XPost: rec.arts.tv
This close connection between government and Amazon should bring
up suspicions of corruption in government and Amazon. Is Amazon
being illegally subsidized by the state? When Amazon bans books
are they working jointly with the government as part of Big Media?
And about the intelligence agencies, they are the ones who have
presided over attacks on the national security of the United States,
for example, the espionage of shipping the 15 million federal
workers and ex-workers personnel records to China about 5 years
ago, and who knows what else that has gone unreported. Are our
intelligence agencies compromised? Are they, and Amazon, working
to dismantle the United States by way of corruption?
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/03/amazon-has-become-a-prime-revolving-door-destination-in-washington/
March 2, 2021
Amazon Has Become a Prime Revolving-Door Destination in Washington
“Its interests probably transverse the US government more than
any other company.”
Everything about Amazon is big. It’s the second-biggest retailer
in the world. Its founder, Jeff Bezos, possesses the biggest
fortune in the world. And the company has developed a big
revolving door in Washington through which government officials
and employees whisk and land in well-paying jobs at Amazon, which
has a big list of interests it seeks to protect and advance in
the nation’s capital.
A Mother Jones investigation has identified at least 247 US
government officials and employees—with about 150 hailing from
the intelligence, cybersecurity, law enforcement, and military
fields—who were hired by Amazon in the past 10 years or so. About
200 of them have been retained by the fast-growing company since
the start of 2017. This list is not comprehensive and represents
what is likely only a portion of federal employees who left
government service for Amazon. It was compiled by searching
LinkedIn and locating people who, according to their profiles,
had worked in the federal government directly before moving to
Amazon; it relies on information provided by the platform’s
users. There are no public records that track all the US
officials and employees hired by Amazon or other firms.
It is not uncommon for prominent firms to vacuum up government
officials who can lobby their former agencies, win and manage
lucrative government contracts, offer strategic or legal advice,
or perform other services. Boeing, Raytheon, and other military
contractors hire loads of people from the Defense Department and
the armed services. (Most of the senior military
officials—generals, admirals, and others—who leave the Pentagon
for the private sector do become lobbyists for military firms.)
Consulting firms, including McKinsey & Company, frequently
recruit former US officials.
Given that Amazon hired over 400,000 employees to increase its
workforce to more than 1.2 million in the first 10 months of last
year, the recruitment of hundreds of former federal officials and
employees is a small slice of its workforce expansion. Many of
these Amazon hires were undoubtedly brought aboard for their
technical know-how and work in positions in which they do not
interact with the government. And there is nothing illegal about
any of this (though there are limited restrictions on the sort of
lobbying activities certain senior government officials can
conduct after they land in a corporate suite). But good
government groups have long complained about the ever-spinning
revolving door between public service and private companies and
the possible impacts on government regulatory decision making and
contracting. Not only can corporations use such hires to navigate
and influence government actions; if a government official has
the possibility of obtaining a lucrative position at a
corporation, this may effect how he or she handles matters
related to that company.
“If you combine the quantity and breadth of their hires, Amazon
may have more of a revolving door than any other American company
now,” says Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project at
the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “There is almost no
department of the US government Amazon is not interested in.”
Timothy LaPira, a professor of political science and
revolving-door expert at James Madison University, points out
that Amazon wants people with government experience who can help
the company understand the regulatory landscape and how to adapt
to it: “Amazon is probably not buying access so much as they’re
buying the expertise of what happens behind closed doors.”
Amazon declined to comment for this story.
The roster of Amazon hires spans the US government. The list
includes an undersecretary for the Transportation Department, a
Pentagon deputy general counsel, a US Treasury economist, a
Federal Trade Commission associate general counsel, a Food and
Drug Administration cybersecurity operations director, a US Trade Representative senior director, a National Economic Council
senior director for trade policy, a former US ambassador to the
World Trade Organization, a Justice Department senior counsel in
the computer crime and intellectual property section, a National
Transportation Safety Board public affairs director, a General
Services Administration acting assistant commissioner, a Veterans Administration senior program manager, a Center for Medicaid and
Medicare Services senior adviser for information technology, and
an Office of Management and Budget chief acquisition officer.
There are many from the military and national security agencies:
a State Department internet policy adviser, a Department of
Homeland Security cyberthreat intelligence analyst, a National
Security Council director for space policy, a US Air Force deputy
chief of staff for operations, an FBI assistant director, a
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency talent acquisition
manager, a National Security Agency network analysis chief, a US
Navy cryptologic warfare officer, a Defense Intelligence Agency
operations officer, a senior official at the Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency, a Defense Contract Audit Agency
auditor, an Office of the Director of National Intelligence
senior plans officer, and a CIA East Africa Branch chief.
(According to the Intercept, Amazon has in recent years hired
more than 20 former FBI agents for its global security center in
Arizona.)
“Amazon is so vast and vaster in its ambitions,” says Hauser.
“Its interests probably transverse the US government more than
any other company.” Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the
Center for Responsive Politics, notes, “There have been
multinational corporations that have wielded clout in DC—AT&T,
Boeing—but they are hardly comparable to the tech giants,
including Amazon.”
Not surprisingly, Amazon has snapped up Capitol Hill veterans.
Its payroll in recent years has expanded with staffers for many
past and present lawmakers: Sens. Patty Murray, Dianne Feinstein,
Cory Booker, Jeanne Shaheen, Jon Kyl, Thom Tillis, Tom Cotton,
Tim Scott, John Kerry, David Vitter, Fritz Hollings, George
Allen, and Orrin Hatch; and Reps. Jimmy Duncan, Darrell Issa,
Todd Rokita, John Shadegg, Peter Welch, Mario Díaz-Balart, Suzan
DelBene, Lloyd Doggett, Will Hurd, Vernon Ehlers, and G.K.
Butterfield. The megacompany has also grabbed staff members of
various congressional committees, including the Senate Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Senate Finance
Committee, the House Appropriations Committee, the House
Judiciary Committee, the House Rules Committee, and the Committee
on Transportation and Infrastructure.
“If you combine the quantity and breadth of their hires, Amazon
may have more of a revolving door than any other American company
now. There is almost no department of the US government Amazon is
not interested in.”
One prominent example: In 2018, Lartease Tiffith, a senior
counsel for then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), jumped to Amazon
to become an in-house lobbyist and senior manager for privacy,
security, and consumer protection. Previously, Tiffith had worked
for Feinstein and the Justice Department.
In 2020, Amazon spent $18.7 million on Washington lobbying—about
a $2 million increase from the previous year—and assembled an influence-swaying army of 20 different lobbying firms and 118
individual lobbyists, which included 41 in-house lobbyists. One
member of this force was veteran lobbyist Jeff Ricchetti, the
brother of Steve Ricchetti, a counselor to President Joe Biden.
Amazon signed a contract with Jeff Ricchetti a week after Biden
was declared the winner of the 2020 election.
Perhaps the most noticed move from DC politics to Amazon came in
2015 when Jay Carney, a onetime journalist who had been President
Barack Obama’s press secretary, joined the firm as its senior
vice president of global corporate affairs—Amazon’s top person in Washington. (Before working for Obama, Carney was communications
director for then–Vice President Biden.) As Business Insider
reported, Carney “oversees public policy and communications and
is a member of Amazon’s elite ‘S-team,’ a group of 23 of the
company’s most senior employees that helps shape culture and
policy at Amazon.” He reports directly to Bezos.
Amazon has grown substantially in recent years to become a
company like no other in the United States. It has a wide array
of interests that stretch across the entire landscape of the US
government and that mostly fall within two fundamental areas:
regulation and contracts. The firm, the second-largest employer
in the United States (after Walmart), has long been criticized
for its workplace conditions and is battling a much-watched union
organizing effort in Alabama. (So it would deeply care about the
Department of Labor, the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration, and the National Labor Relations Board.) It owns
Whole Foods. (Cue the US Department of Agriculture and the Food
and Drug Administration.) It faces international regulatory
challenges. (Keep an eye on the USTR, the State Department, and
the Commerce Department.) It has developed one of the largest
trucking and delivery systems in the nation. (Watch the
Department of Transportation.) Cyber-commerce and cybersecurity
are top concerns. (Track the National Security Agency, the
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the FBI.)
And with its Prime streaming service, there’s telecommunications,
net neutrality, and broadband issues. (That means the Federal
Communications Commission.) Intellectual property, privacy,
Section 230, tax regulations, trade policy, mail delivery,
infrastructure, energy, and sustainability—so many matters
critical to Amazon are overseen by one or multiple government
entities.
And then there’s antitrust. As one of the biggest companies on
the planet, Amazon needs to fret about regulators and officials
at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission who
could be concerned about its dominance in multiple markets and
its possible use of monopolistic predatory pricing. Scott
Fitzgerald, who worked for a dozen years in the Justice
Department’s antitrust division, became a corporate counsel for
the company last year. Two years earlier, Bryson Bachman, a
senior attorney in the antitrust division, was hired as a senior
corporate counsel. Before working at the Justice Department,
Bachman served as chief counsel to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on the
Senate’s Antitrust Subcommittee. In recent years, Amazon has
hired at least three other veterans of the Justice Department’s
antitrust division and five FTC officials.
“Amazon especially needs people these days who bring technical
expertise the company needs in its battles with the government
over antitrust and privacy, as Washington looks at tech
regulation,” Krumholz says, “and money is hardly an issue for
Amazon.”
Simultaneously, the US government has become an important source
of revenue for Amazon, primarily though Amazon Web Services,
which sells cloud-based services. AWS pitches itself on its
website as a crucial supplier for the government: “The AWS Cloud
provides secure, scalable, and cost-efficient solutions to
support the unique requirements and missions of the US federal
government. Our cloud services can be employed to meet mandates,
reduce costs, drive efficiencies, and increase innovation across
civilian agencies, intelligence community, and the Department of
Defense.” That site lists contracts with the FAA, the IRS, the
Census, the Army, DHS, GSA, NASA, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, the Social Security Administration, the Department of
the Interior, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and
other government agencies. In 2014, AWS developed a computing
cloud for the CIA designed to be used by all 17 agencies of the
intelligence community. The price tag: $600 million. In November,
US immigration and Customs Enforcement noted its intent to pay
$100 million to AWS and Microsoft for cloud services. AWS sought
a $10 billion megacloud computing contract with the Defense
Department that was eventually awarded to Microsoft. But that
contract has been impeded by a lawsuit filed in 2019 by Amazon,
which accused then-President Donald Trump of intervening against
AWS due to his animosity toward Bezos, who owns the Washington
Post. (Bezos also owns Blue Origin, a rocket company, which has
plans to compete for US government contracts.)
Amazon’s net sales in 2020 were $386 billion—up 38 percent over
the previous year—with AWS accounting for $45 billion of that.
AWS was responsible for about 60 percent of the company’s
operating profits last year. The head of AWS, Andy Jassy, has
been tapped by Bezos to succeed him as CEO later this year. With
the federal government a major customer, AWS could use former
government officials to sell its wares to government agencies.
And with Washington so central to Amazon, the company is building
its HQ2—its second headquarters—in Arlington, Virginia, across
the Potomac from the nation’s capital. In 2016, Bezos bought a
swanky, 27,000-square-foot mansion in Washington.
Amazon’s expanding revolving door is a sign of how the firm has
grown and how it has become more involved with decisions and
policies made across the US government. As Krumholz observes,
“There is a lack of scrutiny and transparency in this area. And
there is nothing more MEGO—my eyes glaze over—than, say, cloud
services. There is far more outcry over where Amazon puts their
headquarters or what their delivery times are. But this is big,
big money, and inside baseball. The government agencies know how
important it is. Amazon knows how important it is. Everyday
Americans don’t.”
LaPira notes that government experience is increasingly valuable
for Amazon as it has become a corporate behemoth and the target
of regulatory and antitrust concerns. The company, he says, is
likely willing to pay a premium for it: “From a survival
perspective, we would expect Amazon to pull out all the stops...
They have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to
hire every former government official they can find.”
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)