In the past month, Amazon has hired three aides to congressional Democrats, the Washington Examiner reports. Among them: "House chiefs of staff LaDavia Drane and Tony Clair to handle the company's ties to the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus." Who even knew this was a job in corporate America? Imagine how much less your Prime membership might cost if this wasn't a necessary cost of doing business in 2018 Washington. These caucuses all have allied nonprofit organizations that are happy to accept corporate contributions in what some critics have characterized as a kind of shakedown.
The more Congress threatens to crack down on companies by heightened regulation, the greater incentive the companies have to offer the staffers, and in some cases even the members themselves, post-public-service employment. I guess one could argue that fending off additional regulation from a new private sector perch is also a kind of public service. But the whole thing makes me recall Glenn Harlan Reynolds' idea of a Revolving Door Tax.
