Vice President Joe Biden, America's textbook Beltway barnacle, still labors under the illusion that he is America's middle-class Everyman. And now, he's gone and dragged his adult children into the land of Democratic make-believe. This is a BFD: a Biden Fabulist Dud.
As usual with White House class-warfare demagoguery, reality doesn't fit the wealth-bashing narrative.
At the International Association of Fire Fighters 51st Convention in Philadelphia on Wednesday, Biden stoked passive-aggressive resentment of the 1 percenters. "The wealthy," he sniveled. "God bless 'em," he snarked. "I wish my kids would become wealthy," he sighed before railing against tax relief for all those evil, privileged rich people earning more than $250,000 a year.
Does Biden have kids we don't know about? Because his three children with wife Dr. Jill Biden all appear to be, well, doing just fine. Way more than just fine.
Daughter Ashley, a social worker in the Delaware state bureaucracy, graduated from Tulane University and has a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She's married to an otolaryngologist/plastic surgeon at Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals in Philadelphia. Along the way, Ashley's husband also racked up a Ph.D. and snagged a slot as an assistant professor of otolaryngology/head and neck surgery and as a director of the Herbert Kean Center for Facial Aesthetics.
Not exactly Occupier-level poverty in that line of business.
Oldest son Beau is the current attorney general of Delaware, a former Justice Department official and federal prosecutor, a former partner in the Wilmington law firm Bifferato, Gentilotti, Biden and Balick, and a career beneficiary of the Biden dynasty.
Then there's younger son Hunter. Vice President Biden, meet your well-heeled and wildly successful lobbyist/lawyer offspring.
Hunter Biden now fronts Eudora Global, "a uniquely organized growth and acquisition firm focused on purchasing and accelerating the development of high potential enterprises in industries that meet its selective investment profile." He co-founded the firm with Jeffrey Cooper. Who is Jeffrey Cooper?
Cooper helped build one of the biggest asbestos litigation firms in the country. SimmonsCooper, based in Madison County, Ill., has donated a whopping $196,050 to the senior Biden's campaigns since 2003, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C. In that same time frame, the firm poured $6.5 million into lobbying against a key tort reform bill -- which Sen. Biden worked hard to defeat. Cooper also contributed to Beau Biden's first attorney general campaign and paid Beau for legal work on Delaware asbestos litigation cases.
Hunter Biden was previously a top official at PARADIGM Global Advisors, a hedge fund holding company founded with Vice President Biden's brother, James, and marketed by convicted finance fraudster Allen Stanford. As Paradigm chairman, Hunter Biden oversaw half a billion dollars of client money invested in hedge funds while remaining a lobbyist at Oldaker, Biden and Belair. Cooper chipped in $2 million for the ill-fated venture, which went down in flames amid nasty fraud lawsuits.
Before all that, Hunter Biden was a senior vice president at MBNA America Bank, one of his dad's wealthiest corporate campaign donors. An MBNA bank official helped facilitate an eyebrow-raising real estate deal for Daddy Biden that paved the way for the acquisition of a custom-built house in Delaware's ritziest Chateau Country neighborhood.
While raking in consultant payments at MBNA, Hunter Biden also served as a founding partner in D.C. lobbying shop Oldaker, Biden and Belair. His lobbying for drug companies, university earmarks and other clients and causes brought in nearly $4 million in 2007 alone.
Nice Beltway influence-peddling work if you can get it. As I noted in my book "Culture of Corruption," one client seeking federal government earmarks told The Washington Post, "Biden's parentage was a selling point."
Nepotism has its privileges -- and the Biden children, despite Papa Joe's lamentations, have enjoyed far more than their fair share.