Saturday, February 22nd, 2020
IGOR DERYSH, Staff Writer - Salon
Stephan: Do you have an uncle, a cousin, a close friend in prison? Do you have money? Well here is your get out of jail ticket. Donate enough cash to criminal Trump's re-election campaign to get his attention and, lo, the gates can open. The United States is now officially a banana republic. Exhibit A.
The family of a Republican donor who pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return gave more than $200,000 to President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign before he was pardoned.
The White House announced Tuesday that Trump granted a full pardon to former Texas construction company owner Paul Pogue, who pleaded guilty to the charge in 2010. Pogue was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay a $250,000 fine and more than $473,000 in restitution, according to The Associated Press.
Other pardons included former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was found guilty of trying to sell former President Obama’s vacated Senate seat, former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who pleaded guilty to tax fraud and lying to White House officials after he was selected to head the Department of Homeland Security, and the scandal-plagued financier Michael Milken.
The White House downplayed the charges against Pogue in a statement claiming that he agreed to plead guilty in the case in order to save the jobs of employees at his company. It added that the pardon was pushed for by Texas Attorney General […]
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Saturday, February 22nd, 2020
Stephan: In the Trump administration, everything is a grift. His greed and grifting are so consistent it is the norm of his administration. Exhibit B.
On Wednesday night, when President Donald Trump addressed supporters from behind a Trump Hotels lectern in a room at his Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C., one of his company’s most faithful customers accompanied him.
The U.S. Secret Service.
The government agency charged with protecting the president has paid his businesses at least $471,000 to fulfill its congressional mandate, according to documents The Washington Post recently obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. That’s money from U.S. taxpayers flowing to the Trump Organization, with a venerable 155-year-old law enforcement organization being used like one of Michael Cohen’s Delaware shell companies and serving as a conduit for presidential profit. And that $471,000 figure? It’s only through April 2018.
That’s money from U.S. taxpayers flowing to the Trump Organization, with a venerable 155-year-old law enforcement organization being used like one of Michael Cohen’s Delaware shell companies.
In an interview with Yahoo Finance in October, Trump Organization Executive Vice President Eric Trump claimed his company charged the government only enough to recoup its costs when hosting the president. (Eric Trump also denied the new Washington Post reporting.) But the rates the […]
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Saturday, February 22nd, 2020
Dan Alexander, Staff Writer - Forbes
Stephan: I do not support Michael Bloomberg. To me he represents continuity of the profit first corporatist view of America. By almost any social measure you can cite this approach to government and economics is killing us. Whether it is maternal mortality, life expectancy, literacy, obesity. Pick whatever you like. No one can say accurately that the United States is a welleing fostering society, as currently conducted.
But you have to say this about Bloomberg: he puts his money where his mouth is. Think about it: He has spent $462 million dollars to be part of the game. What most commentators don't mention is that sum, almost unimaginable to most people, is just 0.7% of his 66 billion fortune. And most of it is probably coming out of income not the sale of principal. If you made $50,000 a year that 0.7% would be $350.
A second point to be leaned from this Bloomberg story: It is a perfect example of the wealth inequality that prevails in America.
But there is another thing to be learned here. Compare Bloomberg with Trump. It instantly becomes clear that everything Trump does is a grift. He clearly always begins something asking: How can this be done so that it enriches me? How can I exploit my political office to increase my personal wealth? Read this. Can it get any clearer? This is a man without integrity, by any measure I understand.
Supporters go wild as President Trump arrives for a “Keep America Great” New Hampshire rally on … Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty
Billionaire Donald Trump still has not donated a cent of his own to his 2020 campaign, opting to fund the effort with money from supporters around the country. At the same time, Trump’s private companies are continuing to charge the campaign for expenses like rent and consulting, according to the latest federal filings. That means that since January 20, 2017, the day Trump officially declared his intent to run for reelection, his campaign has put $1.9 million of donor money into the president’s private business.
“This is a man, who when he first said he was going to run for office, was saying that he was going to do this all out of his own pocket,” said Karl Sandstrom, a Democrat who served as a commissioner of the Federal Election Commission from 1998 to 2002. “And now he’s taking money from others and putting it in his pocket.”
Forbes
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Saturday, February 22nd, 2020
Jake Johnson, truthout - truthout/Common Dreams
Stephan: I couldn't make this up. It is breathtakingly stupid but, for the first time, I think the Republicans are being honest, and that is terrifying. They just don't get it. Climate change is not an elective.
Mick Mulvaney
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said in a speech Wednesday night that Republicans won’t act on the climate crisis because the party doesn’t want to raise taxes or ask people to change their “lifestyle.”
“We take the position in my party that asking people to change their lifestyle dramatically, including by paying more taxes, is simply not something we are interested in doing,” Mulvaney said in response to a question on why the U.S. government is not doing more to combat the climate emergency.
The audience in attendance at the speech in the United Kingdom laughed at Mulvaney’s response, according to an audio recording obtained by the Washington Post.
Nathan Richardson, a law professor at the University of South Carolina and a fellow at the non-profit research organization Resources for the Future, tweeted that Mulvaney and the GOP’s position on climate “is increasingly a political loser.”
“And it […]
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Friday, February 21st, 2020
Adam Goldman, Julian E. Barnes, Maggie Haberman and Nicholas Fandos, National Reporters and Correspondent - The New York Times
Stephan: Surprise, surprise. And, of course, criminal Trump has tried to keep Russian backing and meddling in the 2020 election a secret. Do you think a single senate Trumplican from Moscow Mitch to Lindsey Graham will speak out about this attack on American democracy? I predict Trumpers won't care that a hostile foreign power is working to keep their cult leader in office. His approval rating is up.
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Credit: fivethirtyeight[/caption]
Trump and Putin
WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.
The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, Mr. Trump berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump cited the presence in the briefing of Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who led the impeachment proceedings against him, as a particular irritant.
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