Is it okay that Joe Biden paid family members from campaign?

[Don1]

YES. It's legal!

This article is bullshit:

Biden has a sister and son whose companies received large contracts from his last presidential campaign; about one-fifth of the $11.1 million raised by that campaign went to companies that employed close relatives.

It is perfectly legal to pay family members with campaign funds or put them on the payroll as long as they provide a bona fide service and their salary is fair. Dozens of members of Congress, from both sides of the aisle, have employed family members on their campaigns.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/bernie-sanders-joe-biden-enriched-their-families/607159/

Politicians have family working for campaigns or contracting for campaigns.

Bernie had family members working for his campaign. That's in the article, too! And so what?

It's only a big deal when the money changing hands doesn't represent the actual work...like paying someone a gazillion dollars for being unqualified and a national security risk...like say Jared Kushner...and those guys are working for the government, not merely a campaign.

Biden and Sanders are a million times better than Trump. There is ZERO reason to attack either of them for paying the market value for services or actual work from qualified persons.

[napi21]

1. I think it's perfectly fine as long as they did the work. Presumably he trusts them more than he

would have a stranger.

[LastDemocratInSC]

2. It would be best if family were not on the payroll.

[Hortensis]

19. Yes, but many couldn't work their hearts out then.

All across the nation, for family members campaigning for offices at all levels, not just presidential races. It's common for relatives to take big losses to help, if they can.

[jaxexpat]

28. Agree.

Obvious is obvious.

[TexasTowelie]

3. There is a difference between what is legal and what is moral or ethical.

I'm not comfortable with any candidate that uses their campaigns to enrich their relatives. However, I do draw a distinction as to whether those family members are paid with campaign donations versus taxpayer money when those family members land government jobs. On that note, I'll mention that you didn't include this sentence in your excerpt.

Unlike Sanders, however, Biden did not receive any of that money himself, and the money came exclusively from campaign contributions rather than taxpayer dollars.

I think that some latitude can be accepted for directing campaign funds to a family member, but hiring someone who draws a salary provided by taxpayers is far worse since the taxpayers contribution is not voluntary while a donation to a campaign is voluntary.

[TomCADem]

4. Your Article Says That No Biden Family Members Are Working On The Current Campaign

And that Valerie Biden has worked for other campaigns, including Wesley Clark's 2004 campaign. Has Levi Sanders worked for anyone besides his Dad recently? The article notes that working for Bernie has been the sole source of income for Bernie's son, wife, step-daughter, and if you add his foundation, his son-in-law all within the past five years!

Thanks for the information!

In 2004, Burlington College hired Jane as its president. While she was in that role, the college entered into a $500,000 contract for student activities with Vermont Woodworking School, which was run by Jane’s daughter Carina Driscoll. The contract ended shortly after Jane left the college, in 2011. The college shut down the next year, drowned in financial troubles resulting from a multimillion-dollar loan that Jane had obtained to purchase land for its new campus. The FBI later investigated the deal for alleged fraud, but no charges were ever brought. Jane received a $200,000 severance package that Sanders’s Senate financial disclosure describes as having been for a “sabbatical.” Jeff Weaver, a top adviser to Sanders, has previously told the press that Jane did nothing wrong. Jane, through the campaign, declined to comment.

By 2000, Carina, then serving one term as a Vermont state representative, was also working for Sanders. During the time she was in office, from 2000 to 2004, Sanders’s congressional reelection campaigns paid her $51,032 in salary and expenses, though the payments were irregular—she would sometimes get multiple payments on a single day, and then not get paid for a month or more. (In 2018, Carina ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Burlington with the backing of Our Revolution, the progressive group that Sanders started after the 2016 election, although he is not formally associated with it.) Carina, through Sanders’s presidential campaign, declined to comment.

Starting in the late ’90s, Jane was an alternative commissioner on the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission—a gubernatorial-appointed position on a commision that had been created after Sanders led efforts to dump nuclear waste in a small border town named Sierra Blanca. Jane, who didn’t have experience with nuclear-waste or land issues, was paid roughly $5,000 annually. Not listed on Sanders’s financial disclosures, the payments first came to light when he released several years of their joint federal tax returns in 2016. Sanders’s state tax returns might have more information—but so far, he hasn’t released them, even though he relented last spring and released federal returns that he’d been withholding.

Sanders has also benefited from his campaign account over the years, spending $8,000 in the late ’90s, and then $445,000 in 2015, on purchases of his own book. In his 2016 Senate personal financial disclosure, Sanders said he received only $6,700 in royalties from the 2015 purchase. Other politicians do this—but when, for example, the Republican National Committee bought Donald Trump Jr.’s book in bulk last year, the author didn’t also profit off money raised in his name, with his own authority to spend it.

The personal and professional converged once again after Sanders’s first presidential campaign ended. In 2017, Jane started the Sanders Institute, envisioned as part think tank, part advocacy group. She tapped her son David Driscoll, who had worked as an executive at two private companies, as executive director, and he was approved by the board. He hadn’t worked for a nonprofit before, but was paid a salary of $100,000. The institute raised about $1.2 million, according to tax returns and public statements it released. But neither its full donor list nor the number of donations it received is public. Bernie and Jane Sanders said that they made a $25,000 initial donation, and Our Revolution gave a $105,000 loan. The organization shut down after Sanders began his second race for president; most of its paperwork remains undisclosed. The most significant thing the institute did was host a December 2018 gathering for top supporters and press in Vermont that was essentially an informal kickoff to his anticipated campaign.

[Don1]

13. You are nitpicking.

Someone on the other side would pick different nits.

Division and bashing are not helpful.

[The Magistrate]

20. Indeed, Sir, 'Division And Bashing Are Not Helpful'

Let us know when you propose to act in accord with your own advice to others.





"From Bernie’s perspective, dropping out of a race once you have no chance of winning is peculiar behavior that can only be explained by the work of a hidden hand. For most politicians, though, it is actually standard operating procedure. Only Sanders seems to think the normal thing to do once voters have made clear they don’t want to nominate you is to continue campaigning anyway."





"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."

[TwilightZone]

26. "Division and bashing are not helpful."

Look in the mirror.

[Squinch]

15. This. And no. It's most definitely NOT nitpicking.

[Mr.Bill]

5. Look where the hell we are at.

Right now it's okay if Joe Biden picks his nose and eats his boogers on camera.

[Don1]

6. Probably not a good idea

[Paka]

7. It's perfectly okay.

The hypocrisy comes when the msm calls out Senator Sanders for the same thing.

[Don1]

9. I agree.

It's just more mud slinging.

To put my cards on the table, unity right now is extremely important. But Sanders is attacked with invalid point on a daily basis. All that will do is make those who believe the propaganda hate Sanders and those who recognize it is propaganda get pushed away. Therefore, the bashing causes division.

[Paka]

14. Amen!

[The Magistrate]

21. The Only Cause Of Division, Sir, Is Sanders' Being Bull-Headed In A Lost Cause

So long as he persists in showboating, and so long as he is kept in countenance by devoted supporters, 'Bernie' does harm to the prospects of turfing out this cheap thug Trump.

Once Sanders accepts reality and leaves go his illusions, no one is likely to say one harsh word towards him. Or pay him much attention at all. One suspects this is why he will not abandon his destructive course....





"From Bernie’s perspective, dropping out of a race once you have no chance of winning is peculiar behavior that can only be explained by the work of a hidden hand. For most politicians, though, it is actually standard operating procedure. Only Sanders seems to think the normal thing to do once voters have made clear they don’t want to nominate you is to continue campaigning anyway."





"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."

[Demsrule86]

24. This is mudslinging...and Sanders has lost...he needs to go back to the Senate and earn his salary.

[Squinch]

16. Do, please, link to where that happened.

I don't mean when Mrs. Sanders was criticized for asinine decisions she made on the campaign trail. I mean where Mrs. Sanders was criticized for being on the campaign.

Thank you in advance for the myriad links.

[Historic NY]

8. Ask Bernie?

[Cha]

11. lol

[Don1]

12. Why

[MrsCoffee]

22. Because he likes to funnel money to unqualified family members.

“as long as they provide a bona fide service and their salary is fair.”

It’s a little different to contract a relative who already has a business established than to tap an unqualified family member and pay them six figures.

[The Magistrate]

10. A Man Of High Principle, Sir

Would not allow family and associates so much as a cup of coffee purchased with campaign funds. Whether it was legal or not would not matter.

This is what comes of posturing as a moral exemplar. People who do are properly held to the standard they apply to others, and 'Bernie' has made far too much hay out of braying that others are corrupt to be allowed even the smallest monetary peccadilloes. The amounts do not matter, and the fact that this behavior was engaged in over a period of fifteen years at least simply establishes it is 'a continuing pattern of conduct', and not a one-off which can be rectified by apology, and refraining from such acts in future.

My own attitudes towards 'honest graft' are quite lenient, but I charge few people with being corrupt, and find scolds and crusaders particularly offensive. Life is an organic thing, full of curves and waves and spirals. Scolds and crusaders seek to impose a crystalline form upon it, and sooner or later must commence whacking off or squeezing in the organic shapes that do not fit their mineral framework.




"From Bernie’s perspective, dropping out of a race once you have no chance of winning is peculiar behavior that can only be explained by the work of a hidden hand. For most politicians, though, it is actually standard operating procedure. Only Sanders seems to think the normal thing to do once voters have made clear they don’t want to nominate you is to continue campaigning anyway."



"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."

[Squinch]

17. BS has lost. It is over.

[NurseJackie]

18. I'm not fooled either.

Thank you!

[Demsrule86]

23. I read the article and it is completely devastating for Sanders They didn't lay a glove

on Joe...his sister worked for a a firm that got money for ads? Really that is all you have? The sister's daughter worked in the campaign and was hired by Obama-really? That is it? That is hardly the same thing as the lifetime of money Sanders paid Jane (himself after they married)... I can't believe you would post something that unintentionally shows Sanders in such a bad light...of course it skips entirely over the college issue with Jane and her daughter. It also skip over the fact that Jane received money as a result of the deal to send nuclear waste to a poor brown area in Texas for years; She was on some board. Large sums were paid to family members out of the Sanders' Charitable foundation too.

And as for Joe, most of this article is about Hunter where Biden is concerned...he had jobs that author hints were because of his Dad's status-not one hint that Biden had anything to do with helping Hunter get these jobs. Well Hunter was grown and that has nothing to to do with Biden...when I read this I came away with this opinion;Joe Biden is squeaky clean while Sanders has given his family member paychecks out of charitable or campaign funds for decades. Despite the attempt to play 'what about' in this article, the bottom line is Biden did not become a millionaire while in the Senate and never played the market either viewing it as a conflict of interest. I find some of Sanders activities with family and money as detailed in this article and from other sources as well troubling.

[Demsrule86]

25. Also, you left off the date. March 2nd...this article is very old...you must have searched

desperately for something to smear Biden with...as Sanders is irrelevant now that he has lost the primary, there are few recent articles other than at right wing sites attacking Biden from legitimate sources. But all you managed to do is show how Sanders talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.

[MineralMan]

27. Personally, I have no problem with candidates hiring family members

to work on campaigns.

I am much more concerned about hiring people who voted for Jill Stein in 2016. That is far more worrisome to me.

Perhaps it's OK with some, but I find it disqualifying, personally.

[PubliusEnigma]

29. Is it ok that Bernie's wife was being prosecuted for a bad land deal, but Trump made it go away?

Bernie owes Donald Trump.

[ismnotwasm]

30. Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are both politicians

I, personally don’t care if politicians hire family.
Bernie Sanders has positioned himself as an outsider, a lone warrior against forces he claims to despise. He deliberately gives the impression of moral superiority, of radical change, a pied piper with all the right answers against a system that is nothing but wrong. In speech after speech Bernie Sanders has implied that he, alone, has a solid moral compass.

One would think he would be as meticulous about that moral compass in his hires as he is in his speeches.