Thursday, September 26, 2019

Better than Biden

I can't take Joe Biden's racism or his sexism.  We need better and we can have better.  We don't have to settle for old Joe.  He is opposed to everything that we need in this country.  He will not take on climate change, he will not fight for Medicare For All.  He is not who we need.  What we need is so much better than Joe.

Branko Marcetic (JACOBIN) reports:


Since 2016, as Bernie Sanders has risen in national prominence and his Medicare for All proposal has gained increasing momentum, corporate America has been gearing up for a war over the policy. And now, as the health and pharmaceutical industries align themselves with Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, we have a clearer idea of what their battle plan will look like.
As Bloomberg first reported Monday, the neoliberal think-tank Third Way has been polling Americans to figure out which attacks will be most effective in a coming public relations campaign against the policy. The survey builds on documents leaked to the Intercept in 2018, detailing the contours of a planned campaign by the private health care sector to “change the conversation around Medicare for All” and prevent it from “becoming part of a national political party’s platform in 2020.”
While billing itself as a “national think tank that champions modern center-left ideas,” Third Way is a conduit for a panoply of corporate interests that campaigns against left-wing policies — in 2013, two of its highest-ranking officials wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed warning that “economic populism is a dead end for democrats.” One of those officials, Executive Vice President Jim Kessler, the former longtime aide of Wall Street’s favorite Democrat Chuck Schumer, has admitted the majority of Third Way’s financial support comes from Wall Street, which views the health insurance industry as a great investment. At least as far back as 2013, it was staffed with Republicans and fundraising from a variety of corporations, donations that the companies themselves sometimes listed as part of their lobbying budgets.
Today, one of its leadership team once worked for the National Association of Manufacturers, a Republican-aligned business group that, among other things, fights climate action and in its earlier years was one of the earliest forces to organize against Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Meanwhile, Third Way’s board of trustees currently features a former private equity titan, a former Goldman Sachs executive, the head of a major corporate lobbying firm that has counted pharmaceuticals as its clients, and several other private equity and bank executives.
Third Way has openly said it views Sanders alone among the Democratic field as an unacceptable choice for the nomination, so threatened by his campaign that they’ve now come around to even longtime nemesis and Sanders rival Elizabeth Warren. In 2018, the organization convened a meeting of 200 elected Democrats, political operatives, and donors to “launch a serious, compelling economic alternative to Sanderism,” as Kessler put it.
Although health insurers and the pharmaceutical industry are funding a variety of Democratic candidates — all of whom are now either attacking or backed away from their earlier support for Sanders’s Medicare for All bill — the primary conduit for their campaign against the policy appears to be Biden. Health insurers were thrilled when Biden entered the race, seeing his campaign as a bulwark against Sanders’s plan for Medicare for All, and an In These Times investigation from July found that Biden received the most money in the Democratic field from insurance and pharmaceutical employees, while Sanders received the least. He kicked off his campaign with a fundraiser hosted by a health insurance executive, and one of Biden’s campaign aides is a former health care lobbyist.
Not only that, but Biden’s advisor and chief pollster John Anzalone is the president of the firm that authored Third Way’s survey, Anzalone Liszt Grove Research (Anzalone’s partner, Lisa Grove, conducted the polling). Anzalone joined Trade Works for America earlier this year, an organization co-founded by Vice President Mike Pence’s current chief of staff that’s partly funded by the pharmaceutical industry and is pushing for Trump’s sequel to NAFTA.


Joe is not going to fight for us.  Joe is not going to fight for this country.  Joe is going to purr to the fat cats who've given him $15 million in the last two years.  He is not who we need.  He is not what we need.

And don't get me started on that niece of his. 

Find me any Black man or woman who was found guilty of stealing over $100,000 and they then didn't go to prison?

But princess Caroline Biden is going to walk scott free.

He is trash and he is surrounded by trash.

We need better than Biden.

In fact, that should be the slogan: Better than Biden.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Thursday, September 26, 2019.


Starting in the US where the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination continues.  War Hawk Joe Biden wants to be president.  And so does his family.  Including his niece who stole over $100,000 and just got a slip on the wrist (see Ruth's "Biden's only tough on crime when it comes to people of color") because, well, "as a Biden."  Joe's word as a Biden is looking even more laughable.


Apparently, Caroline Biden's family didn't use that record player enough at night or maybe they didn't have social workers coming in teaching her parents how to parent -- that's Joe's answer for African-Americans, right?  What's his answer for spoiled White kids in his own family?  Oh, right, look the other way.  Always.

With more on the trashy Biden family, Ben Schreckinger (POLITICO) reports:
Joe Biden’s brother told executives at a healthcare firm that the former vice president’s cancer initiative would promote their business, according to a participant in the conversation, who said the promise came as part of a pitch on behalf of potential investors in the firm.

The allegation is the latest of many times Biden’s relatives have invoked the former vice president and his political clout to further their private business dealings. It is the first that involves the Biden Cancer Initiative, a project Joe Biden made the centerpiece of his post-White House life following the death of his son Beau. 

Biden’s brother, James, made the promise to executives at Florida-based Integrate Oral Care during a phone call on or around November 8, 2018, according to Michael Frey, CEO of Diverse Medical Management, a health-care firm that is suing James Biden. At the time, James Biden’s business partners were pursuing a potential investment in Integrate, according to Frey and court records. Frey, who had a business relationship with James Biden and his associates, had introduced the group to Integrate. 



James Biden told the Integrate executives that he would get the Biden Cancer Initiative to promote an oral rinse made by the firm and used by cancer patients, Frey, who said he participated in the call, told POLITICO. He added that James Biden directly invoked the former vice president on the call. "He said his brother would be very excited about this product,” Frey said. 

Crony capitalism.

Joe claims wisdom.  His family is unethical and he wants to be president?  His niece stole over $100,000 and she's not going to do time?  That's not fair, that's not fair and equal. That's the Biden corruption that runs through that family.

Simon Lewis (REUTERS) reports:

 U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday edged past former Vice President Joe Biden for the first time in a major national opinion poll for the Democratic presidential primary, making her largest gains among white voters with a college degree. 
Warren drew 27% support to Biden’s 25% in a Quinnipiac University poll of Democratic voters and independent voters who lean Democratic, though her lead was within the margin of error.
The results marked a significant shift from Quinnipiac’s prior polls for the Democratic nominating contest to choose a candidate to take on President Donald Trump in November 2020. Biden had been ahead of Warren by double digits since it began polling in March and by 13 points in the same poll in August.


Joe had been ahead.  He had been.  Before people started seeing who and what he was.

And what happens to his niece is an issue  This goes to the whole 1% argument.  And this is not fair -- again, we're talking $100,000.  There are actresses who are in trouble  for using their money and influence to get their children into colleges.  But his niece steals $100,000 and she's not serving time?

If she wasn't his niece, she would be doing time.

Joe wants to be president as this happens and feels no embarrassment.  This goes back to Hunter Biden getting caught for cocaine usage while in the reserves and being allowed to walk when many others would have served time.

This goes to the issue of corruption and his family -- his brother and his son Hunter -- using his name and his positions to make money.  It's unethical.  This is not a new development.  This nothing new.  It did not develop last week, last year or last decade.  These are policies that have been in effect throughout Joe's political career -- in fact, before his career started.

Joe's allowed this unethical behavior to go on and on.  And now he wants to be president.  It is a serious issue and he needs to be asked about it and he needs to answer for it.  Serious issues are not addressed by sitting down with Jimmy Kimmel, for example.  And that's not slamming Jimmy.  He does an entertainment talk show, he has no background in news, his audience is watching for laughs.  The problem is not Jimmy or any other late night talk show host.












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