The Fabulous Biden Boys

RUSH: From the Washington Post of Sunday: ‘A son and a brother of Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) are accused in two lawsuits of defrauding a former business partner and an investor of millions of dollars in a hedge fund deal that went sour, court records show. The Democratic vice presidential candidate’s son Hunter, 38, and brother James, 59, assert instead that their former partner defrauded them by misrepresenting his experience in the hedge fund industry and recommending that they hire a lawyer with felony convictions.’ (laughing) Sorry to laugh at the misfortune. ‘Hunter Biden was made president with an annual salary of $1.2 million, despite his inexperience in the hedge fund industry, the lawsuit said. Before that, he had been part of the Washington law firm Oldaker, Biden & Belair, which earned $1.76 million in lobbying revenue in the first half of 2006, according to Congressional Quarterly’s CQ MoneyLine. One of its biggest clients is the National Association of Shareholder and Consumer Attorneys, a District-based group representing law firms specializing in investment and corporate law. Hunter Biden is one of many children and relatives of prominent members of Congress who have made their careers as lobbyists. He returned to lobbying after less than a year with Paradigm. Lotito’s lawsuit alleges that James Biden called him in January 2006 to arrange a job for Hunter Biden. It says James Biden told him that his brother (Sen. Biden) ‘was concerned with the impact that Hunter’s lobbying activities might have on his expected campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination,’ and, ‘Biden told Lotito that, in light of these concerns, his brother had asked him to seek Lotito’s assistance in finding employment for Hunter in a non-lobbying capacity.”

So I mean that doesn’t require any translation. Hunter Biden got a big gig at a hedge fund with no experience, and his dad said, ‘You gotta get out of this lobbying business because I’m going to run for president.’ He told his brother to get him out. It just reminds me, this New York Times story from Saturday, it was the top left of the front page, about how disappointed they were that Obama is not getting the money out, that it’s a bunch of fat cat donors that will be on display paying millions for the privilege of being in the club suites at Invesco Field at Mile High to hobnob with Obama before and after. They’re just wringing their hands about all of the special interest money, and it’s one of these things I have to laugh at because every presidential race we hear this from candidates of both parties, ‘We’re going to get rid of the special interests. We gotta get rid of lobbyists,’ and we never do and we never will. Lobbyists and special interests are as much a part of the electoral process as voters are. The idea that these people are going to come along and clean it up and that they’ve never been involved is just absolutely absurd. It’s a lie. It’s one of the reigning tenets of politics. Rail against the things that people find most negative, try to convince them that you are going to be the guy that finally cleans it up, they believe you, they vote for you on that basis and never gets cleaned up and four years later repeat the cycle.

Here’s a story from the New York Times: ‘Obama Aides Defend Bank’s Pay to Biden Son.’ This Hunter Biden guy is a busy guy. ‘During the years that Senator Joe Biden was helping the credit card industry –‘ wait ’til you people hear this. It’s not just Pelosi trying to keep the gas price up so you have to go to natural gas. And, by the way, Rahm Emanuel has introduced natural gas legislation while Pelosi is out there telling Brokaw, ‘Ah, the markets take care of that. My investment doesn’t have anything to do with that.’

‘During the years that Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. was helping the credit card industry win passage of a law making it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy protection, his son had a consulting agreement that lasted five years with one of the largest companies pushing for the changes, aides to Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign acknowledged Sunday. Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, received consulting fees from the MBNA Corporation from 2001 to 2005 for work on online banking issues. Aides to Mr. Obama, who chose Mr. Biden as his vice-presidential running mate on Saturday, would not say how much the younger Mr. Biden, who works as both a lawyer and lobbyist in Washington, had received, though a company official had once described him as having a $100,000 a year retainer. But Obama aides said he had never lobbied for MBNA and that there was nothing improper about the payments.’ Of course, they’re Democrats, can’t be anything inappropriate about anything.

‘Campaign officials acknowledged that the connection between the Bidens and MBNA, the enormous financial services company then based in their home state of Delaware, was one of the most sensitive issues they examined while vetting the senator for a spot on the ticket. Mr. Biden’s support for the bankruptcy changes, which were signed into law in 2005, puts him at odds with Mr. Obama of Illinois, who opposed the bill and has criticized the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, for supporting it.’ So Biden’s kid is working for a credit card company, and Biden, Sr., the father pushes legislation making it harder for you to sue for bankruptcy on the basis of credit card companies, where his son works. ‘In late 1996, the company hired the younger of Mr. Biden’s two sons, Robert Hunter Biden, known as Hunter, who had just graduated from Yale Law School, as a lawyer. The company promoted Mr. Biden to senior vice president by early 1998. And after the younger Mr. Biden worked at the Commerce Department on electronic commerce issues from 1998 to 2001 … Consumer advocates say that Senator Biden was one of the first Democratic leaders to support the bankruptcy bill.’ I know — so what, so what, so what. It’s just the hypocrisy of all this. People want to try to present as clean and pure as the wind-driven snow, claim to clean all this up, and they never, ever will clean this stuff up. It is what it is. But somehow the American voter gets sucked in every four years accepting some candidate’s claim to clean all this up. It just repeats every four years.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Hunter Biden worked for a hedge fund, made $1.2 million. Incidentally, Chelsea Clinton works for a hedge fund. John Edwards, the Breck Girl, worked for a hedge fund that was foreclosing on people’s homes in New Orleans where he announced his campaign for president. Michelle Obama went to Zanesville, Ohio, during the Ohio primary and told people there not to work for hedge funds and not to go to law firms and corporate law firms and hedge funds. No. The women in Zanesville were supposed to stay in Zanesville and engage in the service economy there to help the least among them. Yet if you look at Obama, he seems to love these big financial institutions. I mean his buddy Jim Johnson with his Fannie Mae ties, and then Biden with his bank buddies and his son working as a lobbyist and as a hedge fund manager. But don’t worry, we’re told. No, no, no, no, no, don’t worry, this election is about change. It’s about fighting special interests and lobbyists. A-ha! I don’t know about you, folks, but I’m not swallowing this croc anymore. I don’t care where it comes from, which party, this stuff is what it is and we’re going to have to realize it’s part of politics, politicians getting their kids jobs, incompetent kids in some cases, just like powerful people try to get their kids jobs all over the country. Politicians probably have a little bit more pull because they can play the extortion game with people.