7) Trump Previously Handed Over the Reins of Government to Corporate Elites or Their Lobbyists

Reason #7 to Vote Blue on Nov 5

Trump says he’s against the “elite.” Yet his actions show the opposite. In his previous administration, Trump appointed corporate elites or lobbyist stooges who did whatever they could to help big business at the expense of the poor and middle class. Two more examples:

Treasury Secretary. Steven Mnuchin got personally rich during his 17 years at Goldman Sachs, specializing in the kind of private-label mortgage securities that would end up nearly wrecking the global economy in 2008. He got richer by capitalizing on the carnage to buy a failing, scandal-stained bank on the cheap and carry out 36,000 foreclosures (many involving high-risk reverse mortgages marketed to elderly homeowners) while collecting federal subsidies intended to help keep people in their homes.

In 2015 and 2016, Mnuchin led the fundraising effort for candidate Donald Trump, raising $169 million. A day after being nominated for the Treasury job, Mnuchin declared the watering-down of Dodd-Frank bank rules his “top priority.” (Congress made these rules in order to prevent a repeat of the housing mortgage implosion that led to the 2008 recession.)

Agriculture Secretary. Sonny Perdue was the subject of multiple ethics investigations during two terms as governor of Georgia. Example: he approved a tax bill with a little-noticed provision that retroactively saved him $100,000 on a land sale. Yet Trump appointed him, and Perdue filled the Agriculture Department’s top ranks with former agribusiness executives and lobbyists, along with an unusual number of Trump campaign workers without other obvious qualifications.

Perdue highlights:

–> The Department OK’d sharply higher line speeds for hog and poultry slaughterhouses and cut back on USDA meat-safety inspections.

–> In Wisconsin for a conference of dairy farmers at a time of distress and a surge in farmer suicides, Perdue implied that they should just get used to it, telling reporters, “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out.”

–> The department proposed taking three million people off food stamps.

–> The department loosened many environmental and health and safety regulations and dismissed concerns over climate change.