Where did Joe Biden's Money Go?

Sarah and Todd Palin released their 2006 and 2007 tax returns yesterday, which the [sarcasm] unbiased Associated Press [/sarcasm] took to mean that they were hiding something because they released them on a Friday.

A few weeks ago Joe and Jill Biden released their tax records. Also on a Friday, but shockingly, no accusation of them trying to hide something. But media bias isn't where I'm trying to go with this post.

Today I took a fresh look at the Bidens' tax records and came out wondering the following: Where did Joe Biden's money go?

In a press release from about a year ago, Biden takes pride in having one of the lowest net worths in the US Senate:

In a 2005 ranking of the 100 senators for wealth, [Biden] was 99th. In other words, unlike most other presidential contenders, he isn't a millionaire.

"He's not even close," said David Wilhelm, who was Biden's campaign manager during his first run for the presidency in 1987 and is now a senior adviser to Biden.

Biden comes across as "a middle-class guy with middle-class aspirations, sometimes middle-class resentments," Wilhelm said.

In fact, Open Secrets puts Biden's net worth between about negative $300,000 and a positive $275,000. They go ahead and sort of average that down to a net worth of approximately $0.

Here is where I'm left scratching my head. Biden has been a Senator since 1973. Senators make a nice chunk of change - a lot more than the middle class on main street do (to use the political parlance of our times). The Bidens' tax returns released a few week ago go back just 10 years but show that in that 10 years, the Bidens have pulled in approximately $2.5 million.

Let's put $2.5 million in perspective. The Census Bureau pegs median income just north of $50,000. If you reasonably assume the median American household only has income while working, and that your average worker works about 50 years (say ages 20 to 70), a lifetime of household income comes to ... $2.5 million.

So in 10 years, the Bidens made as much money as the median American household makes in their lifetime. Putting it another way, the Bidens make five times more than the median American household per year.

But, curiously, despite making a rather substantial amount of money, the Bidens have no net worth. How does that happen?

I don't want a vice president making decisions about our economy when he apparently can't even keep his household finances in order.

Katie Couric's Vice-Presidential Questions

Ugh. In my now more than 13 months of pulling for Sarah Palin, I've seen her do great interviews. I'm not sure what happened, but it's been painful to watch her in these Katie Couric interviews.

In any event, while Palin's answers to Katie Couric's Vice-Presidential Questions have been wanting to say the least, at least they appear to me to be factually accurate. Joe Biden's have contained important factual inaccuracies. Of course Katie Couric doesn't try to play "gotcha" with Biden, so most people won't realize this.

On abortion, Biden tries to sing the praises of what's commonly thought of as the trimester-based balancing test, specifically referring to "the first three months," "the second three months," and "the third three months" and various restrictions attaching to each.

This is the "first three months" myth, as described below:

In its new poll, the AP presented poll respondents with this highly misleading characterization of Roe v. Wade: "The 1973 Supreme Court ruling called Roe v. Wade made abortion in the first three months of pregnancy legal."

The real Roe decision legalized abortion for any reason up to "viability." "Viability" refers to the capacity of the baby to survive independently of the mother (with technological assistance), which is reached in the latter portion of the second trimester (about five and one-half months). Roughly ten percent of all reported abortions, or approximately 130,000 a year, occur AFTER the first three months. (The Court also required states to allow abortion for "health" reasons even AFTER "viability." The Court defined "health" to include "all factors -- physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age -- relevant to the well-being of the patient.")

The Supreme Court itself has emphatically repudiated the "first three months" misconception again and again. For example, in the 1992 Casey ruling, the Supreme Court reaffirmed Roe v. Wade, and explicitly held that the abortion "right" applied with equal force at every point prior to "viability," adding, "We reject the trimester framework, which we do not consider to be part of the essential holding of Roe."

In the Supreme Court's most recent abortion ruling, in 2000, the Court even struck down a state ban on partial-birth abortion, which is a method used in the fifth month and later, as inconsistent with Roe v. Wade. At least 68 percent of the public favors a ban on partial-birth abortion.

Characterizing Roe as legalizing abortion "in the first three months" or "in the first trimester" was formally declared erroneous in the early 1980s by senior news executives of the Associated Press, The New York Times, and other major organs of the news media. A directive by Louis Boccardi, then executive editor of the Associated Press, dated September 4, 1981, said, "The [Roe v. Wade] decision is often misreported, even now. . . . For summary purposes, you can say the court legalized abortion in 1973. . . . Thus, it's wrong to say only that the court approved abortion in the first three months. It did that, but more."

So, Joe Biden is in favor of the conventional-wisdom-version of Roe v. Wade, but doesn't actually understand the real ruling. Where's Katie Couric with a smarmy follow up question of "what other Supreme Court decisions do you not actually understand, Senator Biden?"


Next we come to Church-State Separation.

Biden:

The best way to look at it is look the every state where the wall's not built. Look at every country in the world where religion is able to impact ... the governance. Almost every one of those countries are in real turmoil.

The problem is not religion impacting governance. Our country's government was impacted by religion. Profoundly. Our primary founding document, the Declaration of Independence invokes our Creator as the source of our rights.

Britain's governance was profoundly impacted by religion during the abolitionist movement.

The US and UK: in real turmoil! News to me.

Good for Obama

Obama deserves praise for this:

“I have heard some of the news on this and so let me be a clear as possible: I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics,” the Democrat [Obama] said forcefully. “It has no relevance to Governor Palin’s performance as governor, or her potential performance as a VP. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories,” he continued.

The candidate who himself was born to a teenage mom, reminded reporters, “You know my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and you know teenage children, that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that’s off limits.”

When asked about an “unnamed McCain advisor” accusing the Obama campaign of spreading despicable rumors surrounding Bristol Palin online, Obama interrupted the reporter mid-question. “I am offended by that statement. There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us,” he said directly. “Our people were not involved in any way in this, and they will not be. And if I ever thought that it was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that - they’d be fired,” he added.

My understanding is also that Obama and McCain basically took the day off from politics (well, except, apparently Biden) per Gustav. Good for both of them (and somewhat shame-on Biden.)

Palin Knocks It Out of the Park

Not bad for an "inexperienced mayor" (as the Democrats are smearing her as), eh?

She favors alternative energy but has the good sense that we need to ramp up domestic production of oil for the short term until we have those alternatives in place.

Plus, she takes it to the three B's: Biden, 'Bama, and Bush.

(H/T: Allahpundit @ HotAir).

Update: The full interview is available here. It's so refreshing to listen to a politician communicate clearly and in depth about an important issue of the day.

No Video For You, Silly Mac-Using Republican!

I've been recording PBS's 8pm - 11pm coverage of the Democratic convention, as I'm a political-dweeb that wants to be able to watch about as much as possible of it, but watching it recorded lets me 30-second-skip which is probably good for my blood pressure. (Three straight hours of Democrats ... let me tell you!)

Anyway, tonight I forgot to record it, and as such only caught from just after the start of Biden's speech until The Grand Entrance. With the punditry abuzz about Bill Clinton's speech, I figured, this is 2008, his speech should be somewhere on the interweb that I can watch it. Googling led me to the convention web site, where I was rudely greeted with the following:



I guess that's what I get for using such an ancient (3 whole years old!) Macintosh. What's really driving this is that my Mac isn't Intel-based, it's PPC-based, and the Dem Convention website requires Microsoft Silverlight, but Microsoft doesn't provide a version of Silverlight for PPC-based Macs. But that's getting into nerdery we don't need to get into.

I was happy to see that the Slashdot folks are predictably outraged at this. At least some other nerds are feeling my pain. Also interesting - the techno-geeks apparently hate Biden. Who knew?

Biden's Speech

Like Hillary Clinton's speech last night, Joe Biden's included plenty of criticism of McCain. But it was (at least largely) issues based, raising actual facts instead of using broad generalities to make McCain look like a monster.

That's a welcome development.

Don't get me wrong - I disagree with Biden strongly on most of the positions he holds - it's just a really welcome event to see a bit more levelheadedness on the Dem's convention stage.

Biden on Obama and McCain

There is a whirlwind of Biden quotes (and gaffs)swirling around since Obama's VP announcement. The McCain team have done a nice job stitching these two together:



(Note: I tend to be a little hesitant about pointing people to attack ads, and this certainly is one. I prefer my discourse positive and issues-oriented. But I think the fact that the guy Obama picked as his running mate recently didn't think Obama was ready to be president, but did think highly of McCain, should give Obama voters pause.)

Obama's Pick of Biden as Running Mate

For some reason I had a hunch that it would be Biden. Maybe it's just that media discussion of Biden has seemed stronger and more consistent than other choices lately.

I find the Biden pick pretty strange. On the "soft qualities" side of the coin (by which I mean everything other than their policy positions, which are largely similar between the two) they are total opposites. Biden is an old white dude with significant experience on the national stage who seems to be able to relate to the working class. If anything, I think the pick just highlights Obama's inexperience and appearance of being an out of touch elitist.

Not Helping the Public Debate

This weekend I discovered Reason Magazine. Their tag line is "Free Minds and Free Markets," so, with my strong libertarian streak, I thought I'd found something I might enjoy. After all, I love QandO who's tag line is quite similar: "Free Markets, Free People."

Count me disappointed. The first two articles I found drastically turned me off:

First, "Romney, Torture, and Teens". The article tries to slam Mitt Romney because one of his supporters has ties to a "school" which is accused of having used coercive techniques to change the behavior of troubled teens.

If the accusations about the school are true, that's a valid story. But trying to smear Romney as being pro-torture-of-kids using it is shameful.

And - second, "Wait, Who's Got a Crush on Obama?." Same crappy smear-"reasoning" (it's a shame this place is called Reason Magazine) but this time the smear is against Barack Obama. The context being used is his, admittedly strange and awkward, clarification about Joe Biden's comments that he took an AIDS test. "Reason" Magazine twists his clarifying into Obama either being homophobic or a philanderer. What nonsense.

How do either of these stories push the public discourse forward? They don't. Reason Magazine should pick some stories that actually do this and stop trying to smear candidates over petty, frivolously, nonsense.