Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies (16 page)

Remember please that few of us have as high of an IQ as Joe Biden. He told us that in 1988 when he claimed to be an academic superstar (before his mediocre transcript was released). He also told us that the “Bidens were coal miners”—but that was actually the British Kinnock’s story that Ol’ Joe stole.

It’s not just that he lies, it’s that he lies SO well that you think he really believes the stuff he makes up. That is a bit scary. But there is no better way to hone the art of lying with sincerity than 35 years in the Senate. I see the Obamabots are furiously scrambling to treat this as “just a minor” issue, nothing important. Come on people! In an attempt to appear all “folksy,” ol’ Just Joe told a whopper, pretending that he regularly goes someplace to be with the regular folks. His dropping of a name that no longer exists in the locale (and hasn’t for many years) proves he’s lying about it. Now, I realize that, to the liberal (sorry, “progressive”) mind set, what’s a little lying in order to get the power to do good things for us all (whether we want it or not?) Still, a man who lies so blatantly about so-called little things (especially when it is so un-necessary) is a man who can’t be trusted to be straight with us about anything.

I hate these politicians that claim to give straight talk and then can’t even name a restaurant in their own back yard. I’m completely disgusted by him. And it only goes to show just how out of touch this man really is. Pathetic attempt to touch the heart strings of America and a pathetic attempt at seeming human.

Joe makes things up, and repeats them even when he knows they are not true. The worst one was about the truck driver who was driving when Neilia [Biden, Joe Biden’s first wife] was killed in 1972. He maliciously lied when repeatedly saying that the (now-deceased) driver was drinking.
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Lying about a dead man is the lowest of the low things one can do. That is not “being human” or “flubbing the facts.” That is just plain evil. What worries me, as someone else said, is that this kind of pathological “straying from the truth” is evidence of a much more serious problem.

Biden’s buffoonery continues to provide us with endless comic relief. Who can forget his assertion that “J-O-B-S” is a three-letter-word; that FDR promoted his economic recovery program on television in 1929 when only experimental TVs existed; or his mortifying call for a Democrat official in a wheelchair to rise and be recognized at a campaign event (“Stand up, Chuck, let ’em see ya.”)? His serial denials of reality and Team Obama’s whitewashing of his backroom enrichments, however, are no laughing matter.

While Biden boasts of being one of the Senate’s least wealthy members, he has profited mightily from the perks of entrenched incumbency—earmarks, sweetheart real estate deals, and lucrative positions for his children. Biden prides himself on shaking up business as usual in Washington, but he used his clout to install his sons in positions of influence and fill the family coffers. While his running mate’s wife admonished voters to spurn selfish jobs in corporate law and hedge-fund management, Biden helped grease the wheels for his son Hunter’s entry into . . . er, corporate law and hedge-fund management. While he paid lip service to change, Beltway Joe engaged in business-as-usual string-pulling to set up son Beau to succeed him in the Senate. The elder Biden arranged for seat-warmer and former Biden chief of staff Ted Kaufman to hold the seat until 2010, by which time he hoped that Beau Biden would return from National Guard duty in Iraq in order to succeed his father. (Beau Biden subsequently decided not to run for the U.S. Senate.)

Rest assured that the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency is every bit as self-serving a hypocrite as his boss.

MBNA: MAKING BIDEN’ S NEPOTISM APPARENT

Thanks to friendly tax laws and corporate governance rules, the state of Delaware is a business haven.
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For two centuries, the E. I. Du Pont de Nemours chemical empire dominated the landscape. Hundreds of thousands of corporations and other business entities flocked to incorporate in Delaware—from Chrysler and Coca-Cola to Google and Walt Disney—and take advantage of the enterprise-embracing climate. State legislation passed in the 1980s particularly encouraged the growth of credit card subsidiaries, including what would become the world’s largest independent issuer of credit cards: MBNA. (The company was bought out by Bank of America in 2006.)

Former MBNA president Charles Cawley pioneered the “affinity card” concept by marketing credit cards branded by sports teams, business associations, unions, and other special interest groups. The 1990s saw business boom and jobs skyrocket. Spending ballooned, too: MBNA splurged on private golf courses, vintage cars, expensive watercraft, Lear and Gulfstream jets, a helicopter, a lavish $56 million downtown Wilmington headquarters, New England and Florida resorts, and even an in-house barbershop and nail salon. Managers gave away cars to top call-center employees.
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The company amassed a $65 million art collection, including one of the biggest caches of Andrew Wyeth’s work.
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In 2001, MBNA surpassed DuPont as the state’s largest private employer.
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MBNA spread the wealth in other ways, too. United States Senator Joe Biden was a prime beneficiary of the credit card behemoth’s largesse. Since 1993, the company has been the number one donor to his campaigns.
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(The overall partisan split of MBNA’s political contributions was about 65 percent to Republicans and 35 percent to Democrats.) In 1996, Biden sold his two-decades-old mansion (a fixer-upper that had been slated for demolition) to MBNA vice chairman John Cochran. The asking price was $1.2 million. Cochran forked over the full sum. Biden then paid $350,000 in cash to real estate developer Keith Stoltz for a 4.2-acre lakefront lot. Stoltz had paid that same amount five years earlier for the undeveloped property. Stoltz told the
Wilmington News Journal
that “the residential real estate market was soft” at the time he sold the land to Biden. But “soft” for whom?

Stoltz was a well-off businessman who didn’t appear to be in such dire financial straits that he needed to unload the property quickly in a weak market.

Reporter Byron York looked at comparable properties in Biden’s neighborhood and found three cases where homes in the area went “for a good deal less than their appraised value. In comparison, it appears Cochran simply paid Biden’s full asking price.” Moreover, York’s sources told him, “the house needed quite a bit of work; contractors and their trucks descended on the house for months after the purchase.” Biden’s office denied any sweetheart deals took place, but York noted:

It appears that MBNA indirectly helped Cochran buy the Biden house. According to a statement in the company’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission—in which it is required to detail the compensation of top officers—in 1996 MBNA reimbursed Cochran $330,115 for expenses arising from the move. The statement says $210,000 of that was to make up for a loss Cochran suffered on the sale of his Maryland home. An MBNA official declined to comment on the payment.

Was the home sale a sweet deal for Biden? If you talk to people involved in real estate in the Wilmington area, you’ll quickly find that few want to approach the question. “I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole,” said one agent. Another declined to say anything. And a third agent said only, “In my opinion, (Cochran) overpaid.” None wanted to be identified by name.
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The Bidens’ custom-built new home, with an adjacent carriage home for his mother, was built in Delaware’s ritziest Chateau Country neighborhood. It is now worth at least $2.5 million ($1.8 million more than the couple owes) and is the Bidens’ most valuable asset. Biden tapped campaign funds to pay for his home’s lawn needs—worth a few thousand dollars every year.
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A Biden spokesman attempted to wrap his boss in populist clothing, insisting that Biden’s real estate transactions represented “a snapshot of life in America that I think folks can relate to.”
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If “folks” means other politicians who have benefited from cozy deals followed by a shower of campaign donations, then the “snapshot” is certainly clear enough. Those “folks” can “relate.” Developer Keith Stoltz, who sold the Bidens the land where his current house is built, has donated some $9,000 to Biden’s campaigns; his parents, wife, and brother pitched in nearly $25,000 more to Biden since 1994. Not long after he sold his old house to MBNA’s vice chairman, Quid Pro Joe started rolling in a new infusion of company cash. In the 1996 election season, MBNA forked over nearly $63,000 in bundled primary and general contributions from its employees to Biden.
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Biden refused to answer questions about the deal through his campaign spokesman David Wade, who cited “time constraints.”
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Ordinary Joes don’t have room in their schedules to answer pesky reporters.

To be clear, no laws were broken. These arrangements were simply a continuation of Biden’s mutually beneficial, Beltway business-as-usual relationships with corporate benefactors. And that’s just the tip of a massive iceberg.

Soon after Senator Biden’s 1996 reelection, MBNA hired Biden’s son, Hunter. The younger Biden graduated from Georgetown University and Yale Law School. There were no late-night, kitchen table sessions worrying about where the young Biden kid would find a job. MBNA apparently stands for “Making Biden’s Nepotism Apparent.” The company, described in its heyday as having a “cult”-like atmosphere, remained tight-lipped about Hunter Biden’s duties, job description, and salary. He started out as a management trainee and quickly moved up at the firm, becoming a senior vice president by early 1998. Hunter Biden then clocked in with the Clinton administration’s Commerce Department, specializing in “electronic commerce” issues for three years before returning to MBNA as a “consultant” in 2001. According to various reports, Hunter Biden received a $100,000 yearly retainer from MBNA to offer advice on “Internet and privacy law.” He received consulting fees from MBNA from 2001 through 2005.
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The consulting arrangement ended when Bank of America acquired MBNA in January 2006.

What was Hunter Biden’s dear old dad up to during this time frame? Not coincidentally, Senator Biden was distinguishing himself as one of the few Democrats on Capitol Hill in favor of the credit card giant’s pet project: bankruptcy reform. (Biden would end up voting four times in favor of the company’s agenda in 1998, 2000, 2001, and in March 2005, when the Senate passed a new bankruptcy law by 74 to 25.)
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The changes MBNA pushed for would make it more difficult for credit card holders to abandon their debt. (That’s not a bad thing, in my opinion, but the bill hardly matches Biden’s class-warfare populist rhetoric about the “rich.”) Senator Biden took the unusual step of stuffing the MBNA-backed package into a foreign relations bill in 2000. Left-wing consumer groups blasted him for providing cover to other Democrats doing the credit industry’s bidding. Congress passed the bill, but then-President Clinton vetoed it. In 2005, Biden was back championing another MBNA-supported bill to stiffen personal bankruptcy standards. Left-wing consumer groups lambasted the proposal. Like Senator Biden, Republican Senator John McCain supported the bill. One of their fellow Senate colleagues, however, singled out McCain for criticism: