November, 19 2020, 11:00pm EDT
Progressive Groups Launch Grassroots Efforts To Lobby Against Corporate Cabinet, Release List of Corporate Insiders Biden Should Reject
Today, five progressive organizations led by the Demand Progress and the Revolving Door Project launched the "No Corporate Cabinet" campaign, dedicated to keeping corporate insiders out of the Biden administration. Partners include Climate Investigations Center, Documented, and True North Research.
WASHINGTON
Today, five progressive organizations led by the Demand Progress and the Revolving Door Project launched the "No Corporate Cabinet" campaign, dedicated to keeping corporate insiders out of the Biden administration. Partners include Climate Investigations Center, Documented, and True North Research.
The website will serve as a central hub for information and activism related to the Biden transition, with a trove of information on corporate insiders shortlisted for Biden administration posts. It also offers tools through which people can take action and contact key decision makers, which are expected to be used by tens of thousands of people. You can check out the website here.
Yesterday, a distinct parallel campaign launched in partnership between Daily Kos, Demand Progress, and more than 20 other progressive and good governance organizations, including MPower Change, Public Citizen, Presente, Ultraviolet, and the Working Families Party. The groups are asking activists to email, call, and tweet at the Biden transition and Senate Democrats to urge them "to appoint public-minded progressives instead of corporate lobbyists and executives for key roles" in the Biden administration.
The Persons of Interest page on the "No Corporate Cabinet" website will single out key corporate-friendly insiders in Biden's orbit who must be stopped - including one who has already been announced this week - and details their troubling pasts. At this time they're calling for the rejection of the following Persons of Interest, with more to be added based on news reports and other intel about who is under consideration.
- Brian Deese: After advising Obama on climate policy (defending the production of fossil fuels and necessity of oil and gas), Deese took a job as the chief greenwasher at the world's largest investor in fossil fuels: BlackRock.
- Larry Fink: Larry Fink is the CEO of BlackRock, which is the fossil fuel industry's top banker and quietly exerts massive influence over the U.S. government and economy.
- Mark Gitenstein: While working as a corporate lobbyist, Mark Gitenstein listed many successes including weakening whistleblower laws and packing federal courts with business-friendly judges.
- Tony James: Tony James has taken it upon himself to improve private equity's well-deserved poor public image, all the while being credibly accused of market-rigging and collusion.
- Ernest Moniz: Even though he believes that climate change is real, Ernest Moniz has maintained unusually close ties with the fossil fuel industry throughout his career in public life, refusing to adopt climate policies which might anger his friends in coal, oil, and gas.
- Gina Raimondo: Gina Raimondo has been a steadfast ally of Wall Street and corporate America throughout her time in politics, selling out pensioners to hedge funds, slashing social services, and making enemies of labor unions.
- Bruce Reed: Bruce Reed was a key intellectual architect of the Democratic Party's turn toward neoliberal economic policy and conservative social policy.
- Steve Ricchetti: Steve Ricchetti has spent his entire career shuffling through the revolving door, lobbying on behalf of corporate interests from both K Street and within the halls of government -- which is why it's deeply disappointing and dangerous that he's in line to serve as senior counselor to the president in Biden's administration.
- Heather Zichal: Heather Zichal served as the Obama White House's actions "chief ambassador to oil and gas companies" before leveraging her relationships into a job with a natural gas company.
- Jason Bordoff: Jason Bordoff rarely sees a fossil fuel project he doesn't support, which isn't surprising because nearly all of his professional positions are currently funded by fossil fuel corporations.
"President-elect Biden is assembling this administration after four years of egregious corruption under the Trump administration and in the depths of a historic crisis," David Segal, Demand Progress Executive Director, said. "If Biden is serious about 'building back better' in a way that remedies the longstanding ills of the country, his administration must be run by people dedicated to working in service of the general welfare. Our message is clear: Joe Biden should not let corporate interests run the government - and, if needed, senators must hold him accountable."
"The Biden administration has a daunting task ahead, to both undo the corruption of the Trump years and guide the country out of interlinked crises of health, economics, racial injustice, and climate change," Jeff Hauser, Revolving Door Project Executive Director said. "None of that can happen if Biden appoints to his government the same corporate leaders whose profits skyrocketed under Trump, and whose influence over the last four decades generally has led to surging inequality and a crisis of faith in government. If Democrats fail to take back the Senate, executive-branch powers will be one of Biden's only ways of tangibly improving Americans' lives. He cannot trust corporate America if he hopes to do that."
"Americans are exhausted. We have spent the last four years watching the Trump administration repeatedly put the interests of big businesses and corporate lobbyists over the well-being of everyday people, causing untold suffering--especially during the COVID-19 pandemic," Carolyn Fiddler, the Communications Director of Daily Kos said. "That's why it is imperative that the Biden administration appoint a cabinet that puts the American people's interests over corporate agendas. Now more than ever, we need leadership that is experienced in corporate accountability and will check the interests of big corporations while advocating for policies that center the health and success of all Americans, especially Americans of color."
"There are a finite number of cabinet positions. Any cabinet post given to a recent corporate lobbyist is one less seat that could be filled by a well-qualified person whose record demonstrates a deep commitment to advancing public good rather than private gain," said Lisa Graves, executive director of True North Research, a partner on the No Corporate Cabinet initiative. "Especially after the massive financial conflicts in the Trump cabinet, the new administration should take extra steps to avoid the conflicts of interests that have made the revolving door so lucrative to the distinct disadvantage of the real needs of Americans whose lives are in tumult due to the pandemic and callous indifference of a Senate majority led by Mitch McConnell. Personnel is policy and We the People deserve a better cabinet in the Biden Administration, one that reflects the true needs of the American people rather than greed of huge corporations."
This new website comes just a week after Demand Progress and The Revolving Door Project led a group of 50+ organizations in sending letters to President-elect Joe Biden as well as Democratic senators and senators-elect, urging them to reject corporate insiders for cabinet positions.
Demand Progress amplifies the voice of the people -- and wields it to make government accountable and contest concentrated corporate power. Our mission is to protect the democratic character of the internet -- and wield it to contest concentrated corporate power and hold government accountable.
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"Investing now in nuclear energy is an inefficient route to take to reduce emissions at the scale and pace needed to tackle climate change," said one campaigner.
Dec 02, 2023
Climate campaigners scoffed Saturday at a 22-nation pledge to triple nuclear power capacity by mid-century as a way to ward off the increasing damage of warming temperatures, with opponents calling it a costly and "dangerous" distraction from the urgent need for a fossil fuel phaseout alongside a rapid increase in more affordable and scaleable renewable sources such as wind and solar.
The Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy—backed by the United States, Canada, France, the Czech Republic, and others—was announced as part of the Climate Action Summit taking place in Dubai as a part of the two-week U.N. climate talks known as COP28.
While the document claims a "key role" for nuclear energy to keep "a 1.5°C limit on temperature rise within reach" by 2050 and to help attain the so-called "net-zero emissions" goal that governments and the fossil fuel industry deploy to justify the continued burning of coal, oil, and gas, critics say the false solution of atomic power actually harms the effort to reduce emissions by wasting precious time and money that could be spent better and faster elsewhere.
"There is no space for dangerous nuclear power to accelerate the decarbonization needed to achieve the Paris climate goal," said Masayoshi Iyoda, a 350.org campaigner in Japan who cited the 2011 Fukushima disaster as evidence of the inherent dangers of nuclear power.
"There is no space for dangerous nuclear power to accelerate the decarbonization needed to achieve the Paris climate goal."
Nuclear energy, said Iyoda, "is nothing more than a dangerous distraction. The attempt of a 'nuclear renaissance' led by nuclear industries' lobbyists since the 2000s has never been successful—it is simply too costly, too risky, too undemocratic, and too time-consuming. We already have cheaper, safer, democratic, and faster solutions to the climate crisis, and they are renewable energy and energy efficiency."
When word of the multi-nation pledge emerged last month, Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and co-founder of The Solutions Project which offers a roadmap for 100% renewable energy that excludes nuclear energy, called the proposal the "stupidest policy proposal I've ever seen."
Jacobson said the plan to boost nuclear capacity in a manner to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis "will never happen no matter how many goals are set" and added that President Joe Biden was getting "bad advice in the White House" for supporting it.
In comments from Dubai, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said that while he agrees nuclear will be a "sweeping alternative to every other energy source," but claimed that "science and the reality of facts" shows the world cannot "get to net-zero by 2050 with some nuclear."
Numerous studies and blueprints towards a renewable energy future, however, have shown this is not established fact, but rather the position taken by both the nuclear power industry itself and those who would otherwise like to slow the transition to a truly renewable energy system.
Pauline Boyer, energy transition campaign manager with Greenpeace France, said the scientific evidence is clear and it is not in favor of a surge in nuclear power.
"If we wish to maintain a chance of a trajectory of 1.5°C, we must massively reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the coming years, but nuclear power is too slow to deploy in the face of the climate emergency," she said.
"The announcement of a tripling of capacities is disconnected from reality," Boyer continued. Citing delays and soaring costs, she said the nuclear industry "is losing ground in the global energy mix every day" in favor of renewable energy options that are cheaper, quicker to deploy, and more accessible to developing countries.
In 2016, researchers at the University of Sussex and the Vienna School of International Studies showed that "entrenched commitments to nuclear power" were likely "counterproductive" towards achieving renewable energy targets, especially as "better ways to meet climate goals"—namely solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower–were suppressed.
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Writing on the subject in 2019, Harvard University professor Naomi Orseskes and renowned author and psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton observed how advocates of nuclear power declare the technology "clean, efficient, economical, and safe" while in reality "it is none of these. It is expensive and poses grave dangers to our physical and psychological well-being."
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Hundreds of civil society groups and frontline voices from around the world on Saturday condemned a voluntary pledge heralded by government leaders and fossil fuel giants, calling the "Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter" unveiled at the COP28 climate talks in Dubai nothing but a cynical industry-backed smokescreen and greenwashing ploy that will allow for the continuation of massive emissions of carbon, methane, and other greenhouse gases.
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Oil Change's Tong also pointed to national promises on renewables in the context of the overall greenwashing effort underway trying to tell the world it can have a renewable energy revolution while also allowing the fossil fuel industry to continue its existence.
"If your company digs stuff up and burns it, you’re the problem. It’s time to wind down your business."
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"I've seen Gov. Abbott's border buoys for myself. They're illegal and dangerous."
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American Immigration Council policy director Aaron Reichlin-Melnick suggested on social media that the case turned out the way it did, even though the 5th Circuit is the most conservative U.S. appeals court, "in part because the panel draw was a very good one for the DOJ."
Abbott said Friday that the decision "is clearly wrong," that he and GOP state Attorney General Ken Paxton "will seek an immediate rehearing by the entire court," and that they will seek intervention from the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court "if needed."'
Despite the governor's determination to continue the legal battle, opponents of 4-foot-wide orange spherical buoys—which span 1,000 feet of the river near Eagle Pass—celebrated the appeals court decision.
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The immigrant youth-led group United We Dream also welcomed the "small victory" but stressed that "the razor buoys are only a fraction of Gov. Abbott's racist and murderous Operation Lone Star," pointing to a new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.
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Alison Parker, HRW's deputy U.S. director, declared that the state operation "is maximizing chaos, fear, and human rights abuses against Texans and migrants, which might be a cynical way to win political points but is not a responsible way to run a government."
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