House of Cards

[JoeOtterbein]

[link:https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/11/biden-bankruptcy-president/|

How Joe Biden helped build a financial system that’s great for Delaware banks and terrible for the rest of us.

TIM MURPHY NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 ISSUE

In early 1973, as Joe Biden was settling into his new job in Washington, DC, Ralph Nader published a deconstruction of what made the freshman Democratic senator’s state of Delaware, the most anodyne of states, so exceptional. The answer, The Company State explained, had to do with the unique relationship between government and commerce: Delaware was less a democracy than a fiefdom, contorting its laws to meet the demands of its corporate lords.

Preeminent among them was the chemical giant DuPont. Nader took readers to Rodney Square, in the heart of Wilmington. There was the ritzy Hotel du Pont, housed in a building owned by DuPont, next to a theater built by DuPont, connected to a bank controlled by the du Pont family, surrounded by law offices and brokerages—all affiliated in some way with what was known simply as “The Company.” The du Ponts owned the state’s two largest newspapers and employed a tenth of the state legislature. The governor was a former executive. The state’s member of Congress for most of the 1970s was Pierre Samuel du Pont IV.
“General Motors could buy Delaware,” Nader quipped, “if DuPont were willing to sell it.”

Over the next two decades, as Biden rose through the ranks of the Democratic Party, the state’s center of gravity began to shift from the world of chemicals to the big business of other people’s business—banking, accounting, law, and telemarketing. But if the industry had changed, the ethos remained: Delaware was the Company State. It owed its prosperity to its willingness to give corporations what they wanted.

snip

more at link

[question everything]

1. So he had his constituents in mind.

This is what we expects our reps to do, just as Sanders was (is?) against gun control because, supposedly To benefit his constituents.

I can assure you that finding what you hope is dirt about Bide will not help Sanders.

[George II]

4. "Guns in Chicago are different from guns in Vermont"

[JoeOtterbein]

14. Uh? Why change the subject?

[Thekaspervote]

15. Why not!! Every chance you get you take a pot shot at Joe Biden!!

[TexasTowelie]

24. +1

[booley]

30. And people here take "potshots" at Sanders

Didn't see you complaining.

If you have to change the subject that implies you cant argue the original point.

[George II]

32. It was said he was serving his constituents. That's the reason BS he has given....

Last edited Mon Dec 2, 2019, 10:38 AM - Edit history (1)

....countless times to rationalize his votes against gun control, "Guns in Chicago are different from guns in Vermont".

Not changing the subject, just responding to it.

[Peacetrain]

33. Bingo!!

[The Valley Below]

2. I don't think you'll make friends by quoting Ralph Nader...

Who's next? Jill Stein?

[question everything]

6. Interesting observation

And welcome to DU

[JoeOtterbein]

8. So is he Nader lying, wrong, or not?

I see lot of Repubs quoted on DU, rec'd with flying colors.

Or do you still own a Corvair?

[The Valley Below]

9. I've yet to see a Republican quoted in order to smear a Democratic candidate on this forum.

I'm not buying what you're selling.

[JoeOtterbein]

10. Then keep looking.

You might find that Corvair after all. (In what we DUers call the Primary Forum, see homepage)

[The Valley Below]

16. As I said, not buying what you're selling.

[JoeOtterbein]

18. So? Then what is your point?

BTW, Welcome to the Primaries Forum. It's great fun!

[The Valley Below]

20. my point is i don't think you will make friends among Democrats...

by smearing our leading candidate with quotes from Ralph Nader.

Good luck with that.

[JoeOtterbein]

21. Not looking for friends. I'm looking for fighters like you.

Cause I'm certain you will fight for Bernie when he wins (like I have said many times I would do about Joe if he wins.)

So are you in?

We need all of you.

[LanternWaste]

34. Question is, are you in?

We don't need self-validating bumper stickers and self-righteous t-shirts... we need people voting Democratic for the Democratic nominee.

I hope you are. But repeating platitudes and branding logos over and over again gets us no where. Did you not know that...? Did you not know it takes actual work to get the vote out?

[George II]

37. Why bring up a Corvair or, as you say, "why change the subject?"

[George II]

3. Why are you constantly posting negative OPs about Joe Biden? Is there nothing positive you can say..

...about either your preferred candidate or the Democratic Party?

[JoeOtterbein]

5. Cause I'm sure you would not say anything negative about anyone but Joe.

But then you don't support him yet either.

[LanternWaste]

35. This is troubling for Bernie.

[Hortensis]

41. I don't mine the web for dishonest hit jobs on Sanders.

Everything I post about Sanders is fact-based, not spins meant to deceive, and the vast majority of it is actually provided to the world by Sanders himself.

Such as the fact that Sanders himself said he didn't vote through most of the civil rights era, but only voted for the first time for himself when he ran in a local VT race. That would have been in his late 30s.

Republicans siccing dogs on protestrs and liberal Democrats sending the National Guard to segregate schools? Liberal Democrats creating Medicare and Medicaid over intense RW opposition? Liberal Democrats passing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, over rabid RW opposition?

Nah, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee: as Sanders also described the parties. Fact.

"I am not now, nor have I ever been, a liberal Democrat." Sanders. Fact.

[NYMinute]

7. Excellent point .... bravo!!

[JoeOtterbein]

19. Uh? What point?

I'm sure it's nothing personal. I hope.

[PatrickforO]

11. The problem of corporate corruption is endemic to our entire system.

This is why we're impeaching a president who is literally owned by Russian oligarchs, and why that president's party is doing their level best to support Trump and take this republic, our country, all the way down the path to dictatorship.

The truth is that anyone who has served more than a couple terms cannot help but be beholden to these lobbies, some more than others. I don't like it. You don't like it. And it is certainly very bad for 'we the people.'

But the problem here isn't Biden. Or Sanders. The problem is campaign finance, lobbies and the series of rulings, culminating with Citizens United that falsely equates corporate dollars to free speech. The problem is the news is not held sacrosanct from ratings and the profit motive, and the current system of massive dark money spent on ads profits the shareholders of the six corporations that own all of our media.

The root cause, in fact, is the primacy of the shareholder doctrine - the idea that profits for shareholders are more important than the safety and welfare of customers, of communities, of workers and of the environment.

Laissez-faire capitalism is the root cause of most of our problems, in fact.

[JoeOtterbein]

12. Great points! Thanks for posting!

[sprinkleeninow]

27. Well said. Who gave corporations personhood? Compliments of scalia? eom

[crazytown]

13. "MBNA employed about a third of the state's finance workers"

Last edited Mon Dec 2, 2019, 03:00 AM - Edit history (1)

" (Biden) He brought in more than $200,000 from MBNA employees over the course of his career." Doesn't seem that much to me. Biden famously left the Senate with little wealth onboard. He is not corrupt.

However, the Bankruptcy Act was atrocious.

[JoeOtterbein]

17. Great points!

Thanks. After all $200 grand is small potatoes!

(I sadly wish)

Tears.

[The Valley Below]

22. $200,000 is precisely how much Jane Sanders took as a "golden parachute"...

after driving Burlington College into financial ruin (and eventual closure) due to her own financial ineptitude.

Had anyone person taken such an undeservedly sweet deal, BS would be howling bloody murder, methinks.

[JoeOtterbein]

23. So...

...Is ok to take 200 grand from Credit Card companies?

I say, F.....em

[TexasTowelie]

25. So

it is okay to drive a college into bankruptcy?

[The Valley Below]

26. And then take $200,000 on the way out?

To say nothing of the $500,000 of college funds Jane paid her daughter for teaching woodworking.

[TexasTowelie]

28. But, but, but

Burlington College wasn't a corporation.

[stopdiggin]

31. 200 thousand was small potatoes back in the day

(particular over some time) and positively chump change in today's. Let's have a little perspective.

[George II]

36. "Small potatoes" in 2011? Would you give me that $200,000 in chump change, please?

[stopdiggin]

38. I know. I'd take that coin myself! Still ...

200 thousand is NOT a lot money in many circles. (now in MY circle .. quite a different story .. but I have to recognize that I don't represent ...)

[George II]

39. For one of the "poorest members of congress", as he/she were billed back then, $200K is huge....

...and even more so considering that a Burlington College went bankrupt shortly after that.

[stopdiggin]

40. we'll have to disagree

200 is a fairly modest annual salary, for mid to upper level management or administration. Just not unusual at all. And a "buy out" when asking someone to go away .. also not unusual.

(I'm hardly a Bernie fan .. put I think painting him, or his spouse, as rapacious fat cats or quick buck artists of any sort is a stretch)

[The Valley Below]

29. So you are OK with undeserved golden parachutes?

[treestar]

42. DuPont employed a lot of people

And that was back in the day when people could work with the same company for an entire career. The GM plant (recently pulled down) employed a lot of people too.

There were even competing auto plants and chemical companies then.

Delaware always prided itself on being the state of incorporation for companies from all parts of the nation and international companies in the U.S.

[question everything]

43. One thread was not enough

how desperate you guys must be

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287364838