruptcy restructuring of the airline and steel industry.
While publicly claiming that they wanted to avoid bankruptcy, court document would show that Deese and others in Obama’s inner circle were determined to force the auto companies into a forced restructuring from the earliest days of the new administration.
After Rick Wagoner, GM’s former chief executive, said publicly that bankruptcy was not a viable option, the administration would fire him and threaten to withhold any further money from GM unless it imposed far more “painful” cuts than outlined in its initial plan, which called for the elimination of 47,000 jobs worldwide, including 21,000 hourly workers in the US.
The “managed bankruptcy” of GM and Chrysler ordered by the Obama administration set into motion the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs, including 35,000 GM production jobs in the US alone, the shuttering of dozens of assembly and parts plants and the closing of more than 1,000 car dealerships. Obama worked with the United Auto Workers to slash the wages of new hires in half, abolish the eight-hour day, ban strikes for six years and relieve the corporations of retiree health care obligations by handing the provision and cutting of retiree medical benefits to the UAW.
As the wrote at the time, “Obama’s Auto Task Force has focused on one thing from the beginning: how to exploit the crisis of the auto industry to create conditions for Wall Street to reap huge profits. Its leading figures—Secretary Treasurer Timothy Geithner and White House economic [adviser] Lawrence Summers—played a key role in the Wall Street bailout, opposing the slightest restrictions on compensation paid to banking executives receiving public money. When it has come to the auto industry, however, they have demanded the most brutal job cuts and wage and benefit concessions from autoworkers.
“The outcome of the dismantling of the auto industry,” the continued, “will mean that the industrial base of the US will shrink even more and the economy will be further dominated by the type of reckless and socially destructive speculation that is responsible for the worst economic and social crisis since the 1930s.”
A year after the forced bankruptcies, Citi Investment Research analyst Itay Michaeli boasted that GM’s fixed cost per vehicle would drop from $10,400 in 2009 to $7,280 in 2010 and fall to $5,772 by 2012. In the five years following, labor costs at GM and Chrysler—which declared bankruptcy on April 30, 2009—were predicted to be lower than any Japanese automaker operating nonunion plants in the US, making it profitable for the company to build small cars in the US, rather than in Mexico.
The auto restructuring became a template for the decimation of wages throughout the working class during the eight years of the Obama administration, which oversaw the greatest transfer of wealth from the bottom to top in US history up until today.
Deese’s “success” during the auto restructuring earned him a rapid set of promotions in the Obama White House. He was soon named deputy direct of the National Economic Council and then the deputy director and acting director of the Office of Management and Budget. In 2015, he helped negotiate the 2015 Bipartisan Budget Act.
After finding limitless funds to bail out Wall Street, the Obama administration would insist there was no money to bail out states and municipalities, which had laid off hundreds of thousands of educators and other public employees during the Great Recession.
When Biden introduced his economic team Tuesday, he claimed that “help was on the way” to the tens of millions of workers, small business owners and unemployed who are facing an unprecedented economic and social catastrophe. But his selection of Deese, Yellen, Adeyemo and others directly from Wall Street make it clear that a Biden administration will be committed to austerity and back-to-work campaign aimed at forcing workers to pay for the corporate bailout no matter how many lives are needlessly lost to the pandemic.
At the time, Delphi employed nearly 50,000 Americans, who earned about $30 an hour on the assembly line. Now, workers in Mexico for the company earn about $1 an hour.
Joe Biden’s Pick for Economic
Adviser Tied to Delphi
Pension-Slashing Scheme
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
30 Nov 2020316
4:35
Democrat Joe Biden’s pick to be his top economic adviser in the White House served on the Obama-appointed team that helped slash pensions for roughly 20,000 Americans in the auto bailout.
This week, Biden announced that Obama alum Brian Deese, now an executive at the investment management firm BlackRock, will serve as his top economic adviser should he enter the White House.
Deese previously served as a special assistant to Obama for economic policy and played a role in the administration’s bailout of the auto industry, which ultimately led to slashed pensions for 20,000 non-union workers at the Delphi Corporation, an auto parts supplier to General Motors (GM).
In 2009, as part of the Obama-Biden administration’s taxpayer-funded bailout of GM, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) terminated the pension plans of non-unionized Delphi workers. In some cases, workers had their pensions gutted by as much as 75 percent.
A federal report in 2013 detailed that the Delphi workers would likely have their pensions cut by an estimated $440 million. Meanwhile, GM topped off unionized Delphi workers’ pensions at a cost of about $1 billion.
Deese, along with agency heads like Timothy Geithner and top advisers like Ron Bloom, was named in that federal report, having had been involved in multiple conversations about the Delphi pensions:
In July 2009, internal Government emails between the Auto Team and Advisor to the President Brian Deese discussed GM’s need to address issues with Delphi’s “splinter unions.” Auto Team officials did not recall details related to the emails. When Senator Charles Schumer took a position that GM should assume the Delphi salaried retiree pensions, Mr. Deese emailed Mr. Rattner this “may complicate the optics of doing anything for the splinters.” Other emails from Mr. Deese stated, “We will continue to face intense scrutiny on this issue. The politics of terminations is quite intense” and “we need to work on a clear rationale for the outcomes we’re moving toward, as well as an explanation of respective roles.” Mr. Rattner emailed members of the Auto Team that he had spoken with Fritz Henderson about “our logic on the splinters, which he [Henderson] was fine with. [Auto Team Analyst] Sadiq [Malik] should speak to Janice [Uhlig] about the details, particularly how the reallocation of the $417mm would work.” Auto Team member Feldman emailed members of the Auto Team about health care/pension benefit changes for IUE and USW employees, and Mr. Deese responded that the company’s organizing principle was parity between GM salaried and non-UAW hourlies. Mr. Deese referenced a discussion about health care costs and the “credible fairness arguments to augment the hourlies’ recovery based on the pension disparity, but that for all the reasons we discussed that would not be possible. However, I think the logic of that conclusion strongly counsels in favor of bringing the top-up through. Otherwise, we’re moving in the opposite direction from a position that we all agreed was itself on the edge of fairness.”
In October, President Trump signed a memorandum to devise a plan to restore the pensions of the Delphi workers. Biden has not said if he supports the memorandum.
Former Delphi workers told Breitbart News in interviews how the pension-slashing scheme uprooted their livelihoods. One retiree said she lost her home, and her retirement plans to move to the Florida coast have been squashed.
Another retiree said his wife died in the process, as he was forced to find work in order to pay for her medical bills. He had assumed that after 30 years at Delphi, he and his wife would have a good healthcare plan in their retirement. That ended when his pension was cut by about 30 percent.
Delphi, which has since split into Aptiv and Delphi Technologies, announced in 2006 that it would shutter 21 of its 29 plants in the United States — offshoring some 20,000 U.S. jobs to Mexico, China, and other foreign countries.
At the time, Delphi employed nearly 50,000 Americans, who earned about $30 an hour on the assembly line. Now, workers in Mexico for the company earn about $1 an hour.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
YOU WONDERED WHY BIDEN HAS VOTED FOR EVERY WAR FOR THE LAST 50 YEARS???
JOE BIDEN'S GLOBAL WAR MACHINE TO BE RUN BY WALL STREET CRONIES
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/11/biden-names-national-security-team-of.html
Biden names national security team of right-wing militarists
This is because despite all its declarations, the Democratic Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team attests, is a party of Wall Street, big banks, Amazon, and the military-industrial complex.
Amazon is entangled not only with Wall Street, but also with the US military and intelligence apparatus. Amazon was awarded a $600 million contract with the CIA in 2013, followed by a $10 billion contract with the Department of Defense last year to move government data onto the cloud. Meanwhile, Amazon’s facial-identification software “Rekognition” is being marketed to federal and local police.
Hostile Takeover: Wall Street Assumes Command of Joe Biden Transition Team
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/11/joe-biden-i-need-secretary-of-treasury.html
Wall Street and the biggest U.S. banks, after spending a fortune to unseat President Trump, are getting key spots in Democrat Joe Biden’s transition team that he has devised before the presidential election is certified.
Many of the big banks with links to Biden transition team members were major donors to the former vice president.
JOE BIDEN SAYS MUCK PROGRESSIVES, I MADE MY DIRTY MONEY SERVING WALL STREET!
“Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors.”
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/11/joe-bidens-america-to-be-ruled-by-wall.html
“Joe Biden’s transition is absolutely stacked with tech industry players,” noted Protocol, an online publication that covers technology.”
“He was presumably referring to the two dozen agency review team officials who come from law firms like Arnold & Porter. Or to the 40 or so members of the Biden transition who are current or recent lobbyists.”
“During the summer, the American Prospect published a lengthy exposé about Biden’s foreign policy advisers’ lucrative foray into corporate America. Many are set to return to the highest echelons of official Washington.”
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
at @JxhnBinder
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