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by seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 28, 2016 10:47 am
by seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 28, 2016 11:59 am
by seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 28, 2016 1:30 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 28, 2016 1:33 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 28, 2016 1:37 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 28, 2016 2:16 pm
9/27/2016
Observations on a Brutal Beatdown at Last Night's Presidential Debate
Autoerotic asphyxiation is tricky. Done right, a man who ties a cord or a necktie around his throat and attaches it to a strong doorknob or closet rod can masturbate furiously to an ejaculation that'd blow the paint off the walls. But one wrong move, one moment's lack of attention to detail, and that man can find himself dangling like a discarded marionette, dead, strangled, probably covered in various bodily effluvia. Sure, sure, if you get there at the right time, you can save him. But you've gotta be willing to get your hands slickened with jizz to do it, and, last night, as Hillary Clinton watched Donald Trump choke out in the closet of his belligerence and grandiosity, she not only decided to let him die, but she got freaky and stuck her hand in her slacks to finger herself while Trump gagged on his own tongue. Trump's last thoughts were wild shock since he had been so successful at it so many times before...maybe Hillary rigged the...but then darkness.
At last night's first presidential debate, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton did everything short of score an obvious knockout punch, which isn't possible against an opponent who seems so willfully oblivious to his own failings as a speaker, as a father, as a husband, as a business owner, as a human being. Indeed, one thing that came through clearly is that Clinton knows how to talk to children, and Republican nominee Donald Trump ran the gamut from toddler having a tantrum to teenager arguing why he should have the keys to the car when his breath smells like beer and weed. Every one of Clinton's looks was that of a parent or grandparent hearing the screaming kid, indulging him for a few minutes, and then demonstrating why she's the fuckin' grown-up, whether he realized it or not.
Oh, sure, sure, at the beginning, there were a couple of moments where Clinton seemed thrown off, especially on her views on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But instead of taking advantage of that opening, Trump brayed like an ass on meth that he was the reason she might have changed her mind, offering, "[Y]ou heard what I said about it, and all of a sudden you were against it." If anything, she heard what Bernie Sanders said, not really giving a happy monkey fuck what Trump was saying in the early days of the primaries. And, yeah, for a few minutes there, it seemed like vaguely-rational Trump had shown up for the evening. But when the coke wore off, all that was left was a sad, puffy fool raging against a heaving ocean wave that didn't care that he even existed.
Clinton took him apart, piece by piece, attacking everything with a vigor that made it seem like she was just waiting for this moment to go at him. She destroyed him on his sexism (which he piled up on during the debate), she reamed him on his racism, and she ripped his business sense, wisely getting him to tangle himself in the minutiae of leverage debt and excuses for why he didn't pay small businesses for their services. And she wiped the floor with him on his tax returns. I cannot remember a more bizarre moment in a debate than Trump saying, proudly, about not paying any federal income taxes, "That makes me smart." No, motherfucker, that makes you a pathetic worm who gets all the benefits of the government without contributing when you brag about how much money you have. All the while, Clinton put out policy after policy, some of them remarkably detailed for the limited time of a debate. She was especially strong on "systemic racism," again getting her Bernie Sanders on.
Trump continued to be the candidate from Breitbart and Drudge. He brought up conspiracies and dark threats from the conservative fringes, saying them as if everyone in the United States genuinely cares what Sean Hannity says about anything when, really, most Americans would say, "Who?" and a significant portion of the rest would say, "Fuck that guy." So when Trump started bringing up Sidney Blumenthal, a good chunk of the country probably thought, "The fuck is he talking about?" And on the birther issue, shouting like a football fan who thinks that his team scored because of how loud he yelled at the TV, Trump again proclaimed, "I think I did a great job and a great service not only for the country, but even for the president, in getting him to produce his birth certificate." So he's proud that he got the victim of a racist smear to prove the smear wrong, as if ignoring the smear wasn't even an option. That was one of many times in the debate when you could see in Trump's beady, narrow eyes that an adviser's voice was screaming in his head to calm the fuck down and you could see him telling it to shut the fuck up and barreling ahead with the lies and insults. Trump at a couple of points even mocked the idea that facts exist that prove he's a goddamned liar.
Clinton made Trump look like a mental patient cutting off his own dick on issues of security and nuclear weapons (whether or not you agree with her on her approach). See if you can figure out what the fuck Trump is saying here: "Nuclear is the single greatest threat. Just to go down the list, we defend Japan, we defend Germany, we defend South Korea, we defend Saudi Arabia, we defend countries. They do not pay us. But they should be paying us, because we are providing tremendous service and we’re losing a fortune. That’s why we’re losing — we’re losing — we lose on everything. I say, who makes these — we lose on everything. All I said, that it’s very possible that if they don’t pay a fair share, because this isn’t 40 years ago where we could do what we’re doing. We can’t defend Japan, a behemoth, selling us cars by the million..." The look that Clinton gave at these moments was of a hero watching her enemy plunge off the side of a building. Let's not even get into the 400-lb. Chinese hackers Trump seems to fantasize about.
Clinton even got to act completely presidential, assuring our allies that the United States isn't going completely mad. "Words matter when you run for president," she said. "And they really matter when you are president. And I want to reassure our allies in Japan and South Korea and elsewhere that we have mutual defense treaties and we will honor them." It was the closest she came to the knockout because it was, in a few lines, a breathtaking contrast to the blustering, twitchy madman who had been yelling at the nation's allies like he was yelling at a chandelier maker whose bill he didn't want to pay.
This was a fucking disaster for Republicans, and I say that as someone who thought that Romney beat Obama in the first debate in 2012 (so maybe I'm a bit more honest on this shit). Trump did it himself, with a huge assist by Clinton, who, for much of the evening, like moderator Lester Holt, just stepped aside and let Trump wrap the mic cord around his neck and jack off until he gasped his last breath. And he didn't even orgasm before he expired.
Of course, Trump's idiot hordes thought he was incredible, and, of course, Trump blamed everyone and everything for his shit job, as he does all the time. In the classiest move, this morning, Trump continued to fat shame Alicia Machado, the former Miss Universe who he called "Miss Piggy" for gaining weight, as Clinton pointed out last night.
For a man running for president, Donald Trump sure seemed like a crappy reality TV show host. After last night, Trump voters should be vomiting into their "Make America Great Again" caps before throwing them out. But if you still believe he should be the leader of the country, you really are fucking deplorable.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com
by seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 28, 2016 2:56 pm
Soul Sisters Podcast: Tori Amos on the Scary Prospect of Donald Trump as President
9/27/2016 by Jessie Katz
Heather Wines
Tori Amos
The Billboard office was awash in alt '90s nostalgia when Tori Amos stopped by last week to talk about her latest single "Flicker," which she wrote for the new Netflix documentary Audrie & Daisy. But that topic was just the tip of the iceberg.
What ensued was a frank discussion with Amos on the effect music streaming has had on artists' finances ("I’m speaking out about it because it’s wrong"), how she had to push back against her label's notes on what would become her breakthrough album, 1992's Little Earthquakes ("Sometimes you have to fight for something as an artist, but you don’t know what the answer is"), her gut reaction to Audrie & Daisy's true story of two young women who were sexually assaulted by their peers ("Netflix sent it over and when I watched it, I couldn’t move") and how the specter of Donald Trump becoming the next U.S. President could dramatically alter the way she's writing her next album.
Soul Sisters Podcast: Indigo Girls on The 'Left-Wing, Bleeding Heart Women' Label
"The album might be a very different album come November 8," she explains. "I know where it’s going if [Hillary Clinton] wins. But if Donald Trump becomes the president of the United States… buckle your seatbelt."
In case there's any confusion which way she'll be voting, Amos makes herself very clear:
"We’re ready for Madame President."
Listen to the full episode below, hosted by Jessie Katz and Darah Golub, and be sure to subscribe to our iTunes channel for all future episodes.
http://www.billboard.com/articles/colum ... nald-trump
by seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 28, 2016 5:10 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 28, 2016 5:22 pm
Mystery Surrounds Payment for Donald Trump’s Mexican Helicopter Ride
Zeke J Miller @ZekeJMiller 11:19 AM ET
Meeting Between Trump And President Of Mexico Was "Constructive"
Donald Trump on Wednesday defended the right of the United States to build a massive border wall along its southern flank, but he declined to repeat his frequent promise to force Mexico to pay for the wall.
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A couple days after Donald Trump’s trip to Mexico City, his campaign posted a video on YouTube showing his arrival at Los Pinos, the official residence and office of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.
The video shows Trump step from a gleaming white Mexican Air Force helicopter that transported him from the Mexico City airport on Aug. 31. “It was really good, thank you,” Trump can be heard saying on the video, when asked by a Mexican official about his trip.
The details of who paid for the helicopter trip, however, remain shrouded in mystery, raising concerns in the capitals of Mexico and the United States.
Campaign finance experts say U.S. election law likely prohibits the Mexican government from picking up the tab of Trump’s helicopter flight, under statutes that bar “any foreign national from contributing, donating or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly.” Mexican legislators, meanwhile, have fumed at the possibility that the Mexican people subsidized Trump’s August visit.
Read More: Transcript of Read Donald Trump and Enrique Peña Nieto’s Press Conference
The Trump campaign’s August filing with the Federal Election Commission includes no listed reimbursement to the Mexican government for the use of the helicopter, nor any other associated costs of the trip. In response to questions from TIME, the office of Peña Nieto also declined any comment on the cost of the helicopter flight, and whether there was a reimbursement.
Trump’s campaign did not address a specific question about the helicopter expense but spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in a statement, “expenses for this trip weren’t due on this report and will appear on the next report.” If Trump was invoiced for the helicopter in September, he could wait to report it until next month.
“The trip to Mexico was clearly a campaign event,” said GOP election lawyer Charles Spies, “and it is impermissible for a foreign government to make contributions to a federal campaign, so the campaign would need to reimburse the Mexican government for the helicopter in able to avoid an impermissible in-kind contribution.”
Mexican opposition lawmakers, who were critical of the trip from the moment it was announced, condemned the government’s expenditure of funds on Trump. “Not a single Mexican liked Mr. Trump’s visit, and much less the idea that their taxes contributed to his visit in this campaign,” said Senator Gabriela Cuevas of the National Action Party. Senator Luis Humberto Fernandez, of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, told TIME that he requested that Peña Nieto’s government to detail the costs associated with the trip but has yet to hear back. “Ethically it is not correct or possible that the Mexican’s tax money goes to launch or relaunch [of] Mr. Trump’s campaign,” he said.
Paul Ryan, the deputy executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group, told TIME that any expense relating to a campaign event must be covered by the campaign. “Failure by the Trump campaign to reimburse Mexico for Mr. Trump’s Mexico trip would amount to the receipt of an illegal in-kind contribution from the state of Mexico,” he said.
Tony Herman, a former general counsel at the FEC, said there is a well-recognized exemption for Secret Service protection that campaigns don’t have to pay for. And while the helicopter may be claimed as a security requirement, taking it as in-kind would be “uncharted territory,” for the committee.
A Secret Service spokesperson referred questions to the campaign.
If Trump fails to reimburse the Mexican government for the trip, he could face an investigation by the FEC, which could level fines or even refer the case to the Department of Justice. But the six-member commission is notoriously deadlocked on partisan lines, making enforcement action unlikely. A campaign found to take illegal contributions is fined $5,000 under federal election law, while those knowingly accepting the payments can be fined the same amount and imprisoned for up to one year.
http://time.com/4511581/donald-trump-mexico-helicopter/
by 82_28 » Wed Sep 28, 2016 6:01 pm
by 8bitagent » Wed Sep 28, 2016 11:16 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 28, 2016 11:21 pm
by seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 29, 2016 8:59 am
COVER STORY: DONALD TRUMP IS BARRY BLITT’S “MISS CONGENIALITY”
By Françoise Mouly , 07:27 A.M.
“She was the worst we ever had, the worst, the absolute worst, she was impossible,” Donald Trump told Fox News the morning after his debate with Hillary Clinton, defending his treatment of Alicia Machado, the former Miss Universe whom he called “Miss Piggy,” when she gained weight after the pageant, and “Miss Housekeeping,” in apparent reference to her heritage. Watching the debate, the artist Barry Blitt recognized a significant moment in the Presidential campaign. Of all Trump’s dangerous beliefs, Blitt said, his misogyny “might just be his Achilles’ heel.”
by seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 29, 2016 1:14 pm
A Madoff in the White House?
Imagine how — once Donald Trump is in the Oval Office — this country could become his personal piggy bank.
By Nomi Prins / TomDispatch September 29, 2016
Imagine for a moment that it’s January 2009. Bernie Madoff, America’s poster-child fraudster, has yet to be caught. The 2007-2008 financial crisis never happened. The markets didn’t tank to reveal the emptiness beneath his schemes. We still don’t know what’s lurking in his tax returns because he’s never released them, but we know that he’s a billionaire, at least on paper. We also know, of course, that he just won the presidency by featuring the slogan -- on hats, t-shirts, everywhere -- “Make America Rich Again!” On a frosty morning in late January, before his colleagues, his country, God, and the world, Madoff takes the oath of office. He swears on a Bible to uphold the constitution.
The next day, everything comes crashing down. The banks. The markets. His fortune.
Madoff is a businessman, not a politician. He’s run and won as an anti-establishment maverick. Now, he’s faced with a choice: save the United States or his own posterior. During the campaign, he promised that he could separate the two, that his kids could run his empire, while he did the people’s business. But no one wants to talk to his progeny. They want him. They want the man in the suit who owes them money.
Okay, so that never happened, though over two decades Madoff did build a $65 billion Ponzi scheme. In December 2008, he became the most vilified man in America -- at the very moment when Washington and Wall Street needed a distraction from the crippling financial crisis. He’s now serving a 150-year sentence for multiple felonies.
Of course, Donald Trump is not Bernie Madoff, who was 70 when he took up residence in the Big House. Trump at 70 is eyeing the White House. Other glaring differences separate them, though certain overriding similarities can’t be ignored. Let’s look at those differences first.
Trump vs. Madoff, The Scorecard
1. Trump is much richer than Madoff ever was, though we have no idea by how much. Forbes puts his wealth at $4.5 billion. Trump says it’s $10 billion. (Compared to just under a billion for Madoff.)
2. Madoff took advantage of individuals. Trump extracted tax breaks from entire cities.
3. Madoff broke the law and got caught. He's in jail. As a felon, he can't even vote in this election. Trump may have broken the law, and has bragged about paying people off, but now deflects everything and is running for president.
4. Trump forced poor people from their homes and onto the street. Madoff ripped off customers who were predominantly financially well off to begin with.
5. In 2007, while Madoff was enjoying himself at Mar-a-Lago Country Club, Trump’s premier Palm Beach hotel, The Donald racked up $120,000 in unpaid fines to that city. In exchange for a $100,000 donation to a veterans’ charity, the city agreed to forget about it. That check came from the Donald J. Trump charitable foundation (that is, from other people’s donated money), not from The Donald himself. This seems to have been typical. According to the Washington Post, more than a quarter of a million dollars from his charity went toward solving his own business woes, a violation of “self-dealing” laws. Madoff actually did donate money to charity. Okay, technically, it wasn't his money either, but at least he had the decency to pretend it came from his own pocket.
6. Madoff never ran for president.
Moving In on Pennsylvania Avenue
If those are the differences, think about the similarities. Both men manipulated people over decades, were less than forthcoming about the numbers behind their methods, and had long-term plans for their own success at the expense of others. But where Madoff merely scammed his generally well-off clients, Donald Trump, if elected, could possibly scam us all.
Imagine this: if he wins in November, he’s going to be right on Pennsylvania Avenue twice, once as the people’s representative and once representing himself -- and can there be any question which of the two will be more important to him? Indeed, Trump first targeted Pennsylvania Avenue just after abandoning his unofficial bid for the presidency in 2012 to focus on his fortune.
As he said at the time, "Ultimately... business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector." He then managed to corral the political real-estate deal of the century, outbidding a group of hotel chains to secure 60-year rights from the government to the Old Post Office building at 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue. That’s just southeast of the White House. He then pledged more than $200 million toward its renovation, assuring its future customers -- hardly a cross section of average Americans -- that “the hotel is going to be incredible, super luxury.”
Normally, Trump merely licenses his gilded name to the constellation of hotels that bear it. Not so in D.C. There was too much at stake for him in our nation’s capital. When the hotel opened ahead of schedule and just in time toaid his publicity drive in this year’s election, rooms were said to start at $750 to $850 per night and escalate to $18,000 for a “presidential suite.” It costs about $33,000 for election night in the elite Trump Townhouse section of the hotel billed as the “largest presidential suite in Washington.” My scan of prices on booking.com revealed some “bargains.” For a mere $489 (not including tax), I could have been writing this piece in the comfort of my own hotel room, slightly bigger than Madoff’s cell. Trump knew exactly what he was doing when he opened his business on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Now, imagine another chill morning, this time in January 2017. Foreign dignitaries are hopping into black Lincoln Town Cars emblazoned with the Trump logo and lined up by that Trump hotel. President Donald J. Trump, a businessman and by his own account the best dealmaker in the history of deal-making, is pledging to uphold the Constitution. He smiles and gestures with those not-too-small hands of his at his family, a.k.a. his business associates, a.k.a. his advisers. They beam. They wave. They’ve got this.
Consider what Trump wrote about Ronald Reagan in The Art of the Deal: “He is so smooth and so effective a performer that he completely won over the American people. Only now, nearly seven years later, are people beginning to question whether there’s anything beneath that smile.”
Trump could hardly be described as smooth. More like nails on a chalkboard combined with Dr. Strangelove-level crass. But one thing is guaranteed: he brings into the Oval Office with him a set of conflicts of interest that would make Madoff’s head spin and potentially make the Iran-Contra affair look like a bad episode of Celebrity Apprentice.
Conflicts of Interest Galore
When Hank Paulson, former CEO and chairman of Goldman Sachs, was appointed treasury secretary by George W. Bush in 2006, he had to sell his 4.58 million shares of stock in that company. Executive branch conflict-of-interest laws require appointed senior government officials to divest themselves of investments that could be affected by or benefit from decisions they might make in public office. (Let us note, however, that even without the stock Paulson would prove to be a walking conflict of interest. From his public post, he would help Goldman Sachs survive the financial crisis with federal funds, and look where that got us.)
However, the president and vice president don’t even have to abide by those formal laws of divestment. Trump has indeed promised to focus on the country and not his business and branding empire by, among other things, placing the Trump Organization in a blind trust. But don’t count on it. Why would he? That would be like asking him to actually release his tax returns. In addition, Trump’s businesses are the antithesis of the sort that easily lend themselves to inclusion in such a trust. As David Cay Johnston, author of The Making of Donald Trump, told me in an email, “The ethics rules don't apply to the president. But a blind trust is absurd as this is not simply an issue of stocks and bonds.”
According to his tax lawyers at Morgan Lewis, the blue-chip global law firm, his 2002-2008 returns were under audit by the Internal Revenue Service precisely because he runs “large and complex businesses.” During the primary, he said, “I have three children now who are grown and could run [the business].” This July, when asked by the New York Times whether he would actually step away from his business dealings while president, heequivocated, “I’ll let you know how I feel about it after it happens.”
As with most things Trumpian, we are left with nothing but his word and a belief that someone as impossibly rich as him might not mind losing some ground in his business empire because of decisions, foreign and domestic, that he might make in moments of crisis or otherwise. We are also supposed to believe that he always makes the best deals. What if the two aren’t compatible?
And what if possible illegal activities follow Trump directly into the Oval Office? Examining the possible conflicts of interest of a Trump administration and his track record when it comes to siphoning the money of others to his personal uses makes him look like a prospective -- to use a term of his -- disaster.
The first and most obvious potential area where conflict of interest is likely play a crucial role: the many decisions a President Trump would have to make on foreign affairs. Kurt Eichenwald vividly explored this issue atNewsweek recently and concluded that it would be a singular reality of any future Trump presidency. After all, many of his businesses exist in countries with which the U.S. has, shall we say, squirrelly relationships.
As Vin Weber, partner at Mercury Consulting in Washington, told me: “Even though he says he won’t be influenced and has only basically addressed the issue of whether his businesses would distract him time-wise, other countries may feel they have leverage on him and therefore on the U.S.” That’s obviously a problem. As a way to achieve ends of their own, foreign leaders could easily fashion their future policies in terms of threats of damage to the Trump empire. It would make no difference whether Ivanka or anyone else was in charge of daily operations. Trump would be dealing with countries that could impact his brand in significant ways.
Trump’s foreign business holdings (the ones publicly disclosed anyway) span areas that already involve scandal, as in the case of India, or dicey national security issues, as would be true of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Foreign parties have helped Trump out of business jams in the past. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, for instance, came to Trump’s aid during his corporate bankruptcies in the 1990s. He even bought Trump’s yacht and some bad hotel debt.
Another kind of major conflict of interest hits far closer to home. As president, Trump gets to appoint federal district court judges nationwide. The media has focused exclusively on the crucial Supreme Court seats he might get to fill. But if any of those federal judges turn out to have jurisdiction in areas touching on Trump’s widespread business activities, imagine the opportunity for conflict of interest both in who might be appointed to the bench and how they might act. Keep in mind that, in addition to properties he owns or that bear his name, Trump is the sole proprietor of 268 of the 500 or more limited liability companies (LLCs) that he disclosed in his Federal Election Commission filings. These LLCs can be found all over the country, including in New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, and San Diego where, for instance, Trump University is already in the dock.
Last month, San Diego federal court judge Gonzalo Curiel, appointed by Obama, green-lighted that case to proceed to trial after Trump had lambasted him and claimed that he had an “absolute conflict” in presiding over it because of his “Mexican heritage.” What would a Trump appointee have done in the same situation? Of Obama’s 320 federal district court appointees, 262 were district court judges. Imagine the conflicts of interest to come in a Trump presidency where each lawsuit (and so many possible appointments) might represent one. And we’re not talking about the unlikely here. Trump or his businesses have been involved in a reported 3,500 lawsuits over the last three decades. In 1,900 of them, he or his companies were the plaintiff; in about 1,300, the defendant. He’s essentially guaranteed the title of most litigious leader in the modern world, possibly in history.
Trump’s sole proprietorships -- companies where he alone is listed as the owner -- also pop up in tax havens like Panama, Cozumel, and Dubai, bringing up a third area of potential major conflict of interest for the country, but of enormous potential benefit to Trump. Those elusive tax returns of his undoubtedly would reveal hints about this. They might also show that he’s not as rich as he says he is, and perhaps that he hasn’t given as much to charity as he claims, but those are unlikely to be the real problems that have stopped him from releasing his taxes because neither of them is illegal.
What Trump may worry about is whether a thorough public analysis of those returns would illuminate dodgy behavior, ways in which he’s been operating possible financial shell games. Shady deals can be easily hidden in shell companies and tax havens or in LLCs that no one can examine.
If he’s president, none of this is likely to matter much. Remember, he would get to appoint the new IRS commissioner, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and of course the Attorney General. We don’t know how all of his little sole proprietorships interrelate and what they could be hiding. (It should be noted that a sole proprietorship is a business owned and run by one individual with no distinction between the business and its owner.) All we know is what his lawyers wrote him regarding his 2002-2008 returns: “Because you operate these businesses almost exclusively through sole proprietorships and/or closely held partnerships, your personal federal income tax returns are inordinately large and complex for an individual.”
He has not released proof from those lawyers that he even filed personal tax returns after 2008, or that such filings are actually under audit, though he says his taxes since 2009 are. But even if he did file them and they are being audited, there’s nothing in federal law or IRS regulations to prohibit him from sharing what he’s done -- except perhaps the fear of getting caught.
Reportedly, he’s already played fast and loose with donated money from the Donald J. Trump Foundation to cover some of his personal business shortcomings. As the New York Times recently revealed, he used charity money on multiple occasions to settle personal legal issues. These were relatively small-scale matters, but -- as Madoff found out with his smaller clients -- small-scale can add up fast. In Florida, for instance, Trump paid a $2,500 IRS penalty for a tax regulation violation after his nonprofit foundation contributed an improper donation of $25,000 to a political action committee of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who may have been contemplating whether or not to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University.
In fact, using money to wash away problems seems to have been a characteristic of the Trump way of life. For instance, he gave at least $35,000 to Democrat Alan Hevesi for his campaign to become New York state comptroller. According to the Huffington Post, “Trump’s donations coincided with a $500 million lawsuit he filed against the city of New York in the hopes of reducing his property taxes.” Hevesi won his 2002 race. In the fall of 2003, the city settled Trump’s lawsuit. Imagine, then, how -- once he’s in the Oval Office -- this country could become his personal piggy bank.
The final potential conflict of interest: his entire administration to come. According to figures from the U.S. Government Policy and Supporting Positions, a congressional publication also known as the "Plum Book," a president (or his administration) could appoint people to nearly 9,000 positions in the federal government. Of those, only about 800 must be confirmed by the Senate. This would mean, for instance, that in areas of gaming, environmental building codes, or housing and urban development, he would control the game. Business and politics would become one and the same in a unique fashion.
How all of this would play out, of course, remains unknown. Trump’s family has touted The Donald’s super-ability to focus exclusively on the affairs of the country. "My father is going to be a government official, and he's going to separate himself" from the Trump Organization's business interests, Donald Trump Jr., 38, typically promised a bunch of editors and reporters. But who would dare to count on this being anything but fantasy?
A Pandora’s Box for Americans
Trump and Madoff knew each other in the old pre-cellblock days. Madoff frequented the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach. In an April 2009 Vanity Fairspread, Trump noted that Bernie and his brother Peter (later sentenced to 10 years in jail for his role in their mutual swindle) played golf at the Trump International Golf Club, where Bernie’s game was as steady as his returns. “Out of hundreds and hundreds of rounds, he never shot lower than 80 or more than 89,” said Trump.
It wasn’t until after Madoff pled guilty on March 12, 2009, that Trump sounded warning bells. As he said about Madoff in his 2009 book, Think Like A Champion, “I think we would all do well to pay heed to all of our transactions no matter how much we might respect or like someone. But the main lesson is never to invest 100 percent of your money with one person or one entity.”
Whatever Trump may be, perhaps we should heed his warning in the present situation. Because as he also wrote, “Just because someone is well established doesn’t mean they’re not above being a total crook.”
The immense power Donald Trump would wield over his own interests as president already looms as the biggest conflict of interest in the nation’s history. Think of the Oval Office under Trump as a kind of Pandora’s Box for the American people. Giving him the White House threatens to be no better than giving Madoff your bank account information. You know how the story is likely to end.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/m ... hite-house
by seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 29, 2016 2:50 pm
What People Around the World Think of America After Trump's Bewildering Rise
'Trump represents the America we love to hate.'
By Natalie Shure / AlterNet September 21, 2015
Americans are no strangers to embarrassing exports (sorry for "Grey’s Anatomy" and Papa John’s pizza, Planet Earth!). And our political nutbaggery is no exception. But when it comes to Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, we may have outdone ourselves. The GOP frontrunner is a woman-hating reality TV star whose campaign has mostly focused on his lust for ethnic cleansing. The global reaction to Trump mania has been a sense of disgust; Trump is the native son of a country that worships selfishness above empathy, corporate interests over justice and notoriety over prestige. As French author Marie-Cecile Naves put it to Politico, “Trump represents the America we love to hate…He is our negative mirror image, a man we see as brutal, who worships money and lacks culture — someone who lets us feel a bit superior about being European."
In short, the rest of the world seems as flabbergasted about Trump’s rise as we should be. Here’s how seven other countries have reacted to his befuddling popularity.
1. Mexico
Mexicans have a special right to resent Trump, given his well-documented disdain for them. He’s pushed blackmailing Mexico into paying for a border fence, called undocumented Latinos “rapists” who are “bringing drugs and crime,” and even vowed to implement a mass deportation of millions of undocumented people and their American children. One July issue of Mexican comic book El Peso Hero featured its hero slugging Donald Trump in the mug on its cover, just as Captain America once socked Hitler. Not to be outdone, Mexican artist Dalton Javier Avalos Ramirez designed a special Donald Trump piñata so people can fulfill their dreams of bashing Trump with a stick.
2. France
France’s Liberation Newspaper didn’t go for subtlety in its August 27 cover story, “Trump: The American Nightmare.” Text that ran alongside his pink grimace declared him to be “vulgar and opportunistic.” Resentment against Trump has long been brewing in the land of brie and berets: back in January, he sparked widespread outrage when he blamed the Charlie Hebdo murders on strict gun laws. (Say quoi?!) More recently, Trump’s nationalism and tendency to make outrageous comments in the media led a columnist at Le Figaro to dub him the American Le Pen, a comparison to Jean-Marie Le Pen, the notorious patriarch of France’s far-right. Le Pen could also give Trump a master class on how to alienate practically everyone with reactionary bullshit: over the past year, Le Pen has gone off the deep end by denying the Holocaust and singing the praises of Nazi-collaborationist Vichy government occupiers who deported thousands of Jews during WWII.
3. Venezuela
The Latin American country has come under fire for draconian anti-trafficking policies that critics say amount to abuses of Colombians, including sealing their shared borders and deportations. Some observers couldn't help but notice that President Nicolas Maduro’s vicious anti-immigration policies are awfully similar to the vitriol that’s been spewing from the Donald. Opposition politician Saverio Vivas thinks the shoe fits: “Maduro criticizes Donald Trump, but his acts against Colombian immigration are worse than the magnate's words." But Maduro takes issue with the comparison. As he said during an August TV spot, “They’re saying Maduro is like Donald Trump. Imagine! I don't even have his hairstyle, and least of all his bank account.” Um, fair enough, but nothing says “unpopular” quite like being more offensive than human rights violators.
4. China
Trump has made no secret of his distaste for China. He’s grumbled about how America keeps losing to China, in contrast with Trump’s record of “always beating [them.]” He claimed the Chinese are “ripping us off left and right,” and their diplomats ought to be taken to McDonald’s instead of to state dinners. As the Washington Post reports, the Chinese are beginning to snark back. Besides mocking Trump’s hair (“This guy’s hair is so strange. I thought it was photoshopped at first!” one Chinese national quipped on social media) the Chinese have become increasingly critical of Trump’s flaunting of his wealth. One state newspaper put it this way: “The theme of Trump’s speech for running for president: I really am very rich.” Spokespeople for the Chinese government have been dismissive, rebutting his claims that Chinese policies swipe jobs and saying that they care more about the opinions of those who actually matter.
5. Germany
Much has been made of the fact that Trump’s anti-immigrant rabble-rousing discounts his own family history. Not only did Trump descend from immigrants, he also married two of them. (His first spouse Ivana was born in the Czech Republic, and he is currently married to Melania, from Slovenia.) But less is said of the fact that his Grandpa Drumpf, after building up a nest egg, actually tried to move back to his native Germany and was denied. As Deutsche Welle reports, Drumpf’s propensity for self-serving corner-cutting seems to have resulted in a grandson bent on erecting 100-story golden calves into the skyline of any city whose legal limits he can push. It’s exactly that flamboyance that fuels German distaste for “The Trump Show,” as his soundbite-optimized campaign was called by the tabloid Bild. A few weeks after Trump announced his candidacy, Suddeutsche Zeitung was feeling lost: “Weird, egomaniac, racist…yet he leads in the polls; how can that be?” the paper asked. Wunderbar question.
6. Russia
Given the fact that Trump’s venom has spared practically no one, it’s notable that he’s been less critical of Russia and President Vladimir Putin than practically any other global politician. (“I was over in Moscow two years ago, and I will tell you — you can get along with those people…you can make deals with those people. Obama can’t,” he recently explained.) Trump has tacitly sided with Russia in the Ukraine conflict, having affirmed his indifference over whether or not Ukraine enters NATO, and landing on an "enemies list" in Ukraine for his pro-Russia comments in the press. Pro-Russian publication Russia Insider even recently suggested a Trump presidency could be good for Russia, since Trump will negotiate based on pragmatics instead of emotion or ideology. The Kremlin-friendly pub also praised the fact that Trump “harbors none of the ridiculous and hysterical Russophobia, which of course is a hallmark of every other Republican candidate.”
7. Australia
Down under, some people have a cynical, sarcastic reason to root for Trump: it distracts the planet from the awfulness of their own recently deposed prime minister, Tony Abbott. As one bloke put it to the Unaustralian, “Trump would take the heat off Abbott so no Australian ever needs to pretend to be a New Zealander ever again.” Another claimed electing Trump “would be so embarrassing for America, they’d all be like ‘ugh, we elected this guy? Awkward.'" Fair enough. But why were Aussies so disgruntled at Abbott, anyway? Sydney Morning Herald columnist Julie Szego wrote that both represent ugly aspects of conservative values, particularly a high-profile disrespect of women. Trump’s center-stage battle against Megyn Kelly at the first Republican debate caused decent human beings to recoil in horror, as they do toward what Szego called Abbott’s “inability to self-censor his natural tendency to link women with domesticity.”
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