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MIKE PAPANTONIO: For decades,lobbyists have helped influence politicians with corporate
money, but now they have found an even better way to deliver for corporate America by getting
appointed to high ranking positions.That's within the administration most of the time.Joining
me now to talk about this are attorneys Howard Nations and Dave Tescell. Howard, you know,we
used to see the idea of revolving door, where we would actually have somebody moving from
industry and they would move maybe into the public sector and that was one way we saw
revolving door, and then we see them moving from the public sector, the private sector
into the public sector, so it goes both ways.And what we're seeing now more, I think, and I
don't know, I want both of your opinions on this, but what we are seeing now is this new
form of imposing the will of corporations by a person who on day one had worked with
a corporation and on day two, they are working inside of the administration changing laws
inside. Howard, aren't you seeing that as a huge, new, developing problem, even more
so than we saw, even ten years ago? HOWARD NATIONS: Well, it's definitely true,
Mike, and as usual, not unusual at all, *** Cheney is the poster boy for this type of
situation where when he was nominated for Vice President in his initial report, he made
a financial disclosures that his income from Halliburton was $6.4 million in compensation.On
May 15th, after he took office, he reported that his income from Halliburton was $35.1
million.He then proceeded to spend eight years of billions of dollars of taxpayer going in
no bid contracts to Halliburton, big surprise. MIKE: So Dave, what we see happening is the
way that I see this new revolving door, as I say, it revolves in two directions.But the
new revolving door that we're seeing more of, I guess is the best way to put is where
an employee is working with a corporation, they have been there ten years, they say,
you know, we are going to give you a bonus if you can seat yourself somewhere inside
government, to where you can have an impact on laws inside the administration and they
give them huge bonuses if they can get a job like that.Don't you see that happening more
and more? DAVE TESCELL: Mike, this is just shameless.It's
almost unbelievable.One of the best examples that we have seen is Jack Lew, the treasury
secretary, under Obama.It just came out that in 2009 when he left to become part of the
Obama administration, he was paid a million dollar bonus by Citi Group for taking that
position and Citi Group is not the only large big business that is doing this.There is at
least eight large companies on Wall Street that pay bonuses to employees who are leaving
their employment, if they go into government. Usually bonuses are paid in business in order
to reward work and keep good employees long term. Now, shamelessly, they are paying for
access and influence into the government up front, by paying bonuses when they leave to
go to government. MIKE:Howard, aren't they actually enticing
some of their employees that they feel have the chance to make the leap into government,
inside the administration or inside some regulatory agency? Aren't they actually enticing their
employees to make that move by telling them that gee ***, if you do that, you are going
to be able to draw down on your pension program immediately? We are going to go ahead and
give you all kinds of money that you wouldn't have been able to get immediately, and we
encourage you to do this thing they call, become the public servant, well, really what
it is is it's the corporate servant, isn't it, Howard.Isn't that what this is all about?
HOWARD: Well, if you look at the jobs they are going into, primarily, they are going
into jobs as staffers with congress.Staff members in congress are extremely important.They
are important in two regards.You have legislative staff members who are, they work directly
for the congressman, but then you have committee staff members who are generally hired by the
chairman of the committee, they have tremendous influence on everything that takes place before
the committee, so what they are doing is they are hiring not just members of the corporation,
they are hiring lobbyists.Lobbyists.This is amazing.Lobbyists for corporations are being
hired to go into jobs as staff members of congress, exercising extreme influence.
MIKE:Dave, one story that hit the news that I think maybe is, maybe even corporate media
reported a little bit, but for the most part they ignored the story, and that's the Northrop
Grumman story. Lay that out for us a little bit. What happened with this very ugly little
history that tells the story about what's happening to our government?
DAVE:Well, this is just amazing.I mean, we have seen exactly what Howard was just talking
about where lobbyists are going into congress and being paid large bonuses before they become
staffers.Now, Northrop Grumman, in the Global Hawk Program, was trying to sell a new program
to the United States government to replace the U2 manned surveillance program, which
works perfectly fine. MIKE:Yeah, there's never been a complaint.As
a matter of fact— DAVE:There's never been a complaint.
MIKE:The military said, we don't need this new thing that you are trying to sell us,
right? DAVE:The military said, we need to cut back
and this is where we can cut back.We don't need this unmanned spacecraft.But Northrop
Grumman in a multi-billion dollar industry, and to make sure that they made money, they
made sure that their lobbyists got to become staffers in congress and made sure to fight
this and now are using this program to attack Obama saying this is President Obama trying
to cut back on the military against our will.When really the military doesn't want this program.
MIKE:Yeah, the Global Hawk Saga, again, you start off with the military saying no, we
don't even need this thing, you are wasting money by doing it.And then the next thing
we see, we see people, we see lobbyists that are working with people like Jim Inhofe.You
know, who has this incredibly close relationship with the arms industry, we see their lobbyists
showing up and the way they are showing up is they are leaving Grumman, they are leaving
Northrop Grumman.Northrop Grumman is saying, hey, on your way out, by the way, why don't
we give you an extra $400,000. DAVE:Absolutely.
MIKE:Just because you have been such a good employee, and oh, by the way, when you get
over there to Jim Inhofe's shop there, and when Jim Inhofe tries to sell the American
public on this new thing called the Global Hawk, make sure you make it happen.Howard,
isn't that basically how we see it happening with all the industry right now? HOWARD:That's
how we are seeing it happen across the board, Mike and we are seeing, you have to stop and
think of the simple common sense of this.And this is not just the republicans in this case
doing this.For example, in 2008, David Krone, who was the chief lobbyist for Comcast was
paid $2.9 million.Now think about this, Comcast paid him $2.9 million and then paid off a
$1.2 million condo that he had in Philadelphia in order for him to go in and take a job at
$170,000 a year salary as Chief of Staff of Harry Reid.Now, why is that so important?
The Chief of Staff is the gatekeeper.They are the people that exercise an unbelievable
amount of influence on who gets to talk to, who gets access to the congressman on all
sorts of legislation. It's a huge job, but it pays $170,000 a year.Why do you give up
something that's paying you $2 million a year for $170,000, I wonder.
MIKE:Howard,isn't that rest of that story, or David, let me just ask you this—
DAVE:Sure. MIKE:I think you talked about this last program.Isn't
part of that story is here you have Comcast, obviously MSNBC, they are the media, so why
would the media, corporate media report a story like this? Why would corporate media
talk about that revolving door that takes place between the lobbyist and the public
sector and the private sector? Why would Comcast have any interest in it going on the nightly
news and say, oh, by the way, the people that we just sent over to government, to work as
government workers used to work with us and we gave them a huge bonus before they left.Why
would Comcast just do that kind of reporting? DAVE:Absolutely.They are not going to do that.I
mean, this is the huge conflict of interest.And what's amazing is that we tried to pass, Congress
talked about the Stock Act and passing an act to be able to actually track this type
of disclosure, when employees would come into congress, they would have to disclose those
kinds of benefits that they got.And one of the major improvements in the disclosures
was that the stock act would require an easy to use, online database, so that the American
public and so that people beyond the mainstream media, other outlets that actually try to
uncover these types of stories, could actually find out about this.And what did they do most
recently? Very quietly without being reported, again, Mike, by the mainstream media, by Comcast.
What they did was, they removed that from the bill.They removed the ability, in the
middle of the night. MIKE:Obama signs off on it in the middle of
the night.And the media doesn't do any reporting because the people who benefit from this really,
just as big as the defense contractors, Howard, I know you'll agree, if you take a look at
these stories dealing with the media, corporate media, buddy, they are loading up a government
regulatory agencies, now the new load up is in telecom, isn't it, Howard? Isn't that another
area where we are seeing them double down on their effort to change democracy by just
paying people off directly and indirectly? HOWARD:Well, in telecommunications, they have
so many lobbyists who became members, who became staff members in congress and who have
taken other jobs in congress so they can make sure that everything they won't pass gets
passed. And that's what's happening across the board with the biggest lobbyists and if
there is major legislation pending or if legislation has just been passed that they want to repeal,
you will find these people going into the-, they are loading up.They load up the committees.They
load up the congressmen that are in charge of either passing that legislation or trying
to repeal that legislation. MIKE:And Dave, if you are waiting for a story
to be heard on the nightly news about this actually happening, wouldn't you tell people
to listen very closely, because they won't hear it?
DAVE:They won't hear it.I mean, this is common sense, Howard said this before, but it needs
to be emphasized, why would someone leave a job on K Street Making a million, two million,
three million dollars a year. MIKE:Right, to work for the government for
$170,000. DAVE:Exactly.
MIKE:Hey, guys, thanks a lot.It's a story we'll continue talking about because nobody
else seems to be interested in talking about it.Thank you for joining me.