There's something about the Swamp that makes its minions never want to leave. Former Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), a celebrated progressive, served 24 years in the upper chamber of Congress. Before that, she was a member of the House for ten years. She turns 80 this year. This woman has spent almost half of her long life suckling at the teat of the U.S. taxpayer. One might think she would be satiated by now.
She is not. Boxer has announced that she is joining well-heeled, powerful lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs. Mercury officially labels itself a "global public strategy firm." The revolving door from political office to cozy lobbying gig is not strictly a leftist Democratic affair, of course. The parasitical insider baseball is most assuredly a bipartisan game. Ex-GOP Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) and former influential Rep. Vin Weber (R-MN) are also on Team Mercury.
Toying With Blue Emotions
For Democrats, the news should serve as a wake-up call as to how their affinity for identity politics and emotional responses to policy issues expose them to easy manipulation by self-serving politicians motivated by greed. Throughout her long career Boxer constantly championed "the rise of women" in politics as she enjoyed the many benefits that came with her lofty position in Washington. In fact, the smoke of scandal frequently surrounded her tenure. Back in 1992 she was among the most egregious perpetrators involved in the House Bank check-kiting scandal that deeply angered Americans, who could never get away with such behavior without penalty in their own lives.
Even more disturbing is the Hunter Biden-esque machinations Boxer was allegedly involved in in the early 2000s. Journalist Peter Byrne has reported that Boxer's son, Douglas, and a business partner who was highly connected in state Democratic Party ranks defrauded a Native American tribe over worthless swampland. Byrne reports that Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria tribal chairman Greg Sarris "trusted Boxer because the lobbyist’s mother had sponsored the legislation that re-established the tribe’s sovereignty," thus allowing it to open a casino. Whether that is true or not, it is an undisputed fact that Barbara Boxer pushed legislation through the Senate that reinstated an officially defunct Native American tribe that promptly opened a lucrative casino and engaged in big-dollar business transactions with her son Douglas.
At the same time all this was happening, CNN breathlessly labeled the 2002 mid-term elections as the "Year of the Women." (Sound familiar?) As CNN "senior analyst" Jeff Greenfield stated in a Nov. 1, 2002 telecast, "six women won or [were] re-elected to Senate seats, and some of them, like California's Barbara Boxer and Washington's Patty Murray, specifically [cited] their gender as a reason why they'd be more responsive, more sensitive." I am woman. Hear me roar. And thus you hopefully won't notice those shady Indian casino dealings I'm involved in.
Integrity For Sale?
Barbara Boxer (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
In Nov. 2016, shortly before Boxer finally retired from the Senate, she was honored at a "special banquet" by the Bay Area Union Labor Party, a political action committee affiliated with the Teamsters. A post on the website of her husband’s law firm states that Barbara "was presented with the group's Robert 'Bob' Morales Leadership Award in recognition of her 24 years' service representing California in the United States Senate. Morales was a longtime labor leader in the Bay Area."
How odd then, that this staunch friend of union workers would join Mercury Public Affairs. In a bulleted highlight in the "Capabilities" section on its website, Mercury brags that "it developed successful strategy for global automaker to keep union out of US." In 2012, former client Walmart was forced to distance itself from Mercury after an employee of the firm pretended to be a student journalist in order to infiltrate an employee group meeting. The Warehouse Workers United group had accused Walmart of failing to make sure that its contractors paid minimum wage and granted regular breaks and air conditioning.
As her ninth decade on this Earth approaches, aged American kleptocrat Barbara Boxer just can't ride off to the sunset to enjoy her estimated multi-million-dollar net worth. There must be something truly addictive in that fetid Potomac water. Our veteran politicians seem fundamentally unable to remove themselves from the networked cronyism and amoral personal enrichment that comes with being Swamp royalty.
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