Obama and Perez are kindred lost souls, or make it kindred frauds. Were you, now knowing recent history, to expect either CHANGE or HOPE from either, you'd be idiot enough to have some other con sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.
This is a topic hard to let go. Crabgrass already posted, here, linking to Jacobin's post about the sleaze bucket. Because the Perez segue says so much about the true nature of the pack of Democratic Party nationwide bosses, who seem to hate the people as much as Trump does, it foreshadows the furture strangle any chance the Party will become people friendly rather than Moloch friendly, Mammon friendly, while whoring with lies, to US.
That said, moving next to online commentary and reporting (beyond Jacobin's) of the SOB finally showing his true colors by taking the job at a labor-undermining law firm.
But one more thing to add, before that:
TOM PEREZ MIRRORS ALL THAT IS WcRONG WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY - PEREZ, WHOSE LAST NAME SHOULD BE CHANGED TO CLINTON, ARGUABLY IS WORTH A PINCH OF SHIT, BUT NO MORE THAN THAT.
Now online commentary, of note:
SLUDGE first:
After a four year tenure as chair of the Democratic National
Committee, Tom Perez has taken a job as partner at Washington D.C. law
and lobbying firm Venable LLP.
“When assisting clients with legal, legislative, and regulatory
matters across a broad range of subject matter areas, Tom Perez brings
to bear decades of experience leading government organizations at the
federal, state, and local levels,” Venable’s website says.
Venable advertises
services defending employers against labor unions, including collective
bargaining negotiations, refuting unfair labor practices allegations,
and offering advice during union organizing campaigns and petition
drives.
“We regularly counsel and train clients on union avoidance,” Venable’s website reads.
Perez took charge of a beleaguered DNC in 2017, after an election
cycle where the group was accused by some of its most influential
figures of rigging the nominating process
against grassroots candidate Bernie Sanders and in favor of
establishment favorite Hillary Clinton. But rather than reckoning with
how the organization funneled $82 million to the Clinton campaign and
patching up relations with the grassroots elements of the party, Perez
elevated establishment figures to positions where they could vote down
reforms like instituting a conflict of interest policy and banning
corporate lobbyists from being superdelegates.
As Sludge has covered extensively,
Perez purged key DNC committees of members who had supported Sanders or
his chairmanship opponent Keith Ellison, and replaced them with
corporate lobbyists and Clinton allies. For example, Perez appointed
multiple corporate figures to the DNC Executive Committee in 2017,
including state oil and gas lobbyist Tonio Burgos, lobbying firm
principal Minyon Moore, and finance industry and casino gaming
consultant Susan Swecker.
- and more -
“His investment in state parties was almost non-existent, his Rural Desk
consisted of a single person, and he even managed to screw up the 2020
Iowa caucuses,” said political consultant Matt L. Barron. “All in all,
Perez has to be one of the worst DNC chairs ever.”
A context for that last sentence is that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was his predecessor; making it necessary to have to write "one of." More:
Department of Defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin employs
Venable to lobby on the defense appropriations bill provisions related
to its contracts and tax issues involving foreign-derived income. Eagle
LNG, a Texas natural gas company with operations throughout the
Caribbean, pays Venable to lobby Congress on energy infrastructure
issues, marine fuel, and fuel bunkering. Other Venable lobbying clients
include American Airlines, hedge fund Citadel LLC, utility trade
association Edison Electric Institute, and McAfee LLC.
Perez is not yet a registered lobbyist, but his Venable bio page
lists services including “legislative and government affairs,” which can
include lobbying visits with officials as well as work like monitoring
regulatory proceedings and preparing research and other materials to
influence the government.
In August 2020, toward the end of Perez’s stint as DNC chair, the DNC Rules Committee voted down
a resolution from a Sanders delegate to amend the DNC charter to ban it
from accepting corporate PAC donations and prohibit lobbyists for
for-profit corporations from serving as members. Many of the Rules
Committee members who led the opposition to the resolution were Perez
appointees with background in corporate lobbying, Sludge found.
Then the coup de gras for the credibility of the Democratic Party, national level, by SLUDGE:
Perez has been replaced as DNC chair by Jaime Harrison, a former
lobbyist and floor director and counsel for House Majority Whip Rep.
James Clyburn (D-S.C.). Harrison worked for Podesta Group as a lobbyist
from 2008 through 2016, representing 68 clients including Boeing, Bank of America, BP America, Wells Fargo, and Wal-Mart.
Clyburn and the Podesta brother ties suggest the above noted "one of" comment is super relevant, given successor, as well as predecessor. Shit running DNC makes it hard to vote Dem, with only Trump, McConnell, Paul Ryan and such suggesting it could be worse.
DNC's kind of "leadership" transitioning (in light of the alternative) should make an "independent" out of every cogent soul in the nation.
There's another relevant online analysis from 2020, i.e., from before this latest backstabbing of labor by an Obama administration insider; context being right after the Iowa caucus SNAFU on the Dem side of things, working against Bernie's popularity. American Prospect having then posted:
Tom Perez Should Resign, Preferably Today -- He represents an establishment that has put its own position in the party above the party’s success. It’s time to go.
by David Dayen - February 7, 2020
Tom Perez should never have been DNC chair. He was used
as part of a proxy war between Barack Obama’s faction of the
establishment and the rest of the party, which was fully ready to move
on after the 2016 mess. Both Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer had embraced
Keith Ellison, one of Bernie Sanders’s top surrogates in 2016, for the
position, a show of unity that might have helped rebuild broken bonds
within the party. Just as Howard Dean’s elevation to DNC chair in 2005
brought insurgents within a broader circle of power, Ellison’s victory
would have at least attempted a rough union between the Sanders and
Clinton forces, and given the party’s left wing more of a shot at
creating a strong and legitimate message to counter Donald Trump.
Obama couldn’t handle it. He pressured Perez, who was musing about
running for governor in Maryland, into the race, and bore down on the
establishment to break with the Ellison unity shtick and accept his
preferred candidate. This eventually succeeded, with the help of a party coup in Puerto Rico that delivered Perez all of that delegation’s votes.
Obama, now a movie studio boss
and occasional public speaker, had no personal reason to force Perez on
the party. The most logical reading of his rationale would be that he
did it for the blob,
the network of consultants, strategists, pollsters, lobbyists, policy
mandarins, and media figures for whom politics is their business. They
didn’t want the spigot to close on the hundreds of millions of dollars
that flow through campaigns, and they needed to eliminate the threat of a
gatekeeper like Ellison, who might have different ideas. So Perez was
installed.
The disastrous past week of Democratic politics is the result, deeply
damaging the perceived competence of a party that is attempting to ask
the American people to put them back in power to engage in activist
government. The Iowa results weren’t just one snafu but part of a
pattern of self-dealing and stupidity within a party elite that’s more
concerned with staying in power than taking power. And so, for the
second straight cycle, like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a DNC chair needs
to step down before the end of their term. Tom Perez must go.
He didn't. Until now. Replaced by dreck. The bulk of the remainder of that 2020 American Prospect item dealt with how Perez led a biased and abominable fuck-up in the 2020 Iowa caucusing, one which, however, disadvantaged Bernie.
Of all things?
.......................................................
Finally, for readers who ignored urging in earlier Crabgrass posting to access the current Jacobin item, excerpting next, from it's beginning:
Tom Perez announced on Thursday that he’s joining the law firm Venable LLP, whose website boasts that its lawyers “regularly counsel and train clients on union avoidance.”
Perez, who was the Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair until
January, joins a growing number of Obama officials who cashed in their
government experience with jobs at union-busting companies. That list
includes press secretaries Jay Carney, who became the top flack at Amazon, and Robert Gibbs, who spent several years as a top flack for McDonald’s. Obama senior advisor David Plouffe served as policy chief at Uber, while former senior adviser Valerie Jarrett has a board seat at Lyft.
Rather than avoid issues he oversaw as labor secretary, Perez said in
a press release he will be working specifically on those issues.
“Venable’s attorneys are at the forefront of helping clients navigate
dynamic regulatory, policy, and labor and employment issues,” Perez
said in Venable’s press release announcing his hiring. “I look forward to joining them in this important work.”
Michael Volpe, a cochair of Venable’s labor and employment practice
group, said that Perez’s “unique background and insights on workplace
matters will be invaluable to our clients.” Volpe’s firm biography notes that he has “broad experience representing corporate interests in union organizing efforts and campaigns.”
With that record of former Obama flunkies cashing in anti-labor, what else needs to be said? How from ordinary beginnings you get a Martha's Vineyard waterfront mansion estate is not via a people friendly legacy, but something you can HOPE for if you CHANGE things in ways favored by Mammon. Just move to the dark side of The Force. Then, Mammon rewards.
_________UPDATE________
Two items more, NYT hinting at the politics from before Perez formally put his name into the contest to succeed DWS as DNC head; and this current image from DWT.
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Interestingly, the NYT item mentions, "Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party" as a voice in things back then; while the DWT item speaks for itself, (the image headlining this DWT post).
In Minnesota, DFL people in office and in support are clearly better than the Minnesota Republicans, who now fawn over Trump.
Nationally, both parties suck. Biden in place getting nothing done but posturing well, with Manchin as an excuse for nothing getting done; Harris in waiting - depressing at best. Republicans, a joke, but with a rabid base and effective GOTV, despite their being who they are. Lindsey Graham arguably being a prototypical Trump stooge.
Lindsey Graham additionally whoomped Harrison in the last Senate election to remain in Congress, tons of money failing to buy that seat for Harrison. Harrison then was the Clyburn-Biden choice to head DNC, much as Ms. Harris was the Clyburn-Biden choice for VP.
Progress suffers, unless and until . . . CHANGE
If ever.
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