Blogs For Victory

Courtesy of the son of Senator Joe Biden, D-MBNA:

son of Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden was paid an undisclosed amount of money as a consultant by MBNA, the largest employer in Delaware, during the years the senator supported legislation that was promoted by the credit card industry and opposed by consumer groups.

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign said Biden helped forge a bipartisan compromise on the measure, which is now law and makes it harder for consumers to obtain bankruptcy protection in the courts.

MBNA’s consulting payments to Hunter Biden, first reported by The New York Times, followed his departure in 2001 from the company, where he had been an executive.

Obama opposed the bankruptcy law, enacted in 2005, while Biden supported it.

David Wade, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said that “after working in the Clinton administration in the Department of Commerce on Internet privacy and online commerce issues, Hunter consulted for five years as an expert on these very same issues at a time of enormous expansion in online banking.”

At the time Hunter Biden was receiving consulting payments from MBNA, he also was a Washington lobbyist at a firm he had co-founded.

“He was not a lobbyist for MBNA, and his work had absolutely nothing to do with the bankruptcy bill. Zero. Nothing,” said Wade.

Lets see, he’s the son of the Senator who represents Deleware and Delaware’s largest employer is MBNA, who paid a mint to said son of the Senator…yeah, sure; he wasn’t lobbying for MBNA. I’m sure it never crossed Senator Biden’s mind that his son was getting rich off MBNA while laws affecting MBNA were being considered by the Senate.

Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing Matt and I detailed in Caucus of Corruption (which really is a must-read – not because we’re the best writers the world has ever seen, but because the subject matter is so important for the future political health of the United States) – the fuzzy connections between big money, politicians, family members and legislation before the Congress of the United States. Biden isn’t alone here, ya know? In fact, Senator Harry Reid’s children also lobby the Senate on behalf of Nevada businesses…and we all sleep well at night knowing that there’s no chance at all that Daddy will look favorably on his son’s paymaster, right? Of course we all know that its corruption to the very bone – Biden’s son shouldn’t have been a lobbyists, certainly not for any entity which was of any concern to the State of Delaware, and neither should Reid’s sons…but it happens, all the time.

As there is more than one way to skin a cat, there’s also more than one way to bribe a politician – you can, of course, hire the pol’s children, but the pol can also put his wife on the campaign payroll, or your daughter can do the legal work for the company wanting your vote on a bill, or your daughter can be hired by a fellow Congressman who owes you, or you can see to it that your brother-in-laws company gets that federal contract. Some of this is illegal, but most of it falls into a grey area – grey areas created, from what Matt and I could figure, quite deliberately by the pols, businesses and lobbyists concerned to ensure that there’s always a way to grease political palms. Our campaign and ethics laws are quite byzantine and so there’s only one way to really clean up DC.

Hold them accountable.

Biden shouldn’t be on the ticket – heck, he shouldn’t even be in the Senate anymore. If a few dirty e mails were sufficient to force Foley out, then Biden’s questionable connections to MBNA are more than enough to give Biden his walking papers. But instead of holding Biden accountable, Democrats want to elevate him to the Vice Presidency of the United States of America. Small wonder that people like William Jefferson and Jack Murtha feel themselves above the law…one of their own is on the ticket, so what have they to worry about? Until such time as Democrats hold their own to a high standard this sort of corruption will continue unabated – and for all Obama’s talk of change, the reality is that the same corrupt gang will be running the show.