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This makes me uncomfortable because it reminds me so much of those times that the Democrats would push narratives about Russia and Trump. I remember making arguments at length that regardless of whether or not Trump was 'polite' the office of the presidency should still command respect; I thought these were strong arguments and maybe I still do. When are we going to try to be a more uniting force instead of continuing to hunt down scandals involving relatives?
Kushner being sent to build peace in the middle east was unorthodox in the appearance of nepotism, but in unorthodox times we need unorthodox solutions. I dare call this preoccupation on Biden's spawn obsessive. You're trying to hold 'the system' to a consistency it never had. Trump did things that angered the left and that made me glad, but as I think about a divided country I feel some shame for embracing that power, for now I see in you someone who is angered, much as the left was, over trivial, irrelevant, and imagined corruption.
Do you need to be told that Trump lost, get over it? Do you need to be told to look to the future and not the past? What are you looking for? What are you hoping to find?
You can't tolerate corruption like that.
... you think it's normal that Biden bragged about having Ukrainian prosecuted fired for investigating Burisma, the company that was paying off Hunter Biden ?
This is just corruption. In any western European country, that'd cause the government to resign. Ministers there resign over some piddly plagiarism nonsense, or minor oversights. Even in eastern Europe it'd be a major scandal and probably require new elections.
Probably Bundestag MPs also had their children employed by Burisma.
https://www.uawire.org/news/german-deputies-advise-poroshenko-to-consider-changing-of-the-prosecutor-general
And some guy from SBU who accused Shokin of corruption and demanded his resignation also had dealing with Burisma.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2015/11/12/7088525/
And members of Kharkiv Human Rights Group...
https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2016/01/7/7094715/
And dozens of Ukrainian MPs...
https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2015/12/22/7093387/
... and that proves what? That Biden jr. being paid off is okay ?
No, that disproves your assertion that Shokin was fired on behest of Biden Sr because the latter wanted Shokin not to investigate his son. Of course, you could say that it WAS the real reason, and Biden just used reputation of Shokin being a corrupt prosecutor for plausible deniability in getting him fired. But then argue accordingly, not just put it as an undeniable fact.
Also Hunter Biden didn't commit any crime according to Ukrainian law by working there. Zlochevsky, the head of Burisma, most likely did - but then it was during presidential term of Yanukovich, a figure very much beloved by some on American far right and far left, deposed by the evil CIA.
Yeah, it looks like Shokin was fired because he wasn't investigating the 'right' people.
**It still doesn't explain to me why you think politicians getting paid off by through their family getting cushy sinecures in foreign countries is remotely okay. **
It's okay in Ukraine. We get that, it's why Ukraine is that way.
In any normal county, a politician whose junkie son gets $50k a month from a sinecure in a famously corrupt country overseas would instantly be embroiled in a huge scandal.
No, this is business as usual in the UK, France, the USA and more. You usually don't hear about it it because of how accepted it is. And that is because compared to corruption in Pakistan, China and yes Ukraine and so on it is tiny. There is no non-corrupt country but most of the wealthy Western ones have fairly minimal levels like said Hunter Biden issues. The amount of effort it would require to eradicate is just not worth it. And of course it's not like elites whose families benefit from it would want to. Even if they are temporarily on the other side of it for short term political gain. Trump does it even more directly with Jared and Ivanka and so on. It isn't exceptional, it is the norm.
Putting relatives of people with power on boards and in cushy executive positions is endemic almost everywhere. That might not make it ok, but please do not underestimate how common it is in "normal" countries.
As an eastern European, we used to look up to Germany when it came to political culture, and they seem fairly intolerant with corruption.
Do they do this too ? Or is e.g. Schröder involvement in Gazprom only a scandal because it's politically advantageous to bash Russians ?
Yes.
Since 2018 an investigative committee organized by Germany's Federal Audit Office is looking into how contracts worth tens of millions of euros were awarded to external consultancy firms.[109][110][70] The auditing office has found several irregularities in how the contracts were awarded. During the investigation, two of von der Leyen's phones were confiscated, but data from both phones has been deleted before being returned to the defense ministry.[111] In turn, opposition lawmaker Tobias Linder has filed a criminal complaint against von der Leyen suspecting deliberate destruction of evidence relevant for the case.
and
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24504386
Germans are in my experience particularly sensitive to it, so it usually is smaller scale and more hidden. For example see this Quora answer about corruption and nepotism in Germany:
"On a lower scale, there is nepotism. In a very subtile and hidden way. You might not get your own daughter a nice job in the authority you work as a a head of department. But you might ask your fellow who works for an other authority to give her a job. Off course she has to be qualified, and she has to pass some tests.
If you are an executive in a big company, you like one colleague quite much and want that he earns a little more money, you just create a new job for him. Off course he has to be qualified and he has to pass some tests."
Germany is in my experience not that corrupt, but not that corrupt in a wealthy nation still can involve billions of euro.
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