So there’s no problem but Hunter Biden should not be free to make money however he chooses? That is your position?
And again: I disagree with your characterizations of Hunter Biden. The level of hate seems really strange IMO.
Of course it’s not your “job”. But you seem convinced that there is “something” President Biden should be doing about the actions of a private citizen but you can’t say what that “something” is. It doesn’t really seem reasonable to criticize a President for not doing “something”, without being able articulate what that “something” is.
And you still haven’t articulated what exactly the ethical rule that’s being violated is, nor who is violating it. Again, government ethics rules don’t apply to private citizens. What rule of government ethics is President Biden violating? How do rules on ethics in government apply to Hunter Biden?
I’d be pretty surprised if you ever sat through ethics training where you were expected to dictate what sort of jobs your middle aged child was or was not allowed to accept.
Get back to me when you find your goalpost.
Yeah. He’s not bad. Everyone knows that art “quality” is highly subjective and price is always dependent on who did it.
I like this piece.
I’ve sat through a lot of those classes. Death by Power Point!
I sat through a lot of those classes when I was a Soldier. Because I was an official representative of the U.S. government. I’ve also sat through the versions of those classes which apply to government contractors. Absolutely none of those classes involved restrictions on what your adult children could do. Absolutely none of them applied to private citizens.
In the private sector, I’ve also sat through a lot of those classes, and they were all about ethics and conflicts of interest involving my employer. Again, none of those classes involved my adult children.
Hunter Biden isn’t bound by conflict of interest rules for government officials. Joe Biden is bound by those rules, but he’s not breaking them.
In my ethics training, we had to disclose if a spouse or child had a financial interest in a firm that we paid money to in any way. If you were a procurement guy and bought a lot of stuff from such a company and didn’t disclose the conflict of interest, you could be in big trouble.
Which isn’t remotely similar to what I just described.
QuickSilver has a challenger! Who will walk away with the title of “most non-sequitur post for the thread”?
I’m starting to understand why you don’t charge people for living in your head.
I don’t make assumptions about the family dynamics of strangers.
Hey, you’re the one so worried about the potential for a conflict of interest. I was just suggesting the only way to eliminate it. You know, because they’re fucking human beings and not robots?
Ok, here we have an actual ethics rule that President Biden could actually be in violation of. Of course, the President of the United States isn’t a “procurement guy” in any normal sense, but if the President’s family has financial dealings with Federal contractors, I agree that should be something the President should disclose. Has President Biden failed to disclose any potential conflicts of interest?
And to expand on this a bit:
What I remember from my ethics training was that if you were a “procurement guy” and you had close family members with financial interests in a vendor, you were supposed to recuse yourself from dealings with that vendor. If that wasn’t practical, you were supposed to disclose the potential conflict of interest, and be open and above board about any financial ties you or your immediate family members had.
I don’t remember anything about restricting your unaffiliated adult children from selling artwork. I also don’t remember anything dealing with hypothetical future financial transactions that could potentially occur between vendors and your adult children.
When does this apply to private citizens taking money in exchange for goods or services?
The answer is “A, it doesn’t” because these rules apply to the person in power, the person in authority, the person who has responsibilities separate from their own personal interest. Hunter Biden has none of those responsibilities.
I agree that the federal government should absolutely not purchase any of Hunter Biden’s artwork.
And total and complete fuckup? Only if you watch Fox News. He’s about as fucked up as most of the rich kid investment bankers in the ‘80’s, about 90% of whom abused drugs and indulged in other excesses.
Yes, I guess if you look at his resume and automatically assume that he only got and retained these high profile jobs because his name is Hunter Biden and therefore they are all meaningless accomplishments, he’s a fuck-up. But by that definition, he’s doomed to be a fuck-up no matter what he does just because his name is Hunter Biden. Anyone not named Hunter Biden would probably be considered very successful if they landed a job at Boies Schiller Flexner, easily one of the most prestigious law firms in the world. Considering that he worked for this company, have you even considered the possibility he might be a good lawyer?
Fair enuff. If President Biden interacts with a person who bought Hunter Biden’s terrible art, he should disclose that fact.
Are we done here?
Republicans will take any little nugget they can get a grip on and spin it into the most dire ethical scandal in a generation. They will invent facts and distort the timeline to fill in their malignant narrative. They have demonstrated that they have no honor.
The only way - the only way - that this dishonest narrative becomes any sort of ethics scandal is if tongue-clucking Democrats decide to give it oxygen.
The Administration should not acknowledge this issue beyond pointing out that Hunter is an adult with his own agency, and that he and his actions have no influence on the Administration in any way. And then drop it, refusing to acknowledge it beyond that statement.
If there really is anything more to it, it’s up to the accusers to bring that to light. Until then, there is no ethical issue.
Really? We’re to pretend now that the Biden family dynamics haven’t been as open of a book for years?
Joe loves his family. He loves his son. That’s not a criticism in any way. If someone were to accuse me of being over-indulgent with my own (now young adult) kids, I could not possibly offer an argument to the contrary. But I have the luxury of not being the President of the United States and do not need to subject myself to the scrutiny that entails.
It applies when the general public are the ones deciding if someone gets to keep their job. There’s not a White House HR department which says Biden gets to have a 2nd term. If enough of the general public think that Hunter’s painting sales are problematic, then they may be the deciding factor if Biden gets a 2nd term. Likely some Biden voters tilted his way because they viewed the nepotism with the Trump children in a negative light. Whether or not an ethics rule is broken won’t matter. And it doesn’t matter if there was a rule anyway because the general public knows that politicians and the wealthy get away with whatever they want no matter the rules or laws.