DiscussMormonism.com

Homeland Security Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

With the shift from fighting terrorists to fighting immigrants, the Department of Homeland Security has become a major funder of the private prison industry, which has reciprocated by sending a torrent of money to the Trump re-election effort and the Republican Party.
The two giants in the field, GEO Group and CoreCivic, run a combined 41 facilities housing more than half of the detainees held in custody by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit, known as ICE. As of mid-2019, the two companies had received an estimated $2.9 billion in federal contract revenues, $1.7 billion for GEO and $1.2 billion for CoreCivic. Executives and PACs associated with those companies have so far made roughly $1 million in reported contributions to the Trump 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

State Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

The U.S. has a long tradition of bestowing ambassadorships on wealthy friends of the president and his party. Donald Trump has taken it to new extremes, making more crony appointments than any past president and giving them to people with weaker qualifications in return for bigger sums of money.
His picks have included, as ambassador to Iceland, a dermatologist who had never even visited the country; as ambassador to the Bahamas, a real-estate developer who in his Senate confirmation testimony incorrectly described his assignment as a former U.S. rather than British protectorate; and as ambassador to Slovenia, the founder of an evangelical charity known for sharing bizarre right-wing social media posts such as “The Clinton ‘Body Count’ EXPANDS—5 Mysterious DEATHS in the last 6 weeks.”

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

QUICK AND DIRTY

Former Acting Director Mick Mulvaney opposed the agency’s creation and called it “a sick, sad joke.”
The payday lending industry’s main lobbying arm, the Community Financial Services Association of America, spent roughly $1 million holding its 2018 and 2019 annual conferences at the Trump-owned Doral golf resort. Collectively, payday groups and companies gave $2.2 million to the Trump campaign and inaugural committees during the 2016 election cycle.
In May 2018, Mulvaney’s agency took the remarkable step of siding with the payday industry in its legal efforts to delay implementation of a CFPB rule intended to block lenders from manipulating customers into unmanageable long-term debt.
Three weeks later, payday moguls Mike and Tina Hodges contributed $250,000 to the main super PAC working for Trump’s re-election. The Washington Post caught Mike Hodges, CEO of the mega-chain lender Advance Financial, telling his peers that money invested in the Trump cause would mean access to top administration officials. “I’ve gone to [Republican National Committee Chair] Ronna McDaniel and said, ‘Ronna, I need help on something,’” Hodges explained during an industry webinar. “She’s been able to call over to the White House and say, ‘Hey, we have one of our large givers. They need an audience … They need to be heard and you need to listen to them.’”
After lenders poured money into the Trump campaign and inauguration, Mulvaney terminated multiple investigations of payday companies over “rent-a-tribe” arrangements and other circumventions of law.
The bureau has cut back sharply on enforcement and financial relief for defrauded consumers.
The bureau wants to make it easier for debt collectors to barrage people with text and email messages.

Interior Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

Secretary David Bernhardt spent years representing mining and oil and gas interests, including Rosemont Copper, the National Mining Association, Cadiz, Inc. (a water project developer), Cobalt International Energy, Halliburton Energy, the Independent Petroleum Association, and the U.S. Oil and Gas Association.
As a lobbyist, Bernhardt earned $1.2 million from mining clients, $2.1 million from oil and gas clients, and $1.5 million from other energy companies, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He entered office with more declared conflicts of interest than any other Trump Cabinet member.
His former firm, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, has quadrupled its revenues since Bernhardt came to Interior, while past Bernhardt clients have won a series of moneymaking policy breaks.
Bernhardt has filled the top ranks of his department with former extractive-industry employees and lobbyists—some 60 in all.

Treasury Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin got personally rich during his 17 years at Goldman Sachs, specializing in the kind of private-label mortgage securities that would end up nearly wrecking the global economy in 2008.
He got richer by capitalizing on the carnage to buy a failing, scandal-stained bank on the cheap and carry out 36,000 foreclosures (many involving high-risk reverse mortgages marketed to elderly homeowners) while collecting federal subsidies intended to help keep people in their homes.
In 2015 and 2016, Mnuchin led the fundraising effort for candidate Donald Trump, raising $169 million.
A day after being nominated for the job, Mnuchin declared the watering-down of Dodd-Frank bank rules his “top priority.”