Amid massive corporate lobbying campaign
Biden, Democrats prepare to gut their own social welfare bill
With deadlines looming this month on key items in the Biden administration’s domestic agenda, the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” package, the process of corporate manipulation and watering down of the already inadequate social welfare measure is moving into high gear.
Last month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer set a September 15 deadline for the various committees in each chamber to draft their pieces of the budget bill, which, in its present outline form, modestly expands benefits for working people and increases taxes on corporations and the rich to partially offset the cost. Unlike the physical infrastructure bill, which is broadly backed by big business and passed the Senate with 19 Republican votes, there is no Republican support for the budget proposal, and corporate America is for the most part lined up against it.
The Democrats are seeking to bypass a filibuster in the Senate which could be overcome only by obtaining the votes of 10 Republicans in the evenly divided chamber, by moving the bill under the budget reconciliation process, whereby the legislation can be passed by a simple majority. That means, however, the Democratic leadership has to secure the votes of all 50 Democratic senators. Vice President Kamala Harris would then cast the tie-breaking vote.
Last month, Pelosi agreed to bring the infrastructure bill up for a vote in the House by September 27. That was a concession to a group of right-wing Democrats, who said they would not vote to move forward on the budget reconciliation bill if Pelosi continued to insist that the House not act on the infrastructure bill until after the Senate had passed the broader measure. As a result, Schumer has been compelled to set a September 27 deadline for the Senate passage of the social spending bill.
The process of drastically shrinking the social improvements contained in the “human infrastructure” bill, slashing its cost and blocking any significant increase in corporate taxes began in earnest last week, when Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia published a column in the Wall Street Journal headlined, “Why I Won’t Support Spending Another $3.5 Trillion.”
Manchin, a multimillionaire owner of coal companies in West Virginia, cited the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Admiral Mike Mullen, as his authority on the danger to national security from too much debt. The senator called for a “strategic pause” in consideration of the budget bill, in effect delinking passage of the corporate-backed infrastructure bill from passage of the broader social legislation.
An unabashed flack for the fossil fuel industry, Manchin has repeatedly opposed environmental regulations on mining and energy in general. He previously called certain provisions in the budget bill aimed at modestly restraining carbon emissions, such as repealing tax subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, “very disturbing.” He has also made it clear he is opposed to raising corporate taxes and would like to “means test” measures such as tuition-free community college, universal preschool, child care tax credits and an extension of the enhanced child tax credit.
Other Democratic senators who have publicly opposed the budget bill’s $3.5 trillion price tag (spread out over 10 years) include Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Jon Tester of Montana and Mark Warner of Virginia, a former tech entrepreneur worth $200 million and now chairman of the Intelligence Committee.
On Tuesday, press reports emerged that Manchin had let it be known he was prepared to support a bill costing from $1 billion to $1.5 billion. Back in June, Bernie Sanders, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, was claiming he would oversee passage of $6 trillion in social welfare measures, calling it the most far-reaching reform since the New Deal. Sanders was chosen by Biden to lead the effort to pass his budget in order to give his conservative domestic economic agenda a “progressive” gloss.
The Vermont senator, who at times calls himself a “socialist” and is relentlessly promoted by the pseudo-left as “proof” that the Democratic Party can be pressured to carry out progressive and even socialist policies, has said nothing about Biden’s termination of federal jobless benefits in the midst of the widening COVID-19 pandemic, or the drive to reopen the schools amidst soaring infections, hospitalizations and deaths of children, teachers and school staff.
The response by the White House and the Democratic congressional leadership has made clear that the $3.5 trillion package of social measures will be drastically cut back before any bill is brought up for a vote. The same applies to Biden’s promise to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthy.
On Tuesday, Biden told the press, referring to Manchin, “Joe at the end has always been there. He’s always been with me. I think we can work something out, and I look forward to speaking with him.”
Pelosi has said she will only bring before the House a budget measure that can be passed in the Senate, i.e., one that accommodates the most right-wing factions in the Democratic Party.
Yahoo News cited a “lobbyist familiar with internal deliberations on Capitol Hill” as saying “there was optimism among congressional Democrats that a bill would get passed and sent to Biden for signing into law. But such a bill is likely to be in the range of about $2 trillion…”
The article continues: “While the various House committees are likely to approve bills that would total $3.5 trillion, that number would get whittled down before the legislation is sent to the full House for debate and passage, the source said. That could mean that any proposed tax increases on the wealthy and corporations would not have to be as steep as initially envisioned.”
Even were the infrastructure and budget bills passed with the current proposed spending levels, they would be hopelessly inadequate to address the catastrophic levels of poverty and social crisis and decades-long degradation of social infrastructure. This was revealed in the response of the ruling class to the pandemic and the social disaster unfolding in the Gulf Coast and New York City as a result of Hurricane Ida.
Capitalism is incapable of addressing these existential public health and environmental issues, both because of the total subordination of all questions to corporate profit and the accumulation of private wealth by the ruling elite, and the division of the world economy into rival nation states. The measures dictated by science and made possible by the development of technology to eradicate the coronavirus and resolve the climate change crisis are blocked by the economic and geo-political interests of a corporate-financial oligarchy that accounts for a miniscule portion of the world population.
The infrastructure bill includes only $550 billion in new money, spread out over eight years. The current funding figure in the budget bill, $350 billion per year, pales in comparison to the vast increase in wealth of the US financial elite just in the course of the pandemic.
According to a recent report from Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality, US billionaires have seen their wealth surge $1.8 trillion in just the first 18 months of the pandemic. Their collective fortune has skyrocketed by nearly two-thirds (62 percent), from just short of $3 trillion at the start of the COVID crisis on March 18, 2020, to $4.8 trillion on August 17, 2021.
Elon Musk has seen his wealth increase by $150 billion during the pandemic, a gain of over 600 percent.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve continues to pump $120 billion every month into the financial markets and maintain near-zero interest rates to fuel the stock market frenzy.
The minor tax increases on corporations and the rich proposed by Biden and the Democrats, should they see the light of day, would do little to reverse the ongoing plundering of society by the oligarchy. Government tax revenues from US corporations have declined by 40 percent just since the enactment of the Republican tax bill in December of 2017, and Biden is only proposing to restore half the 14 percent cut in the 35 percent corporate tax rate that prevailed prior to Donald Trump’s “reform.”
In any event, corporate America will not tolerate any significant increase in its taxes or reduction in its profits, and these are the class interests that control both parties. The pharmaceutical giants (Pfizer, AbbVie, AstraZeneca), energy monopolies (ExxonMobil), entertainment monoliths (Walt Disney Company), tech titans, major retailers, manufacturers and banks are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to bribe lawmakers, target them with negative ads and mobilize right-wing organizations they have funded to determine the final shape of any spending bills that might emerge from this sordid process—which is carried out largely behind the backs of the American people.
The Washington Post reported last month that “the pharmaceutical industry has embarked on its own wide-ranging campaign to combat Democrats’ drug pricing proposals, another potential revenue source in the bill. Conservative outfits previously backed by the sector’s top trade group, known as PhRMA [Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America], have run recent ads claiming lawmakers’ plans would have worsened the coronavirus pandemic.”
The Post noted that the RATE Coalition (Reforming America’s Taxes Equitably), “which counts support from Capital One, Disney, FedEx, Lowe’s and Lockheed Martin,” is preparing a seven-figure digital ad campaign to oppose any increase in the corporate tax rate. One of its top spokesmen is Blanche Lincoln, a former Democratic senator from Arkansas who served with Biden in the Senate.
The very fact that Biden has intervened so forcefully exposes the claims that what is involved in the unionization campaign at Amazon has anything to do with the interests of Amazon workers. Biden’s entire career in the Senate, from 1973 to 2009, coincides with the abandonment by the Democratic Party of any program of social reform and its accommodation to “Reaganomics.”
Long known as Delaware’s “senator from DuPont,” Biden served on committees that were most sensitive to the interests of the ruling class, including the Judiciary Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee. He supported the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, a milestone in the deregulation of the banks, and other right-wing measures. After nearly four decades in the Senate, Biden became Obama’s vice president, helping to oversee the massive bailout of Wall Street following the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent restructuring of class relations to benefit the rich. That included the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, based on a 50 percent cut in the pay of all newly hired autoworkers.
In the 2020 elections, Biden won the Democratic Party nomination for president through the intervention of the party leadership on the basis of an explicit repudiation of any program of social reform. Biden was promoted as the right-wing alternative to Bernie Sanders.
Report: Andrew Yang No Longer a Democrat, Will Create Third Party
Former presidential and New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang reportedly no longer identifies as a Democrat and will soon launch a third party.
Two people close to Yang told Politico that the former candidate will launch the third party with the release of his upcoming on October 5, Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy. The exact name of his party and its rollout remains unknown as of this writing, however, Crown, the book’s publisher provided some hints about the party’s principles:
It writes that the book is an indictment of America’s “era of institutional failure” and will introduce “us to the various ‘priests of the decline’ of America, including politicians whose incentives have become divorced from the people they supposedly serve.”
The book is blurbed by businessperson Mark Cuban (“a vitally important book”) and The New York Times’ Kara Swisher (“Can there be another political party in the U.S.?…In Forward, Yang does not just give us a laundry list of intractable problems, but shows how we can find solutions if we think in new ways and summon the courage to do so.”).
Though left-of-center on a variety of issues, Yang differentiated himself from the list of Democrat candidates through his rejection of toxic politics, including cancel culture, in favor of a culture of dialogue and understanding.
Democratic presidential candidate entrepreneur Andrew Yang speaks during a Democratic presidential primary debate Thursday, Dec. 19, 2019, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
“Cancel culture has really become sort of a source of fear for many Americans where we live in a culture that you are somehow afraid that if you say the wrong thing that your life could be changed forever,” Yang told The Hill in 2019.
“To me, it’s vital that we humanize each other,” he added. “We humanize the consequences of some of these impulses not just in terms of who hears the expression but who is losing a livelihood as a result.”
As noted by Reason, Yang garnered a diverse group of supporters (the “Yang Gang”) through his promotion of Universal Basic Income (UBI), which would grant Americans $1,000 a month.
“That was never a particularly libertarian agenda, but Yang’s practical approach—find ways to help people who may have been hurt by capitalism, rather than destroy capitalism itself—nevertheless made him popular with a diverse range of people, including some libertarians,” noted Reason.
MASKLESS WONDER BOY?
OR LYING SOCIOPATH BRIBES SUCKING LAWYER?
REALITY CHECK ON BRIBES SUCKING BIDEN:
The corporatist organizations like the AFL-CIO are still called “unions,” but their actual practice and role bear no relationship to the function traditionally associated with the term “union.” They are not workers’ organizations, but instruments of management and the state.
Long known as Delaware’s “senator from DuPont,” Biden served on committees that were most sensitive to the interests of the ruling class, including the Judiciary Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee. He supported the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, a milestone in the deregulation of the banks, and other right-wing measures. After nearly four decades in the Senate, Biden became Obama’s vice president, helping to oversee the massive bailout of Wall Street following the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent restructuring of class relations to benefit the rich. That included the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, based on a 50 percent cut in the pay of all newly hired autoworkers.
The very fact that Biden has intervened so forcefully exposes the claims that what is involved in the unionization campaign at Amazon has anything to do with the interests of Amazon workers. Biden’s entire career in the Senate, from 1973 to 2009, coincides with the abandonment by the Democratic Party of any program of social reform and its accommodation to “Reaganomics.”
Joe Biden Serves Sandwiches to Union Workers on Labor Day
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AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
6 Sep 20213,784
2:36
President Joe Biden celebrated Labor Day by delivering deli sandwiches to union workers in his home state of Delaware.
According to the Associated Press, the president visited an event orchestrated by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 313 in New Castle, Delaware, where he served sandwiches from Capriotti’s, a Delaware restaurant chain founded in 1976.
“He shook hands and chatted with the group of mostly men, who were clad in jeans and union T-shirts,” reported the AP. “Biden spent several minutes chatting with the union members in groups before telling them, ‘C’mon, let’s go get something to eat.'”
Biden later told a union member’s mom that he has been a proud supporter of the union since he was first elected to public office in the 1970s. The IBEW endorsed Biden for president during the 2020 election, hailing him as a strong protector of workers’ rights and the man to fight climate change:
What makes Joe Biden different isn’t just his support for our rights on the job, but his support for good energy jobs. Eighty-five percent of IBEW members work in the energy industry, and our country needs a realistic plan to combat the ongoing threat of climate change without putting energy security or working families at risk.
Joe Biden has listened to IBEW members, and his energy policy has been shaped by deep, meaningful conversations with the professionals who will build and maintain the energy grid of the future. He backs an all-of-the-above approach to slashing carbon emissions. He also has proposed the largest-ever investment in clean-energy technology, as well as an aggressive clean-power infrastructure plan that will make the United States a global leader in fighting climate change, while putting tens of thousands of Americans to work building the energy economy of the future.
While Biden has touted himself as a proud supporter of the American working man, the economy under his leadership has demonstrated the exact opposite. As the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently announced on Monday, “real average hourly earnings for all employees decreased 0.1 percent from June to July.”
“Businesses across America are paying their workers more as they struggle to fill a record number of open positions,” Breitbart reported. “Wages increased four-tenths of a percentage point in July. But prices are rising even faster. The Consumer Price Index rose five-tenths of a point.”
Joe Biden Promotes Amnesty for Illegals During Event Celebrating Union Workers
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
8 Sep 20210
1:44
President Joe Biden met with union organizers at the White House on Wednesday, promising to push for amnesty for illegal immigrants.
“I want us to see us finally, finally, provide DREAMers, TPS (Temporary Protected Status) recipients, farmworkers, essential workers, a pathway to citizenship,” Biden said. “Bringing them out of the shadows so they can receive the protection and representation that our laws and our unions provide.”
During the event, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler agreed with Biden, calling for a “long overdue pathway to citizenship” for people working in the United States who were not citizens, and endorsed his radical spending bill expanding entitlements.
“Every working person in every state would benefit in some way,” she said.
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler speaks about Labor Unions during an event in the East Room of the White House on September 8, 2021, in Washington, DC. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Biden has endorsed the idea of including amnesty in his partisan Senate budget reconciliation “infrastructure” bill — even though it remains unclear whether it will be approved by the Senate parliamentarian.
If it passes, the bill would provide citizenship for a population of at least eight million people who are not United States citizens. The president has allowed roughly 1.6 million migrant workers into the United States, creating a surplus in the labor supply that depresses wages for American workers.
Biden reminded union members at the White House that his wife Jill Biden was a member of the teachers’ union.
“And by the way, of course, I sleep with an NEA (National Education Association) member every night,” he joked. “Same one. Same one.”
Why Biden supports the unionization of the
Amazon workforce
On Sunday night, President Joe Biden issued a video statement fully backing the efforts of the Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Union (RWDSU) to unionize workers at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama warehouse. Nearly 6,000 workers at the facility, which is located just outside of Birmingham, are currently voting on whether to join the RWDSU.
Biden clearly called on workers in Alabama to vote “yes” on the union drive, for which balloting concludes on March 29. “The National Labor Relations Act didn’t just say unions are allowed to exist,” he said. “It said we should encourage unions.”
Biden speaks at The Queen Theater, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, in Wilmington, Del. [Credit: AP Photo/Matt Slocum]
He continued, “Today and over the next few days and weeks workers in Alabama and all across America are voting on whether to organize a union in their workplace. This is vitally important—a vitally important choice—as America grapples with the deadly pandemic, the economic crisis, and the reckoning of race—what it reveals about the deep disparities that still exist in our country.”
Biden’s intervention is historically unprecedented. After President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act into law in 1935, the leaders of the newly organized industrial unions declared that “The president wants you to join a union.” But FDR never actually said that.
In this case, Biden gave no indication of impartiality, all but calling on workers to vote the union in and accusing Amazon of intimidation. Biden is putting the entire prestige of the White House behind the vote. He would not have done this unless he felt that the direct support of his administration was both necessary to ensure a “yes” vote in Bessemer and strategically important.
The very fact that Biden has intervened so forcefully exposes the claims that what is involved in the unionization campaign at Amazon has anything to do with the interests of Amazon workers. Biden’s entire career in the Senate, from 1973 to 2009, coincides with the abandonment by the Democratic Party of any program of social reform and its accommodation to “Reaganomics.”
Long known as Delaware’s “senator from DuPont,” Biden served on committees that were most sensitive to the interests of the ruling class, including the Judiciary Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee. He supported the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, a milestone in the deregulation of the banks, and other right-wing measures. After nearly four decades in the Senate, Biden became Obama’s vice president, helping to oversee the massive bailout of Wall Street following the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent restructuring of class relations to benefit the rich. That included the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, based on a 50 percent cut in the pay of all newly hired autoworkers.
In the 2020 elections, Biden won the Democratic Party nomination for president through the intervention of the party leadership on the basis of an explicit repudiation of any program of social reform. Biden was promoted as the right-wing alternative to Bernie Sanders.
Biden’s aggressive intervention on behalf of the unionization campaign at Amazon can only be interpreted as a strategic, and not merely tactical decision by a significant faction of the ruling class. What are the considerations motivating this policy?
First, the ruling class confronts an unprecedented crisis, which has been enormously intensified by the pandemic. As a result of the refusal of the ruling class to take the necessary measures to save lives, nearly 530,000 people have died from COVID-19 over the past year. The impact of mass death, combined with the disastrous social and economic situation, is having a profoundly radicalizing impact on the consciousness of workers and youth.
Trump has responded to this situation with the promotion of fascistic organizations that will be used as a spearhead against working class unrest. The Democrats are attempting to smother social opposition by utilizing the unions. This is combined with their relentless efforts to divide workers against each other through the promotion of the politics of racial and gender identity. Significantly, Biden framed his intervention at Amazon in racial terms, presenting unions as instruments for defending “especially Black and Brown workers.”
Second, the international situation is no less concerning to the ruling class, which is determined to maintain its global hegemonic position through the use of military force. The Biden administration is carrying out an increasingly confrontational policy toward Russia and, in particular, China. The logic of this policy leads to war. In the event of a major “great power conflict,” the pro-capitalist unions will be critical in promoting national chauvinism and suppressing the class struggle. War abroad requires a disciplined “labor movement” at home.
Biden’s intervention at Amazon is part of a broader strategy of promoting the unions and integrating them ever more directly into the state apparatus and corporate management. Prior to his inauguration in January, Biden pledged that he would be the most “pro-union” president ever.
In mid-November, shortly after the 2020 elections, Biden held a meeting with the leaders of all the major unions, including AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, along with corporate executives from General Motors, Microsoft, Target and other companies. Biden reportedly told the meeting that he is “a union guy,” but insisted “that’s not anti-business.” He added that “we’re in a pretty dark hole right now,” but “we [that is, the union executives, the corporate CEOs and the incoming Biden administration] all agree on common goals.”
The strategy Biden is pursuing is known as corporatism—that is, the integration of the government with the corporations and the unions on the basis of a defense of the capitalist system.
It has been decades since the AFL-CIO was associated in any way with the defense of workers’ interests against the corporations and the ruling class. Since the isolation and defeat of the PATCO air traffic controllers strike in 1981, the trade union movement has been completely integrated into the structures of corporate management. During the 1980s, the unions played a critical role in isolating and suppressing opposition to the ruling class counter-offensive spearheaded by the Reagan administration.
With the assistance of the unions, strike activity was almost entirely suppressed in the 1990s and the first decades of the 21st century, facilitating an increase in social inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s.
In 2018, during oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the case of Janus vs. AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), a lawyer for AFSCME summed up the role of the unions by saying that the “agency fee”—the requirement that public service employees in some states pay the equivalent of dues even if they opt out of joining a union—“is the tradeoff for no strikes.” Without maintaining the financial security of the unions, he warned, “you can raise an untold specter of labor unrest throughout the country.”
The corporatist organizations like the AFL-CIO are still called “unions,” but their actual practice and role bear no relationship to the function traditionally associated with the term “union.” They are not workers’ organizations, but instruments of management and the state.
The ruling class, however, is extremely concerned with and sensitive to the growth of opposition in the working class, which has been concretized in the movement for rank-and-file committees, including among Amazon workers. The ruling class is, moreover, aware of the ability of workers in the US and internationally to utilize social media and other forms of communication to share information and organize outside of the control of the corporatist unions.
There is particular concern over the political radicalization of Amazon workers, who have become even more critical to the overall process of capitalist exploitation since the onset of the pandemic. The world’s fifth largest employer added 427,000 jobs in 2020, bringing its total to 1.3 million employees worldwide, including half a million in the US.
The promotion of the unions is aimed at countering the expanding movement of rank-and-file workers. It is aimed at subordinating workers to the array of laws that come into effect when the unions are established as the “sole legitimate” representative of the workers. In return, the union executives will be given access to the union dues that come from the institutionalization of these organizations in broader sections of industry.
The combination of aggressive backing by the government and anger and opposition among Amazon workers could produce a victory for the union drive in Bessemer. Whatever the outcome of the vote, the fight to establish and build rank-and-file committees must be developed and expanded. Workers cannot allow themselves to be disciplined by the pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist trade union apparatus.
This must be combined with a new political strategy to mobilize the working class in the US and internationally in the fight for socialist policies, including the expropriation of pandemic profiteers like Amazon owner Jeff Bezos and the transformation of Amazon and other logistics companies into public utilities, democratically controlled and collectively owned by the working class.
At its most fundamental level, the promotion of the unions by the ruling class is aimed at quarantining workers from socialism. The overriding fear of the ruling class is that the objective radicalization of the working class, intensified by the pandemic, will acquire a socialist leadership and political program. It is this fear that is behind Biden’s extraordinary intervention at Amazon.
Biden has been selling his soul for money for decades; to China, to Ukraine, to Pakistan. How else can he explain his massive wealth and multiple mansions on a salary of $174k? He cannot. See Peter Schweitzer’s book Profiles in Corruption. Chapter 3 is about Joe Biden:
“The Biden family partners are often foreign governments, where the deals occur in the dark corners of international finance like Kazakhstan, China, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Ukraine and Russia. Some have even involved taxpayer money.”
And later in chapter 3:
“The Biden family’s apparent self-enrichment depends on Joe Biden’s political influence and involves no less than five family members: Joe’s son Hunter, daughter Ashley, brothers James and Frank and sister Valerie.”
Read Schweitzer’s book. For the Bidens, as Ilhan Omar is fond of saying, it was always and only about the Benjamins.
In just seven months Biden has created seven disasters. Every sentient American surely knows by now about Biden’s plagiarism, his pathological lying about everything from his law school record to his fabricated exploits around the world. Everyone surely knows by now of Hunter Biden’s depravity, all of which China has proof of (as did the FBI in December of 2019).
Long known as Delaware’s “senator from DuPont,” Biden served on committees that were most sensitive to the interests of the ruling class, including the Judiciary Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee. He supported the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, a milestone in the deregulation of the banks, and other right-wing measures. After nearly four decades in the Senate, Biden became Obama’s vice president, helping to oversee the massive bailout of Wall Street following the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent restructuring of class relations to benefit the rich. That included the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, based on a 50 percent cut in the pay of all newly hired autoworkers.
House Republican Demands Hunter Biden’s Art Dealer Assist in Investigating White House Corruption
David McNew/Getty Images, Hunter Biden
7 Sep 20210
5:21
House Oversight Committee’s ranking member Rep. James Comer (R-KY) has demanded Hunter Biden’s “art” dealer “assist” in an investigation regarding “undue White House influence” over Hunter’s scheme of selling paintings worth $500,000 to anonymous investors.
In a congressional letter addressed to Hunter’s art dealer, Georges Bergès, Comer notes it “is the Oversight Committee’s responsibly to scrutinize Mr. Biden’s business activities because he [Bergès] chooses to conduct them in the most murky and corrupt corners of international affairs.” The letter also speaks to Bergès’ connections to China and the art industry’s “commodities of fluid and opaque value” that “evade sanctions”:
Moreover, he has chosen—in the latest iteration of his career—to sell commodities of fluid and opaque value to anonymous benefactors. Mr. Biden acknowledges it is “a hell of a lot easier to get noticed” as an artist due to his family name.
Given Mr. Biden’s connection to the White House, his network of foreign associates, your efforts to become the “lead guy in China” for art, and history of foreign nations that have “used transactions involving high-value art to evade sanctions imposed on them by the United States,” the extent and nature of your dealings with Mr. Biden must be subject to the same scrutiny.
Comer, therefore, demanded Bergès comply with the following document requests:
1. All documents and communications between you, the Georges Bergès Gallery (or agents thereof) and the White House, including a copy of the ethics guidelines;
2. All documents and communications between you, the Georges Bergès Gallery (or agents thereof) and Mr. Biden;
3. All guidelines, agreements, contracts, or other documents executed by you or the Georges Bergès Gallery (or agents thereof) in connection with Mr. Biden;
4. All documents and communications pertaining to setting the prices for Mr. Biden’s art;
5. A copy of the ethics guidelines, created in conjunction with the White House, pertaining to Mr. Biden’s art;
6. Documents sufficient to show who attended the opening of Mr. Biden’s shows; and
7. Documents sufficient to show who purchased Mr. Biden’s artwork.
House Oversight and Reform Committee Ranking Member James Comer (R-KY) speaks during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing titled The Capitol Insurrection: Unexplained Delays and Unanswered Questions, on Capitol Hill on May 12, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jonathan Ernst-Pool/Getty Images)
Comer’s press office in a statement also suggested Hunter’s art dealings are concerning due to the artists’ “new, untrained, celebrity” and for “the Biden family’s historic precedent of using proximity to political power for self-gain”:
Given the history of foreign governments using high value art to evade U.S. sanctions, the unprecedented prices which Hunter Biden—a new, untrained, celebrity artist— is selling for, and the Biden family’s historic precedent of using proximity to political power for self-gain.”
Ranking Member Comer is demanding information and communications between the gallery and Hunter Biden, including the individuals who have purchased the art or indicated an interest in purchasing his art via attendance at his art shows.
Previously refuting any concerns over the art scheme, White House press secretary Jen Psaki stated in July that Hunter “has the right to pursue an artistic career” by selling “artwork” to an anonymous buyer for as much as $500,000, despite concerns that Hunter Biden is still invested in “CCP [Chinese Communist Party]-linked firms.”
Bergès would set the prices for the artwork and withhold “all records, including potential bidders and final buyers,” Washington Post reported. “The owner, Georges Bergès, has also agreed to reject any offer that he deems suspicious or that comes in over the asking price, according to people familiar with the agreement.”
Hunter Biden walks to Marine One on the Ellipse outside the White House May 22, 2021, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
But when Psaki was asked if Hunter will undergo ethics training while his father is President of the United States, Psaki ignored the reporter’s direct question by suggesting Hunter “is not involved in the sale or discussions about the sale of his art,” and Hunter will not be “informed” of “who is purchasing his art.”
Breitbart News senior contributor and Profiles in Corruption author Peter Schweizer said the entire proposal is an utterly “absurd” solution.
“The only way to address these issues is with greater transparency — not less,” he told Breitbart News. “Their proposed solution is greater secrecy, not transparency. And they are essentially saying, ‘Trust Us.’ Joe and Hunter Biden’s track record on such matters gives us no reason to trust them.”
Hunter responded to his critics by suggesting selling art for $500,000 to anonymous investors is a “pretty courageous thing to do.”
“Fuck em … Look man,” Hunter Biden explained on the Nota Bene Podcast, “I never said my art was going to cost what it was going to cost, or how much it would be priced at. I would be amazed, you know, if my art was sold, for you know, for, umm, for ten dollars.”
“I’m [the] most famous artist in MAGA world, at least,” Hunter facetiously said before suggesting President Joe Biden believes “everything” Hunter does “should be in National Gallery” of Art.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø.
IMAGES OF JOE BIDEN’S MANSIONS:
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/real-estate/a33809100/joe-biden-real-estate-homes/
Has there ever been a President as cold-hearted as Joe Biden?
No. There never has. No previous president in US history has been as willing to sacrifice America, American lives, and American power and standing in the world solely for political purposes. Are his traitorous actions purely political? Perhaps his motives are personal as well.
Biden has been selling his soul for money for decades; to China, to Ukraine, to Pakistan. How else can he explain his massive wealth and multiple mansions on a salary of $174k? He cannot. See Peter Schweitzer’s book Profiles in Corruption. Chapter 3 is about Joe Biden:
“The Biden family partners are often foreign governments, where the deals occur in the dark corners of international finance like Kazakhstan, China, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Ukraine and Russia. Some have even involved taxpayer money.”
And later in chapter 3:
“The Biden family’s apparent self-enrichment depends on Joe Biden’s political influence and involves no less than five family members: Joe’s son Hunter, daughter Ashley, brothers James and Frank and sister Valerie.”
Read Schweitzer’s book. For the Bidens, as Ilhan Omar is fond of saying, it was always and only about the Benjamins.
In just seven months Biden has created seven disasters. Every sentient American surely knows by now about Biden’s plagiarism, his pathological lying about everything from his law school record to his fabricated exploits around the world. Everyone surely knows by now of Hunter Biden’s depravity, all of which China has proof of (as did the FBI in December of 2019).
Just as the truth about the covid vaccines is strictly suppressed, so was the depth and breadth of the Biden family’s corruption. The media, print and electronic, deranged by their irrational hatred of Donald Trump, covered up the truth about the Biden family’s unscrupulousness.
We have the media and their big tech partners in crime to blame for the calamitous failures of this illegitimately installed president. We will suffer the reverberations of his open borders, energy regression, inflation, and the horrors unfolding in Afghanistan for decades to come.
Does Biden care how his diktats and policies have hurt millions of Americans? Not one bit; he revels in the damage he is doing. He finally has the power he has lusted after for decades, but his sabotage will embolden jihadists around the world for the foreseeable future. Biden has single-handedly ushered into power and armed a vast terrorist state.
How could a man view the carnage he is responsible for in Kabul and publicly blame President Trump? How on earth could he compare the loss of his own son from brain cancer to the loss of those thirteen young people he condemned to death?
Now Biden is warning of another terrorist attack on our troops who are sitting ducks at that regional airport in Kabul because of him! This level of callousness cannot be explained by his cognitive decline. Those of us who have lived with aging parents with dementia know that their core qualities become startlingly more pronounced. Joe Biden has always been a racist and a bully. He has always been in the business of politics strictly for the money. He owes China, Pakistan, Ukraine, and who knows what other corrupt nations for his unearned wealth and, as president, he is now paying them back. He just handed Afghanistan to China and Pakistan. For money, he is betraying our country and troops. For money, he has kickstarted WW3.
Lara Logan said on Jeanine Pirro’s program Saturday night:
“These people [the Biden administration] have a special place in history. They will go down as the most evil people that have ever led this country and have ever led American people to their deaths because when you betray one ally you betray all of your allies and if you empower one of your enemies you empower them all. There is not an American alive today who isn’t less safe because of what this administration has done.”
She is exactly right. None of this would be happening if Trump were still President. The southern border would still be closed. We would still be energy independent, Afghanistan would be more stable than at any time in the last twenty years with a scheduled, conditioned withdrawal that would have evacuated the Americans and our troops safely.
Those thirteen young people would still be alive. Their blood is on the hands of all of those Trump-deranged people who did everything in their power, legal and illegal, to defeat Trump. Their blood is on the hands of every Biden voter. They should have known better. They should never have fallen for the left’s propaganda so cleverly devised to induce mass psychosis. Biden and his entire cabinet must resign or be impeached for they have perpetrated the most egregious crime against this country in US history.
Photo credit: Jay Godwin, LBJ Library, public domain
Biden throws a tantrum
Our hapless president’s speech on Tuesday was not a speech at all. It was a full-blown childish tantrum. While he was ostensibly celebrating his massive “airlift” of thousands of mostly-Afghan refugees, from the beginning it was clear he is extremely angry. He almost shouted his claim that his catastrophic misadventure in Afghanistan has been a smashing success. This is a huge lie and everyone knows it, even those trying to spin this debacle as a win.
In fact, Biden’s surrender has probably set a genocide in motion just as our betrayal of the South Vietnamese gave birth to the killing fields. Women and girls are sure to be brutalized.
Biden had promised for days that no American would be left behind but of course hundreds, perhaps even thousands, have been left behind. Some even made it to the airport and were then denied flights home by US forces on the ground there. Thousands of those who escaped were rescued not by Biden’s forces but by retired vets and private organizations who set out to do what the government would not.
Biden is, and has always been, a pathological liar of the worst kind, the kind who lies to boost his own ego no matter how easy it is to prove his dishonesty. His seething, wretched defense of this massive failure will haunt this nation for decades to come. He has single-handedly created a fully-armed terrorist state, a state surrounded by enemies of the US – China, Iran and Pakistan. Those countries now have access to the $90b worth of American weapons, military vehicles and aircraft, not to mention Bagram Air Base.
Our NATO allies will no longer trust us. Biden will be forever known as the most destructive, the weakest and most gullible president in US history. A better man would resign but Biden is not even a decent man. As his mad rant on Tuesday proved, he will never take responsibility for his fatal errors in judgment.
Biden blamed President Trump, whose actual plan had stabilized the country and would have worked if implemented, and he blamed the Afghan army whom he betrayed by withdrawing their air support and their financial support. Of course, they fled. Biden betrayed them as cruelly as any leader in history has abandoned his troops and allies. He can claim his decision to withdraw as he did was successful from now to kingdom come, but it was the most egregious foreign policy error in American history.
The deaths of those thirteen young soldiers who died last Thursday is entirely his responsibility and yet he could not even bring himself to salute at their dignified transfer as their coffins passed by; he just kept checking his watch as if he had somewhere more important to be. The man is without heart and soul. The few parents who spoke with him were shocked that he only talked about his deceased son Beau. That’s his go-to default reply to anyone else’s loss; he makes it all about him.
As the months of his administration slip by, it becomes clearer and clearer that he is something of a sociopath. Nick Arama agrees. He is congenitally unable to care. As for Americans still stranded in Afghanistan, he blamed them – for not getting to the airport, for being “dual citizens” as if that makes them less worthy of rescue.
Of course, it is not just Biden that is to blame. Those military clowns, the ones who just weeks ago were telling us that Covid was the gravest threat we face (Austin) or that ‘white rage” is worth investigating (Milley) are to blame as well. Whoever was giving the orders on the ground in Kabul should also be fired.
Who thought it was a good idea to have those young soldiers do crowd control in a sea of panicked Afghans? Who decided those busloads of Americans had to be turned back in favor of unvetted refugees? Whose decision was it to let the highly trained military dogs who were brought safely to the airport be left behind, turned loose to face certain death on the streets of that benighted city?
Every leader who participated in this ill-timed, fateful attempt at withdrawal should resign or be fired. As many observers have noted, a high schooler could have managed it all better. But then maybe it was all by design, engineered by Biden’s paymaster, China. Biden has been bought and paid by a long list of influence purchasers for nearly all his years in Congress. “Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you’re really buying into someone else’s system of values, rules and rewards.” (Bill Watterson). Biden sold us out long ago.
Nancy Pelosi, a horrid woman equally as without heart and soul, on Tuesday refused to have the names of the thirteen soldiers killed in Kabul read out on the floor of the House. That should permanently indict her for being the wicked witch she is. She is more devious, more calculating than the irresponsible Biden but every bit as beyond redemption as he is. She will do anything to try to convince the American people, for whom she has only contempt, that whatever she and her party do is righteous no matter how loathsome and totalitarian.
Like the schoolyard thug he is, Biden will defend to the death the treacherous plan he put into motion so he could make a grand speech on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. He ignored the advice of some advisers, wanted Ghani to lie about the Taliban’s success in July (transcript here), all to mount a bit of theater with him in the starring role. No matter what he says, things did not go as he envisioned so like a spoiled child, he threw a tantrum from the podium at the White House. Shame on him a thousand times.
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