Happy Halloween: "Dark Money Word Cloud I+II"

<"Dark Money Word Cloud I":

The Reckoner>

It's just too big to stop...Ka-ching, Ka-ching...It's not the time...

Ka-ching, Ka-ching...

The political climate doesn't allow it...

Follow the money...Money is speech...Follow the money...

Ka-ching, ka-ching...

Corporations are people, too...

Ka-ching, ka-ching...

Just follow the money...

It doesn't buy my vote...

Ka-ching, ka-ching...

"I think the major factor for why Biden has gradually been falling in the polls is by the way that he campaigns and speaks and the contradictions in his claims versus his record. 

"And those contradictions are very much played out in his current effort to rationalize taking huge money or accepting the huge money going into super PACs on behalf of his campaign."

<Norman Solomon,

Common Dreams Contributor>


."Joe Biden should get scorched 

on the next debate stage

 for starting a super PAC 

because he doesn't have grassroots support." 

<Erick Fernandez, Journalist>

"While there may be disagreements between candidates in this race about whether or not it’s okay to have a super PAC, on this issue the country is already pretty united: People have had ENOUGH of the wealthy and powerful buying our candidates and elections."
<Fahiz Shakir,

Bernie Sanders' 2020 Campaign Manager>

Common Dreams: 

"Sanders Campaign, Progressives

Rip Biden Super PAC"

<10/30/19>

<"Dark Money Word Cloud II":

The Reckoner>

I must make two honest confessions to you… 
First, I must confess that over the past few years
 I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. 

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion 
that the Negro’s great stumbling block
 in his stride toward freedom 
is not the White Citizen's Councilor, 
or the Ku Klux Klanner,
 but the white moderate, who is more devoted
to “order” than to justice; 

who prefers a negative peace 
which is the absence of tension
 to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; 

who constantly says:
“I agree with you in the goal you seek,
but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”;

 who paternalistically believes 
he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; 

who lives by a mythical concept of time 
and who constantly advises the Negro
 to wait for a “more convenient season.” 

Shallow understanding from people of good will 
is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding 
from people of ill will. 

Lukewarm acceptance 
is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

<Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”>

Guest Cartoon: The Highwayman: "The Windowless Basement Hustle"

<Click on the image for the full effect!>

"We're not going to beat 
Trump with pocket change."

Democratic Presidential hopeful
Pete Buttigieg, 
pondering the pros and cons
of joining the money chase

"Small-dollar grassroots campaigns, aka what Buttegieg insults here

as 'pocket change,'

out-fundraise him by millions.

"Our nation’s leaders

should be working to end the era

of big money politics,

not protect it." <Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offers a slightly different take>

“The front of the line is always filled
with people whose pockets are filled."


Joe Biden, Zombie Frontrunner,
Explaining How It Works, 101

Our friend and house artist, The Highwayman, is feeling righteously angry, as this week's cartoon makes amply clear. The quote in panel #2 comes from The National Review, which ran an interesting article (see below) about Democratic Minority Leader Charles Schumer's strategy to retake the Senate --by putting up party-vetted favorites, have them say as little of substance as possible, and run a blizzard of negative ads to make their opponent -- typically, a white, male, inoffensive, party-vetted favorite -- seem like the spawn of Hitler, Osama bin Laden and Satan combined.

Does sound like an equation that favors the common interest? Not in the least, but it showcases the Democratic Party disconnect between the Old Bulls, who seem hellbent on imposing the above vision on the rest of us, till Hell freezes over, or they die, or finally get run off, whichever comes first -- and the newly energized progressive wing, who don't want the anti-Trump resistance simply hijacked to preserve the status quo...the same status quo that keeps us stuck in the hellish non-choice between a) Aetna and Cigna, b) Comcast and nobody, c) Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump...take your pick. Wash, rinse repeat.

This cartoon came at an interesting week, due to some welcome light getting shed on the issue of big money, and its role in campaigns. Just look how far Zombie Frontrunner, Joe Biden, has fallen -- $1 million in private jet rides later, and he still ends up with just $9 million to show for his third quarter of fundraising! I can just imagine the slogan: "Joe Biden: The Last White Man Who Can't Raise Money. Give Till It Hurts."

So what's Lunch Bucket Joe's solution? Do a 180-degree turnaround (see link below), and go with the super PACs that you disavowed when your campaign started. Of course, you'll definitely fix what ails the system, if you ever make it to the White House, and try elbowing past all those big donors, waiting to cash their IOUs, which only means...yeah, we've seen this movie before, time and again. It didn't pass the stench test then, and doesn't now. Unless we stand up and say, "We demand something different." We don't want to stay stuck in the windowless basement, right? --The Reckoner

Links To Go (Hurry, Hurry.

The Ghost Of Dark Money

Is Banging At Your Door)

The Intercept:
Joe Biden's Super PAC:
https://theintercept.com/2019/10/25/joe-biden-super-pac/

The National Review: 

Chuck Schumer's "Wndowless Basement" Strategy

For Winning Back The Strategy:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/chuck-schumer-windowless-basement-strategy-for-winning-back-the-senate/

Nice Work, If You Can Get It: Team Biden Circles The Wagons

The Shape Of Things To Come?

https://nypost.com/2019/07/05/joe-biden-keeps-making-things-worse-for-himself/

<i.>

One of the oldest, sickest, oft-repeated jokes that America plays on its citizens is the notion that it's some kind of meritocracy. At some point in our lives, we all learned that simply wasn't true, whether that lesson came in junior high -- when we watched the popular kids pick each other for their baseball teams, and leave us standing, way last, in the outfield -- or in high school, where the spoiled jerk who always had a blonde on each arm, and his first car at 16, went on to become a high-profile CFO, courtesy of his family name, and/or connections. (My own favorite anecdote is the star basketball player who earned an ACT composite score that fell 50 percent below the desired minimum, which didn't prevent him from graduating.)

Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but not by half. As over the top as the above images seem, I'd argue the need to believe in a meritocracy is an essential ingredient of our social DNA, even if the reality doesn't match up. It's a belief that drives many a public policy debate, like the infamous Clinton-era welfare overhauls of the 1990s -- which essentially arose from the notion that the undeserving had out-hustled and overtaken the truly needy. That the needy who remained on the rolls would now have to live with scaled-down benefits, and no end of restrictions -- like work requirements, for instance -- was incidental to the whole exercise.

Which brings us to Joe Biden's troubled offspring, Hunter, and uncle, James Biden, who've been reaping a lot of negative news this week for the putative Democratic front-runner. That status seems shaky at the moment, though it will depend on how many other shoes start raining down. The 2014 photo that's surfaced of Joe golfing with Hunter and his Ukrainian business partner, presumably, will do little to help the cause.

In one sense, the avalanche of revelations of Hunter Biden's unorthodox business dealings triggered by Trump's forthcoming impeachment proceedings amount to business as usual. This is how Washington works, the talking heads on TV wearily intone. You get along to go along, blah-blah-blah. It's not what you know, blah-blah-blah, it's who you know, blah-blah-blah. No, it's who knows you. And so on, and so forth. Wash, rinse, repeat.

In yet another sense, you can feel a perverse note of empathy for Hunter, who toiled in the shadow of his far more illustrious brother, Beau Biden -- who seemed headed for a glorious political ride, only to have brain cancer cut it brutally short. At one point, Hunter's life seemed to have skidded so far down, that he convinced someone to pull some strings to get him into the U.S. Naval Reserve at 42, well beyond the age that military recruiters typically desire. Yet even with that helping hand, Hunter Biden washed out of the U.S. Navy as quickly as he'd arrived.

Given Hunter's apparent lack of discernible talent for anything in particular, it's not surprising that he determined, early on, to cash in on his family connections. What else could he really offer? It's a similar rationale that the villainous boxing manager, Maish Rennick, voices to his fallen protege, in the climactic scene of Requiem For A Heavyweight: "You're not a winner anymore, Mountain. There's only one thing left. Let's make some money from the losing."

Of course, Hunter came out of his deals slightly better than the banged-up Mountain Rivera, starting right out of law school, when he picked up a $100,000 retainer as a "consultant" to the credit card giant, MBNA, one of many corporate entities located in the Bidens' home state of Delaware. Not all of his ventures succeeded, as you'll see from the National Review timeline below, but nevertheless, it didn't take long for the Bidens' deals to reach the seven-figure-plus range. The deals came rolling in, goosed by foreign countries eager to buy the access they desired, in order to push their own agendas.

<ii.>

Again, it's all part of a larger climate where neoconservative and neoliberal offspring alike float along an oil slick of entitlement, whose skids were arguably greased long ago by the likes of Buckley v. Valeo, the infamous 1976 Supreme Court decision that slammed the brakes on campaign spending limits by countering, "Hey, kids, corporations and dollar bills are people, too." The coup de grace came along in 2010, with the Citizens United ruling, one that opened the floodgates for unlimited campaign spending -- and spectacles like the dark money group that spent $22 million to jam Brett Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court (including $17 million alone that came from one anonymous donor).

This, of course, is precisely the problem with the Bidens, and for that matter, all who came before them -- the Clintons, the Bushes, and so on, and so forth. Wash, rinse, repeat. In such a climate, it's hardly surprising that Biden's defenders are furiously pumping out any number of shaky defenses, ranging from the classic "ya got nothing on us" bit ("None of the activities were illegal, per se"), to the "matter of degree" line ("Trump's abuses of power are far worse, and far more damaging"), to the "zombie apocalypse" credo ("If Biden falls, we'll get stuck with four more years of Trump"). As any quick glance at the mainstream media will tell you, Biden has plenty of allies, all doggedly pumping out variations on the above themes with the megaphones that their various platforms provide them. Or, as my late father put it, "One crow doesn't peck another."

But I still see too many fatal flaws in this line of thinking. For one thing, it's hard to take Team Biden's messge ("Eat your spinach, vote your head, not your heart, blah-blah-blah") seriously, when it's obvious that his family has never done likewise. For another, voters have wearied of the constant commingling of business, pleasure and policy that characterizes so many neoconservative and neo-liberal side projects. Team Biden is crawling with lobbyists, like his so-called climate adviser, Heather Zichal, who earned $1.1 million from her ties to the liquified natural gas industry, an energy option that -- not coincidentally -- the Obama administration avidly encouraged. With these sorts of characters lurking behind the curtain, how can you seriously expect a Biden Presidency, should one ever materialize, to tackle the global dumpster fire of climate change? If you believe that the link doesn't matter, you're a more optimistic bugger than I, but I digress.

The final irony, though, is that nominating someone like Biden will repeat the error of 2016, when Trump repeatedly called out Hillary Clinton's political and business baggage to his own perverse advantage by saying, "You think I'm so bad? Well, look at her! You don't know who's lurking behind her curtain! At least you know who's lurking behind mine!" This is why simply moaning about Trump's dark, divisive nature, won't stick against him, in and of itself. The people who chose him in 2016 are well aware of his flaws, for the most part, but wanted someone to blow up the system. That tendency is amply documented. Now imagine them looking at someone like Biden, who epitomizes the "swamp creature" that they so despise -- the same kid who always got the pitcher's mound in junior high, the same rich jerk who got the shiny new car and the blondes on each arm. it's not hard to guess how they'll react, and not hard to imagine Trump gleefully rubbing his palms together: "Oh, boy, I get to muddy the waters again! I can't wait!"

Time will tell how this latest mushrooming narrative of scandal plays out, but the war clouds currently swirling above Team Biden remind me of an equally troubled nominee, Warren G. Harding, from the Roaring Twenties. Like Biden, Harding was a terrible public speaker, one whose utterances made little sense in cold print. Like Biden, Harding's 1920 presidential campaign rested largely on the idea that the nation needed to be soothed, not challenged to greater heights. Feral capital pirates and white-sheeted Ku Klux Klanners had nothing to fear from him, because he simply wished they would go away, so he wouldn't have to hold them accountable for their misdeeds.

Unlike Biden -- who's 0 for 2 in the presidential box score -- Harding rode to the White House, flanked by a group of shadowy opportunists -- some on the government payroll, like Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, others preferring a lower-key role, like the ever-resourceful go-between, Jess Smith -- who wasted no time cashing in their political IOUs, and cranking up the side deals they hoped would make them ever more rich, and ever more powerful. The cascade of scandals took a physical and emotional toll on Harding, who died in 1923. His name remains forever associated with scandal, cronyism and corruption. 

Historians have argued the degree of Harding's competency and culpability for his "Ohio gang"'s misdeeds ever since, though the debate has hardly budged his ranking near the bottom of American presidents, a place that Trump may eventually overtake. Yet even more forgiving biographers, like Robert K. Murray, remain adamant about one thing -- the need to take accountability, once things head south, as he suggests in his 1969 book, The Harding Era 1921-1923: Warren G. Harding And His Administration. 

"In the American political system, there is no such thing as an innocent bystander in the White House," said Murray, in part. "By his inaction, he forfeited whatever chance he had to maintain the integrity of his position and salvage a favorable image for himself and his administration. As it was, the subsequent popular and scholarly negative verdict was inevitable, if not wholly deserved." It's a point that Team Biden and its defenders, such as they are, would do well to ponder, whenever the next shoe happens to drop. Or if they actually make it to the White House.--The Reckoner

Links To Go (Hurry, Hurry,
Before The Bidens Beat You To The Post)

National Review
Hunter Biden: The Most Comprehensive Timeline:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/hunter-biden-comprehensive-timeline/

Post-Bulletin
Normal Is What Got Us Here:
https://www.postbulletin.com/opinion/columnists/normal-is-what-got-us-here/article_3da0a11a-cb37-11e9-99d9-d386e4cc3469.html

Skafish:
Disgracing The Family Name:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=974DvCkUtEQ

Sludge Climate
Biden's Climate Adviser
Earned $1 Million From Natural Gas Company:
https://readsludge.com/2019/05/10/bidens-climate-adviser-earned-1-million-from-natural-gas-company/