US Politics- Stay Gold, Pony Boy

[maarsen]

With all the talk about politicians and conflict  of interest questions going around, as an old fart with  a long memory,  let me throw out an old scandal from the bad old days. Does anyone still remember Abscam?

Not only was it very easy to find bribeable Congresspeople, but the truly amazing part was how little money it took.   One look at Ben Franklin was sometimes sufficient to secure a vote. If that is all it took  then imagine what would be the price for a President who rumour has it is over $300 million in debt.

[Altherion]

29 minutes ago, snake said:

An interesting article by Matt Stoller that details problems with the Democratic Party and offers some insight into how Trump won.

A lot of people (including myself) have been saying similar things for a while, but it is nice to see this in the pages of the Washington Post. I wanted to make a separate thread about the nature of property featuring the article from The Atlantic that this one links to, but haven't had the time to do so yet. The Democrats badly underestimated the consequences of their betrayal on Wall Street. The only thing that keeps them relevant is that the lack of a populist alternative (the Republicans are usually even worse on this issue).

[Zorral]

Obama changes the One Foot rule for undocumented Cubans getting to the U.S.

http://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article126179364.html

Though it seems assumed that the orange will overrule this immediately.

 

 

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

Washington (and Jefferson and Madison) owned plantations which were one of the main forms of top-tier wealth at their time and presented clear conflicts of interest with respect to several contemporary political issues (the most obvious is slavery, but tariffs are also important). By the standards of that ethics official and several people in this thread, they should have been expected to sell their holdings upon entering office to avoid conflicts of interest -- but of course the idea would have been completely absurd at the time and I doubt it was even brought it up.

Most of those either did not have any assets to speak of or had converted them to a cash or a similarly inoffensive form before they reached office. Carter did something weird with his peanut business; I'm not sure what exactly, but it was not sold off. I haven't looked into the others, although the Motley Fool article points out that Johnson almost certainly used his position as Senator to benefit his wife's radio business.

I think you are misunderstanding at least part of the issue. The wealth being in a trust fund is, in and of itself, not important. What matters is that it is in a blind trust. That is, the trustee does not know what assets are in the trust and thus no motivation of profit can influence his political actions. Kennedy almost certainly knew his father's business at least partially and if not, he was as close as a man can be to people who definitely knew it fully.

Again, I think you are a bit confused about why a blind trust is important. Control is a relatively minor part of the potential conflict. The main one is that Trump knows what his assets are and, unless they are sold, he will continue to know what they are even if he were to hand control over to an independent director. There is no way to make a blind trust out of real estate holdings because it is public knowledge who owns what and the prices are likewise publicly documented. This is why the only solution that truly avoids all conflicts of interest is for Trump to sell all of his holdings (which obviously isn't going to happen).

Um, don't compare these early Presidents and their property to how things began working in the 20th century.  It wasn't even until the 20th century we started having presidential libraries.

Presidents and their family had to support themselves and their staffs in the presidential residence. All the travel was paid for by themselves, including their horses and carriages.

There wasn't even a White House -- and it was a rickety mess -- until John Adams administration.  They had to pay and staff every situation themselves.  Washington was already in debt since he took no salary while General in the war.  Yet he had to pay for an official residence, first in NYC then in Philiadelphia. He went much further into debt while president.

Jefferson, of course, brought his slaves to do all that work.  Washington didn't approve of that so didn't.

Mrs. Polk fired all the White House servants and brought in her own slaves so she didn't have to pay a gardener, cook, etc. 

There are reasons that Mary Todd Lincoln had so many financial problems in the White House beyond her general emotional troubles that clearly impaired her judgment far too often in too many areas.

All those positions are now permanent staff paid for by the tax payer.  Though the First Lady is still expected to pay for her own clothes.  And there are a lot of other expenses involved.  Every time the White House changed around by the new administration they -- meaning usually the First Lady -- has to find donors to pay for it.  The Clintons didn't have any money, less even than the Obamas, I think.

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

11 minutes ago, Altherion said:

A lot of people (including myself) have been saying similar things for a while, but it is nice to see this in the pages of the Washington Post. I wanted to make a separate thread about the nature of property featuring the article from The Atlantic that this one links to, but haven't had the time to do so yet. The Democrats badly underestimated the consequences of their betrayal on Wall Street. The only thing that keeps them relevant is that the lack of a populist alternative (the Republicans are usually even worse on this issue).

They had Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Put either of those two on the ticket and I think you see a different result. Not sure either would've held their nose long enough to run with Hillary though. 

[Swordfish]

5 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

They had Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Put either of those two on the ticket and I think you see a different result. Not sure either would've held their nose long enough to run with Hillary though. 

Imagine the possibilities of putting them both on the ticket....  I don't think it even would've been close, though obviously that's impossible to prove.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Just now, Swordfish said:

Imagine the possibilities of putting them both on the ticket....  I don't think it even would've been close, though obviously that's impossible to prove.

Not sure Bernie is a viable presidential candidate to be honest. His platform was kind of ridiculous when held up to a magnifying glass. I'd vote for Warren in a heartbeat though. If Sanders had been willing to take the backseat I could see that working.

[LongRider]

Walls to the South of us and....hoodies to the North?

Quote

On Tuesday American Apparel returned to its Canadian roots when Montreal-based Gildan Activewear announced it had successfully bought American Apparel at auction for $88 million in a bidding process that had generated interest from online retail behemoth Amazon, Forever 21 and others, according to Reuters. Gildan’s initial stalking-horse bid was $66 million. ....................... 

But what happens when a foreign company with existing plants both outside and inside of the United States purchases a bankrupt U.S. manufacturer? Could Trump’s policies make them think twice?

“Of course. He’s going to make everyone think twice,” Mauro Guillen, a professor of international marketing and the director of the Joseph H. Lauder Institute at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told Salon. “What Trump has been saying and doing runs against one of the Republican principles that less government intervention is better. In the Republican Party there is a very pro-free-trade faction; most of them are pro-free trade. This whole thing is so against the most basic Republican principles.”

O_o, Canada is stealing our hoodies!  What will this mean to our friendly neighbor north of us?  Tariffs? Sanctions? Walls!!!!!!   The mind boggles.

[Swordfish]

4 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Not sure Bernie is a viable presidential candidate to be honest. His platform was kind of ridiculous when held up to a magnifying glass. I'd vote for Warren in a heartbeat though. If Sanders had been willing to take the backseat I could see that working.

I can't imagine he'd have turned it down, but who knows really.

Given that Trump won, I'm not sure policy/platform is particularly important to voters at this point anyway.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

12 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

I can't imagine he'd have turned it down, but who knows really.

Given that Trump won, I'm not sure policy/platform is particularly important to voters at this point anyway.

Yeah, I mean Trump was the populist candidate here, believe it or not. The World Turned Upside Down.

[LongRider]

5 hours ago, Altherion said:

Here is some amusing proof that Republicans are well on their way to understanding the politics of identity/grievance/victimhood/etc.:

"Proof?"  That's not proof, as it's an opinion piece that's full of confirmation bias.   Try again.

[snake]

Masha Gessen takes a critical look a the intelligence report issued recently and finds it wanting. 

The conclusion,

Quote

But the intelligence report does nothing to clarify the abnormalities of Trump’s campaign and election. Instead, it risks perpetuating the fallacy that Trump is some sort of a foreign agent rather than a home-grown demagogue, while doing further damage to our faith in the electoral system. It also suggests that the US intelligence agencies’ Russia expertise is weak and throws into question their ability to process and present information—all this, two weeks before a man with no government experience but with a short Twitter fuse takes the oath of office.

 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

Yeah, I mean Trump was the populist candidate here, believe it or not. The World Turned Upside Down.

Well, Trump didn't campaign on having a Cabinet full of billionaires giving a golden shower to the working class. It will be interesting to see how he explains that in 4 years.

[Wrl6199]

19 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

"Proof?"  That's not proof, as it's an opinion piece that's full of confirmation bias.   Try again.

Thais all they got.

[Mexal]

Two fun stories this evening. 

1. Chaffetz threatens to subpoena federal ethics watchdog over Trump criticism. Trump does absolutely nothing to comply with conflict of interest laws, he's rightfully called out by the head of the office of government ethics and is now threatened by House Republicans. Surprise surprise.

Quote

House Republicans have found a subject for their opening review of conflicts of interest under Donald Trump: the federal official in charge of investigating conflicts of interest.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the head of the House Oversight Committee, criticized the director of the federal Office of Government Ethics on Thursday over his criticism of Donald Trump’s plan to address conflicts of interest. And he threatened to subpoena the official, Walter Shaub, if he refuses to participate in an official interview.

“He seems to be acting prematurely at best, without doing investigations or thorough looks,” Chaffetz said in an interview. “He’s rendering opinions publicly that really cause you to scratch your head. We need the Office of Government Ethics to act ethically. Ironically, that’s not what they’re doing.”

2. 

Again, no surprise. 

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Um, don't compare these early Presidents and their property to how things began working in the 20th century.

Why not? It's true that a whole list of Presidential customs (including who pays for what) have changed over the centuries, but the conflict of interest issue was almost exactly the same for George Washington as it is for Donald Trump. The only difference is that Washington's property was entirely domestic whereas Trump's is global. I suppose if Congress and the Supreme Court get angry enough at Trump, they may be able to stretch the Emoluments Clause to make this difference important, but I don't consider such an outcome likely.

Also, who pays for what is not really relevant to Trump: he is rich enough that even if he were to sell all of his property now (resulting in artificially low prices), he would still have enough to finance a Presidential lifestyle for the rest of his life. There's a pretty good chance that he will announce that he is giving away the Presidential salary which, at $400K, amounts to something like one fancy dinner.

1 hour ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

They had Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Put either of those two on the ticket and I think you see a different result. Not sure either would've held their nose long enough to run with Hillary though.

There is no doubt that the Democrats could have made any number of changes to win the Presidential election and, with slightly more changes, the Senate. That is not the point; it is very rare for a single election to have profound effects. The real issues are that the Democrats have embraced policies that increase the concentration of wealth, that they have done so for decades and that they show no sign of stopping. Take a look at this really long Atlantic article which probably deserves its own thread. Obama's betrayal on the issue of Wall Street is only the latest straw.

[LongRider]

7 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Two fun stories this evening. 

1. Chaffetz threatens to subpoena federal ethics watchdog over Trump criticism. Trump does absolutely nothing to comply with conflict of interest laws, he's rightfully called out by the head of the office of government ethics and is now threatened by House Republicans. Surprise surprise.

2. 

Again, no surprise. 

Golden showers of illegal contributions perhaps?  LOL!  Film at 11:00!

[Swordfish]

19 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Two fun stories this evening. 

1. Chaffetz threatens to subpoena federal ethics watchdog over Trump criticism. Trump does absolutely nothing to comply with conflict of interest laws, 

Which conflict of interest laws are you referring to here, specifically?

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 hour ago, Martell Spy said:

Well, Trump didn't campaign on having a Cabinet full of billionaires giving a golden shower to the working class. It will be interesting to see how he explains that in 4 years.

Yeah, that's basically my point. The fact that the voting public bought into his "populist" message is mind-boggling. I came across a decent article on Twitter from Paula Chertok regarding the phraseology and hyperbole he uses being much like the late night TV ads hocking various crap products. "This is your last chance"! "You've never seen anything like this before". "There's nothing like this in the history of this country".  Etc, etc. 

[Zorral]

56 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Why not? It's true that a whole list of Presidential customs (including who pays for what) have changed over the centuries, but the conflict of interest issue was almost exactly the same for George Washington as it is for Donald Trump. The only difference is that Washington's property was entirely domestic whereas Trump's is global. I suppose if Congress and the Supreme Court get angry enough at Trump, they may be able to stretch the Emoluments Clause to make this difference important, but I don't consider such an outcome likely.

Also, who pays for what is not really relevant to Trump: he is rich enough that even if he were to sell all of his property now (resulting in artificially low prices), he would still have enough to finance a Presidential lifestyle for the rest of his life. There's a pretty good chance that he will announce that he is giving away the Presidential salary which, at $400K, amounts to something like one fancy dinner.

There is no doubt that the Democrats could have made any number of changes to win the Presidential election and, with slightly more changes, the Senate. That is not the point; it is very rare for a single election to have profound effects. The real issues are that the Democrats have embraced policies that increase the concentration of wealth, that they have done so for decades and that they show no sign of stopping. Take a look at this really long Atlantic article which probably deserves its own thread. Obama's betrayal on the issue of Wall Street is only the latest straw.

It is relevant because these presidents didn't own big multi-national corporations with investments and properties outside their personal single ownership. They had no stockholders. They weren't doing deals with people of other countries who would have reasons to leverage that business into actions that were inimicable to the United States and her tax payers.

The difference between owning a plantation and owning business that goes around the world is obvious to anyone, even people wearing glasses.

Nor did the regulations and traditions governing such things come into existence until later. HOWEVER, from the very beginning, it was not acceptable for a sitting president to accept GIFTS of any real value from anyone, much less from other countries.

This situation IS unlike anything that has gone before and goes against everything that has been set up -- particularly since this bozo is not fit in any way to be POTUS.