Ague Proof posted:

Biden's first Senate campaigned heavily against his opponent's age. Boggs was 63.

quote:

Their ventures, over nearly half a century, have regularly raised conflict-of-interest questions and brought the Biden family into potentially compromising associations. This investigation offers the most comprehensive account to date of the politically tinged business activities of Biden’s brother and son, and is the first time former associates of James and Hunter have alleged that the pair explicitly sought to make money off of Joe’s political connections.

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James Biden made it clear he viewed the fund as a way to take money from rich foreigners who could not legally give money to his older brother or his campaign account. “We've got investors lined up in a line of 747s filled with cash ready to invest in this company,” the executive remembers James Biden saying.

At this, the executive recalled, Beau Biden, who was then running for attorney general of Delaware, turned bright red. He told his uncle, “This can never leave this room, and if you ever say it again, I will have nothing to do with this.”

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In James and Hunter’s five-year tenure, Paradigm became associated with a number of alleged and confirmed frauds, including Allen Stanford’s multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, while seeking to draw on their powerful relative’s political allies for financing.

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During the Obama years, several months after James joined a construction firm as an executive, the firm received a contract worth more than a billion dollars to build houses in Iraq while Joe oversaw the U.S.-led occupation of that country.

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In his suit against Hunter and James, Lotito alleged they invoked their political connections in their dispute with Fasciana, the lawyer who was later jailed. “The Bidens refused to pay the bill, repeatedly citing their political connections and family status as a basis for disclaiming the obligation,” Lotito claimed in his complaint. “The Bidens threatened to use their alleged connections with a former United States Senator to retaliate against counsel for insisting that his bill be paid, claiming that the former senator was prepared to use his influence with a federal judge to disadvantage counsel in a proceeding then pending before that court.” James and Hunter denied those allegations.

A month after Joe Biden was elected vice president, the Justice Department seized the building that housed Paradigm’s offices, 650 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y., alleging that it was secretly owned by the same Iranian bank that was financing the nation’s nuclear program.

quote:

The Benefits of Being Joe Biden’s Brother

...

It was not the first time — or the last — during his long career that Jim Biden turned to Joe’s political network for the kind of assistance that would have been almost unimaginable for someone with a different last name. Campaign donors helped him face a series of financial problems, including a series of IRS liens totaling more than $1 million that made it harder to get bank financing. Jim Biden took out two more loans from WashingtonFirst before its sale in 2018.

These transactions illuminate the well-synchronized tango that the Biden brothers have danced for half a century. They have pursued overlapping careers — one a presidential aspirant with an expansive network of well-heeled Democratic donors; the other an entrepreneur who helped his brother raise political money and cultivated the same network to help finance his own business deals.

Jim Biden, 70, has cycled over the years from nightclub owner to insurance broker to political consultant and fundraiser to startup investor and construction company executive. But the through line of his resume was his bond with his brother, a Democratic Party stalwart in a position to push legislation or make government contracts happen.

...

Recognizing a potential minefield, Joe has avoided responsibility for or financial involvement in his brother’s ventures, according to longtime advisers. Yet on occasion, as Jim pursued opportunities, Joe met with his potential clients or partners, at Jim’s request.

In 2002, Joe addressed a Washington conference of the National Association of State Treasurers, whom Jim was courting on behalf of lawyers who wanted to represent state pension funds. “Jim offered that his brother,” who usually took the train home to Delaware in the evening, “was just happening to be in town,” said Pamela Taylor, then the group’s executive director. “He said: ‘He’s going to spend the night in D.C. Would you like him?’”

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Taylor reached out to Joe, who had previously been invited by Delaware’s state treasurer but hadn’t firmly committed. Joe spoke to the group over breakfast, analyzing the prospects for war in Iraq. “It was perfect,” Taylor recalled.

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$1.5B contract in Iraq for Biden’s little brother exposes Obama ahead of debate

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Jim reported a net worth of about $10,000, but he and a partner were able to borrow $300,000 from First Pennsylvania Bank of Philadelphia for the expansion. His brother then sat on the Senate Banking Committee.

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Pinto, the Corrections USA vice chair, was unaware of this incident. He was a registered Republican, but he admired Joe Biden’s criminal justice record. In meetings with Corrections USA executives, Jim and his partner offered an attractive package and emphasized their Washington clout. Jim “makes sure he tells you his brother is Joe Biden,” Pinto said. “‘We’re brothers, we’re close.’”

One day in 2007, Pinto recalled, was an all-out Biden blitz. In the morning, he and other Corrections USA executives took Amtrak from Philadelphia to Washington for meetings. When Jim boarded in Delaware, he “brought Joe back to say hello,” Pinto recalled.

On Capitol Hill, Pinto’s group met with the senator, who chaired the Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime and drugs. Pinto had his photo taken with Joe, and a Biden aide discussed the group’s priorities. That evening, Pinto said, they dined with Hunter Biden, then a lobbyist with Oldaker in Washington.

Biden & Caveney gave a benefits overview at the group’s annual conference.

Then the deal fell apart. Pinto and another association executive said the group balked at Jim’s demand for an unusual arrangement to pay Biden & Caveney’s fees. They had assumed that Corrections USA would pay the fees out of member dues. But Jim insisted that the guards pay all dues — roughly $750,000 a year, deducted automatically from their paychecks — to Biden & Caveney. It would keep its fees of about $120,000 and disburse the rest to Corrections USA.

Spokespeople for Jim Biden and the Biden campaign disputed Pinto’s account of the breakup but did not explain why.

After registering as an insurance agent in at least 10 states, Biden & Caveney dissolved in 2011, records show.

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The brother-in-law of former Republican Senate majority leader Trent Lott, Scruggs had gained fame — and nearly a billion dollars — by brokering a landmark 1998 settlement with four major tobacco companies, which paid more than $200 billion to 46 states to resolve tobacco-related health care claims.

That deal had come after the companies and state attorneys general first sought to wrap the state cases in a single federal settlement requiring the companies to pay more than $360 billion. As the bill reached the Senate, Scruggs retained Jim and Sara Biden’s Lion Hall Group to lobby for its passage.

In a lawsuit deposition, Scruggs vaguely explained Jim and Sara Biden’s role. “I’m not sure they’re lobbyists, but they are a firm that’s headed up by … the person I deal with in the firm, I don’t know who heads it up, is a gentleman named James or Jim Biden, B-I-D-E-N, who’s the brother of Sen. Joseph Biden,” he said. “And he gave us a great deal of advice about what was going on on Capitol Hill during the tobacco legislative effort.”

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One of Scruggs’ lawyers early in the case was Joey Langston, who would soon plead guilty in another Scruggs-related judicial bribery case. Langston had hosted fundraisers for Joe Biden and solicited the senator’s legislative help.

Despite Langston’s guilty plea and subsequent disbarment, he and Jim Biden eventually became business associates. Both showed up as managers in Earthcare Trina International, a marketing firm affiliated with a Sacramento, California, health care company called Trina Healthcare.

“Biden was going to have a big bite of the apple,” said Shad Ellison, a corporate dealmaker who was asked to help raise money to open medical clinics that would administer Trina’s new diabetes treatment.

Trina’s “artificial pancreas treatment” was controversial. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had stopped paying for the procedure in 2009, citing evidence that it doesn’t improve health outcomes. The American Diabetes Association agreed. Nevertheless, Trina’s founder, lawyer G. Ford Gilbert, tried to push a bill through the Alabama Legislature requiring private insurers to cover the treatment. He pleaded guilty in January 2019 to federal bribery charges and was sentenced to six months in prison.

PeterCat posted:

All true.

Will Trump be better?

Unoriginal Name posted:

am i required to pick between them

PeterCat posted:

One of the two is going to be president.

PeterCat posted:

One of the two is going to be president.

Unoriginal Name posted:

am i required to pick between them

Ramrod Hotshot posted:

From the FoxNews poll:



This has got to be the first election with generational horseshoe theory. We thought boomers were the enemy, but it's Gen X. I guess it makes sense that the most nihilistic of current generations would be the most pro-Trump?

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-biden-tops-trump-in-michigan-where-gov-whitmer-is-more-popular-than-president

FRINGE posted:

It is annoying. You dont seem to know the history.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/02/joe-biden-student-loan-debt-2005-act-2020

https://theintercept.com/2020/01/07/joe-biden-student-loans/



The Deleware bank-man made it as easy as possible for families to go as far into debt as they could to help their children, and then made then lifelong debtors for the banks he represents.

If youre convinced that Scammer Joe will help you, vote for him. But dont melt down when people say that this might not be a good bet.

In general Bank-Lackey Joe works against poor people. He always has. It seems likely based on his campaign staff comprised of lobbyists that he will do so until he dies.

https://www.gq.com/story/joe-biden-bankruptcy-bill

PeterCat posted:

One of the two is going to be president.

PeterCat posted:

One of the two is going to be president.

Rick posted:

Seeing so many allegedly apolitical or "both sides" dudes who I thought were cool instantly take the mask off as full alt-right the second they hit 45 was rough.


drat . There's like zero good news about Joe.

Marxalot posted:

It gets better. He was asked about student debt and such very recently during his campaign and he started yelling about how he has no sympathy for younger people who aren't fiscally responsible enough to have richer parents. But no, he totally changed his mind on this once he basically won the primary. This is what we're expected to believe.

Cerebral Bore posted:

Basically every time someone has challenged Biden on anything he responds by hurling abuse at that person and telling them to vote for someone else, so this really sounds like a guy that we can move to the left real easy.

porfiria posted:

I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that Biden and Trump are similar enough that the differences between them are negligible.

Like, can you say we're any worse off right now than we would be if McCain had won in 2008? Isn't there a reasonable case to be made that that would have been better since Obama wouldn't have been able to cripple the Democratic Party as much as he did?

Wicked Them Beats posted:

Libs don't want you to know this but there are usually a whole bunch of candidates running for president from a number of different parties. Do with this information what you will.

the_steve posted:

But don't forget that according to Lib Math any vote that isn't for Biden is literally a bajillion votes for Trump and also activates a machine that tries to push RBG down a flight of stairs.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Yeah, the liberal worldview is based entirely on aesthetic presentation, and it's clear at this point they find any realistic acknowledgement of material issues and tangible records to be deeply uncomfortable and alien. This also ties in that when you get down to brass tacks, what they actually dislike about the Trump administration ultimately just comes down to Trump being gross and rude, and it's easy to be nostalgic for Bush because he seemed like a serious and dignified statesman. They understand tone but not content, and don't understand why anyone else thinks differently.

the_steve posted:

But don't forget that according to Lib Math any vote that isn't for Biden is literally a bajillion votes for Trump and also activates a machine that tries to push RBG down a flight of stairs.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Yeah, the liberal worldview is based entirely on aesthetic presentation, and it's clear at this point they find any realistic acknowledgement of material issues and tangible records to be deeply uncomfortable and alien. This also ties in that when you get down to brass tacks, what they actually dislike about the Trump administration ultimately just comes down to Trump being gross and rude, and it's easy to be nostalgic for Bush because he seemed like a serious and dignified statesman. They understand tone but not content, and don't understand why anyone else thinks differently.

Condiv posted:

"if you don't vote for dems you're with trump" is the same kind of totalitarian non-sense as saying that countries that were neutral in the iraq war supported saddam

Ague Proof posted:

PeterCat posted:

All true.

Will Trump be better?

PeterCat posted:

All true.

Will Trump be better?

ManBoyChef posted:

Yes. The democrats will actually fight Trump's worse inclinations.

porfiria posted:

I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that Biden and Trump are similar enough that the differences between them are negligible.

Like, can you say we're any worse off right now than we would be if McCain had won in 2008? Isn't there a reasonable case to be made that that would have been better since Obama wouldn't have been able to cripple the Democratic Party as much as he did?

Gripweed posted:

What makes you think they'll start doing that?

ManBoyChef posted:

If McCain had won we probably would have at least gotten a $1200 dollar consolation check when they bailed out the banks that broke the economy.

PeterCat posted:

All true.

Will Trump be better?

ManBoyChef posted:

Yeah after I typed that I started thinking about the money the democrats gave him to keep the concentration camps going.

GreyjoyBastard posted:

i'm actually real interested in how much impact a party platform has, historically, on presidential candidates / lower candidates / their future behavior in office / media coverage / etc

seeing as it's nominally one of the Big Responsibilities of the national convention, and therefore one of the bullet points in why I'm pushing people to get involved

sure, the least important bullet point, after "set the rules for 2024" and "what if Biden dies or becomes physically incapacitated or his brain melts" and "the state conventions select the DNC", but I want to know whether it (and the discussion at the convention around it) is utterly ignorable or semi-relevant; Hillary Clinton's a useful example, but not the most useful example, seeing as how she didn't get elected so we didn't see whether she'd bother incorporating anything

Doctor Jeep posted:

Trump winning in November presents a (very small) chance for a leftward turn inside the party. A Biden win kills it outright.

Gripweed posted:

What is the connection between Jenni's ice cream and the Democrat party?

https://twitter.com/shoe0nhead/status/1253200614458380293?s=20

Booourns posted:

That's something I've been wondering, do the people who Biden literally told to not vote for him have to vote for him or else they're supporting donald?
Or is Biden himself supporting donald by telling people to not for him

StratGoatCom posted:

Except the part as it stands wants to get rid of those folks and a Biden win will embolden that wing.

StratGoatCom posted:

Except the part as it stands wants to get rid of those folks and a Biden win will embolden that wing.

PenguinKnight posted:

I looked them up and a flavor is called cadmium yellow

Gripweed posted:

I just fuckin know that if I looked into it it would turn out that Jenni's ice cream is owned by Steny Hoyer's daughter in law or something like that.

quote:

One of the many stops for Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez Monday was a visit to Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams shop in the Short North of Columbus.​

He’s been to a Jeni’s before, back in 2016 during the Presidential campaign. Now, three years later, he was welcomed back with open arms.​

Jeni Britton Bauer, the founder and owner of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, gave him a hug and posed for a selfie with Perez. ​

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Ice-cream maker Jeni’s will hand out extra scoops on Tuesday for the midterm elections, ride-hailing app Lyft is giving riders 50% off trips to the polls, and outdoor gear purveyor Patagonia swapped its usual photos of adventure in stunning natural settings for a plain black and white message on its website: “Democracy requires showing up. Go Vote.”

...

Being part of the national conversation during an energized election season also allows companies to get exposure as people gear up for holiday shopping. More than half of consumers (52%) say they’ll take companies’ stances on social issues into account as they buy their holiday presents this year, up three percentage points from 2017, a report released this month by market research group NPD found.