Eric Zuesse
On 25 October 2019, Lee Fang at The Intercept headlined “JOE BIDEN’S SUPER PAC IS BEING ORGANIZED BY CORPORATE LOBBYISTS FOR HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY, WEAPONS MAKERS, FINANCE”, and he reported that among the billionaires who were planning a PAC to support Joe Biden’s campaign was Bernard Schwartz. On that same day, I headlined “Biden Backer — Former Lockheed Leader — Convinces Biden to Sell-Out”, and I reported that the “Former Lockheed leader” who was leading this effort was Schwartz, himself, formerly a Chairman of Lockheed Martin, the company that sells more to the U.S. Government than does any other — it’s by far the largest federal contractor.
In other words: if Biden does become the U.S. President, then he will be heavily in debt to the world’s biggest weapons-maker, a corporation whose profits are totally dependent upon selling to the U.S. Government and to its allied governments such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Israel. This is exactly the opposite of what America’s Founding Fathers urged subsequent generations of Americans to do. They were very wise. Joe Biden is not.
Only an uninformed person would expect such a President to be seeking Mid-East peace. Biden would instead be seeking the standard neoconservative’s objective, “Peace Through Strength” — in other words, fear-mongering the public against ‘America’s enemies’, and ‘love’-mongering for ‘America’s allies’ (such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc.). That’s the opposite of what, for example, George Washington urged the American people to do.
Biden’s relying upon people such as Bernard Schwartz to place him into the White House is the worst possible form of selling himself out — selling-out to America’s “Military Industrial Complex” or “MIC.”
But the reason why such people as Schwartz want Biden to become the President is that, consistently, Biden has been precisely such a war-monger or “neoconservative” as they have always been wanting — such as when Biden helped to lead Democrats in the U.S. Senate who backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That wasn’t a ‘mistake’ by him as he now claims — it was the way Joe Biden has always been. And, now, we know that the former Chairman of Lockheed Martin thinks that Biden still remains that way.
On 23 October 2019, Luke Darby at GQ magazine, headlined “How Biden Helped Strip Bankruptcy Protection From Millions Just Before a Recession”. Joe Biden was the leading Democrat in Congress backing and pushing for the George W. Bush and Republican-backed ‘bankruptcy reform’ bill which passed, in the Senate, with 18 Senate Democrats for the ‘bankruptcy reform’ bill, while 25 Democrats were against it. All 55 Republicans were for it.
In the U.S. House, the Independent Bernie Sanders voted against. All 229 Republicans were for. 73 Democrats there were for, 125 were against.
A lot of Biden supporters say that Biden is “a real Democrat” and that Sanders is no Democrat at all (since he’s an Independent who merely caucuses with the Senate’s Democrats). But Sanders voted like most Democrats did, and Biden voted like all Republicans did.
Back when the ‘bankruptcy reform’ bill first was first being drafted in 1999, the Washington Post headlined “Creditors’ Money Talks Louder in Bankruptcy Debate” and reported that,
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), a key Judiciary Committee member who hails from the home base of credit card issuers MBNA Corp. and First USA, opposes the liberal faction’s bill. “I’m not the senator from MBNA,” he said.
Luke Darby’s article noted that,
MBNA hired Joe Biden’s son Hunter in 1996. Even after Hunter became a federal lobbyist in 2001, he stayed on at MBNA as a consultant at a fee of $100,000 per year, meaning he was pulling in a six-figure salary at the same time his father was pushing for the industry’s top priorities. Biden’s interests were so aligned with MBNA’s that in 1999 he was forced to defend himself by declaring, “I am not the senator from MBNA.”
Joe Biden has always expected voters to ignore his record and simply trust his promises because he’s a “regular Joe” like they are. He promises that he won’t keep promoting invasions of countries that never even so much as threatened the United States, and that he won’t keep supporting corporations which were his biggest financial backers. So, he says, voters should just trust him to do the right thing. According to Open Secrets, headlining in 2008, ”The Money Behind Biden”, “His largest contributor over time has been credit card giant MBNA Corp.,” the credit-card issuer, “which, despite being acquired by Bank of America a few years ago, remains atop the list of Biden’s major contributors.” That company knew how to repay a debt, and they had a big debt, to him, to repay. In fact, while the ‘bankruptcy reform’ bill was being drawn up, during the 2000 political campaign-cycle, MBNA wasn’t merely Biden’s #1 donor, but its employees donated over twice as much to his campaign as did his #2 donor during that cycle, and he delivered the goods so well that they owed him now even more.
And, like Lee Fang said, it’s not only credit-card companies, but, “JOE BIDEN’S SUPER PAC IS BEING ORGANIZED BY CORPORATE LOBBYISTS FOR HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY, WEAPONS MAKERS, FINANCE”.
And he will be very grateful to all of them if he wins the Democratic nomination. It’ll be as usual in American politics, one corrupt politician up against another corrupt politician, each of whom is trusted by the voters in his own Party. Truth, to them, makes no difference; but, in a land where truth makes no difference, does “democracy” even mean anything, other than an empty slogan?
On 27 November 2007, C-Span showed a Joe Biden Town Hall. A brief clip from that was posted online as “User Clip: Joe Biden 2007, Money in Politics”, and here’s my transcription from what I consider to be the most revealing (about Biden’s values) part of it:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4817532/user-clip-joe-biden-2007-money-politics&start=3322
“User Clip: Joe Biden 2007, Money in Politics”
27 November 2007, Iowa Town Hall
(0:40-) People who accept money [from lobbyists] aren’t bad people. But it’s human nature. You go out and bundle $250,000 for me, all legal, and then you call me after I am elected, and say “I would like to come and talk about something.” You didn’t buy me, but it’s human nature, you helped me. I’m going to say, “Sure, come on in.” … What it does mean, it means that the front of the line is always filled by people whose pockets are filled, people who are special interests. Most of you are no part of any special interest.
He went on there to promise that if elected President he will change that, by campaigning constantly (AFTER winning the Presidency — not BEFORE) against the corrupt system which had made him President. He thinks that his audience will believe in the tooth-fairy, if only he tells them that the tooth-fairy exists and that he’s it. The deceptive irrelevant line from all of the corrupt candidates is the same: “I’m the most electable one!” But corrupt people constantly lie, and nobody is actually certain whom the “most electable” one is; but that’s really not even the question here. What the Democratic primaries are actually about isn’t about beating Trump. He’s not even a candidate in the Democratic primaries. They’re not about ‘beating Donald Trump’, but instead about whom the person will be that’s going to be running against Trump in the general election. The primaries won’t be selecting the next President. They will only narrow the field of contenders, to two. Which two? That’s the question here.
Of course, lots of Democrats think that any Democrat will be better than Trump. And lots of Republicans believe that Trump is better than any Democrat. There is a sucker born every second; and, so, people believe this way, and their Party thus ends up having lousy individuals carrying its banner, such as both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were in 2016. Both Parties deserved to lose, but that (a Hobson’s choice) isn’t a democracy. It’s corrupt politicians, and it’s stupid voters who refuse to recognize the corruption of, and in, ‘our own side’ — not only the other’s. It’s not democracy, because it’s thoroughly corrupt, on all sides. Democracy is rejection of the corrupt system, and of corrupt candidates. It’s demanding better than that. It’s not only the donors — the mega-donors (the people who really are seeking special personal favors and NOT good government) — who are corrupt, and who always do “buy” politicians, such as Joe Biden. It’s also stupid voters, who make things bad for everyone except the corrupt and the corrupters. No actual democracy consists of the corrupt and the corrupters. That’s just a fact which all of the resolutely stupid voters ignore because they’re so attached to their chosen tooth-fairies.
On January 22nd, the Washington Post headlined a 6,000-word article about the day in politics “The Daily 202: Joe Biden talks Ukraine, but not impeachment, in Iowa”, and reported that “The centerpiece of Biden’s pitch is that he can bridge the partisan divides and work with Republican senators to get big things done.” Yes, that’s actually true: Biden is clearly aiming to become the ‘Democratic’ President who can be ‘bipartisan’ with congressional Republicans, and sign into law legislation that until his occupancy of the White House had been only decades-long Republican and billionaires’ dreams, but under a Biden Presidency would now become his proud “bipartisan achievements.” He could turn out to be the most effective Republican (but of the Democrat-in-name-only, hyper-hypocritical, type of) President ever — a truly bipartisan-fascist President. It would be a fitting culmination to his career.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
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