CIRCA 2012 Crony capitalism & Joe Biden’s brother
SOURCE https://nypost.com/2012/10/23/crony-capitalism-joe-bidens-brother/
By Charles Gasparino, NY POST, October 23, 2012
James Biden isn’t a big name in the business of residential housing development, so what exactly qualifies him to work at a construction company and share in the winnings of a $1.5 billion project to build affordable homes in Iraq? If you said it has something to do with his last name, the one shared by his older brother Vice President Joe Biden, you wouldn’t be far off. At least that’s the guess of some Wall Street analysts who cover the Marlton, NJ-based company Hill International and think they’ve seen yet another sordid tale of crony capitalism.
Hill has been around for decades; its main business is managing construction projects in the Middle East and here in America. It’s built a good reputation over the years, as has the father-son team who run it, Irv and David Richter. But the bursting of the real-estate bubble took its toll; Hill shares are down 80 percent since 2008. Since 2011, the company has reported losses. Its Middle East business has also been stymied by the Arab Spring uprisings; in Libya alone, Hill is out $60 million in payments that it’s still trying to recover.
But it got some good news not long after its housing subsidiary hired James Biden as an executive vice president in late 2010. Just six months later, Hill won one of its biggest contracts ever, a $1.5 billion deal to build at least 100,000 affordable homes in Iraq. A good deal for Hill, a relative newcomer to building homes — and for James Biden, who as one partner will get a good share of that $1.5 billion.
The deal is contingent on the Iraqi government providing financing, which it has yet to do, but Hill execs tell analysts the money could start flowing by the end of the year. That’s when everyone involved, James Biden included, will start collecting on tens of millions of dollars in profits.
One friend of James Biden’s estimates his net worth at around $7 million, yet he seems to have a remarkable lack of concrete business experience. An attorney who’s done work for him called him a “serial entrepreneur,” but didn’t name the startups he was responsible for. Hill chief Irv Richter called Biden a “good salesman” and the firm’s Web site describes “40 years of experience dealing with principals in business, political, legal and financial circles across the nation and internationally.”
(James Biden also had a relatively short and somewhat controversial run as a co-owner of a hedge-fund company with Joe’s son Hunter. The company, as it turns out, was marketed by companies controlled by now convicted Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford. Neither Biden was charged, but the fund company is now winding down its operations.)
No, James Biden’s obvious value comes from his connection to the Obama administration. Richter assures me that James’ ties to Joe played no part in landing the plum assignment in Iraq or any of the other government-related jobs Hill has received recently.
Really? Connect these dots: Both the Iraqi government and the Obama State Department played roles in helping Hill win the assignment, Richter concedes. And Joe Biden is President Obama’s point man on Iraq — a country where people expect politicians’ families to be “taken care of.”
Also key is TRAC Development, a South Korean firm that won the master contract for the Iraq work. And — huh! — James Biden and his wife were guests of President Obama and Michelle for last October’s state dinner honoring the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak. All one big coincidence?
Well, Richter insists that, while Biden’s name and connections might open doors when government business is on the line, that doesn’t guarantee success. “If he had the name Obama, he would get in the door easier,” Richter joked. During this month’s vice-presidential debate, Joe Biden told Americans to just ignore all that stimulus money that went to administration-connected failures like Solyndra. Crony capitalism, he insisted, hardly exists with Joe Biden and Barack Obama watching the store.
Maybe that’s why the veep, after making that dopey statement, was laughing so much that night.
Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent.
Missing in Action: Stimulus Sheriff Joe Biden
By Michelle Malkin - October 10, 2012
Copyright 2012, Creators Syndicate Inc.
Remember when President Obama bragged about Joe Biden's fiscal discipline creds in 2009? "To you, he's Mr. Vice President, but around the White House, we call him the Sheriff," Obama warned government employees. "Because if you're misusing taxpayer money, you'll have to answer to him." Fast-forward to 2012. Call in the search teams. Since being appointed the nation's stimulus spending cop, Sheriff Joe has taken a permanent donut break. He's AWOL on oversight. In fact, he's been bubble-wrapped, boxed and kept completely out of sight. The garrulous gaffe machine hasn't sat down for a national media interview in five months.
The Democrats' trillion-dollar "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," however, keeps piling up waste, failure, fraud and debt. Who benefited most? Big government cronies. According to Investor's Business Daily this week, a new analysis by Ohio State University economics professor Bill Dupor reported that "(m)ore than three-quarters of the jobs created or saved by President Obama's economic stimulus in the first year were in government."
Dupor and another colleague had earlier concluded that the porkulus was a predictable jobs-killer that crowded out non-government jobs with make-work public jobs and programs. Indeed, the massive wealth redistribution scheme "destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs" by siphoning tax dollars "to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment."
Will this Keynesian wreckage come up during Thursday night's vice presidential debate? It should be a centerpiece of domestic policy discussion. Nowhere is the gulf between Obama/Biden rhetoric and reality on jobs wider. Remember: Obama's Ivy League eggheads behind the stimulus promised that "(m)ore than 90 percent of the jobs created are likely to be in the private sector." These are the same feckless economic advisers who infamously vowed that the stimulus would keep unemployment below 8 percent -- and that unemployment would drop below 6 percent sometime this year. Sheriff Joe rebuked the "naysayers" who decried the behemoth stimulus program's waste, fraud and abuse. "You know what? They were wrong," he crowed.
But Biden was radio silent about the nearly 4,000 stimulus recipients who received $24 billion in Recovery Act funds -- while owing more than $750 million in unpaid corporate, payroll and other taxes. (Cash for Tax Cheats, anyone?)
He had nothing to say about the $6 billion in stimulus energy credits for homeowners that went to nearly a third of credit-claimers who had no record of homeownership, including minors and prisoners.
And the $530 million dumped into the profligate Detroit public schools for laptops and other computer equipment that have had little, if any, measurable academic benefits. And the whopping $6.7 million cost per job under the $50 billion stimulus-funded green energy loan program -- which funded politically connected but now bankrupt solar firms Solyndra ($535 million), Abound Solar ($400 million), Beacon Power ($43 million), A123 ($250 million) and Ener1 ($119 million).
And the $1 million in stimulus cash that went to Big Bird and Sesame Street "to promote healthy eating," which created a theoretical "1.47" jobs. (As Sean Higgins of The Examiner noted, "(T)hat comes out to about $726,000 per job created.")
And the hundreds of millions in stimulus money steered to General Services Administrations junkets in Las Vegas and Hawaii, ghost congressional districts, dead people, infrastructure to nowhere and ubiquitous stimulus propaganda road signs stamped with the shovel-ready logo.
Of course, there's no example of unfettered stimulus squandering more fitting than the one named after Keystone Fiscal Kop Joe Biden himself. Government-funded Amtrak's Wilmington, Del., station raked in $20 million in "recovery" money after heavy personal lobbying by the state's most prominent customer and cheerleader. In return, the station (which came in $6 million over budget, according to The Washington Times) renamed its facility after Biden. Bloated costs. Crony political narcissism. Glaring conflicts of interest. Monumental waste. This is the Obama/Biden stimulus legacy bequeathed to our children and their grandchildren. Sheriff Joe and his plundering boss need to be run out of town on a rail.
http://dyn.realclearpolitics.com/topic/v/Vice_President_/