Tag: double standard

Now It Can Be Told: Letter Reveals What Hunter Biden was Doing for Burisma

Bribing and hustling money off of his Dad’s position, while he was in office. What’s the crime? Treason, traitor, breach of security, lying, collusion, Rico? Why did they hide it? Why did they raid Mar-A-Lago instead of Biden? Was he doing drugs and hookers at the time? There are 2 sets of rules for crimes, politicians (except Trump) and everyone else.

Yesterday the NY Times published a follow up to a story about Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma while his father Joe Biden was Vice President. The original story was published last August and Ed wrote about it here. Here’s a bit of what Ken Vogel reported at the time:

Hunter Biden sought assistance from the U.S. government for a potentially lucrative energy project in Italy while his father was vice president, according to newly released records and interviews.

The records, which the Biden administration had withheld for years, indicate that Hunter Biden wrote at least one letter to the U.S. ambassador to Italy in 2016 seeking assistance for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where he was a board member…

The State Department did not release the actual text of the letter.

Essentially, this was proof that Hunter had been acting as an unregistered foreign agent while his father was VP. But just as significant as the story was the timing of it. The NY Times had been trying to get the information though an FOIA request for years.

The request was initially filed under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, in June 2021. After nearly eight months, the State Department had not released any records, and The Times sued. About 18 months later, the department moved to close the case after releasing thousands of pages of records — none of which shed light on Hunter Biden’s outreach to the U.S. government.

The Times challenged the thoroughness of the search, noting that the department had failed to produce responsive records contained in a cache of files connected to a laptop that Mr. Biden had abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. The department resumed the search and periodic productions, but had produced few documents related to Mr. Biden until the week after his father ended his re-election campaign and endorsed Vice President Harris for the Democratic nomination.

So the Times did finally get some incriminating documents related to Hunter’s outreach to the US ambassador but those documents were released one week after Joe Biden announced he was stepping down as the Democratic nominee. The State Department claimed that timing was just a coincidence but let’s just face it, they were lying. It’s definitely not a coincidence that evidence that showed Hunter Biden was trading on his fathers name was hidden for three years and finally revealed a week after he left the race. Sorry, no one is going to ever believe that.

As mentioned, even then they didn’t release the actual letter Hunter Biden sent. And that’s what yesterday’s follow-up is about. Ken Vogel finally got a copy of Hunter’s letter.

The State Department last week released a letter that Hunter Biden wrote while his father was serving as vice president in which he sought assistance from the U.S. government for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

In the previously unpublished June 2016 letter on Burisma letterhead to the U.S. ambassador to Italy, Mr. Biden requested “support and guidance” in arranging a meeting with an Italian official to resolve regulatory hurdles to geothermal energy projects Burisma was pursuing in the Tuscany region…

The letter requested help arranging a meeting between Burisma officials and Enrico Rossi, the president of the Tuscany regional government at the time, “to introduce geothermal projects led by Burisma Group, to highlight their social and economic benefits for local communities and develop a common action plan that would lead to further development of the Tuscany Region.”

In the letter, Hunter mentioned meeting the ambassador on a recent trip to Rome. That trip was apparently a trip on which Hunter accompanied his father the Vice President and spent time with the ambassador on a shared plane trip home on Air Force Two. The ambassador sent a follow up letter saying he knew the president of Tuscany and had designated a Commerce Department official working at the US embassy to “see where our interests may overlap.” Allegedly the meeting between Hunter and the Tuscany official never happened and the deal apparently fell apart.

The official response to all of this now is either silence or a claim that nobody knew this was happening.

A Burisma representative did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for former President Biden declined to comment.

Last summer, a Biden White House spokesman said the elder Mr. Biden was not aware when he was vice president that his son had contacted the United States Embassy in Italy on behalf of Burisma.

It sure looks like Hunter was trading on his father’s name and influence and that the State Dept. sat on the evidence until Joe Biden was a lame duck no longer running for president. But even if that’s true, there’s nothing that can be done about it now. The pardon Joe Biden granted Hunter before leaving office goes back to 2014, right around the time Hunter started working for Burisma and two years before this letter was sent. So Hunter is in the clear, no matter what documents the State Department releases next.

source

How Much Income Tax Warren Buffet Pays

Despite his request to pay more taxes and that the rich do not do their fair share, it appears that Mr. Buffet has reduced his tax burden.  While you read the story below, consider if there is a double standard.

From Thomas Stanley, Ph.D.

Warren Buffett is the best of the best at transforming income into wealth.    How did he do it?  Wise investing, you say.  Combine this with his reputation for having enormous integrity and his well publicized frugal lifestyle.  When it comes to consumption he seems to possess traditional midwestern values.  In spite of his substantial wealth he lives in a relatively modest home and drives American makes of cars.  Ah , but there is something else.  As I stated in The Millionaire Next Door,

Millionaires know that the more they spend, the more income they must realize.  The more they realize, the more they must allocate for income taxes.  So . . . adhere to an important rule:  To build wealth, minimize your realized (taxable) income and maximize your unrealized income (wealth/capital appreciation without a cash flow).

You may recall from an earlier blog that the typical millionaire next door has a realized income that is equivalent to only 8.2% of his wealth [median].  But Mr. Buffett is much better at miniziming his income as a function of net worth.  According to the 2012 Forbes 400 list, Mr. Buffett has a net worth of $46 billion.  CNN Money reported that “his taxable income was $39,814,784” in 2010.  That is the equivalent of only 0.087% of his net worth! Translated, the typical millionaire next door’s percentage of realized income to his net worth (8.2%) is nearly 95 times higher than Mr. Buffett’s (8.2%/0.087%).

Also consider something else in this equation:  income tax as a function of net worth.  The typical millionaire next door pays the equivalent of approximately 2% (median) of his net worth in income tax annually.  But here again Mr. Buffett is far, far better in minimizing his income tax.  According to Reuter’s, “[Warren Buffett] paid only $6.9 million in federal income taxes in 2010.”

In a nominal sense, $6.9 million in income tax might appear to be a significant amount of money.  But look at Mr. Buffett’s tax bill as a function of his net worth, that is $6.9 million as a percentage of his $46 billion in wealth.  At this rate he is paying the equivalent of only 0.015% of his net worth.  Compare this with the 2% paid by the millionaire next door.  This rate is more than 133 times greater than Mr. Buffett’s.  In fact, if Mr. Buffett was taxed at the same rate (2%) he would owe the Treasury Department $920,000,000 or nearly $1 billion.  You might say that it is unAmerican not to pay your fair share.  But Mr. Buffett gets special dispensation regarding this topic.  Why?  He has pledged to leave the vast majority of his estate to noble causes.  And according to Forbes, he has already demonstrated considerable generosity.  “He gave $1.5 billion to the Gates Foundation in July, bringing his total giving to $17.5 billion. . . in August he pledged $3 billion of stock to his children’s foundations.

Who is more likely to do an efficient job distributing money from your estate, the government or enlightened eleemosynary organizations?  You know the answer and apparently so does Mr. Buffett.