The range of President Joe Biden’s cabinet is unprecedented and a welcome change. Unfortunately, it has additionally served to distract the media, Democrats and the left from how these selections will have an effect on thousands and thousands. We don’t simply want a various cabinet, we want a cabinet that takes care of various populations and rejects company affect.
NPR celebrated the range of Biden’s choose for secretary of protection in article with the headline, “Lloyd Austin confirmed as defense secretary, becomes 1st Black Pentagon chief,” that amazingly fails to even point out Austin’s earlier job. When Biden selected Austin, he was a member of the Raytheon board of directors. Raytheon makes the weapons that the U.S. and its allies use to kill people of color around the world, including civilians in Yemen. Austin received a parting present of $1.7 million from Raytheon for giving up his board seat to go command Raytheon’s rich shopper, the U.S. navy.
For years, leftists have warned in opposition to a revolving door between trade and authorities, particularly in regards to the navy. Are we so simply distracted now?
Marcia Fudge
When U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge was requested by Politico a few cabinet place, she particularly requested that she not be given one of many cabinet positions, comparable to head of Housing and Urban Development, usually given to Black folks: “As this country becomes more and more diverse, we’re going to have to stop looking at only certain agencies as those that people like me fit in. You know, it’s always ‘we want to put the Black person in labor or HUD.’”
When Biden and Kamala Harris held a conference call with Black leaders, teams like Black Lives Matter weren’t even invited. Those who have been there gave sensible vital recommendations. NAACP President Derrick Johnson advised placing Fudge in to guide the U.S. Department of Agriculture, however Biden strangely changed the topic to how he thought the slogan “defund the police” lost elections. There is no evidence that “defund the police” lost a single election, however even worse, Biden dismissed the nice recommendation. As a senior member of the House Agriculture Committee, the place Fudge was finest certified for was to move the USDA. Biden as a substitute nominated her for HUD, simply as she predicted.
And who did Biden nominate to guide the USDA? Tom Vilsack, who as Secretary of Agriculture, had famously fired a Black lady, Shirley Sherrod, the Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture. Vilsack made this resolution based mostly on bogus claims in a deceptively edited Breitbart video that Sherrod was “racist.” Vilsack can be seen as a friend to Monsanto and a threat to small farmers.
Avril Haines
NPR was additionally fast to have a good time that Biden’s Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines is the first woman to hold this position, however she covered up torture and greenlighted targets, together with American residents, for extrajudicial assassination. Most on the left imagine that it’s unattainable to torture or or invade different nations into “democracy,” however have been far too quiet about these horrible selections.
While leftists didn’t pour into the streets when President Obama joined a struggle that plunged Libya into chaos, launched illegal drone strikes, handed a brand new medical insurance system without a public option and failed to deal with local weather change, the navy and industrial lobbyists didn’t let up for a second. The outcome was that Obama enacted insurance policies and half-measures that helped get Donald Trump elected. This was historical past repeating itself, because the left had didn’t sufficiently push Bill Clinton — his insurance policies and half-measures on wars and well being care had helped get George W. Bush elected. Does the left need to do this once more and see what sort of Republican we get subsequent?
Cooper is the drummer and producer for the band Free Radicals.
