Why Are Ex-GOP Pols Endorsing Biden? Because He's Promising Them Jobs
It's not the "decency". It's the money. Always follow the money.
Biden staffers are analyzing some Republicans’ backgrounds and resumes as they compile shortlists of candidates for high-profile Cabinet positions. The goal is to have some GOP options among the finalists that Biden would choose from after the election.
Among the names being floated for possible Biden Cabinet posts are Meg Whitman, the CEO of Quibi and former CEO of eBay, and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, both of whom spoke at August’s Democratic National Convention. Massachusetts GOP Gov. Charlie Baker and former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) have also been mentioned, as has former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Penn.), who resigned from Congress in 2018 and became a lobbyist.
The swamp gets swampier.
Why do you think Kasich and Whitman went all out here? They know they have no openings on the GOP side, as it is now, so they went Biden.
Back in August, I noted that Kasich's got an interesting retirement business.
Earlier this year, The Kasich Company, a firm founded by Kasich and Beth Hansen, his chief of staff and the operative who ran his failed presidential campaign, hired a lobbyist to work on coronavirus tax provisions as well as sundry "Federal Regulatory and Legislative Matters".
The Kasich Company doesn’t do such prosaic things as list its clients or give any specifics of what it does and where it does it, but the former governor’s company does promise to, “deliver successful strategies to overcome local, state and federal obstacles”.
The ex-Republicans endorsing Biden inevitably have some sort of gig going on. But that's what the swamp means. It means consultancies and lobbyists hiring themselves out to the highest bidder, whether corporate or foreign. It means foreign governments, including enemy nations, buying anyone who seems to have access to politicians wholesale, and it means that the swamp oozes in the direction of political power.
Since Biden is expecting to win and offering cabinet positions, the swamp oozes his way.
President George H.W. Bush promised a “new world order” of “open borders, open trade … and open minds,” a new international system based on liberal values to bring peace to the world. He and other internationalists wanted a new economic system to match. [Emphasis added]....WE KNOW ABOUT BUSH AND HIS BANKSTERS. ONLY OBOMB AND BIDEN ARE UP THEIR ASSES MORE!
Josh Hawley: Abolish the World Trade Organization in Wake of Coronavirus
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) says the World Trade Organization (WTO) should be abolished in the wake of the Chinese coronavirus.
In an op-ed for the New York Times, Hawley credits the WTO with helping to empower “China’s rise” while weakening American workers:
BLOG: BUSH'S VISION OF 'NEW WORLD ORDER' HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING BUT HIS CARLYLE GROUP/HALLIBURTON WAR MACHINE AND SAUDIS BIG OIL WHICH HIS FAMILY STARTED TWO WARS AGAINST THE IRAQIS TO ADVANCE.
But in the early 1990s, with America’s principal adversary gone, Western policymakers were in a messianic frame of mind. President George H.W. Bush promised a “new world order” of “open borders, open trade … and open minds,” a new international system based on liberal values to bring peace to the world. He and other internationalists wanted a new economic system to match. [Emphasis added]
…
Take the World Trade Organization. Its mandate was to promote free trade, but the organization instead allowed some nations to maintain trade barriers and protectionist workarounds, like China, while preventing others from defending themselves, like the United States. Foreign agriculture won concession after concession, while American farmers struggled to get fair access to markets.Meanwhile, the W.T.O. required American workers to compete against Chinese forced labor but did next to nothing to stop Chinese theft of American intellectual property and products. [Emphasis addd]
Under the W.T.O.’s auspices, capital and goods moved across borders easier than before, no doubt, but so did jobs. And too many jobs left America’s borders for elsewhere. As factories closed, workers suffered, from small towns to the urban core. Inflation-adjusted, working wages stagnated and upward mobility flatlined. [Emphasis added]
Enough is enough. The W.T.O. should be abolished, and along with it, the new model global economy. The quest to turn the world into a liberal order of democracies was always misguided. It always depended on unsustainable American sacrifice and force of arms. And its companion economic order has, in a similar vein, succeeded mostly in weakening American workers and industry. [Emphasis added]
The U.S., Hawley writes, ought to “seek new arrangements and new rules” to restore the nation’s economic sovereignty — which includes returning to the economic system before the WTO’s creation, where reciprocal trade “protected our national interests and the nation’s workers.” Hawley writes:
That means returning production to this country, securing our critical supply chains and encouraging domestic innovation and manufacturing. It means striking trade deals that are truly mutual and truly beneficial for America and walking away when they are not. It means building a new network of trusted friends and partners to resist Chinese economic imperialism.
Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was enacted and China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), nearly five million American manufacturing jobs have been eliminated from the American economy — 3.4 million of which are due to U.S. free trade with China. The mass elimination of working- and middle-class jobs and depressed U.S. wages due to NAFTA and China’s entering the WTO have coincided with a more than 600 percent increase in trade deficits.
Of the 3.4 million American jobs lost due to free trade with China, about 2.6 million — or about three-fourths — were lost in the crippled manufacturing industry. U.S. trade deficits with China have eliminated American jobs in all 50 states.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
ONLY THE GOP ASSAULTS
THE AMERICAN WORKER AS
MUCH AS THE GLOBALIST
DEMOCRAT PARTY
Bush Center Slams Trump: We Want More Migration
The economics director at President George W. Bush’s advocacy center slammed President Donald Trump’s popular, pro-American immigration policy.
As Breitbart News reported, Hawley detailed in the interview how Republicans like former President George H.W. Bush’s ‘New World Order’ agenda and Democrats have helped to create a corporatist economy that disproportionately benefits the nation’s richest executives and donor class.
At the time, Delphi employed nearly 50,000 Americans, who earned about $30 an hour on the assembly line. Now, workers in Mexico for the company earn about $1 an hour.
Biden has elated Wall Street so much that for the first time in a decade, more financial executives are donating to Democrat candidates than Republicans, the latest Center for Responsive Politics analysis reveals.
Obama Officials Who Helped Slash Pensions for Delphi Workers Shower Joe Biden with Campaign Cash
Former Obama administration officials, linked to the slashing of pensions for 20,000 Delphi workers, are showering Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden with campaign cash to oust President Trump from office.
In 2009, as part of the Obama-Biden administration’s taxpayer-funded bailout of General Motors (GM), the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) terminated the pension plans of about 20,0000 non-unionized Delphi workers. In some cases, workers had their pensions gutted by as much as 75 percent.
A federal report in 2013 detailed that the Delphi workers would likely have their pensions cut by an estimated $440 million. Meanwhile, GM topped off unionized Delphi workers’ pensions at a cost of about $1 billion.
In 2012, federal documents unveiled how the Obama-Biden administration’s Treasury Department worked to gut the pensions of the Delphi workers. In other emails, PBGC officials indicated they had the green light from the Obama-Biden administration to slash the pensions.
Trump officials have said the president is working on an executive plan to restore the Delphi pension after more than a decade of no help from the Obama administration.
A number of Obama officials directly involved with the auto bailout deal that slashed the pensions are now banking on a Biden victory on November 3 — pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the former vice president’s campaign with Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA).
Among those officials involved in the deal were former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who reportedly contributed $150,000 to the Biden Action Fund in August. As previously noted, emails in 2012 detailed how Geithner’s agency at the time “was the driving force behind terminating the pensions of 20,000 salaried retirees at the Delphi auto parts manufacturing company.”
Geithner was said to have delegated out responsibility for the Delphi pensions to a select team of Obama officials, though insiders have said he was pushed to help the workers but did not lift a finger.
Likewise, Obama official Steven Rattner has contributed a total of $5,600 to Biden’s campaign last year and this year. Rattner was at the center of the Delphi pensions slashing scheme, as noted in the 2013 federal report previously mentioned:
According to Auto Team leader Rattner, pensions were another area where the Auto Team “encouraged” GM to cut costs. GM had a pay-as-you-go pension plan for salaried employees that was not funded and GM salaried employees and retirees wanted their full pensions, but Mr. Rattner told SIGTARP that the Auto Team wanted cuts to those benefits. [Emphasis added]
…
Auto Team leader Rattner told SIGTARP that GM came to the Auto Team because “GM wanted to do something for the [Delphi] salaried retirees.” Mr. Rattner discussed it with then-GM CEO Henderson. Although Mr. Rattner could not remember the specifics of the conversation, he told SIGTARP that he thought there was nothing defensible from a commercial standpoint that could be done for the Delphi salaried retirees. Mr. Rattner told SIGTARP, “We didn’t think there was anything defensible. We felt bad, but we didn’t think it was justifiable.” [Emphasis added]
Ron Bloom, another Obama official, has given $2,800 to Biden’s campaign. Bloom is named in the 2013 federal report regarding the Delphi pension slashing scheme, which notes his direct involvement:
Although Delphi salaried retirees had asked Auto Team official Bloom to consider preserving the pensions out of fairness, Auto Team official Bloom told SIGTARP that GM “did not provide a top-up to the salaried guys because I think [GM] concluded there was not a commercially reasonable reason to do it.” Mr. Bloom added that GM’s automotive parts suppliers “received a hundred cents on the dollar,” the UAW’s retirees received a number “less than a hundred, but more than the bondholders,” and some got less than the bondholders. Mr. Bloom told SIGTARP that they could not make everyone whole and “That’s not to say that people didn’t lose a lot or [were] hurt or were treated in a way that – sort of in a human way you would say that’s unfair. I don’t think that anybody thinks bankruptcy is fair. It is what it is, though.” [Emphasis added]
Matthew Feldman, who had potentially more involvement in the Delphi pension slashing scheme than any other Obama official aside from Rattner, has not made contributions to Biden. Members of Feldman’s firm, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, where he is co-chairman, have donated tens of thousands to Biden.
It is unclear how many Obama officials who are linked to the Delphi pension slashing scheme are eyeing jobs in a Biden White House should he win on November 3. Biden is considering a number of former Obama officials for top-level jobs, many under the mantle of “diversity.”
Delphi, which has since split into Aptiv and Delphi Technologies, announced in 2006 that it would shutter 21 of its 29 plants in the United States — offshoring some 20,000 U.S. jobs to Mexico, China, and other foreign countries.
At the time, Delphi employed nearly 50,000 Americans, who earned about $30 an hour on the assembly line. Now, workers in Mexico for the company earn about $1 an hour.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.