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Obama Makes the World Safe for DuPontcracy

by: Jill Richardson

Fri Jun 25, 2010 at 15:58:14 PM PDT


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WTF? Obama just nominated Ramona Emilia Romero as General Counsel of the USDA. Who's she? Well, she's spent the last 12 years working as a lawyer for DuPont. You know, the pesticide company. Among her areas of specialty was antitrust litigation. I am pretty confident that means that she was helping DuPont weasel its way through U.S. antitrust and competition law to keep it from having its mergers denied or getting accused of anti-competitive behavior. This is a strange pick, considering that right now the Dept of Justice is doing a series of antitrust workshops focused on agriculture.

Ramona Emilia Romero's bio is below, taken from the Whitehouse.gov site.

Jill Richardson :: Obama Makes the World Safe for DuPontcracy
Ramona Emilia Romero, Nominee for General Counsel, Department of Agriculture

Ramona Emilia Romero is currently Corporate Counsel at E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (DuPont), where she provides legal oversight for the acquisition of transportation, distribution, supply-chain management, travel and energy resources, and manages related strategic litigation.  Since 2008, Ms. Romero has also served as General Counsel of Sentinel Transportation LLC, a DuPont joint venture. She has held other key positions at DuPont, including Senior Counsel and then Corporate Counsel for complex commercial and antitrust litigation (1998-2005), and Corporate Counsel and Manager of Operations and Partnering (2005-2007).  In this last role, Ms. Romero directed all facets of DuPont Legal's industry-leading partnering program and oversaw litigation-related operations.  From 1988 to 1998, she was a commercial, government contracts and white collar litigator at Crowell & Moring in Washington, DC.  Ms. Romero has served on several boards and been affiliated with several professional organizations, including the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, both the House of Delegates and the Presidential Initiative Commission on Diversity of the American Bar Association, the Advisory Committee of The O'Connor Judicial Selection Initiative at the University of Denver, and The Justice at Stake Campaign.  She is also the Immediate Past President of the Hispanic National Bar Association, and a founding member and former officer of the Dominican American National Roundtable.  Ms. Romero is the recipient of multiple honors, including the Lucero ("guiding star") Award from Latino Justice PRLDEF (formerly known as the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund) and Hispanic Business Magazine's recognition in 2007 as one of the 100 most influential Hispanics in the United States.  She holds a B.A. from Barnard College and J.D. from Harvard Law School.

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timing (4.00 / 2)
Who will the Senate confirm first, Romero or Hagen (nominated January 2019)? Senate Ag still hasn't managed to schedule a vote on Hagen's nomination.

Strangest thing about Hagen: I have not detected any statement from any member of the committee about whether or not Hagen should be confirmed, or even about whether the committee should vote. Stabenow? Gillebrand? MIA.


2010, not 2019 (4.00 / 2)
but you guys knew that, right?

[ Parent ]
Ramona Emilia Romero (4.00 / 1)
Another Friday White House dump. It's nearly 2 a.m. Eastern, and I still don't find one news report about this nomination.

Jill, I haven't been paying attention to this. Did Obama have a General Counsel in place who resigned or died? Did he never get around to nominating a USDA general counsel after the last Bush appointee resigned? What's up?

Besides the anti-trust issue, USDA also needs a high-power somebody to defend against court challenges to GE crops. Sugar beets, for example, although I suppose it's late in the game for her to get in on that one.

photo

video (second speaker, after Menendez)

USDA Office of General Counsel


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