Photo: VP Kamala Harris at a Diwali celebration, Oct. 2022. Credit: Rawpixel (CC0 1.0 Universal Deed)
Shortly after ascending to unassailable presumptive nominee status, Vice President Kamala Harris began to “work to build bridges to the business world” to whom she was an “enigma.” From Wall Street bankers to cryptocurrency traders, Vice President Harris seems anxious to prove to the 1% that, like under Joe Biden, “nothing would fundamentally change.”
Concentrated corporate power is the primary driver behind inflation, climate change, poverty, terrible healthcare, and why deodorant is locked in a case at the store. So if nothing fundamentally changes for corporate executives, their bankers and their lawyers, life seems unlikely to change significantly for the better for the working class and the poor.
Harris has existing or growing ties with major players in the tech world, the oil and gas industry, Wall Street and Hollywood. These major players have substantial records of union-busting, climate-destroying, monopoly-creating policies, in addition to involvement with various right-wing campaigns seeking to undermine even mild reforms to the “criminal justice system.” Big money has long controlled politics, and the contours of Harris’ engagement with mega donors opens a window into the powerful people trying to shape and control the world around us.
Fracking USA
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, “involves blasting huge volumes of water mixed with toxic chemicals and sand deep into the earth to fracture rock formations and release oil and natural gas,” leading to contamination of our air and water supply, as well as large emissions of greenhouse gasses. As one Guardian headline neatly put it: “U.S. fracking boom could tip world to edge of climate disaster.”
Fracking is tremendously profitable and a huge amount of lobbying goes into protecting it from serious regulation. Brad Karp is a major fundraiser who serves as chair of the corporate law firm Paul, Weiss. In July, Karp told the Financial Times: “Kamala Harris would be a formidable nominee and make a superb president.” Earlier this year, Paul, Weiss was a key legal player in the $26 billion merger of Endeavor Energy Resources and Diamondback Energy, two energy companies working in Texas’s Permian basin whose fortunes have been lifted by fracking. Four days after Karp’s endorsement of Harris to the Financial Times, her campaign announced that she does not support a ban on fracking.
Mergers and acquisitions
Reid Hoffman, the billionaire founder of LinkedIn, recently donated $7 million to Harris’s campaign efforts. Shortly after cutting the check, he demanded in a CNN interview that Harris commit to firing Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Khan has become a bête noire to CEOs by taking a more aggressive stance on mergers and existing corporate monopolies than recent FTC chairs. While it’s not clear if Harris would remove Khan or otherwise reverse course policy-wise, there certainly is reason to wonder.
This is especially because Roger Altman, founder of investment bank Evercore, has also been a Harris booster. Among other things, Evercore is a power player in mergers and acquisitions, creating huge monopolies in various industries. For instance, Evercore is the financial advisor on the pending deal by oil giant ConocoPhillips to buy fellow oil giant Marathon. The investment firm previously advised Whole Foods on its sale to Amazon and the T-Mobile takeover of Sprint, among many, many other major deals.
With friends like these, it’s clear that a Harris administration is certainly no guarantee against runaway corporate power.
Silicon Valley: Our tech overlords
Companies working on AI and in cryptocurrency are currently splashing around the most cash as battles contenting with regulating both industries rage. President Trump, and Republicans in general, have sought to hoover up crypto cash by promising to look the other way on anything problematic related to these digital financial products. Not to be outdone, Harris is now reaching directly to major crypto players, like Coinbase and Ripple, with the message that Democrats are “pro business.”
Ripple is a major donor to Fairshake, a crypto-supporting PAC that is the largest super PAC of the 2024 election, giving almost $50 million. Among other things, Fairshake spent over $2 million in alliance with pro-Israel and right-wing groups to unseat New York representative Jamaal Bowman. They were responsible for an ad promoting all sorts of dog whistles aimed at agitating racists, including the accusation that Bowman “put a cop killer on a middle school’s wall of honor.” Fairshake has also spent $1 million against St. Louis Congresswoman Cori Bush in her re-election. The Harris campaign, in other words, seems to be looking to get into bed with one of the main funders of far-right hit jobs against progressive Black politicians, working hand-in-glove with the Zionist political machine.
Harris is notably also receiving support from one faction of the AI world as well. Billionaire investor Vinod Khosla, for instance, took to X to call on all “not MAGA” folks to come together for Harris.”
Khosla, and the aforementioned Reid Hoffman, are involved in a big battle over how to “regulate” AI. Working with Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, Khosla and others are spending significant resources to define the “regulatory” environment to be as favorable as possible to their businesses. In pitching his ideas to Congressional staff, he stressed “AI’s national security implications” in the battle against China, noting that AI will be useful to U.S. imperialism: “AI means economic power, which then lets you influence social policy or ideology.”
Both cryptocurrency and AI have significant implications, for climate change in particular. According to the clean energy nonprofit RMI, “U.S. cryptocurrency operations release 25 million to 50 million tons of CO2 every year … the same amount as the annual diesel emissions of the U.S. railroad industry.” AI is consuming huge amounts of water to cool its systems and also massive amounts of electricity, exacerbating sustainability challenges. This goes along with many other concerns with both technologies from money laundering to deep fakes that raise questions on how, or if, they will be controlled. Given the engagements between them and the Harris campaign, it would be fair to worry about whether or not the fox is being let into the hen house.
Law and order: Special campaign unit
Another factor of the connections between the Harris campaign and the tech world is that many of those endorsing or engaged with her have also been at the forefront of pushing failed punitive “criminal justice” policies in the city of San Francisco. Chris Larsen, executive chairman of Ripple, for instance, is known as “San Francisco’s top law-enforcement donor” and a major supporter of policies that would reduce “use-of-force reporting and [enable] more surveillance without oversight,” as well as subjecting “welfare recipients to drug screenings.”
Garry Tan, another Silicon Valley exec, dropped $100,000 in a campaign to recall San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin for being “soft on crime.” Tan, who has yet to endorse Harris explicitly, recently posted on X that “top Cop Kamala Harris can actually win,” particularly highlighting her openness to “severe” criminal justice policies as evidence.
Hollywood union busters
Like all Democrats, Harris is gaining the support of major Hollywood big-wigs — including Jeffrey Katzenberg, former Disney executive and a mega donor to various politicians. Katzenberg called Harris “a new inspiring leader who can take us forward.” The future Katzenberg wants, however, isn’t a great one for workers. Katzenberg was considered so toxic during the recent Hollywood strikes that Biden was afraid to hold fundraisers with him, despite Katzenberg being the campaign co-chair. No surprise, since Katzenberg has made statements like 90% of all animators can be replaced with AI.
Likely more similar types will come on board the Harris campaign as donors, as Hollywood mega-agent Chris Silberman told Vanity Fair: “She will get money from Hollywood, she’ll get support, there’ll be fundraisers.” Something another Hollywood insider cosigned noting “most of the town’s top leaders … will be all-in for Harris.” Something to think about for crew, actors and writers since most of Hollywood’s “top leaders” are also all-in on destroying their unions and reducing their salaries.
Politics is big business
It’s no secret every major party presidential candidate is beholden to big donors. How exactly that affects policy can’t be fully forecast. However, it’s clear Harris is going out of her way to make sure that the power players in industries from cryptocurrency, to AI, to Big Oil, Wall Street and Hollywood don’t view her as a threat. This is building on a trend in her political career. For instance, during Harris’s 2020 primary run, just before she dropped out, she had collected funds from 46 billionaires — the most of any Democrat in the race.
If things are going to change for working and poor people in the United States, it’s only going to come from movements, parties and their leaders who are willing to take on the most powerful corporations, not curry favor with them. Based on the evidence so far, that doesn’t seem like it is going to be Kamala Harris.
