Tuesday Night Owls: Senators Warren, Wyden and Merkley push Biden to ‘padlock the revolving door’

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29 DAYS UNTIL JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS TAKE THE OATH OF OFFICE

Kenny Stancil at Common Dreams writes—After Four Years of ‘Outright Grift’ Under Trump, Trio of Democratic Senators Urges Biden to ‘Padlock the Revolving Door’

In the wake of the Trump administration’s pervasive corruption and flagrant law-breaking, a trio of Democratic lawmakers is urging President-elect Joe Biden to establish new, high standards for federal ethics and transparency by adopting key reforms that would prevent corporate lobbyists from serving in the White House, require the disclosure of lobbying materials privately shared with administration officials, and crack down on financial conflicts of interest.

Encouraged by what they characterized as Biden’s “commitment to restore executive branch ethics through executive action,” Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) on Monday sent a letter (pdf) to the president-elect with specific recommendations for how to “end special interest corruption of our politics and make government work for the people.”

Americans, the lawmakers wrote, “have endured four years of the most corrupt president and administration in modern memory.” […]

According to the lawmakers, “the best way” to improve outcomes for people in the United States “is to stop special interests from profiting off of the public service of government officials and to padlock the revolving door between corporate, special interest and our government.”

To this end, the trio insisted on “enacting a total ban on lobbyists employed by corporations from serving in the administration, especially at executive agencies they lobbied.” […]

THREE OTHER ARTICLES WORTH READING

• A Historic Surge in Gun Violence Compounds the Traumas of 2020, by Champe Barton, Brian Freskos, and Daniel Nass. In over a dozen cities, homicides rose by 50 percent or more this year. “It’s very likely that these increases are larger than any on record,” said one criminologist.
   
• ’Basically Cyberbullying’: How Cops Abuse Social Media to Publicly Humiliate, by Hope Corrigan. Law enforcement agencies are creating online content, often at the expense of people they have arrested.
   
• Trump Has Reached the ‘Railing Against Mike Pence’ Bunker Phase, by Jonathan Chait. In the true final stages of the Trump presidency, we at last have evidence of genuine change. Trump’s mental decline may not be actually accelerating, but he is turning against his supporters in a sharp and distinctive fashion.

TOP COMMENTS • RESCUED DIARIES 

QUOTATION

“The virus that we’re talking about having to do, a lot of people think that goes away in April, with the heat, as the heat comes in, typically that will go away in April.” ~~Donald J. Trump, Feb. 10, 2020. 

TWEET OF THE DAY

BLAST FROM THE PAST

At Daily Kos on this date in 2002—In defense of Sen. Murray:

Boy, stung from a real scandal, the GOP is now trying to manufacture one on the Democratic side.

So here’s the deal:

Sen. Patty Murray intended to be provocative when she told a group of high school students terrorist leader Osama bin Laden is popular in poor countries because he helped pay for schools, roads and even day care centers.

“We haven’t done that,” Murray said. “How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?”

Got it? She said: the US would be more popular overseas if we built schools, rather than bomb. Osama builds schools (which he does). Therefore, Osama is more popular.

This is outrageous? So Drudge and all the jokers of the Mighty Wullitzer are making Murray out to be some kind of enemy sympathizer. Even better, they are asking her to resign. This even as known segregationists Lott and Ashcroft remain in public service