Hunter Biden’s Corruption

“the politician doesn’t seem to take a lot of money, but their husband or wife; their kids and their friends, well, they’re well taken care of.”

Peter Schweizer (author of “Clinton Cash”) claims that 1/3 of Senators have an immediate family member working as a registered lobbyist; or else Senators have 1/3 of immediate family members working as registered lobbyists. I can’t remember which one is true, but both are bad.

Schweizer rejects the notion of corporations corrupting Congress critters, in favor of an extortion model.

Schweizer’s stats on the amazing stock picking ability of Congress critters, which exceeds even that of hedge fund managers, was also eye opening.

According to Schweizer, his focus on the Clintons is because they have internationalized the big dollar grifting. He cites a 9-0 Supreme Court decision that indicates that foreign influence on American politics should be forbidden being a bi-partisan view. The Clintons found a way to cash in, anyway.

for your consideration (noting the place of publication)

https://nypost.com/2018/03/15/inside-the-shady-private-equity-firm-run-by-kerry-and-bidens-kids/

and, Hugh, what’s your source on Hunter’s net worth? If that’s really it, he hasn’t been spending wildly.

Calling this “corruption” is overstating it. I’m not saying that is is proper, but it is a run-of-the-mill behavior that probably half of the USA participates in – using your influence to improve your kids, or your friends, or your political backers.

Describing this as “corruption” as if it is the same as dangling $400 million in foreign aid in exchange for dirt on your political opponent is not proper, in an editorial sense. Yeah, Hunter Biden clearly benefited from being Joe Biden’s son. Pick anyone with a net worth of over $500k and you’ll find similar things.

What is the use of drawing false equivalencies in order to lead moral judgement?

A murder victim may have been issued a speeding ticket the day before her murder. Would it be proper journalism to refer to the victim of the murder as a criminal to diminish the impact of her death and/or to minimize the actions of her killer?

An excellent contemporaneous summary:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/05/r-hunter-biden-declare-owns-new-ukrainian-employer-burisma-holdings.html

@Ian,

I agree with you that there is a point where corruption can become pathological. Part of the problem is that our elite preaches meritocracy but surely doesn’t practice it. But on the other hand, eliminating corruption and having pure meritocracy would be bad for ordinary people especially those at the bottom of society since they would be seen as deserving their lowly social status and all wiggle room would be closed to them.

In a pure meritocracy if you had any blemishes on your resume, or a criminal record, or bad credit, good luck ever getting a job. To some degree this is already happening thanks to technology that screens job applicants and takes out the human element. I suspect that this partially explains why there is a large pool of hidden unemployed people who have given up looking for work and are not counted in official unemployment statistics.

Nepotism gives ordinary people some degree of power because they can directly deal with individuals as opposed to relying on corporate or government bureaucracies that may or may not be friendly to them. People might want to punish elites for corruption but eventually it will trickle down to ordinary people and the only people who will benefit are the elites who already have advantages in upbringing, education, wealth, etc.

I think you are right about the Roman Republic but the Romans also had client-patron networks that many people today would see as a form of corruption. I guess what I am arguing for is keeping some degree of corruption so that there is a human element to life and some wiggle room for ordinary people. I even go as far as thinking that there should always be room for cheating, theft and other forms of crime since these can be a way for ordinary and even poor people to buck the system.

Bruce, I googled “hunter biden net worth” and read down the list without going to the site immediately. Most of the sites I did try said his net worth was under review.

Neil, McCain didn’t need an institute for money because his wife is rich. Rather it was more about influence. Wiki says the institute gets its funding from the likes of Wal-Mart, FedEx, Saudi Arabia, and hedge fund owner Paul E. Singer. A very conservative group. BTW Singer is a Israel hawk nutcase and into some really nasty sovereign debt stuff (Buy it cheap and then pursue full payment in courts. Think Argentina.). The institute is run in “co-operation” with Arizona State.

Our kids are seeing all this corruption, calling it capitalism, then demanding socialism. They won’t have ever known a (somewhat reasonably) functioning capitalism as we once did.

Or maybe the corruption is just the end game of capitalism.

Addendum; there’s supposed to be a strikeout in there, trying to be a smartass shot myself in the foot… the roooskii seems to have disappeared.

Not necessarily the whites, but western “civilization”. The worldview so ingrained we can’t even talk about it. Near-fatal because, well, maybe I don’t want to see things completely destroyed..

Yet another of so many examples of demanding the purity of Caesar’s Wife from Dems and totally ignoring — or even celebrating — the almost inconceivable corruption and lawlessness of the Rs. It’s really striking how routine this phenomenon is on the internet and how frequently it is encountered in mainstream media commentary as well.

There simply is no way for Dems to meet the demands of their critics, so why should they bother? Doesn’t it make more sense for them to become more corrupt than they are, even though it would be impossible for them to match the corruption levels of their R colleagues?

Let’s face it, our political and governing systems are themselves motivations and conduits for corruption. They’re set up that way. They’re meant to be that way at every level. Periodically, “reform” movements waft through the systems and for a time the appearance of corruption and the incentives to become corrupted are lessened, but they never go away. They’re built in. Along comes — say — a Reagan intent on overthrowing the previous reform and sure enough, the road back downhill into the muck and mire is smooth and straight.

Inevitably, the system reverts to type. And here we are, with the most overtly corrupt administration, top to bottom, in modern American history, yet so many are endlessly fretting over the relatively marginal corruptions of its opponents. The Bidens, the Clintons, and very soon, the Obamas. None of whom, by the way, are currently in positions of political power, all of whom were subject to intense criticism when they were in office — as it should be.

If we acknowledge that the system itself is the problem, not the individuals in office or out of it as the case may be, as previous reformers have done, then we may come to recognize what to do about it. I think it should be obvious by now that tweaks around the margins to reduce or suppress corruption and its effects are temporary solutions at best, and something more radical is called for. Trashing one faction of the duopoly while letting the other side slide is evidently not the answer as it simply enshrines and institutionalizes the worst levels of corruption and its effects as standard.

Ian may (tongue in cheek) be calling for monk and nun-like celibacy and Puritan probity from our politicians — an interesting and impossible reform — but at least it’s a concept of what’s needed overall. Too many observers and critics see the problem solely through a partisan lens, insisting that the problem is purely a matter of one faction’s corruption, and getting rid of them would solve it. No, the problem is intrinsic. And it gets worse, the more the focus is not wholistic.

We’ve been headed toward autocracy for some time. In other times and places, autocracy or its variants has been seen as the solution to myriad political problems. If only there were a Good Emperor in waiting….

I do not support Biden for president.

The reason I made my point (criticizing describing Biden as “corrupt” because his son had opportunities and positions that wouldn’t have been available to the son of a line cook) was because I think that defining “corruption” in that broad way creates incredible cynicism among voters, and it diminishes the concept of true political corruption (either explicit or implicit quid pro quo)

That definition of corruption means “they’re all corrupt”, and that tends to make people not want to participate in democracy or the political process (i.e. voting).

“Meanwhile we have a criminal Attorney General globetrotting around Europe planting evidence into his “counter investigation” as part of a criminal conspiracy to cover up for Russia and Trump (and Roger Stone and Paul Manafort).”

Is that so? Well, he should be ashamed. Why doesn’t he just plant evidence right here in the US? Does he not realize what a ginormous carbon footprint jets have? What would Greta Thunberg think?

How dare he!! If he absolutely felt compelled to plant evidence in Europe, he should have sailed there, ala Thunberg.

BTW, do you have any evidence of Barr’s phony evidence? One can’t be too careful, you know.

Yeah, conflation. Terrible thing to conflate. Terrible!

Why not just get a frontal lobotomy?

We are so far past “both sides do it” now.

Vulgarity is really not the supreme sin in my book.

People who whine about “emoluments” but could not figure out that the Clinton Foundation was not much of a charity do not impress me with their passionate moral acumen at this late date.

Ukrainegate is Russiagate 2.0, another nothing burger cooked up by the worst people for the worst reasons. Go along with this manipulative nonsense if you like, but realize that you are complicit.

Biden is not going to be President. He is dying, and Bernie is ailing.

Breaking: Sanders hospitalized

Sen. Bernie Sanders, 78, has been hospitalized in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“During a campaign event yesterday evening, Sen. Sanders experienced some chest discomfort. Following medical evaluation and testing he was found to have a blockage in one artery and two stents were successfully inserted. Sen. Sanders is conversing and in good spirits. He will be resting up over the next few days,” said Sanders’ senior adviser Jeff Weaver on Wednesday in a statement. “We are canceling his events and appearances until further notice, and we will continue to provide appropriate updates.”

when the talk turns to corruption, i always think first of George Washington Plunkett, he of Tammany Hall whose preferred epitaph was, “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.”

One man’s “corruption” can be another man’s opportunity. If your standard of purity allows no -side-benefit to anyone, it is hard to know how you would organize politics. Ian’s suggestion that he would prefer politicians who were childless or unmarried is surely said partly in jest. Celibacy was tried by the Catholic Church to no particularly good effect that I can see.

Plunkett was referring primarily to his ability to profit from foreknowledge concerning the routes taken by New York’s then-burgeoning transit system. It is notable that the transit system still got built; the gain to Plunkett was part of a benefit to the community. Biden’s efforts to “strengthen” bankruptcy were tied only very loosely and distantly to Biden’s wallet; but, he was aiding predators to immiserate those caught in a debt vortex. So, no bad where Biden was concerned; let the consequences be ignored.

You can be very pure and eager to seem pure, and still manage to be deeply destructive. John McCain, who played pure on teevee, campaigned against the custom of earmarks, as if any politics of trying to accomplish something was prima facie to be despised.

What I see in Hunter Biden and the Ukraine is the effect of a corruption that has diffused not thru a family or a mafia but thru an entire political class, maybe the whole socio-economic class of feckless liberals described with such effect by Thomas Frank. It is a class that benefits from the destruction of the nation-state and so celebrates globalization as cosmopolitan. And, it feels secure in its ability to manipulate the public by means of propaganda storytelling that is increasingly absurd but always full of synthetic “outrage”.

Its partisans lose their moral perceptiveness staring at the sheer complexity of the operations of its institutions of diffuse responsibility and relentless propaganda. So, like Mallam above, they disparage “conflation” and refuse to see things as they are. On a granular level, members of this class benefit, but rarely can be said to have participated in a discrete “quid pro quo”. Even when they are caught dead-to-rights, they may be excused for “having friends”, as Senator Menendez was in New Jersey. For this class, righteousness is meaningless, so they promise “transparency” — surely the beginning of an exercise in sleight-of-hand.

The game is not being played by individuals, the game is being played by a class, cooperating together like members of a club providing mutual assistance and working toward a common goal of fleecing the rubes while celebrating their own superior virtue. Never mind that the foreign policy of the U.S. is to create perpetual war to enhance the value of defense contractor stocks. Pay no attention to the former Senator from MBNA and the bankruptcy bill. Pay no attention to the Swamp’s bipartisan feeding frenzy in the deeply troubled Ukraine. And, god forbid that anyone should “conflate” — challenging the convenient “outrage” ginned up around one questionable narrative by pointing to a closely adjacent example of similar and probably worse behavior.

Re Sanders, he had placement of two cardiac stents. I have not seen which cardiac artery was involved nor the degree of blockage. It is very unlikely that the blockage was complete. His chest pain derived from some ischemia. You can go 80-90% stenosis (narrowing) before you develop symptoms. Usually you think of the LAD, the left anterior descending cardiac artery, which services the left ventricle, the workhorse of the heart. That two stents were placed may indicate the length of stenosis or more than one stenotic locus as well as an excess of caution. The principal complication is that stenosis will reoccur at the end of the stent. If this is to occur, it often happens within the first week. So in a week if there are no complications, Sanders should be good to go.