Biden’s Chief Negotiator Was A Shadow Lobbyist Last Year

When The Media Says "Experts" They Mean Paid Corporate Shills (Part 28)

Although most posts in this series have focused on the pharmaceutical industry capture of the main regulatory body (FDA) and medical institutions in general I will occasionally direct attention to other compromised authoritative institutions and figures doing the biding of global capitalists under the pretext of exercising impartial expertise. That is why I’ll occasionally point to other instances of regulatory capture and corporate stooging such as the pesticide industries capture of the EPA pesticide office (Part 11) or the ultra-processed food and sugar industries capture of nutrition experts scattered across various civil society and non-profit organizations globally (Part 20). However, there are other forms of corporate stooging that have a much broader influence over the rules and official narratives the masses are told that serve a broader spectrum of capitalist interests. Such interests were served, for instance, when the Biden admin appointed a shadow lobbyist to be your chief liaison to congress. Immediately before Shuwanza Goff was appointed to the Director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs last year, she worked at lobbying firm Cornerstone Government Affairs, as revealed on her office of government ethics form, without registering as a lobbyist. Before her stint at Cornerstone Government Affairs, she was the deputy director of legislative affairs and house liaison from 2021 to February last year when she joined Cornerstone Government Affairs. Even though Biden supposedly banned the revolving door between lobbying and the whitehouse requiring a 2 year gap between departure from government employment and employment with lobbying firms under a 2021 EO Goff gets away on a technicality because she never registered as a lobbyist under the Lobbying Disclosure Act. Cornerstone’s client’s interests were not immaterial to the legislative efforts her office pushed for either. For instance, the firm helped secure “Sustainable Aviation Fuel” tax credit for the Airlines industry in the Inflation reduction Act. United Airlines is one of Cornerstone’s biggest clients and an obvious beneficiary of such a tax credit.

Originally reported on Lee Fang’s Substack