Draining the Swamp

The supposed “anti-establishment” candidate has surrounded himself with long-time Washington insiders and lobbyists.

IOKIYAAR.

With Trump’s Election, a Bonanza for Washington Lobbyists

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON — Trent Lott, the former Republican senator from Mississippi, had gleefully flown back from Florida, where he had been working for the campaign of Donald J. Trump. Now a powerful lobbyist, his phone had been buzzing nonstop and he was busy helping to organize a briefing Thursday morning for dozens of corporate clients.

He was not alone. The stunning surprise of the election, and the political chaos it created, is a boon for Washington’s lobbying corridor known as K Street.

Corporate America is both excited and anxious about the prospect of Mr. Trump’s presidency, seeing great opportunity to shape the agenda after an extended period of frustration over gridlock in Congress.

With Republicans poised to control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, Mr. Lott said he had not seen such a chance to help clients since he left the Senate in 2007 — whether by making changes to the federal tax code for Amazon or increasing military spending on new ships for Huntington Ingalls Industries.

“Trump has pledged to change things in Washington — about draining the swamp,” said Mr. Lott, who now works at Squire Patton Boggs, a law and lobbying firm. “He is going to need some people to help guide him through the swamp — how do you get in and how you get out? We are prepared to help do that.”

Across Washington, lobbyists and trade association executives were busy reviewing their priorities, which include repealing financial regulations instituted during the Obama administration, pushing for cuts in corporate taxes, overhauling President Obama’s signature health care plan and spending billions on roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

“On these significant issues, now that you have one party controlling the executive branch and the legislature, it is more likely they will be addressed,” said Marc S. Lampkin, managing partner of the lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, whose roster of more than 135 clients includes the drug maker AbbVie and the insurance company Zurich Financial Services.

As for healthcare?

People need to be far more worried about Paul Ryan at this point. He’s already said he’s going to privatize Medicare, and he’ll be able to pass this, easily, without Democratic filibusters, which McConnell may end.

Ironically, what would that privatization do to Medicare? Turn it into Obamacare for the elderly. Obamacare is just privatized, for-profit, health care insurance, subsidized with tax dollars, which instantly means far higher prices and far less coverage than we could get through Single Payer.

Medicare is Single Payer, and can provide citizens with far more coverage at a far lower cost than ANY private, for-profit company. The private sector can’t possibly compete on price and value with the public sector. Its overhead costs, endless need for profit, share-holder dividends, tax avoidance wings, ad wings, marketing wings, make that impossible.

Ryan is basically going to turn a far better system into a far worse one, by making it pretty much like Obamacare for folks over 65.

And a hell of a lot of us can’t afford that change. I’m one of them.

bnw wrote:

He needs people that can navigate the DC swamp. Lets see his policy initiatives in play before condemning him.

That’s excusing and rationalizing everything he and his supporters condemned during the election. Now that he’s in, it’s apparently okay to be everything they condemned in their opponents. That’s excusing “crony capitalism” and “pay to play” now because it’s Trump and Republicans doing it.

And that’s the very definition of hypocrisy. It’s rank, slam dunk, obvious hypocrisy of the worst kind.

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Billy_T.

bnw wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

bnw wrote:

He needs people that can navigate the DC swamp. Lets see his policy initiatives in play before condemning him.

That’s excusing and rationalizing everything he and his supporters condemned during the election. Now that he’s in, it’s apparently okay to be everything they condemned in their opponents. That’s excusing “crony capitalism” and “pay to play” now because it’s Trump and Republicans doing it.

And that’s the very definition of hypocrisy. It’s rank, slam dunk, obvious hypocrisy of the worst kind.

No it isn’t and you are jumping the gun.

bnw, this one is soooo obvious, I thought surely you’d see it too. It’s not debatable. There is no way to spin this. Just look at the people Trump has around him. They’re all long-time, crony-capitalist, DC insiders. And he’s already tapping Wall Streeters for key economic posts, and K-Street is psyched. Jamie Dimon for Treasury is a real possibility, for example.

He conned his voters, bnw. He conned them, and we saw that long ago, but his voters didn’t. They refused to see the snake right under their noses and he’s biting them now.

Billy_T wrote:

And that’s the very definition of hypocrisy. It’s rank, slam dunk, obvious hypocrisy of the worst kind.

You mean Trump’s hypocrisy, right? IE meaning as you see it.

.

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

And that’s the very definition of hypocrisy. It’s rank, slam dunk, obvious hypocrisy of the worst kind.

You mean Trump’s hypocrisy, right?

Yes. Absolutely.

PA Ram wrote:

I find myself reading this with a smile as I think back to Bernie.

Like him or hate him, does anyone believe that he would have had someone like Jamie Dimon on his short list for Treasury Secretary?

He was the most genuine candidate in my lifetime. I appreciate him more every day.

Agreed. And I still think he didn’t want to go far enough. But relative to everyone else in the duopoly? Yeah. Head and shoulders better. Definitely genuine and I think he would have crushed Trump.