You Will Anyway: Emoluments galore

Saturday, February 9, 2019

Emoluments galore

Trump's nonprofit Inaugural committee paid the Trump Hotel DC $175,000 (!) per day for event space—that could violate tax laws prohibiting self-dealing.

16 men and women from Costa Rica and other Latin American countries (!)...said they were employed at Trump Bedminster. All said they worked without legal status — and their managers knew.

"Since he took office, Trump has appointed at least eight people who identified themselves as current or former members of [Mar-a-Lago] to senior posts in his administration."

Rep. Jackie Speier (D–CA) told @NewDay she thinks President Trump’s real estate dealings violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which governs U.S. businesses’ dealings with foreign investors.

.@SenWarren wrote to three Mar-a-Lago members who've been hugely influential in VA decisions to verify the men were not VA employees or contractors, discover if they ever received the VA’s ethics training, & find out what companies they’ve invested in.

Trump's inauguration planner got a discount at the Trump Hotel D,C yet was told to submit her receipts to Reince Preibus (for reimbursement?!)

A U.S. Army regiment held its annual ball last night at the Trump Hotel DC— so soldiers were potentially sending money up the chain of command. And pics of them in dress uniform in front of the hotel's logo made it to social media.

President Trump’s businesses received nearly $3.8 million from political committees during the two-year 2018 campaign cycle, The top political customers: Trump’s re-election campaign and the Republican Party.

.@CREWcrew leaned that @IvankaTrump's business picked up a new trademark in Canada.

The acting AG was asked about his boss's lease of the Trump Hotel D.C and the emoluments clause during Congressional testimony. And I watched it—but forgot because of everything tweeted previously.

.@realDonaldTrump's HUD Sec. Ben Carson posed with a staffer at pro-Trump nonprofit America First Policies, and a major GOP/Trump donor (yes, it's the My Pillow Guy) at— the Trump Hotel D.C.

RNC has paid a firm owned by former Trump Org employee, @realDonaldTrump bodyguard Keith Schiller, $225,000.

There are currently three emoluments suits, one conflicts of interest suit, and at least six House investigations involving @realDonaldTrump's businesses and finances. Scroll to the bottom for the latest updates: https://zacheverson.substack.com/p/old-guard-parties-commander-in-chief …

Referenced material is provided in this thread if you'd like to know more.

Note: This isn't just a gratiutous cartoon. It's timed with the president's annual physical.

..but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

"It’s not about not having something to hide; it’s about having something to lose. What we lose when we’re under observation is our humanity...Rights are inherent to our nature, they’re not granted by governments, they’re guaranteed by governments. They’re protected by governments." -- Edward Snowden

"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack." ~ Molly Ivins

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber

"The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plane....When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, 'Except in wartime.'" -- George McGovern

"I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~ Bill Moyers

"When did hope become a political dynamic? Hope is right below wishful thinking and right above performing a rain dance on the scale of activity." ~ Rich Hall

Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.