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lancesells

I did a quick search for some of the big companies to see who is on their board with a political past.

Apple - Al Gore (Vice President of the US) - Ron Sugar (Northrup Grunman)

Google - Roger Ferguson (Federal Reserve of US)

Facebook - Robert Kimmett (Department of Treasury)

Facebook Oversight - Helle Thorning-Smith (PM of Denmark) - Nick Clegg (Deputy PM of UK)

Salesforce - Colin Powell (Secretary of State in the US) - John Roos (Ambassador to Japan from the US)

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Those are past connections to companies. How many hires are sons/daughters of people still on boards or regulatory bodies. Active family connections are much more difficult to regulate or even document.

Afterpay has a growing list of hires that are obviously for political and regulatory fire supression[0].

[0]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-04/afterpay-square-mille...

I mean, people got to earn a living somehow after they leave politics, right? Would you ban certain positions? Or just give former politicians a salary for the remainder of their lives and forbid them from working? Or how else would you solve this?

Of course it all smells more than a little fishy, but I'm not really seeing any realistic way to solve it.

Exactly. It can't be both ways. Nope, not living on taxpayers' money also can't take private sector job commensurate their skills.

Agreed. I'm not suggesting a ban on what you can do after politics. Just pointing out who is on their board at the moment.

Dropbox - Condi Rice (Bush Sec. State)

I don't think she's currently on the board.

It's a feature, not a bug.

It's a two way street....

Biden's Counselor - Jeff Zients from Facebook's Board

Biden's General Counsel - Jessica Hertz from Facebook

White House Office of Legislative Affairs - Louisa Terrell - Public Policy director at Facebook

Governments and corporations are just not clearly separable entities.

Corporate executives regularly go in to politics, and there influence legislation or regulations that affects the industries they came from or award government contracts to their former employers or other companies which they wind up working for at high paying jobs after they leave government.

It's an open secret in Washington that after leaving office politicians get cushy, high paying jobs at firms they favored while in office.

The back scratching between corporations and governments never stops.

And look at the board that was in place for Theranos....

Don't forget collections of low and mid-level staffers who really get work done who maintain connections back to the military/political industrial complex who collectively become invaluable to organizations.

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