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BIDEN’S POTENTIAL SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE THOMAS VILSACK IS ANOTHER OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ALUM WHO CASHED IN ON HIS TIME IN GOVERNMENT
Biden has nominated Thomas Vilsack to be Secretary of Agriculture, a role he served in throughout the entire Obama Administration.
By selecting Vilsack, Biden disappointed farm groups who had rallied their support around former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND).
Democrat activists have also been sharply critical of the pick, with Mitch Jones, policy director for Food and Water Watch, an environmental advocacy group, saying that “Vilsack has made a career of catering to the whims of corporate agriculture giants, some of whom he has gone to work for.”
Soon after leaving public office, Vilsack took a job leading the U.S. Dairy Export Council, a trade promotion group, whose members include large dairy manufacturers and cooperatives like Luprino Foods, Sargento Foods, Dairy Farmers of America, Land O’Lakes, and Organic Valley.
The council has close ties with the Department of Agriculture and, is funded mainly by the dairy checkoff program, a federal program overseen by the USDA.
In 2018 alone, the dairy industry paid Vilsack more than $1 million.
As Secretary of Agriculture, Vilsack will oversee the USDA which “exerts enormous influence over the dairy market” through its Federal Milk Marketing Orders, which help set the price farmers get paid for milk.
During his time as President Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture, Vilsack failed to address “long-standing complaints of discrimination in access to USDA loans and other programs.”
Black farm organizations and advocates say his inaction “exacerbated a catastrophic loss of land and livelihood for many Black farmers.”
Vilsack faced additional claims of racism in his “mishandling of issues involving Black people.”
Civil rights activists point to an incident where Vilsack called for the resignation of Shirley Sherrod, the first Black director of rural development in Georgia after excerpts of a speech surfaced, in which she appeared to endorse discriminating against a White farmer.
Lloyd Wright, director of the USDA’s Office of Civil Rights during the Clinton and Obama administrations says Vilsack’s treatment of Sherrod was not an isolated event, “That was the pattern. Punishment was always more severe for Blacks. He had a low tolerance for dealing with Blacks.”
FOR SECRETARY OF LABOR, BIDEN PICKED MARTY WALSH, WHOSE TENURE AS MAYOR OF BOSTON WAS MARKED BY QUESTIONABLE JUDGEMENT AND UNQUESTIONABLE CORRUPTION
Biden’s pick for Secretary of Labor, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, will appear before the Senate this week,
Walsh is no stranger to controversy, his ties to unions while holding public office, federal extortion charges against a pair of his aides, and a questionable financial arrangement with his girlfriend’s consulting firm are just some of the scandals that have plagued the Mayor.
Despite his longstanding ties to labor groups, “current and former union officials have raised some concerns about revelations of corruption under Walsh’s watch as mayor, an office he has held since 2014.”
The Boston Globe reported that between 2013 and 2019, Walsh spent nearly $900,000 in campaign funds on a consulting firm where his longtime girlfriend worked, accounting for more than half of the company’s political business in that time period.
Walsh made an inadvisable appearance on the TV show “Top Chef” shortly after becoming Mayor and after top Boston tourism official Ken Brissette learned that the shows’ staff was nonunion told a colleague that “he would fix the situation by seizing the show’s footage or withholding public permits.”
A city-sponsored investigation by former U.S. attorney Brian Kelly was inconclusive but it did describe a “a deep concern among Walsh’s staff for preserving the mayor’s relationship with unions.”
In 2016, investigations of similar allegations, that aides threatened to withhold permits for organizers of the Boston Calling music festival unless they hired union labor, were more conclusive.
Brissette and his chief of staff for intergovernmental affairs, Tim Sullivan, were indicted on federal extortion charges, but those convictions were later overturned because neither man took a “personal payoff.”
As Mayor, Walsh hired former Massachusetts state representative Carlos Henriquez to be a special assistant in 2018, despite Henriquez's conviction years earlier for assaulting a woman who refused to have sex with him.
Henriquez was expelled from the Massachusetts state House of Representatives in 2014 after he was convicted of two assault charges stemming from a 2012 incident and sentenced to six months in jail.
In 2019, Walsh was forced to defend the “culture at city hall” after another Boston City Official, John Lynch, plead guilty to accepting a $50,000 bribe.
Walsh denied involvement but “the Mayor acknowledged that the responsibility to remedy the problems” raised by the corruption scandals lay with his administration.
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