What Could You Expect From-- God Forbid-- A President Joe Biden? Kinder, Gentler Corruption?

Jeremy Toback's essay, Democracy Is Coming To The U.S.A.-- which I referenced in the title of this post last night-- is worth taking to heart if you're contemplating doing what I did when Nixon became president. I left the country-- and stayed away nearly 7 years. I had a great time... but in the end I still came home (once it looked like Nixon was absolutely getting impeached). "This," he wrote, "is a country born in the blood of slavery and Native American genocide, where freedom from tyranny applied to White landed gentry only. The republic our founders got together represented an evolutionary shift up from authoritarian monarchy but a distant drift from pluralist enfranchisement. If we want to talk every race, gender and class, America has never been an actual democracy. At best, it’s been one long, slow, embattled slog toward… and at times, away from it.

While we’ve long since extended the vote beyond that initial White minority, with battles at every increment, any meaningful enfranchisement requires more than the mere permission to cast a ballot. It demands that our representatives respond to the will of the people who elect them. Yet, as a recent Princeton/Northwestern study reveals, even when we do elect our representatives (and I’ll say more about that in a moment), the legislation and policy those representatives implement almost exclusively reflects the will of big donor elites and corporations… not everyday constituents:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.

Despite inevitable attempts to downplay that study, even the most cursory glance unveils obvious evidence of this disenfranchising fracture in our democracy. We continue to see the DEM party and its de facto media allies attempt to derail immensely popular proposals like #MedicareForAll... [The] DEM party not only refused to run on a unified message of #M4A this past cycle, it continues to misrepresent the affordability and necessity of it, while instead focusing on fixing a hopelessly broken ACA that has given millions insufficient insurance, while throwing millions in the middle into financial hardship via annually escalating premiums. Rather than outright insulting popular will with let-them-eat-cake cries that #M4A “will never, ever come to pass.” Beto O’Rourke embodies the evolved DEM strategy of offering vague nods to universal care, while espousing priorities that make its fruition impossible.

Beto and the DEM party are in fact ignoring the measurable will of their constituency to serve that portion of the DEM donor class, which wants to maintain some version of the disastrous private-insurance-dominated status quo. They’re doing so in a way that measurably harms the physical health and material abundance of their constituency. And they’re doing so at their own political peril. Functioning democracy this is not.

...We are divided because the social contract is fractured. We are divided because the pluralist promise we like to wax about so proudly in liberal social circles amounts to a nominally integrated upper class and deeply disenfranchised rest of us. We are divided because of the hypocrisy that festers between what we say and what we actually do. A recent United Way study reveals that 43% of Americans can’t afford the basics. Folk don’t need a degree in propaganda deconstruction to know damn well that they’re being played.

If we’re at all interested in fostering the kind of legit democracy we’ll need to create genuine cohesion in our divided populace and implement the transformative policy necessary to limit the rapid overheating of our biosphere… most of us on the so-called-left in this country and specifically in the DEM center need to shake off the shackles of our own creeping authoritarianism.

We need to refuse to accept extra-legal, authoritarian actions from DEM as well as REPUB representatives. We need to fight anti-democratic suppression and rigging in this next series of DEM primaries with the same intensity we will need for the general election to follow. We need to elevate representatives committed to exercising the will of we-the-people and diminish those who will not demonstrate that commitment. We need to demand pluralist democracy, the long fought-for enfranchisement of every race, gender and class.

Yesterday, reporting for the NY Times, Kevin Sack and Alexander Burns wrote about the very opposite in an essay about one of the worst of the potential 2020 candidates, Biden. When he speaks at colleges, he doesn't make them remove the brown M&Ms... but "Middle Class Joe" doesn't take the AMTRAK either. Sack and Burns wrote that "When officials at the University of Utah invited Joseph R. Biden Jr. to speak there in December, Mr. Biden’s representatives listed a number of requirements for the appearance. His booking firm, Creative Artists Agency, said the school would need to fly Mr. Biden and his aides to Salt Lake City by private plane. It would have to buy 1,000 copies of his recent memoir for distribution to the audience. There would be no insertion of the word “former” before “vice president” in social media promotions. And the speaking fee would be $100,000-- “a reduced rate,” it was explained, for colleges and universities."

When he realized the $100K would come out of state tuition funds, he didn't take the check. Why? Sacks and Burns put it clearly: He wants to get richer but... "So long as a campaign remains possible, Mr. Biden has appeared mindful of the political backlash against the last Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, for earning millions by speaking to private interests in the run-up to 2016, and for her family foundation’s acceptance of huge sums from corporate and foreign donors... During the 2018 cycle, Mr. Biden maintained visibility with campaign visits to 24 states and at least 135 other speaking engagements, giving him a platform whenever he wanted. At a book-related talk in Missoula, Montana, in early December, he fueled coast-to-coast speculation about his plans by declaring himself 'the most qualified person in the country to be president.'"

Biden has long been self-deprecating about his relative lack of wealth, compared with some politicians. He and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, left office with assets worth between $277,000 and $955,000 (not including their house near Wilmington, Del.), as well as a mortgage of $500,000 to $1 million and other smaller loans, according to a 2015 federal disclosure. The report gives values in ranges.

But they have very likely earned more in the two years since leaving office than in the prior two decades, thanks largely to a three-book deal with Flatiron Books reported to be worth $8 million (a figure unconfirmed by the publisher). Two months after the contract was announced, they bought a six-bedroom vacation house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware-- off the water-- for $2.7 million. No mortgage was recorded.

Mr. Biden’s only salaried work, according to Mr. Russo, is a Penn professorship that occupies about one day a week. Dr. Biden-- who is writing one of the three books-- earns $99,398 as an English professor at Northern Virginia Community College, state records show. Mr. Biden, who earned $230,700 a year as vice president, receives a hefty federal pension after 44 years of public service. The couple also receive about $66,000 a year in Social Security benefits and in other pension benefits paid to Dr. Biden, according to their last public tax return, from 2015.

Mr. Russo said Mr. Biden would be transparent about his finances if he ran. “He will make available his tax returns, financial interests and other information that used to be-- and should once again become-- commonplace,” he said, referring to Mr. Trump’s defiance of a four-decade tradition of voluntary disclosure by presidents and many candidates.

...Mr. Russo and Mr. Biden’s representatives at Creative Artists declined to disclose his usual fees. But his contract with the University of Utah, obtained through the state’s freedom of information act, was for $100,000, plus $10,000 for the private plane. In an October email between university officials, one told the other that an agent for Mr. Biden had described that as a discount.

The book events feature Mr. Biden being interviewed for an hour by another prominent figure, like the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin or the philanthropist Melinda Gates. Tickets for a recent appearance, in Burlington, Vermont, cost $45 to $90, with a meet-and-greet package going for $375.

The Bidens pay a staff of five to handle scheduling, media and advance work through a Delaware firm they incorporated called CelticCapri, after his and her Secret Service code names.

Nearly all of the former vice president’s closest advisers are attached to one of his centers, full or part time.

Mr. Ricchetti, who has been gauging donor support for a Biden candidacy, is at the Penn Biden Center, a foreign policy think tank intended to give the university a higher profile in Washington. Others on the staff include Antony J. Blinken, who was Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, and several regional policy experts.

At the Biden Institute at Mr. Biden’s alma mater, the focus is on domestic issues including strengthening the middle class, gay and civil rights, and violence against women. It is housed within the school of public policy, which was recently renamed for him as well.

Administrators at both universities declined to provide budgets or salaries. Their presidents called Mr. Biden’s contributions invaluable, particularly in luring dignitaries to their campuses. “Among our strategic priorities is bringing Penn to the world and the world to Penn, and who better to do that?” said Amy Gutmann, Penn’s president.

Mr. Biden’s PAC, American Possibilities, is led by Greg Schultz, a political operative who served as his senior White House adviser. The committee paid him $225,000 over 18 months, records show.

The PAC raised $2.5 million during the 2018 midterm cycle from contributors who included the technology entrepreneur Sean Parker and the Hollywood producers Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg. But only 21 percent of its spending was distributed to Democratic candidates and committees-- more than 120 in all-- while the rest went to salaries and expenses like Mr. Biden’s travel.

There is modest overlap between Mr. Biden’s political donors and the benefactors of the Biden Foundation, the only of his nonprofits that has voluntarily disclosed its donors. Notable is Tim Gill, a Colorado software entrepreneur and influential gay-rights activist, who, with his husband, is listed as giving at least $1 million to the foundation, as well as the maximum $10,000 each to the PAC.

The foundation is chaired by Ted Kaufman, Mr. Biden’s chief of staff in the Senate and appointed successor after the 2008 election. With Mr. Biden’s help, it raised $6.6 million in its first two years, including seven gifts of at least $500,000. The Bidens pitched in $100,000, according to Mr. Kaufman.

Staff compensation accounted for 42 percent of the foundation’s $2.6 million in spending in 2017. That included $256,000 for the executive director, Louisa Terrell, who was deputy chief of Mr. Biden’s Senate staff. The foundation’s website now lists 16 staff members, including policy experts in areas like military families and violence against women.

“These are people who have been with him doing these kinds of things throughout his career,” Mr. Russo said.

The Biden nonprofits are not traditional grant-makers, and the only one made by the Biden Foundation was nearly $500,000 to spin off the cancer initiative. That group took in $3.9 million in 2017, including three gifts from undisclosed donors worth at least $1 million, according to tax filings.

It spent $1.8 million, more than three-fourths of it on salaries and other compensation. That included Mr. Simon’s package and a projected $292,500 for the vice president, Danielle Carnival, who had worked on cancer policy in the Obama White House.

At the Beau Biden Foundation, based in Wilmington, Delaware, salaries accounted for 45 percent of spending in 2016 and 2017, while grants accounted for less than 1 percent.

Those around Mr. Biden would not speculate about what might happen to the groups if he entered the 2020 race. But at least one set of plans has already been shelved.

When the Biden Foundation applied to the I.R.S. for tax-exempt status in February 2016, it stated that one mission would be to “educate the public regarding Vice President Biden’s career in public service” by building “a first-of-its-kind vice-presidential library and museum for the study of the vice presidency.”

Then Donald J. Trump was elected, perversely reviving Mr. Biden’s three-decade dream of winning the presidency, a job that comes with its own library. “Since that time,” said Mark Gitenstein, the foundation’s president, “the board of the Biden Foundation determined that was no longer a relevant objective.”

Many of these well-paid folks from the non-profits will slide right over into the campaign. I looked closely at who Biden's PAC gave money to. Really disgusting. Among House candidates he was far more likely to give to a Blue Dog or New Dei than to a candidate endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. They raised $2,562,525 last cycle and it looks like a classic establishment scam job, just $350,211 going to candidates, the rest going to consultants and other insiders who will one day (soon) be helping Biden's own campaign. This isn't illegal and Biden can't be charged with any criminal behavior for the scam.

The PAC gave money to 7 incumbents; see if you notice anything tying them together:

• Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL)- $7,000
• Charlie Crist (Blue Dog-FL)- $2,500
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- $7,000
• Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL)- $7,000
• Cedric Richmond (New Dem-LA)- $2,500
• Brad Schneider (Blue Dog-IL)- $4,500
• Darren Soto (New Dem-FL)- $7,000

Trying them together... let's see. Ah, yes, they are all corrupt conservatives who are part of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Not even one progressive... not even just for cover. It was almost as bad among 40 challengers he contributed to-- nearly all endorsed by the Blue Dogs or New Dems, with 6 possible progressives in the mix. Only 4 candidates who received any money from Biden have endorsed the #GreenNewDeal so far-- Mike Levin (CA), Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL), Debra Haaland (NM) and Joe Neguse (CO).