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Comment by guelo | Hacker News Reader

It's worth noting that both Kathryn Keneally, the assistant attorney general mentioned in this article, and Kevin Downing, the lead prosecutor that got him jailed, both now work for private law firms helping large corporations shelter their taxes.

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It's the elephant in the room, textbook revolving door regulatory capture.

So, let's ignore the SEC here for a second (which truly is a mess):

These folks are tax lawyers. They obey every ethical restriction placed on them by the state bars.

If they quit the federal government, where exactly are they to go to have a job?

The narrowness of career paths for highly specialized attorneys combined with the possibility of entering an altogether different remuneration universe at the law firms the DOJ is theoretically adversarial to is what makes the revolving door spin, and the spinning of the door is what turns "adversarial" into "theoretically adversarial". That is the problem. I didn't say there was an easy solution.

The generalization of this principal to other government institutions (agencies, departments, offices including even the presidency) is one of the great problems of governance of our time. You can take the remuneration discrepancy as the "0=1" conclusion of a reductio ad absurdum argument against unfettered capitalism or as an argument that resistance is futile.

"That is the problem. I didn't say there was an easy solution."

I do not believe there is any solution, actually, other than paying them enough to not want to go into private law firms :)

Please tell more.

I have no evidence they help large corporations shelter taxes, but kathryn went to dla piper: https://www.dlapiper.com/en/us/people/k/kathryn-keneally/

and Kevin went to Miller and Chevalier http://www.millerchevalier.com/OurPeople/KevinMDowning

Now, again, i'm a big believer in the various ethics rules bars have for what previous government lawyers are allowed to do and not do.

But they still have to be able to get jobs.

Kevin spent 16 years in government. It's not a blood oath not to go to a private law firm and be on the other side of the table, anymore than working at Google for 16 years is a blood oath to not go work at apple or facebook.

Arguments that they use their previous experience/knowledge to abuse the system (by getting favors, etc) need to be backed up with evidence, not handwaving, because they are serious allegations.

If they did, great, lock them up. But their skill sets prety much only lend them to two types of work: Prosecuting people for civil/criminal tax law, and defending people being prosecuted in civil/criminal tax law.

It's not like you can reasonably say "they used to work at the DOJ so now they have to go work at the zoo".

The argument isn't that using knowledge and skill gained working at DOJ/SEC in private industry is bad. The argument is that while working at DOJ/SEC you go soft on your adversaries because you know you'll need them to hire you at some point.

" The argument is that while working at DOJ/SEC you go soft on your adversaries because you know you'll need them to hire you at some point."

You don't have to go to private law firms if you don't want, of course.

But again, this argument is applicable to everything.

While working at Apple, you'll go soft on improving Siri because you may want to transition to getting paid to work more on Google Now at Google ...

Is there a situation where you think this principle isn't applicable?

(also, what is your proposed solution?)

Or maybe you come down hard on whistleblowers that anger your future clients.

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