BO's Change Mantra is Suspect:Special interest Biden
SPECIAL-INTEREST JOE
newyorkpost.com, September 7, 2008
If Barack Obama really wants to fix "the broken politics of Washington," he could start with his running mate, Beltway insider Joe Biden.
Indeed, the Delaware senator's Capitol Hill seniority has proven to be a dividend to his family - including his son, Hunter, a multimillion-dollar DC lobbyist.
As The Los Angeles Times reported, Hunter Biden and his uncle - Joe Biden's brother - got $2 million in financing (to buy a premium hedge fund) from a law firm that has lobbied the senator's office on a key bill, and benefited nicely from Biden's vote.
That firm, SimmonsCooper - one of the nation's leading tort-law firms - used as its local counsel in Delaware a law firm whose partners included another Biden son, Beau, who'd obtained the contract.
SimmonsCooper and the Biden family are old friends, the paper reports.
The firm and its employees have given more than $200,000 to Joe Biden's campaigns - his largest contributor. Biden is the biggest recipient of SimmonsCooper's largesse.
Those donations began after Biden fought efforts by the asbestos industry to get lawsuits against it out of court by creating a trust fund to handle mesothelioma claims. SimmonsCooper spent $6.4 million lobbying senators, including Biden, to kill the plan.
(Biden, by the way, is one of DC's strongest supporters of the trial-lawyer industry - and his position as chairman of the Judiciary Committee is critical to the tort bar. Think of him as Washington's Shelly Silver.)
In introducing Biden as his running-mate, Obama declared: "Washington hasn't changed him." Maybe not - but is he a guy who'll change Washington?
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