Biden Sends More Swamp Creatures To The Senate

The Biden Cabinet Nominees Slated To Appear Before The Senate This Week Illustrate Perfectly The Extent This President’s Cabinet Is Beholden To Corporate Interests And The Establishment Democrats That Represent Them

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THE SENATE WILL CONTINUE HEARINGS FOR A NUMBER OF BIDEN CABINET APPOINTEES THIS WEEK

Secretary of Commerce nominee Gina Raimondo, Secretary of Energy nominee Jennifer Granholm, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development nominee Rep. Marcia Fudge will all appear before the Senate this week.

THE FIRST OF THESE HEARINGS WILL FEATURE SCANDAL PLAGUED GOVERNOR GINA RAIMONDO WHO HAS USED HER TIME IN RHODE ISLAND GOVERNMENT TO LINE THE POCKETS OF WALL STREET IN EXCHANGE FOR DONATIONS FUNDING HER POLITICAL RISE

Biden has selected Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo, a former venture capitalist, to serve as Secretary of Commerce.

Throughout her political career, Raimondo’s donor list has been a “run-down of Wall Street's who’s who” and her ties to New York hedge funds, private equity, and Wall Street executives are “massive.”

During Raimondo’s 2014 Governor’s campaign, donors from Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, Bain Capital and JPMorgan Chase “showered her with money” before she even declared her candidacy.

One of these donors, Oaktree Capital, was later fined by the SEC for violating federal pay-for-play regulations by donating to Raimondo after they raked in hundreds of thousands in fees from investments she made as Rhode Island’s Treasurer.

During her time as Rhode Island State Treasurer, Raimondo oversaw a “war on public pensions” during which the state passed a law “slashing benefits of state employees with a speed and ferocity seldom before seen by any local government.”

In addition to slashing benefits, Raimondo, a former venture capitalist, planned to save money by handing more than $1 billion, or 14 percent of the state fund, to hedge funds including $5 million to Point Judith Capital, a firm she co-founded.

These funds now stood collectively to be paid tens of millions in fees every single year by the already overburdened taxpayers of her “ostensibly flat-broke state.”

Raimondo’s firm, Point Judith, made more than $1 million in fees from the state’s investment.

The move was an immediate disaster, losing more than $200 million in FY 2012 alone after gains prior to the transition in 2010 and 2011.

Years later it’s clear Raimondo’s “reforms” were a failure, Pew Research has consistently ranked Rhode Island poorly and in 2019, a study by Bellwether Education partners gave the state’s teachers pensions an “F.”

During her time as Governor Raimondo’s mismanagement took an even darker turn when reports surfaced of abuse, sex trafficking, and missing children at state licensed group homes.

A report by the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families revealed 8 child fatalities in 2016 and 2017 alone.

The shocking neglect came after Raimondo “overhauled” the agency in 2015, selecting Jamia McDonald to earn nearly $140k as the “department’s de facto head” and doing away with the acting director role.

The move raised speculation that the director role was eliminated because state law requires the DCYF director to hold a master’s degree in social work and no one in the agency met those qualifications.

Additionally, Raimondo’s FY 2017 budget eliminated 43 full-time positions, a cut that the agency said would “hamper a plan to hire more investigators, social workers and other front-line staff.”

BIDEN’S PICK TO HEAD THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, UNPOPULAR MICHIGAN GOVERNOR JENNIFER GRANHOLM, HAS ALSO RAISED EYEBROWS FOR POTENTIAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, SOMETHING THAT HAS BECOME STANDARD FOR BIDEN NOMINEES

Biden picked former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm to head the Department of Energy.

Granholm’s time as Governor was memorable; under her leadership Michigan experienced “a budget crisis, a rise in taxes, a poor economy and a rising unemployment rate.”

It’s unsurprising that she was “highly unpopular” when she left office after years of failing to fix the state’s economy and never ending partisan gridlock.

Granholm has come under fire for her significant financial interests in industries that would fall under her purview as Secretary, should she be confirmed.

ABC News noted that Granholm joins a series of Biden nominees whose ties to corporate interests “have raised concerns over potential conflict of interest.”

Delaney Marsco, ethics legal counsel at Washington-based good government group Campaign Legal Center, underlined this trend saying, “we're seeing already with the Biden administration is that there are a lot of folks with ties to industries or ties to the private sector of what they are going to oversee or regulate once they move into government.”

The governor and her husband reported owning from $4.4 million up to $16.8 million in corporate interests and private assets like residential real estate properties.

Among Granholm’s biggest assets are $1 million to $5 million worth of stock options in Proterra Inc., a company that designs and manufactures zero-emission electric buses and trucks and provides electric buses and charging systems to municipalities in several states.

Investments in North Carolina-based electric-power holding company Duke Energy, solar-panel manufacturing company First Solar, Inc., and an investment company that focuses on climate solutions and renewable energy called Hannon Armstrong have all raised concerns.

Granholm wrote in her disclosure that she will divest her investments and step down from her position with Proterra if confirmed, but “a consulting firm she owns with her husband, Dan Mulhern, will continue to operate to manage its own investments.”

BIDEN’S POTENTIAL SECRETARY OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, REP. MARCIA FUDGE, HAS ALSO FACED HER SHARE OF SCANDAL

Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) is nominated to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, she had originally lobbied to be Secretary of Agriculture but was relegated to her “second” choice.

As a member of the House of Representatives, Rep. Fudge had consistently fallen in line with the Democrat establishment, including in 2018 when she disappointed allies by dropping a potential challenge to Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) speakership.

Her sudden reversal was the result of “a swift and relentless bit of deal-cutting” by Rep. Pelosi who secured Rep. Fudges support in exchange for the opportunity to chair  the reinstated elections subcommittee.

Rep. Fudge’s prospects for the Speakership were already dim after it came to light that she wrote a letter in 2015 pleading for leniency for Lance Mason, a former state lawmaker and judge in Ohio, after he was convicted of brutally beating his wife in front of their two daughters.

In the letter Rep. Fudge describes Mason as a “good man who made a very bad mistake.”

Mason later plead guilty to stabbing his wife 59 times in a fit of unprovoked rage, killing her in front of their daughters.

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