Big union labor’s voice in federal policy is about to get a lot louder.
The Biden administration has waived crucial ethics rules for two of its new officials in order to allow them to continue their ties with big unions, according to a report by Axios.
In March, the administration waived ethics rules for Alethea Predeoux, the new director of congressional, legislative and intergovernmental affairs at the Office of Personnel Management.
The administration also waived ethics rules for Celeste Drake in April, who will serve as director for Biden’s “Made in America” office at the Office of Management and Budget.
Both women have deep connections to massive unions, and the Biden administration has decided that they should continue to develop those relationships regardless of impressions of quid pro quo antics.
Predeoux was formerly a registered lobbyist for the American Federation of Government Employees. She would normally not be allowed to work on those issues that she previously made a career lobbying for, but her waiver allows her to do exactly that.
Drake was formerly executive in charge of government affairs at the Directors Guild of America, as well as trade and globalization policy specialist at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, the largest federation of unions in the nation. She would normally not be allowed to continue communications with her former employers, but her waiver allows her to do precisely that.
It’s well enough established that the Biden administration is in the pocket of the unions, but the administration’s decision to overtly render ethics rules null and void goes beyond a mere pandering for votes.
This is a real example of the Biden administration simply choosing to ignore the rules so that it can grant favors to its union allies and further entrench the will of big labor in the federal government.
The message is clear enough: Everyone needs to play by the rules, except for Biden and his union buddies, who should now be given every lamentable insider advantage imaginable.
And yet, has the establishment media given any coverage to Biden openly flaunting the rules? Of course not. Though we all know how they would react had these waivers been issued by former President Trump.
The truth is that Democrats simply don’t care if the Biden administration is corrupt and selling out the American government to union interests. Indeed, polling demonstrates how little interest the Democrats have in what the president actually does as opposed to what he supposedly represents.
Between the month of November and Jan. 20, the number of Democrats who believed that the country was “on the right track” skyrocketed from well under 25 percent to over 75 percent, according to NORC at the University of Chicago.
That’s all it took. No action, no meaningful policies and no actual change. Biden had not even entered office or issued a single one of his strident executive orders.
It just took believing that the bad orange man wouldn’t be around anymore to convince 75 percent of Democrats that everything was honky-dory.
Biden and his administration can waive these ethics rules for themselves, they can break the law and they can destroy thousands of jobs, and the left will remain silent because, well, he’s not that other guy. Meanwhile, the establishment media will defend the president all the way to the bank.
Ethics rules exist for a reason, and this administration appears committed to undermining them at every juncture.
Alas, it appears that the presidency of Joe Biden really is a return to normal.
It’s a shame Democrats forgot that “normal” means that a cadre of influence-peddling racketeers get to ignore all the rules while the rest of America suffers.