How Not to Drain the Swamp

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The guys in the C-suites sure must be laughing today. They pulled a fast one on the American public.

As the seating chart fills out for the incoming Trump administration, it becomes clear that Team Trump seeks to “drain the swamp ” in Washington by putting the swamp’s corporate lobbyists in charge.

It’s party time for the corporate elite that really runs our nation.

The signs are legion.

Jeffrey Eisenach, who has worked as a consultant for Verizon and its trade association, is running the FCC transition, and will likely use his post to eviscerate Internet freedoms and bury Net Neutrality.

As our nation’s obesity epidemic continues on, what could be worse than installing a lobbyist for the American Beverage Association, Michael Torrey, to head up Trump’s U.S. Department of Agriculture transition team. Nevermind the 25,000 Americans who die each year due to overconsumption of sugary drinks.

Prominent climate change skeptic Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the corporate front group Competitive Enterprise Institute, is leading Trump’s EPA transition team, a slap in the face to all Americans who recoil at climate change, dirty air and poisoned water.

Two of the biggest winners will be billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, and their firm Koch Industries. At least two of their lobbyists have prominent places in the Trump transition.

Mike Catanzaro, who lobbies for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Chemistry Council and Koch Industries, is the honcho for Trump’s “energy independence ” agenda.

Mike McKenna, who is in charge of the transition at the Department of Energy, lobbies for Dow Chemical and Koch Industries.

Doubtless Team Trump’s lobbyists are working on how to gut the key regulators, for example, carrying out Trump’s promise to undermine the “FDA Food Police,” which is supposed to keep our nation’s food system safe for all Americans. Try telling that to the one in six Americans who contract food poisoning each year.

According to some news outlets, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, is joining Trump’s transition team. Thiel is co-founder of Palantir Technologies, which played a key role in a corporate espionage scandal involving U.S. Chamber of Commerce plans to spy on unions and citizen groups.

Trump’s promise to “end our government corruption ” by putting corporate lobbyists in charge is laughable. As is the idea of empowering Newt Gingrich, who left Congress with a record of contempt for law and House Rules on ethics and corruption, after being forced to pay a $300,000 fine for his congressional wrongdoing.

To be sure, Hillary Clinton has been no great friend of the consumers, public health or government watchdogs. Clinton has a well-honed reticence to taking on the corporations and trade associations who paid her mammoth speaking fee and filled her foundation coffers. Her victory would not have brought citizen movements to power, just as her husband’s did not.
One open question: How will Trump voters respond to — instead of draining the swamp — putting the swamp in charge of the swamp?

Trump voters ought to be mad — they just got sold out.

Gary Ruskin is co-director of U.S. Right to Know, a food industry watchdog group. For 14 years, he directed the Congressional Accountability Project, which opposed corruption in Congress. You can follow him on Twitter at @garyruskin.

This article was first published in The Hill.