Democracy Now! reports via AlterNet
Ken Salazar is a former U.S. Senator from Colorado who now works at WilmerHale, one of the most influential lobbying firms in Washington. Some groups have criticized Salazar's selection due to his vocal support of fracking, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Keystone XL pipeline.
In addition to Ken Salazar, other leaders of the transition team include former Obama National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Center for American Progress head Neera Tanden, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, and Maggie Williams, the director of Harvard's Institute of Politics.
[...] WilmerHale [represents] corporate clients across the board--Cigna, for instance. Cigna is a healthcare giant that is fighting for a merger with Anthem. WilmerHale represents them, Delta Airlines, Verizon, investment firms, a mining company. So, WilmerHale is a major law and lobbying firm.
Ken Salazar is not a registered lobbyist at WilmerHale; he is a partner there. Interestingly enough, Hillary Clinton had published a year ago an op-ed deriding the revolving door where lawmakers leave office and become lobbyists or help special interests. And she had specifically said that she was concerned about lawmakers who go into that line of work, public policy work, for corporate clients, but do not register as a lobbyist, which seems to fit the description of Ken Salazar.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday August 19 2016, @12:08PM
Formerly establishment = support of Israel via bombing random middle eastern countries and occasionally getting our civilians attacked = used to be a major neocon point.
Now that the neocons are rapidly leaving the R party, bombing every country in the ME other than Israel is going to be establishment, not right wing or any wing.
And Trump not running on being an establishment lackey, that's how in one election cycle, bombing Iran and every non-Israel country in the middle east went from being a hard core R issue to a hard core D issue.
What we're living thru right now is much like about half a century ago when a mix of civil rights and the 'southern strategy' mixed everything up for a couple years till things settled down into a new configuration.
As for some speculation on the new political configuration maybe 2025 ish era: Now that the D party is the home of the establishment but still the leader of progressive signalling its going to be interesting to watch that narrative rust away. Imagine an anti-globalist committee of hippies joining the R party because the D want anyone who's not a billionaire international corporation dead, its going to be weird. What happens when 10M hippies try to join the party of gun rights? Likewise the Puritan Christians who gave us screwed up progressivism and holiness spirals and all that, and the Jewish people, are generally leaving the R party. Without the Puritan Christians screwing up the R party I'm not entirely certain abortion will even be a distractor issue for the R anymore, along the lines of "its a church thing and just like baptism is a church thing, abortion is none of the .gov business" Imagine a R party proposing legalization of weed, thats the only way it could possibly happen nationally along the lines of the old Vulcan proverb of only Nixon could go to China.