The US political system is incredibly corrupt. There are perhaps a few mere millionaires in congress, but they’re the tip of an iceberg made of shit – it’s their children or spouses that are grabbing money hand over fist. I remember back in the 90s when the US media was all a’cry about the corruption of Saddam Hussein’s children, but they were ham-fisted amateurs compared to the Washington set.
My loathing is bi-partisan – let me say that for the record.
Did you notice how the discussion of Hunter Biden sort of opened, sputtered, and fell silent? The question immediately shifted from “Is Hunter Biden corrupt?” to “was the way the republicans were trying to ‘out’ him dishonest?” The discussion became about republican dishonesty, and the fact that Biden was offered a series of high-paid jobs because his last name was ‘Biden.’ He wasn’t on Amtrak’s board because he knows anything about running commercial rail service, and he wasn’t on Burisma’s board because he’s an energy trading expert: he’s a Biden. The republicans’ dodgy reasoning was to position themselves to criticize Hunter Biden for corruption without calling what they, themselves, do all the time, corruption. That’s why it didn’t work. But the scandal of the whole thing is that once it didn’t work, everyone went back to business as usual.
$50,000/month is sleazy money. It’s chump change for someone like Paul Manafort, but it’s a “living wage” if you’re a mobster.
Or take Joe Manchin – the clown who pretends to be a deficit hawk and/or concerned with people’s rights. [vf] His “stubborn commitment to bipartisanship” looks more like an attempt to position himself as a middle-man. His daughter is a corporate executive who cashed out with $30+mn on a merger deal – nobody’s asking how she qualified for the position. And Joe’s holding equity in coal companies whose interests he is in a position to affect. When you read about this, it’s portrayed as not particularly corrupt because it’s small-time corruption compared to others in Washington. Oh, well that makes it all OK then? The Washington machine isn’t going to attack Manchin because what he’s doing is what they’re all doing and exposing it doesn’t make them look good, either.
From the “I know what you are, but what am I?” department, we have Lauren Boebert, implying that Joe Biden gets a share of his son’s corruption. That’s absurd, of course, since Joe’s “rich enough” for all intents and purposes, and has made a ton of money off the usual book deals and speaking engagements – he doesn’t need to wet his beak in Hunter’s cup.
By all means, we should be calling the Hunter Biden $50,000/month influence peddling scheme “corruption” – and oh, hey, Boebert’s husband, who ran a restaurant with her, has been making $400,000/year for the last 2 years as an “energy consultant.” [wapo]
Only now, with Boebert not just in Congress but on the House Natural Resources Committee, has she revealed that her husband made $478,000 last year working as a consultant for an energy firm. He made $460,000 the year before, she disclosed in a filing Tuesday with the House of Representatives. Her husband, Jayson Boebert, earned that income as a consultant for Terra Energy Productions, according to the filing.
Of course they’ll get away with it – that’s petty graft for Washington. But it’s “influence peddling” not “consulting.”
Yes, this is a generic problem in politics; corrupt politicians sell their attention to anyone who wants to be able to drop an idea or two in the right ear. It’s probably impossible to eradicate corruption, but we shouldn’t just nod and shrug like we do. Washington is a cesspit of corruption – and they point their fingers at Afghanistan and say “corruption got in the way of our nation-building.”
As a Brit I talked with said about Americans:
They kicked out king George since he wasn’t an absolute enough ruler, then handed that job to a privy council of the richest people they could find.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and her husband Richard Blum have turned war profiteering (among other sins that used to be called “corruption” – or even “evil”) into a multi-billion-dollar art, in no small part thanks to her Senate votes, influence, committee appointments and seniority.
California voters: *yawn*
There’s also the built-in corruption of creating a monopoly like Amtrak the first place. Put any “experts ” you want in there, and it is still guaranteed to be a garbage fire.
Funny that Biden was appointed to that spot by George W. Bush in the middle of his second administration. And the Senate Commerce committee at the time which unanimously confirmed him (replacing famous rail aficionado Michael Dukakis) included such luminaries as John McCain and John Kerry, chaired by Ted Stevens. As hives of scum and villainy go, that one’s pretty fucking wretched.
On that note, it’s really great that our “infrastructure deal” will have anti-infrastructure provisions to privatize more public things. They even have a nice euphemism, “asset recycling,” which seems to suggest it’s environmentally responsible, although of course it isn’t. No surprise that it has Wall Street types salivating, which really should be the only thing you need to say.
consciousness razor@#3:
On that note, it’s really great that our “infrastructure deal” will have anti-infrastructure provisions to privatize more public things.
Meanwhile, we point out how the privatization wave in Russia became the spawning-ground of a new class of oligarchs.
It probably doesn’t apply to the US because our oligarchs are already rich and already in place, so privatization doesn’t pose that sort of threat. After all, that’s the reasoning used to excuse so much Washington corruption: “Well, they’re not as bad as Feinstein” etc.
Senate Commerce committee at the time which unanimously confirmed him (replacing famous rail aficionado Michael Dukakis) included such luminaries as John McCain and John Kerry, chaired by Ted Stevens.
It’s amazing that with so much management talent thrown at it, Amtrak relentlessly continued to fail.
Who will they point at when she kicks the bucket? Place your bets now.
I guess it depends…. If Gavin Newsom loses and a Republican takes over, then pretty much any day now, she’d be replaced with an R-type oligarch instead of a D-type. (In other news, Biden doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to replace Justice Breyer either, because none of it fucking matters I guess.)
I remembered a Canadian building contractor saying that when he was making a presentation for a project in New York City at least one New York participant claimed that his budget was totally unreasonable. He had not included a line item for bribes.
I think he was a bit startled. His experience in Canada, Russia, and Japan had not prepared him to budget for bribery.
Hey #2 Imma Californian.
I didn’t vote for Feinstein. de Leon who primaried her did well relatively. He is a sexist pervert weasel, but still better that than the condescending mummified youth-hating ecocidal warmonger. He’s the only person in their party that the Democratics would allow to challenge her.
The minority parties in California were gaining ground, this is how badly the big two are doing here. Their response was to change the primary system to exclude us, so they can keep on happily raping the state.