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Corporate interests that were largely reluctant to embrace Donald Trump during the presidential campaign last year are finally opening their checkbooks to underwrite the festivities sweeping Washington, D.C., to welcome his incoming administration.
Firms with a great deal riding on the major policy agenda items of the next four years have lined up to sponsor the endless parade of hors d’oeuvres and open bars at parties across the city.
Topping the list are firms with interests in pharmaceuticals, oil, and defense contracting — highly regulated industries that have much at stake with ongoing policy discussions over drug pricing, environmental regulations, and the defense sequester.
Several events list ride-sharing companies Lyft or Uber as special transportation partners. Both firms face regulatory hurdles to accessing municipal markets and in terms of gaining approval for the next generation self-driving car technologies.
Lobbying shops are also sponsoring several balls. The DCI Group, a lobby shop that represents Verizon and Exxon Mobil, is helping sponsor a party for the Iowa delegation that includes Gov. Terry Branstad, Trump’s nominee to server as ambassador to China.
The Inaugural Heartland Ball, a party with at least 35 members of Congress hailing from Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin on its honorary committee, is sponsored by Abbott Laboratories, a major drug firm, and Motorola Solutions, which provides services for law enforcement, each contributing $25,000. Agricultural firms ADM, Monsanto, and CME Group, a private exchange for crop futures, each paid $15,000.
The Black Tie & Boots Inaugural Ball, a party for Texas lawmakers at the Gaylord National Resort near D.C., is sponsored by a raft of oil firms, including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries, Anadarko, Phillips 66, Valero, BP, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute, a lobby group for the industry.
The Indiana Society’s ball, co-chaired by Karen Pence, the vice president-elect’s wife, plans to party Thursday night at the Grand Hyatt Washington. The top sponsor is Anthem, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies, which is closely monitoring the Affordable Care Act repeal effort. Other sponsors include BP America, Coca-Cola, Duke Energy, Ford, Honda, Honeywell, and Peabody Energy, the major coal firm that is preparing to emerge out of bankruptcy. The sponsors of the event are offered a chance to mingle with the gala’s VIPs, expected to include people close to the incoming administration.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is expected to attend the Garden State Inaugural Gala, which is also taking place Thursday evening. The event advertises itself as a chance to hobnob with lawmakers, state legislators, and other politicians while being entertained by “classic boardwalk amusement games in the ‘Fun Zone.'” The biggest donors for the New Jersey event are drug firms Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novo Nordisk, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, and Prudential. Mallinckrodt on Wednesday agreed to pay $100 million to settle a federal investigation that one of its subsidiaries violated antitrust laws. Drug companies have watched warily as Trump last week renewed his campaign pledge to crack down on over-priced medicine, while progressive Democrats on Capitol Hill have also seized upon the issue.
Documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity show that donors to other official inauguration events are granted special opportunities to mix and mingle with the incoming administration. Donors who give $1 million and above receive an invitation to a special “leadership luncheon” with “select cabinet appointees and House and Senate leadership.” They will also receive a special invite to a dinner with Pence and to a luncheon with “the ladies of the first families.”
The donor lists for the official Trump inauguration parties have not yet been disclosed, though the New York Times has reported that Boeing, J.P. Morgan Chase, AT&T, Bank of America, Deloitte, United Parcel Service, and Chevron are among the firms that have pledged large sums to the host committee.
“These contributions cannot be viewed as mere patriotic support for the presidency or charitable, civic donations, but must be recognized within the context of pay-to-play politics that corrupts our political system,” wrote Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, in a release listing each company’s interest in high-stakes federal public policy. “It appears as though the pay-to-play culture is going to get much worse before it gets better.”
Special interests underwrote parties for the inauguration festivities for Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Obama. But for the incoming administration of Donald Trump — who ostensibly based much of his campaign on draining the swamp and tackling the political establishment — little seems to have changed.
These are some of those footing the bill.
America’s rapidly growing underclass will be ones actually paying the price of this cruel and belligerent vulgarian.
Congratulations America.
You’ve hired Jabba the Hut to manage your moral decay and political bankruptcy.
.
The Clintons are down and out the Bushes are political topiary. Economic Nationalism is ascendant. The media have been repeatedly chastised.
We’ll see how things go from here with President Donald J. Trump.
(aka Trumpzilla)
I see the Clinton a Global Initiative is wasting no time in winding down its pay to play non profit structure. So much for those good works.
Way back in the 1970s, ADM sponsored jets for both political parties to use during the campaign. The first order of business with the new congress was sugar price supports.
Draining the swamp might take a few more holes.
Thank GOD we have a for profit mentality, otherwise all the TAKERS will have left us with nothing.
“Who’s Paying for Inauguration Parties?”
People with money to burn.
A good opportunity to review the basics, from opensecrets:
“The Top 10 Things Every Voter Should Know About Money in Politics”
1. Money follows power.
2. Incumbents nearly always win.
3. Most races for Congress are not even competitive.
4. Small donors make good press; big donors get you re-elected.
5. Interests behind the money are predictable.
6. Donors seek a long term relationship.
7. The fundraising never stops.
8. Enforcement of campaign laws is weak.
9. All hell broke loose in the 2010 elections.
10. They don’t have to be crooks, just human.
As far as what’s going on with Trump’s inauguration, I’d bet the real cash cow is going to be the public-private infrastructure plan, on one hand a giveaway of tax dollars to private corporations along the lines of Iraqi Reconstruction projects, on the other an effort to turn all bridges and roads into privatized pay-to-access roads, as well as privatize the water supply system, Bechtel-in-Bolivia style. I don’t see “Make America Great Again” under this infrastructure plan, I think I see “Make America a Third-World Country” – with banks and finance leading the way, agreeing to “make investments in infrastructure” in exchange for privatized public assets, expecting to extract billions in fees from local communities. That’s how it is shaping up:
http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/315110-ryan-offers-picture-of-private-public-spending-in-trumps-infrastructure
Realistically, the only way to rebuild domestic infrastructure is massive cuts to the military-industrial budget, such as cancelling Obama’s $1 trillion nuclear weapons program and slashing NATO spending by 50%; then – under a non-corrupt management, that is – you could finance a ten-year national infrastructure reconstrution program that provided jobs and revitalized local economies. Looking at the donor list Lee Fang publishes here, with defense contractors at the top, that looks highly unlikely.
And with pharmaceuticals and oil in the other top spots, well, business-as-usual is to be expected. Isn’t that the same list of interests that was behind Hillary Clinton? Financial sector, pharmaceuticals, defense contractors, fossil fuels? So, see #1, money follows power.
It’s voter ignorance, apathy, and suppression that’s brung you lot to this. A simple plan would be to bring back the fairness doctrine, along with zero outside money for campaigns. Fully federally funded. Maybe $1.99 per vote. See, you guys are brain damaged. Can’t see the obvious. Why is that?
The Republicans know better than anybody there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch … just free hors d’oeuvres and cocktails.
Bah. I’m looking forward to protesting our country’s fascism (both ruling parties’) on Saturday, as one of probably hundreds of thousands of people marching in many Women’s Marches being held around the world.
NOTE: This comment contains harsh but necessary language to allow a point to be made. Intercept screeners: please don’t delete this.
Friday Trump gets sworn in. Meanwhile, progressives continue to fight among themselves. Who’s leads the DNC? Ellison or somebody else? Is Sanders a Democrat? Or just hustling for more power on the Hill? But also, why isn’t there a united progressive front to counter Trump and the neocons?
Answer: look at the comment sections on almost any news or information website. Almost always the vast majority of comments have nothing to do with the originating article. Instead, it’s pure troll hate. Some of it’s paid for. Some work for everyone from the CIA to Mossad to the Russian FSB. But the point is to just attack. No rational exchange of ideas. Instead, it’s the attitude of motherfucker. I’m gonna rip you to fucking pieces. Fuck you, fuck your mother, and you can kiss my fucking ass,. Fucking douche bag.
This is the state of political argument in 2017. Actual facts don’t matter. All that matters is opinions that can be hyped into infotainment talking points. As for cable news “pundits”, it’s the same attitude. I don’t give a fuck about these people. Just give me the fucking check.
This is why not all but a growing number of sites have eliminated their comment sections. Why the hell should editors waste their time policing the same old troll hate?
Please continue your troll attacks.
From my experiences, many of the most rational, reasoned, independent progressive writers don’t bother with comment sections. While I don’t claim to be in the same caliber of writers, I figure someone’s got to carry the flag for the true Left in these comment sections. And thus I sentence myself to being attacked by rabidly partisan and undemocratic voters, and the occasional troll.
Thankfully here at The Intercept, we tend to outnumber and outclass the trolls and rabid partisans by quite a bit, which makes this comment section more enjoyable.
I don’t think that this is very true of The Intercept. The thing that is different about this comment section is that it is very old fashioned. There is no fucking downvote button! No upvote button! No bogus “democracy” of the bots seeking out ideas to suppress in real time. So The Intercept gets a Usenet-like mix of the good, the bad, the crazy … but some of the comments are good, like yours. And we just need to recognize this and use it. I’ve had meaningful debates here; they’re away in the archives — unfortunately Intercept has in fact fallen victim to some “web 2.0″ stupidity like infinite scrolling, and doesn’t even proudly display a full index of its archives! There is nothing recent on the internet that is not a step backward. Use what you have, be glad for that, because it’s all going away.
The bigger problem you’re having is that people are indeed giving up. I think we have the sense that the U.S. has gone too far, done too much, held firm on far too little, God has it in for the country. Just stand back and wait for the inevitable war with Iran, a defeat more disastrous than any in history that unites most of the world against the U.S. and begins the fragmentation of its empire. But even beyond that, there is the sense that technology has gone far beyond what the slave-era mentalities of “intellectual property” and “fiduciary duty” will allow for — in the hands of a wealthy elite bent on control, it becomes only a curse, and the world looks for a Dark Age to dive into.
Even so, just as there are opportunities in victory there are opportunities in defeat. Who should forget the case of Saint Marino, one of the Christians who decided not to go to Heaven right away by the courtesy of hungry lions, but went to the hills and started a little safe haven for his fellow persecuted believers to run to? A haven which, against all odds, persists to this day as the nation of San Marino, the world’s oldest democracy. People can do things like that even in the declining days of a doomed empire, with the right inspiration. So the real question is… what is yours?
I love the little safe sentence Lee wrote at the end:
“Special interests underwrote parties for the inauguration festivities for Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Obama.”
This supposedly protects him from his obvious anti-Trump propaganda, by painting him as a fair historian … hidden so conveniently at the end of the article, an article that would give one the impression that Trump is breaking new unethical ground.
Let’s take a ride through reality again. Obama’s 2012 Inauguration:
Telephone Utilities $4,712,024
Securities & Investment $2,971,139
Electronics Mfg & Equip $2,563,785
Real Estate $1,994,596
Lawyers/Law Firms $1,588,935
Business Services $1,436,836
Oil & Gas $1,320,998
Defense Aerospace $1,112,859
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products $1,044,893
General Contractors $747,338
Obama’s 2009 Accession:
Securities & Investment $4,596,538
Lawyers/Law Firms $4,351,710
TV/Movies/Music $2,333,223
Business Services $2,116,
Real Estate $2,032,800
Retired $1,630,871
Misc Finance $1,504,728
Misc Business $1,393,724
Electronics Mfg & Equip $1,129,320
Non-Profit Institutions $878,266
https://www.opensecrets.org/obama/inaug.php
This supposedly protects him from his obvious anti-Trump propaganda, by painting him as a fair historian … hidden so conveniently at the end of the article, an article that would give one the impression that Trump is breaking new unethical ground.
It’s sad that stories on current events now have to come with declarations that amount to nothing more than, “Yeah, this is nothing new. Governments X, Y and Z have also done this.” and even then if that statement isn’t precisely located in the exact spot the interlocutor demands it will be summarily dismissed. One would have to be an idiot to think Trump is breaking new ground in anything he’s ever done his entire life, but go ahead and take wahttaboutery to the next dimension.
But before you do, perhaps you should spend some time in Lee’s twitter feed. Here are some recent gems:
Those are just from the last 24 hours.
Then there’s his history of articles:
DNC Chair Candidate Tom Perez Refuses to Support Ban on Corporate Money and Lobbyists – 1/18/17
Hacked Emails Prove Coordination Between Clinton Campaign and Super PACs – 10/18/16
Memo Shows What Major Donors Like Goldman Sachs Want From Democratic Party – 10/11/16
Hillary Clinton Touted Her Record of Spreading Fracking in Secret, Paid Speeches – 10/10/16
And so on and so forth. All there for you to discover if you were actually interested in making a factual point. How far back should he go to satisfy you? It’s not Lee’s fault that he’s reporting on current events that we need to be aware of. It’s how we can see that all this farcical shit is still happening unabated and, in some cases, getting worse.
Ignore the italics after the “Govt X, Y, Z” sentence. :-s
The dingers are getting fyslexic early today.
There are times when I’ve wondered whether a TI writer is pro-Dem. Lee Fang isn’t one of them, however; he’s one of TI’s best investigative journalists in my opinion.
TI is one of the least partisan outlets online. The are a few obviously partisan hacks at TI (Mackey) but overall accusing TI of partisanship is kind of laughable.
“Donors who give $1 million and above receive an invitation to a special “leadership luncheon” with “select cabinet appointees and House and Senate leadership.””
And this is not considered bribery in the USA because…?
Because there is no quo or quos, yet. Dunno, really, why this is acceptable.
Little is normal – and I say this from a historic perspective.
Selling access is a cup of $77,000 coffee or a safari with Donnie and Eric.
Not exactly sure how this qualifies as news. Big corporate donors pony up lots of cash to sponsor inaugural balls?
This is the Obama effort the last time around:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/president-obama-inauguration-planners-soliciting-1m-donations-article-1.1236317
“The changes are part of a continuing erosion of Obama’s pledge to keep donors and special interests at arm’s length of his presidency. He has abandoned the policy from his first inauguration to accept donations up to only $50,000 from individuals, announcing last month that he would take unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations.
“A fundraising appeal obtained by The Associated Press shows the Presidential Inaugural Committee is going far beyond Obama’s previous self-imposed limits and is looking to blow away modern American presidential inauguration fundraising records by offering donors four VIP packages named after the country’s founding fathers.”
read the final paragraph
I did.
As it appears you have also, would you please point out what part of this article offers “news” of any kind?
Every inauguration has sponsors of vacuous “balls” which are no more than the customary wretched excess of wealthy glitterati predictably celebrating themselves.
So what, exactly, has changed this cycle? No change, no news.
Who cares! Just so glad they get to party and celebrate the end of Obama. More importantly look for droves of drunk democrats tonight in DC.
My question is, how many women will Trump get away with molesting at these various and sundry inaugural balls…
Pay-to-play on steroids. How anyone at all can deny that this is the name of the game is beyond me. All you really have to look at is who is not included on the party circuit.