Status Quo Joe: 8 Million Pinocchios

Yesterday, James DeHaven of the Reno Gazette Journal reported that Bernie "took aim at Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden on Friday, telling a Carson City audience that the former vice president had distorted Sanders’ Medicare for All proposal during Thursday’s nationally televised debate... [He] said he was dispirited by the on-stage exchange at Texas Southern University, where Biden attacked Sanders’ single payer health plan as too costly. Sanders went on to deride what he saw as Biden’s willingness to 'parrot' the health insurance industry’s talking points. 'Apparently the Vice President thinks its just wonderful for people to be paying thousands of dollars per month in premiums and paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs,' Sanders said in front of a crowd of around 300 supporters gathered for a town hall at the Carson City Community Center. As for frontrunner... not in Nevada:

Meanwhile, In These Times scored Biden's debate performance, particularly in regard to his disgusting role as a cheerleader for the Iraq War: 8 million pinocchios. "In June 2003, Biden told Fox News Sunday host Tony Snow that 'it was a just war.' The next month he said he’d 'vote to do it again' and gave remarks to the Brookings Institution in which he charged that 'anyone who can't acknowledge that the world is better off without [Saddam] is out of touch.' In August, he called for sending 20,000-50,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq. And in a September speech to the National Press Club, he criticized 'the knee-jerk multilateralists in my own party who have not yet faced the reality of the post-9/11 world.' The list goes on. The U.S. public must make sure the person they select to be president not only demonstrates wisdom, but also won’t be swept away in a tidal wave of pro-war fervor. By allowing Biden to mislead voters on his Iraq War record, his rivals (and the debate moderators) are doing a disservice to the American public."

A few minutes ago, I wise friend who watched the insurance industry lies repeated by Rahm Emanuel and Joe Biden this week, told me, in response, that "Medicare-for-All eliminates the middle-man. The middle-man is the private health insurance industry. So, yes, that largely goes away. People can still buy private health insurance plans, as they do in the UK and other countries that guarantee health care for all of their people. But the behemoth that is private health insurance will be downsized to a cottage industry. So what? Instead of your doc billing your insurance company (and you getting caught in the middle, arguing over denied coverage, co-pays, surprise billing, etc., etc.), your doctor bills the federal government. I cannot for the life of me understand why people are worried about losing out on all the 'fun' we currently enjoy with private insurers in the mix. Regarding who gets care, I am pretty sure that every single Democrat raised his/her hand when asked whether their health care plan would provide care to undocumented people in this country. When I was in grad school, living in the UK, I got very sick. I didn’t go to the doctor because I didn’t think I had one. I wasn’t a citizen. At some point, a British friend was like, 'Why don’t you go to the doctor?' I asked how that could work since I’m American. He thought I must be crazy. I was sick. Doctors are there to help when you get sick. I called, got an immediate appointment, and filled my prescription (antibiotics) for 10 pence. Other countries care for Americans all the time. Why shouldn’t we care for those who are here when they need help?"

As an aside, she wanted a doctor's appointment a couple of months ago when she moved to a new state. In June she called for an appointment with the doctor her husband had already been using. She got an appointment for August. New patients can’t get right in. You have to wait. FREEDOM!!!!





Last week, Ryan Grim had a powerful Lunch Pail Joe exposé in The Intercept, Joe Biden Is Demanding Financial Transparency While Concealing His Own Wealth. Grim pointed out that Biden's case against Elizabeth Warren as a hypocrite because she made some money in the '90s, "is badly undercut by his own financial opacity-- not decades ago, but in the last two years. Since leaving the White House, Biden, long proud of his wealth ranking near the bottom of the U.S. Senate, began delivering high-dollar speeches to well-heeled clients and raked in book revenue that elevated him well into the upper class. He earned some $15.6 million in the last two years alone, according to financial disclosures released by his campaign."

Biden is the most similar of Democratic politicians to Trump in several disturbing ways. Like Trump, he lies as a default position and like Trump, his cognitive brain functions have severely deteriorated in the last couple of years. Will Biden also follow Trump in not disclosing his taxes?

It is typical for presidential candidates to voluntarily release their tax returns, with the exception of Donald Trump. Despite those releases, the details of how Biden, whose career has been partially dedicated to enabling financial secrecy in Delaware, made a significant portion of that money remains a mystery.

The Bidens have used their home state’s financial privacy laws to shield his income from public view, by setting up two tax- and transparency-avoidance vehicles known as S corporations. He and his wife Jill Biden called them CelticCapri Corp. and Giacoppa Corp., respectively, and, according to the Wall Street Journal, have reported more than $13 million in profits the previous two years that weren’t subject to specific disclosure or self-employment taxes. As CNBC has described, money Biden made from book deals and speeches flowed into the S corporations and was then remitted to Biden and his wife as “distributions” rather than salary. When money is funneled through an S corporation, the recipient doesn’t owe Social Security or Medicare taxes on it, nor can the source of revenue be traced. (In addition to the distributions, the Bidens drew relatively small salaries from the S Corporations: under half a million dollars, for which they owed self-employment taxes.)

The use of S corporations by politicians is known as the Gingrich-Edwards loophole, named for Newt Gingrich and John Edwards, who have deployed it in the past. The strategy has become popular among Republicans, but Democratic politicians typically avoid it, given its capacity to appear hypocritical. Warren, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders, the Journal has reported, all shied away from the strategy when it came to reporting income from books and speeches.

In June, the Washington Post reported that Biden’s campaign said he had given fewer than 50 paid speeches since leaving the White House, but would not provide a list of them. The Post nevertheless obtained four contracts, finding that Biden charged $150,000 to $200,000 per speech. Biden has refused to disclose what he was paid for other speeches. He has also made money from the sales of his book, Promise Me, Dad, which he published in 2017.  Biden gave roughly 20 speeches in 2017 outside of the period covered by his most recent financial disclosure, the Washington Post reported in July, “because the form stretches back only through part of 2017, there are still several months of speeches whose specific payments remain unknown-- although his overall income was listed in his tax returns. The Post found that during that period he delivered about 20 speeches.” Biden’s 2018 disclosure lists dozens of speeches, as well as the payment received, but he has not yet disclosed the speeches he gave or fees collected during that 2017 window.

Biden's campaign had told journalists that Biden would be attacking Elizabeth Warren for her lack of transparency but after Grim's story was published, Biden thought better of it and didn't say a word about it on the debate stage, where it was apparent that he fears Warren and was more concerned about his false teeth malfunctioning.