There is a obvious concern this week over the selection of the newest member of the board of directors for Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest private gas producer: Vice President Joe Biden’s youngest son, Hunter Biden. Despite a strong resume, it seems rather coincidental that Ukraine is receiving aid from the United States and recently had a visit from Vice President Joe Biden only to decide that his youngest son was the very best person to sit on its board.
Hunter Biden will be in charge of the Burisma’s legal unit and will “provide support” among international organizations. The White House spokesman would only say that “Hunter Biden and other members of the family are obviously private citizens and where they work is not an endorsement by the president or vice president.”
Reporters were referred to Biden’s law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, which declined to coment.
Alan Apter, the chairman of the company’s board of directors, said it views the selection as part of its effort to “introduc[e] best corporate practices, and we’re delighted that Mr. Biden is joining us to help us achieve these goals.” Those “best corporate practices” are hardly the best ethical practices if the company is hiring the children of high ranking officials to curry favor. This is particularly a concern in Ukraine which, as we discussed earlier, leads Europe as one of its most corrupt nations where the family members of powerful politicians are routinely showered with gifts and positions.
Like many spouses and children of our politicians, Hunter Biden made a fortune as a lobbyist in Washington. That common path for children continues to raise troubling questions of influence peddling and corruption for our leaders as discussed in this earlier column. The company recently added Devon Archer, a wealthy investor and Democratic campaign bundler. Archer previously declared how his business deals at Rosemont Seneca rely on a “relationship network creat[ing] opportunities for our portfolio companies which then compound to greater outcomes for all parties.” That “relationship network” is precisely what many have objected to in the hiring of family members tied to our leaders — allowing companies to give millions legally to families of Democratic and Republican leaders.
In addition to his position as counsel with the firm, Biden is a co-founder and a managing partner of investment advisory company Rosemont Seneca Partners and serves as director of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, a network of 400 businesses. He is also the chairman of the advisory board for the National Democratic Institute, a non-profit that works to support democratic institutions and elections around the world. Even with this experience, I am rather skeptical. First, his selection as counsel to Boies, Schiller, Flexner, LLP, seems designed to create a tie to his father and the Administration. He was was chief executive officer, and later chairman, of hedge fund PARADIGM Global Advisors – an association that he co-founded with convicted financier Allen Stanford. He was later appointed by Bill Clinton to serve in the United States Department of Commerce under Secretaries Norman Mineta and William M. Daley. He was then nominated by President George W. Bush to the board of directors of Amtrak. It is a resume that many would envy but also one that reflects the type of opportunities that are often afforded children of our ruling elite.
Of course, the selection of a Bush for such a position in the prior administration would have had Democrats and liberals in an uproar but they are again largely silent in the face of another deal benefitting one of our ruling elite. Obviously, Hunter Biden is an adult and does not need the approval of his father to accept a position, though his father has had an obvious impact on his past opportunities. It is simply worth noting that while we rightfully criticize the Chinese for the “Red Nobility,” we have a long list of children and spouses receiving millions in cushy deals and positions in this country. However, in the blue state/red state politics fosters by both parties, such issues are quickly brushed aside by those arguing again that the other side is worse or that such ethical questions are merely an effort to smear their side.
Most people call that AWOL, in his case theft of services is more like it. Served whom, Dick Cheney?
Supak – for God’s sake, they have Ann Coulter’s name on there. Why not Hillary Clinton. She was anti-war as a student, pro-war as a Senator. Another chickenhawk.
And Bill Clinton is not because he did not flog up a war. He was a ‘chicken’ – not a ‘hawk’.
Unless you think 30 Americans killed and wounded in Bosnia and Yugoslavia qualifies as a flogging a war.
By Glenn Kessler and Anne Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 29, 2007
A former senior aide to then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice disputed Bill Clinton’s statement this week that he “opposed Iraq from the beginning,” saying that the former president was privately briefed by top White House officials about war planning in 2003 and that he told them he supported the invasion.
Clinton’s comments in Iowa on Tuesday went far beyond more nuanced remarks he made about the conflict in 2003. But the disclosure of his presence in briefings by Rice — and his private expressions of support — may add to the headaches that the former president has given his wife’s campaign in recent weeks.
Hillary Mann Leverett, at the time the White House director of Persian Gulf affairs, said that Rice and Elliott Abrams, then National Security Council senior director for Near East and North African affairs, met with Clinton several times in the months before the March 2003 invasion to answer any questions he might have. She said she was “shocked” and “astonished” by Clinton’s remarks this week, made to voters in Iowa, because she has distinct memories of Abrams “coming back from those meetings literally glowing and boasting that ‘we have Clinton’s support.’ ”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/28/AR2007112802485.html
Still, not a chickenhawk. Bill Clinton is a chickenhawk.
Schulte:
“The so-called list”
No, it’s an actual list.
“of so-called chickenhawks”
No, they’re actual chicken hawks.
“is short of Democrats because the founder of the list Jim Hightower, is a progressive.”
Genetic fallacy. If you think there are Democrats who should be on the chicken hawk list, based on the actual definition which YOU copied and pasted from Wikipedia without citing it, then let’s hear it. So far, all you had was Clinton, who IS NOT a chicken hawk.
And even if you count Clinton sending in pilots on bombing missions in Bosnia, he is certainly a much WEAKER Chicken Hawk than Bush and Cheney.
“GW Bush served.”
No, he dodged. He could have gone to Nam. Instead, he went to Texas where he was occasionally inconvenienced enough to actually show up.
From Wikipedia:
“The term indicates that the person in question is hypocritical for personally dodging a draft or otherwise shirking their duty to their country during a time of armed conflict”
Got that? Otherwise shirking their duty. Getting in the guard was a typical way to avoid Vietnam, and you know it.
Supak – if you think Jim Hightower is a genetic fallacy, then every claim you make about a conservative site or speaker is a genetic fallacy. Remember, one of the truism is that it is not a fallacy if it is true.
Okay. GWB served and went AWOL. Lots of bragging rights there.
Once the John Birch Society is introduced as a source, Fox News almost seems respectable. Did you see the link to The New American offered by Karen S?
Schulte
“Supak – had you been following along”
I have been.
“I already explained my lapse of judgment on Wikipedia.”
I don’t see any explanation of your lapse of judgement. I only see you saying you had one.
“You can hammer away”
Thanks for your permission.
“if that is all you have.”
It’s not.
“The rest we have discussed before”
Yes, and I think there was more to say…
“and I am not going to rehash.”
Of course not. Because you know as well as everyone else here that GW Bush is a Chicken Hawk. Dick “5 deferments” Cheney is a Chicken Hawk.
Matters of degree matter.
Karen S
Feynman:
“targeting conservative donors with the IRS.”
Again… You guys have a lot of chutzpah talking about bad sources… I guess that’s why you repeat Fox News talking points without linking to them…
“New Records: IRS Targeted Progressive Groups More Extensively Than Tea Party”
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2014/04/23/3429722/irs-records-tea-party/
Scott
I those right wing memes, do they ever talk about the role Rockefeller and Kissinger played in getting the Shah admitted into the US?
Carter made the mistake to admit him and that set off the attack on our Tehran embassy, but Rocky and Kissinger had been beating him up for months about granting the Shah asylum. Carter and our Iranian ambassador didn’t want the Shah admitted because of the risk to our embassy in those unstable and dangerous times in Iran.
Supak – GW Bush served. By definition he cannot be a chickenhawk. However, Bill Clinton can and is.
I was amazed to wake up this morning and find that Jimmy Carter had caused the overthrow of Bernard Shaw.
Oh… the SHAH…
So, there’s this right wing meme that Carter caused the Iranian revolution. People who’ve studied history a little more closely know that there was something else at work here, namely that Ike used the CIA to help MI6 and the Brits overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh. This was not generally liked by the Iranian people, and resulted in significant blowback that led directly to the overthrow of the Shah.
“The ’28 Mordad’ coup, as it is known by its Persian date [in the Solar Hijri calendar], was a watershed for Iran, for the Middle East and for the standing of the United States in the region. The joint U.S.-British operation ended Iran’s drive to assert sovereign control over its own resources and helped put an end to a vibrant chapter in the history of the country’s nationalist and democratic movements. These consequences resonated with dramatic effect in later years. When the Shah finally fell in 1979, memories of the U.S. intervention in 1953, which made possible the monarch’s subsequent, and increasingly unpopular, 25-year reign intensified the anti-American character of the revolution in the minds of many Iranians.”
Dowlin, Joan E. (17 June 2009). “America’s Role in Iran’s Unrest”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joan-e-dowlin/americas-role-in-irans-un_b_216831.html
Karen S
“I want to remove the grease from the wheels of politics. Don’t know if it can be done, but I think it should be attempted. From ALL parties. Let’s make things more fair.”
If that’s how you feel, and you vote for Republicans, I can only imagine the headache that level of cognitive dissonance creates.
The Senate is currently debating an amendment to the constitution that will override Citizens United (much to the chagrin of Professor Turley, I assume). What kind of odds will you give me that NO REPUBLICAN votes for it?
feynman:
“a balanced budget amendment is the height of idiocy”
Yep. Especially coming from the party that historically racks up massive debt.
The whole point of a safety net is that it can expand when a whole bunch of people fall, like they did with the Little Bush Depression, when job growth was negative 800,000 a month, and GDP was negative 8.9% (Jan 2009)
“it is in our best interest to understand the political objectives of each party”
This is why I have to struggle with my lashing out at Republicans.
Karen S links to Big Dead Breitbart and Schulte tells us not to use Wikipedia as a source? And then he copies and pastes a whole paragraph from Wikipedia without citing it, of course.
And, of coures, the whole point of the chickenhawk argument got lost because Paul realized he’d lost the argument.
But I need to make sure this is clear here.
The list of Chicken Hawks at the Chicken Hawk database…
http://www.nhgazette.com/chickenhawks/
is notable lacking of Democrats. This is either because many Democrats served while many Republicans did not, and because many Republicans are gung-ho neocons with YEE HAW as their foreign policy, and generally, Democrats are not. Since the definition of chicken hawk is (as Paul quoted from Wikipedia without citation, and then argued the opposite of) that the person in question must STRONGLY support military action, then one can see why Republicans are so strongly represented on the list.
In President Carter’s, Clinton’s, and Obama’s case, we have not undertaken massive offensive ground invasions resulting in massive casualties as we did in Iraq.
Surely even a Manichean, if he looks closely enough, can see that where the black meets the white, there is a gray area.
In the real world, matters of degree matter.
So, ONE MORE TIME….
A half a million people died because of the Iraq war. You don’t like the numbers, of course, because I imagine it must be sickening to realize how horribly wrong you were, but your 30,000 figure is laughably low.
How many died in the Aspirin factory? How many died in Bosnia? How many have died because of Obama’s drones?
If you can’t see that Grand Canyon of a difference then you really need a new pair of philosophical glasses.
The so-called list of so-called chickenhawks is short of Democrats because the founder of the list Jim Hightower, is a progressive. He is not going to sink his own.
Feynman, someone once asked me if I would ever vote for a Republican and I listed off pretty much the list you have. I said I would if the Republican Party platform reflected those values. I would HOPE that we all want what is best for our fellow man/woman. It’s too bad that we have such opposite ideas of how to get there.
Schulte digs up a winner!
“Supak – you said that every President except Carter used the military to kill a foreigner.”
General Washington might be the exception there, to join Carter, since he wasn’t technically President when he was General of the Revolutionary Armies. However, three or four rebels were killed at the Whiskey Rebellion, and a couple of civilians were accidentally killed. I must admit that I don’t know if any of them were foreigners.
And then Schulte misses the point.
“Supak – I sometimes remember to cite things and sometimes I don’t. I am long past the time I gave my thesis to my committee for approval. I do not remember your name on the committee.”
Ah, but I recall your name in the “don’t use Wikipedia as a source” committee.
As for your other snark, well, it’s generally considered bad form to plagiarize, even in a comment section.
Off into Neo-connery!
“A failure to act is still an act. If you do not support your allies and you allow their government to fall you are responsible for the fall just as much as if you were there throwing the bombs.”
Who you talking to here, Schulte? Me? Who failed to act? Bill Clinton? George W Bush? Help me out with this cryptic comment…
In political philosophy, it is generally recognized that there are different degrees (there’s that word again that Manichean sorts seem to have trouble with) of “allies.” There are those who are trading partners, and there are those with whom we have defense pacts. And then there is the “coalition of the willing” who are “willing” to act aggressively against a sovereign country based on questionable intelligence that MANY people were questioning at the time.
Supak – had you been following along I already explained my lapse of judgment on Wikipedia. You can hammer away if that is all you have. The rest we have discussed before and I am not going to rehash.
Don’t put me down in the column for wanting the same things as a right wing Republican or libertarian.
In addition to swarthmoremom’s list, I support food stamps, free school lunch programs, regulation protections, pensions, PUBLIC schools, separation of church and state, Head Start, science, unions, gun control, extended unemployment benefits in periods of recession, the EPA. and assert a balanced budget amendment is the height of idiocy as is the privatization of public responsibilities.
It is irresponsible to believe “we all want the same things”. We most certainly do not and it is in our best interest to understand the political objectives of each party
http://saptstrength.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/stir-the-pot-300×193.jpg
slohr29, We are getting more diverse by the day, much to the chagrin of some old timers.
Democrats and republicans often don’t want the same things like gay marriage, immigration reform, national healthcare along with the right to chose and free birth control.