January, 2020, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: More California Insanity and Biden Making His Entire Family Rich

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) We have often talked about how California politicians have turned a most wonderful state into a living hell along so many dimensions, including our last post where we listed out just some of the state’s problems:

• Homelessness continues to grow rapidly in the state while decreasing around the rest of the country, despite a strong national economy.
• Many state cities tolerate public defecation, public urination and the public shooting up and use of illegal drugs.
• The state has hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded state government liabilities.
• The state has horrible public schools, horrible infrastructure conditions, and horrible forestry management skills, resulting in massive wildfires.
• The state has seen the rise of Medieval diseases such a typhus because of the growing homelessness problem.
• The state failed miserably in building a high speed rail line, wasting untold millions of dollars in the process.
• The state has some of the highest taxes in the country.
• The state’s crazy and likely useless environmental laws results in some state residents paying over $5 for a gallon of gas, about double what the rest of the country pays.

As a result of this gross mismanagement of life, many tax paying, law abiding state citizens are saying goodbye to a place that used to be a wonderful place to live:

• Accordingly, a recent study done by the University of California at Berkeley, more than half of the state's registered voters have considered leaving the state, given current living conditions.
• Which is not surprising since we have previously reported that over a million residents have indeed left the state since 2006.
• In 2017 alone, 76,000 California residents moved to Texas, a state with a much lower tax burden including no state income tax.
• Those in the survey cited, not surprisingly, expensive housing, high taxes, and a liberal political culture as the most important reasons for wanting to leave the state.
• One former resident who was cited in a Daily Caller Website article on the survey, said why her family had left the state: “We’re moving to redder pastures,” former California resident and conservative Judy Stark, 71. “We’re getting with people who believe in the same political agenda that we do: America first, Americans first, law and order.”
• 71% of those surveyed said that expensive housing was the main reason they wanted to get out.
• According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “California’s increasing home costs, which stem from its growing home shortage, could be the result of a combination of factors, including strict state regulations, high taxes, the California Environmental Quality Act, and permanent residents who do not want to give up land space for the homeless population.”
• High taxes (58%) and the political climate (46%) were the next most important reasons for wanting to leave the state.

California used to be a state where everyone dreamed of living. It had everything: mountains and beaches, large metro areas and small towns, wonderful weather that allowed just about any kind of recreational activity. And somehow, the politicians in the state have managed to ruin it with stupid housing laws, high taxes, failed programs of all types, high gas prices, and a serious degradation of living standards and culture despite the state’s natural wonders.

2) While politicians are ruining lives in places California and elsewhere, including Washington D.C., the politicians that are screwing everything up for the rest of us are making themselves and their families incredibly wealthy. From the Clintons to the Obamas to most members of Congress, self greed almost always takes precedence over serving the country and its citizens.

A recent New York Post article by Peter Schweizer on January 18, 2020, showed “How five members of Joe Biden’s family got rich through his connections:”

• According to Mr. Schweizer, “One particular politician — Joe Biden — emerges as the king of the sweetheart deal, with no less than five family members benefiting from his largesse, favorable access and powerful position for commercial gain. In Biden’s case, these deals include foreign partners and, in some cases, even U.S. taxpayer dollars.”
• James Biden is Joe Biden’s younger brother who has been an important part of Joe’s political campaigns.
• As a result, James accompanied Joe on foreign Congressional trips and has been invited to any number of White House functions.
• According to the article, “Sometimes, James’ White House visits dovetailed with his overseas business dealings, and his commercial opportunities flourished during his brother’s tenure as vice president.”
• In 2010, the president of a large construction company, Hillstone International, Kevin Justice, met with Joe Biden and a senior aide.
• Less than three weeks later, James Biden joined the company as an executive vice president despite having zero experience in construction.
• By the way, shortly after James Biden joined the company, Hillstone was trying to win a large government contract for work in Iraq, a contract that they won and which was worth over $1.5 billion over three years, a contract that was much larger than anything the company had ever worked on before.
• They then followed up with a $22 million State Department contract.
• And to add insult to injury, the son of the parent company’s founder, David Richter, made it no secret why they had been so successful in getting taxpayer funded projects from the Feds: “It really helps, he told investors at a private meeting, to have “the brother of the vice president as a partner,” according to someone who was there.”
• The company went onto get dozens of other Federal construction contacts with Jame Biden being there for all of them.
• Joe’s son, Hunter Biden, also lived off of his father's powerful position as Vice President.
• Hunter often rode on Air Force Two with his father to foreign countries at taxpayer expense, where he would cultivate business contacts and jobs.
• According to the article, the deals almost always involved entities that were looking for favors from the U.S. government and/or Joe Biden.
• One of Hunter Biden’s efforts involved working with a college pal, Devon Archer.
• They were business partners in something called the Burnham Financial Group, an entity that had done deals around the world including deals with Kazakhstan and government run business in China, a country that Hunter had visited with his father aboard Air Force Two.
• Domestically, Burnham came under Federal investigation that involved a fraud scheme worth $60 million against one of the poorest Native American tribes, the Oglala Sioux.
• As a result, Archer was arrested in May 2016 and “charged with “orchestrating a scheme to defraud investors and a Native American tribal entity of tens of millions of dollars.” 
• The fraud extended to several public and union pension plans. 
• Somehow Hunter Biden was not charged although he was a director of the company and long time friend of Archer.
• Transcripts from Archer’s trial made it clear that Hunter Biden and Burnham leveraged Hunter’s connections to his father.
• Several employees of Burnham were convicted of fraud in this case but somehow Hunter Biden was not.
• Dr. Howard Krein is Joe Biden’s son-in-law.
• Krein started up an investment consulting business called StartUp Health with two of his siblings.
• The Company was barely started when two of its executives got a meeting with Obama and Biden in the White House.
• The VERY next day, this new company got featured at a large healthcare tech conference being run by the Federal government which obviously was a big boost to a company that barely existed.
• Joe Biden took an active role in promoting the company that was headed up by his son-in-law including a StartUP Health event in San Francisco where Biden showed up to glad hand people attending the event.
• While Vice President, Joe Biden went to Costa Rica to meet with its President. 
• Not surprisingly, several months later, Biden’s brother, Frank Biden, got a big real estate deal done in the country.
• Frank Biden got access to the Costa Rican ministry of education, energy and the environment, and the country’s president about this real estate development despite the fact he had virtually no experience in real estate development.
• Frank Biden also got into solar energy development in Latin American and, “After Joe Biden brought together leaders for CESI, brother Frank’s firm Sun Fund Americas announced that it was “engaged in projects and is in negotiations with governments of other countries in the [Caribbean] region for both its Solar and Waste to Energy development services.” As if to push the idea along, the Obama administration’s OPIC provided a $47.5 million loan to support the construction of a 20-megawatt solar facility in Clarendon, Jamaica.”
• Shortly thereafter, Frank Biden’s company got a job to build a 20 megawatt solar facility in Jamaica, the same country that Obama gave a $47.5 U.S. taxpayer back loan to.
• Joe Biden has a sister,Valerie, who ran all of his Senate campaigns.
• But she was also one of only two executives in a PR firm called Joe Slade White and Company.
• This company received millions of dollars in “consulting fees” during Joe Biden’s Presidential campaigns.

Thus, the country has funded a lot of the Biden family wealth, the country’s politicians, including Joe Biden and Obama opened doors to Biden family financial opportunities, opportunities that were not and are not available to ordinary tax paying Americans, and Joe Biden and others leveraged and sacrificed American wealth and influence to the financial benefit of the Biden family. In return, we got a career politician who has done basically nothing of consequence of the country over the decades he has been in office.

Much more detail about the Biden family shenanigans can be found in the following article:

https://nypost.com/2020/01/18/how-five-members-of-joe-bidens-family-got-rich-through-his-connections/?fbclid=IwAR1hHyHcP5vN3PwKsGcnZX7DCv5nlVd8vFwIMdHdl4S7k9VmBf7aEyYiVhU

Thus, not too many surprises today from the political class. Greed, influence and power peddling, and incompetence at both the state and national political level.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w