Tag: Trump kleptocracy

Social Security commissioner invested in company that makes COVID test touted by Trump

AlterNet logoIn early 2020, Social Security Administration Commissioner Andrew Saul engaged in several stock transactions that appear to have anticipated market reactions to the coronavirus crisis, according to financial disclosure forms.

Specifically, Saul made seemingly prescient investments in Abbott Laboratories, UnitedHealth, thecloud workflow company ServiceNow and Eurofins, a foreign company that manufactures personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers, among other things.

Though Saul — a wealthy New York businessman with prior government service and decades of financial expertise — has a substantial and diverse portfolio, the timing of the transactions, together with his activity in the administration and investment experience, is intriguing. Continue reading.

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago buddy used his ‘shadow’ sway over the VA to promote his comic book empire

AlterNet logoTwo and a half years ago, top officials from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs rang the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange. Standing on the podium with them was a cheering, flexing Captain America. Spider-Man waved from the trading floor below.

The event had been billed as a suicide prevention awareness campaign. No one could figure out what the Marvel characters were doing there. David Shulkin, the VA secretary at the time, said in a memoir about his tenure that he was as surprised as anyone.

The answer, it turns out, lies with the sweeping influence over the VA that President Donald Trump gave to one of his biggest donors, Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter. Continue reading.

How Fed Bailout Greased A Top Treasury Official’s Family Financial Firm

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have become the public faces of the $3 trillion federal coronavirus bailout. Behind the scenes, however, the Treasury’s responsibilities have fallen largely to the 42-year-old deputy secretary, Justin Muzinich.

A major beneficiary of that bailout so far: Muzinich & Co., the asset manager founded by his father where Justin served as president before joining the administration. He reported owning a stake worth at least $60 million when he entered government in 2017.
Today, Muzinich retains financial ties to the firm through an opaque transaction in which he transferred his shares in the privately held company to his father. Ethics experts say the arrangement is troubling because his father received the shares for no money up front, and it appears possible that Muzinich can simply get his stake back after leaving government. Continue reading.

Trump backs DeVos plan to limit student debt relief

The president vetoed legislation that would have blocked a policy by DeVos limiting debt relief for defrauded student loan borrowers.

President Donald Trump on Friday sided with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her plans to make it harder to forgive the debt of defrauded student loan borrowers.

Trump vetoed bipartisan legislation that would have blocked a policy by DeVos that limits debt relief for defrauded student loan borrowers.

Trump backed DeVos over the objections of veterans organizations, which had urged him to sign the measure to stop a regulation that they said makes it too difficult for their members to obtain help if they are cheated by their colleges. Continue reading.

An indelible image of this pandemic: Trump, without a mask, on a golf course

Washington Post logoIt was the murderous dictator Joseph Stalin who supposedly said that one death was a tragedy, one million deaths a mere statistic. One hundred thousand deaths are difficult to get one’s mind around. The toll in our nation from covid-19, as it reaches that horrific milestone, must be seen as a catastrophe — and an indictment.

The long Memorial Day weekend gave the pandemic an indelible visual image: President Trump, wearing a ball cap but no mask, enjoying himself on his Northern Virginia golf course. Last week, you will recall, Trump declared it was “essential” that Americans be able to spend Sunday at church services. He chose to head for the links instead.

Primary blame for those 100,000 deaths must go to the killer itself — the novel coronavirus that spreads so easily, overwhelms defenseless immune systems and turned New York hospitals into charnel houses. But not all of covid-19’s victims had to die. Some responsibility must be laid at the feet of a president who ignored the threat until it was too late, who failed to mount an adequate response and who still, after so many lonely deaths and socially distanced funerals, insists that the enemy will somehow just magically disappear. Continue reading.

Coronavirus hit meat plants just as workers were being asked to speed up

The coronavirus began to spread through U.S. slaughterhouses this spring just when workers, already performing some of the most dangerous jobs anywhere, were being asked to take more risks by going faster.

Even as the outbreak began to force plants to temporarily close last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture continued granting permission to chicken processors to boost speeds by 25% on production lines. And the agency late last year approved an inspection system that would let pork plants abolish line-speed limits — now set at 1,106 hogs an hour — altogether.

With production reduced at many pork and chicken plants by the outbreak, there’s new scrutiny on the safety and procedures in them, including the line-speed changes that have been decades in the making. Continue reading.

Democrats raise ruckus over demoted Transportation watchdog

Mitch Behm will continue in his previous role as deputy inspector general, according to the department

Three high-ranking House Democrats on Tuesday demanded to know why an acting inspector general at the Department of Transportation was abruptly removed in favor of a political appointee.

House Oversight and Reform Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y., House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Peter A. DeFazio, D-Ore., and Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations Chairman Gerald E. Connolly, D-Va., demanded in a letter to Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao that acting Inspector General Mitch Behm, who was stripped of his duties May 15, be reinstated immediately.

Behm will continue in his previous role as deputy inspector general, according to the department. Continue reading.

Trump executive order directs all agencies to gut business regulations amid COVID-19: ‘The corruption is on full display’

AlterNet logoIn a move watchdog groups decried as an effort to reward big corporations at the expense of public health and safety, President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order directing the heads of every federal agency to “waive, suspend, and eliminate” all regulations that they consider unnecessary obstacles to economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis.

“And we want to leave it that way,” Trump said during a press briefing, indicating he would like to make the sweeping deregulation permanent. The president’s order could have enormous implications for workplace safety rules, environmental and labor policy, consumer protections, food and drug regulations, and more.

Robert Weissman, president Public Citizen, said the executive order shows that “instead of real, direct help for the tens of millions of Americans struggling financially due to the pandemic, or a real plan to reopen the economy safely based on the best public health expertise, Trump wants to keep giving handouts to corporate interests.” Continue reading.

Trump’s preferred construction firm lands $1.3 billion border wall contract, the biggest so far

Washington Post logoA North Dakota construction firm that has received backing from President Trump has now secured the largest border wall contract ever awarded, a $1.3 billion deal to build 42 miles of black-painted fencing through the rugged mountains of southern Arizona.

The company that won the contract, Fisher Sand and Gravel, has been repeatedly lauded by the president in White House meetings with border officials and military commanders, the result of a long and personalized marketing pitch to Trump and ardent supporters of his barrier project.

After its initial bids for border contracts were passed over, the company and its CEO, Tommy Fisher, cut a direct path to the president by praising him on cable news, donating to his Republican allies and cultivating ties to former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, GOP Senate candidate Kris Kobach and other conservative figures in Trump’s orbit. Continue reading.

Trump admin slaps solar, wind operators with retroactive rent bills

The Trump administration has ended a two-year rent holiday for solar and wind projects operating on federal lands, handing them whopping retroactive bills at a time the industry is struggling with the fallout of the coronavirus outbreak, according to company officials.

The move represents a multi-million-dollar hit to an industry that has already seen installation projects canceled or delayed by the global health crisis, which has cut investment and dimmed the demand outlook for power.

It also clashes with broader government efforts in the United States to shield companies from the worst of the economic turmoil through federal loans, waived fees, tax breaks and trimmed regulatory enforcement. Continue reading.