The U.S. Secret Service does more than protect Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — the agency also pays him rent.
Since April, Mr. Biden has collected more than $13,000 from the agency charged with protecting him and his family for use of a rental cottage adjacent to the waterfront home he owns in a Wilmington, Del., suburb.
Mr. Biden, listed not as vice president in federal purchasing documents but as a “vendor,” is eligible for up to $66,000 by the time the government contract expires in the fall of 2013, the records show.
Officials say the arrangement came about when a previous tenant moved out of the cottage and the Secret Service moved in.
Edwin M. Donovan, special agent in charge at the Secret Service’s Office of Government and Public Affairs in Washington, said the agency pays $2,200 in rent per-month, the same amount a previous tenant had paid before moving out.
We’ve been down this road before:
After angry callers kept insisting that the Secret Service is paying enough rent to Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton (for space on their property in Chappaqua, N.Y.) to underwrite the Clintons’ mortgage, we checked with the agency that protects presidents, former presidents and their families. Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin told us that the agency is paying the Clintons only around $1,100 a month — a figure based on a government formula and the standard arrangement in such situations.
The right wing has a nonstop bullshit factory, but sometimes they just relabel old products.
Delia
It’s hard work coming up with new bullshit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, year after year, no matter what the weather, no matter what the crisis is, no matter who your targets are. It takes a lot of imagination, and these people run short in that department. Sometimes you’ve just got to go back through your files and do a little recycling.
MikeJ
They’re still protecting Cheney and Bush. What do they pay to be near them? If they don’t rent a guest house, they probably rent something much bigger nearby for much, much more.
And $2,200 month? There are plenty of places where you can’t rent a crack house for that.
Valdivia
Do they ever get tired of the outrage?
Bruce S
Hey – since in Jan. 2009 ObamaStalinoFascism arbitrarily began seizing a portion of the Koch Bros.’, Michele Bachmann’s and Dick Armey’s earnings as so-called “taxes”, don’t you think it’s about time they nationalize Joe Biden’s rental property. Seems fair.
Violet
Is there a Rightwing Buzzword Bingo game we can play? These people are boring. Need to make it interesting.
James E. Powell
While it may be amusing to make fun of the right-wingers and their perpetual outrage, it is that which makes them so useful to the ruling class in their control of “our” government. If it weren’t for the Foaming-at-the Mouth Horde, the Republicans would not have been able to spend the last month or so bitch-slapping the president.
eric
@James E. Powell: I dont “disagree” with you, but “the” reason that the president gets bitch slapped is because the MSM will not call out the abject dishonesty and treasonous conduct of the GOP. The MSM is the true ally of Capital…the TPers provide the drama so the rubes dont look behind the curtain
Yutsano
@Valdivia:
Not as long as they can milk wingnut welfare out of the rubes. Nice work if you can get it.
jrg
Stuff like this does double duty for the right wing. It riles up the fucktard mooks (presumably because if we could save $2,200 a month, we would no longer run a deficit), and because it’s such transparent horse shit, it makes sane people want to give up altogether.
Valdivia
@Yutsano:
I hope that runs out someday!
LosGatosCA
I think every misunderstood Obama on the chess thing. It’s an 11 ring circus he wants to be the ringmaster of. In Ring One we had the stimulus debacle, Ring Two we had the Birther monkeys. Ring Three we had the ObamaCare aerialists, right next to the Ring Four Panels of Death. Ring Five was the high wire act of not passing a budget, not passing a debt increase, and not modifying the Bush Tax cuts before the 2010 elections – without a net. When the acrobats from Ring Five were discharged from the hospital they returned to Ring Six where they passed the Bush tax cuts before the elephant stepped on them. On to Ring Seven where the Clown Cars are showing their wares in anticipation of becoming the new Head Clown AND Ringmaster. And in Ring Eight the Death Defying Debt Limiters were supposed to be shot out of the cannon, through the air, and across the tent to the ooohs and aaahs of the enraptured crowd, but instead 3 Stooges style their clown padded asses were blown off and they came out the wrong end of the barrel. The remaining rings will feature disrespect, ridicule, and embarrassment for the beleagured ringmaster before he is summarily dismissed for having let the entire three ring circus degenerate into eleven rings, which was his plan all along.
Hoocoodanode, indeed.
Yutsano
@Valdivia:
Dunno if that will ever happen. PT Barnum was a wealthy man in his day after all.
ppcli
Next we’ll hear about how Obama sent out a bunch of Black Panthers to kill Vince Foster.
WereBear
No!
Their lives are miserable, AND it’s got to be someone else’s fault.
So what we have here is an outrage generator.
Herman Newticks
Failing to pay rent would be a violation of the Anti-deficiency Act, which prohibits any Federal agency from receiving goods or services without compensation. They have to pay the Bidens rent, or they have to rent from someone else. They should rent from wherever they can provide the best protection. End of story.
Kathy in St. Louis
So, Cheney and Bush don’t have the same arrangement? Sign me, CURIOUS
SteveinSC
Or as found at Big Lots, that’s “Remanufactured” to you.