What else can I say?
Greetings, fellow Dot Calm Readers, Freedom Fighters, and Truth Crusaders!
I have no words left--our benighted corporate media are in the process of gleefully handing the White House to a man who won't rest until he's completely, irrevocably destroyed this great nation of ours while claiming to make it "great."
A greater travesty did not seem possible until now.
Speaking of "now," now would be a good time for enough of Trump's true colors to be shown to drive him and the rest of the cockroaches back under their rocks.
Anyone care to hack teh Donald's tax returns?
PLEASE?!??
Don't forget to read Dot Calm's shadow's favorite independent sources of news and information:
Daily Kos
AlterNet
Peas, friends. Take care of yourselves for me. Trust me--you're worth it!
- Dot Calm's shadow
Consider the preemptive Blogger phuqued-up phormatting disclaimer to be in effect. Grrr.
-- Dot Calm's shadow
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I heard on NPR this morning that
House Democrats seek investigation of Trump Foundation
Also sounds like Every Major Florida Newspaper Just Demanded an investigation, too
All I could think was
"FINALLY!!!"
Trump called it a partisan hack...
he should look in the mirror when he says that!
Fucking Republicans:
They don't take responsibility...
all they do is PROJECT.
********************************************
House Democrats seek investigation of Trump Foundation
Also sounds like Every Major Florida Newspaper Just Demanded an investigation, too
All I could think was
"FINALLY!!!"
Trump called it a partisan hack...
he should look in the mirror when he says that!
Fucking Republicans:
They don't take responsibility...
all they do is PROJECT.
********************************************
Friends, these are all well worth reading. I'm posting articles from VICE and Vox about Trump's charitable (to himself and to his political friends) foundation in their entirety--it's just that important.
-- Dot Calm's shadow
A word or three from Vox:
Lindsey Graham once made a comment very similar to the one that got Hillary Clinton into trouble
...Well, Miss Lindsey wasn't wrong, and Hillary isn't wrong! Time for Hillary to double down!!
Hillary Clinton's health news comes just as the race is close enough for Dems to worry
...Yup, and I'm worried sick. Nobody gave a shit when FDR used to stumble--or Gerald Ford...or Ronbo Raygun. The media are all over this like pigs on shit. If ya asks me, I'd say there's some subtle--or not so subtle--sexism here. Who asks if a candidate is healthy enough to be president? If Hillary were younger, Trump would be asking about her period...and the media would think that was perfectly hunky dokey, too. As the article says, let's reframe this news piece. Here's my suggestion for how the article should have been titled: "HILLARY BRAVELY DEFIES PNEUMONIA TO SUPPORT 9/11 FAMILIES"
Yes, the climate has always changed. This comic shows why that's no comfort.
...I'm a big fan or Randall Munroe and read xkcd without fail every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So I was in for a grim surprise when I saw the comic mentioned in the Vox article linked here. Accurate but disturbing.
Polls show many — even most — Trump supporters really are deeply hostile to Muslims and nonwhites
...If the basket of deplorables fits, WEAR IT. Dang, son--looks like we're gonna need a bigger basket! Can we throw in the married couple who celebrated their wedding anniversary by saying "Death to Obama!" and "Someone really should assassinate Hillary!" and my Tea Party Christian friend who said, "Everyone who voted for Obama twice should be shot!"? PLEEEEEEEASE?!??
Donald Trump gave an interview this morning that should be shocking — but we're numb
...And this, my friends, is how Trump is going to win the election. He is a living Gish Gallop of lies, scandals, hypocrisy, politically convenient flip-flops, controversies, and conspiracy theories. And the media just yawns and instead pillories Hillary....
The change in Republican voters' views of Putin since Trump's rise is remarkable
...Damn, son--I thought Republicans didn't like "commies." Now their boi is in bed with one! Now we know what the "red" in "red state" means.
“The textbook definition of unstable”: why North Korea's newest
...Trump would probably nuke both North and South Korea.
Do presidential debates even matter? Here's the political science evidence.
...Spoiler: only by a few percentage points, at best, but those points could go either way depending on whether the media finally do their job and hold Trump accountable for his words and actions. Looks like we'll be saying hello to President Trump (ARGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!).
Yearning for Trumpocalypse: what's behind a viral conservative essay
...Friends, this is really horrible. Trump supporters liken themselves to the passengers on Flight 93 who stormed the cockpit because they were going to die anyway. They are ready to burn the whole country down because they're convinced that only they have any morality. Hey, I'll agree that they have morality-- but their morality is immoral. Anyone who feels entitled to dictate intimate personal bodily and health care decisions to total strangers IS IMMORAL. Anyone who feels entitled to deprive their fellow equal citizens of their constitutionally-guaranteed equal rights under the law IS IMMORAL. Anyone who is pro-fetus but anti-everyone-else IS IMMORAL. Anyone who is pro-profit and anti-people IS IMMORAL. Fucking hypocrites.
Samantha Bee on fact-checking Trump: "Calling a liar a liar isn't an opinion if you can prove it"
...But the media don't feel like it. They'd rather just give Trump a trophy for showing up. And that's because the media REALLY REALLY REALLY want Trump to win! Check out the m00bies below
--I found the clip and am posting it.
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Here's an article from VICE that's a great quick introduction to the Trump Foundation's shady dealings. The Vox article is below this article, and more headlines are below it.
-- Dot Calm's shadow
What We Know About Donald Trump's Scandal-Plagued Charity Foundation
By Harry Cheadle, Senior Editor
One of the prerequisites for running for president is having a lot of money. Even Barack Obama, one of the least wealthy presidents of the modern era, was a millionaire by the time he ran for the White House in 2008, and Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both make him look like a pauper. Americans are fine with being ruled by the rich—not that we have a choice, lol—but there's understandably a lot of interest in how these rich people choose to spend their money.
Politicians generally being public-minded sorts, presidential candidates tend to give large chunks of their fortunes away. According to Hillary and Bill Clinton's tax returns, the power couple gave away $23.2 million from 2001 to 2015, or about 10 percent of their income. The 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney and his wife had them beat, giving away almost 30 percent ($4 million) of their income the year before his failed bid for the presidency. Proving charitable giving is normally just a box to check off for candidates, a way to signal that they're one of the good One Percenters.
In that context, Trump's history of charity is especially bizarre. As with so much else about the self-proclaimed billionaire, Trump talks big about his generosity but can't or won't go into specifics.
Investigations by journalists into Trump's family charity, the Donald J Trump Foundation, have turned up little in the way of recent donations from the candidate's own pocket, and uncovered one case of an illegal gift to a politician who at the time was weighing whether or not to sue Trump University for fraud. Especially now that the foundation is itself being investigated for wrongdoing, it's worth taking a closer look at what the hell is happening with the Donald J Trump Foundation.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he's given more than $100 million to charity, and earlier this year, his campaign put out a list of nearly 5,000 donations he supposedly made. But the tireless work of Washington Post reporter David A Fahrenthold, who has called more than 300 charities individually to ask if Trump had ever given them money, shows that it's actually very hard to find incidences of the man himself giving away any cash, at least not in recent years. In an article published in June, the Post found that the supposed billionaire had given away less than $10,000 from 2008 to 2015.
How is that possible? It turns out that a lot of Trump's gifts to charity—including gifts he publicly promised to contestants on The Celebrity Apprentice—came from the Donald J Trump Foundation, to which he's donated nothing since 2008 and is instead stocked with other people's money. Other gifts his campaign referenced came in the form of rounds of golf on Trump's golf courses that were given to charities to be auctioned off; that list of donations, the Post reported, also included arrangements called "conservation easements" that involve a real estate developer agreeing not to use land for certain purposes while still owning it and making money off of it.
Trump has given millions to charities over his lifetime, though that amount isn't all that significant given how much money he says he's worth. Since the Post has started chasing this story, Trump has given $1 million to a veterans' charity (months after promising he would, and only after being questioned about it), and gave $100,000 to a Louisiana church last month following the floods that decimated the state.
But the Donald J Trump Foundation has its own problems separate from the lack of proof of Trump's personal giving. GuideStar, a nonpartisan group that evaluates nonprofits, published a blog post Monday comparing the Trump Foundation to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton's organization—which itself is controversial due to so far unproven allegations major donors essentially bought access to Clinton while she was secretary of state—is much bigger, much more transparent about what it does, and has more of its eponymous founders' money.
The Trump Foundation has also allegedly engaged in what's called "self-dealing," or using a charity's money for personal gain, which is usually against IRS rules. For instance, the foundation spent $20,000 on a giant portrait of Trump himself, and $12,000 on Tim Tebow memorabilia.
Oh, and then there's the alleged bribe the Trump Foundation paid to Florida attorney general Pam Bondi. This was a $25,000 donation that the foundation made in 2013 to a Bondi-aligned PAC, which was problematic for a couple reasons. First, charities can't give to PACs—Trump's campaign said that the charity had given the money to the PAC by mistake, then screwed up again by telling the IRS the money had gone to a different group (whoops!). When this came to light this year, Trump paid the IRS a $2,500 penalty and reimbursed the foundation for the $25,000 gift. Second, just days after that gift, Bondi reportedly decided not to join a lawsuit against Trump University filed by New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman. (Bondi's spokespeople deny her office was ever considering the lawsuit, contradicting newspaper accounts from that time.)
Speaking of Schneiderman, in 2014, the Trump Foundation gave $100,000 (a sizable sum by its standards) to Citizens United, a conservative group that was then suing the New York AG over his efforts to get them to disclose their donor list. Citizens United said the gift wasn't related to the lawsuit, but a Schneiderman spokesperson didn't agree, telling Yahoo News, "Funding a meritless lawsuit against this office would be nothing new for someone like Donald Trump, who has filed baseless ethics complaints, planted bogus stories, and tweeted a steady stream of incoherent insults just to make himself feel better for being exposed as the fraud he clearly is."
Trump has called Schneiderman a "lightweight hack" and "a low-life, a sleazebag," and the evidently personal battle between the two men seems bound to continue—on Tuesday, it was reported by the New York Daily News that the AG's office had launched a probe "to make sure [the foundation is] complying with the laws governing charities in New York." The Trump campaign responded by calling the AG a "partisan hack who has turned a blind eye to the Clinton Foundation for years."
It remains to be seen if Schneiderman's probe will result in any charges. But the legality of some of the Trump Foundation gifts aside, there are more basic questions about Trump's personal acts of charity that he refuses to answer, namely: What and when have you given to charity?
When BuzzFeed News looked into Trump's charitable giving in June, campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks told them, "He makes contributions personally, and there's no way for you to know or understand what those gifts are or when they are made." But no, there is a way to know what those gifts are—Trump could just release his tax returns, which he has refused to do. (Trump claims he can't release them because he's under audit, though Richard Nixon showed his returns to the public while being audited. This week, VICE News filed a lawsuit with the IRS seeking to gain access to the audits of Trump's returns.)
In the past week, even as the media has started to zero in on all this, Trump's campaign keeps sending out surrogates to proclaim his generosity in the broadest, least fact-checkable terms.
Deflecting questions about their boss's activities is by now standard operating procedure for people on Trump's payroll, but the more important question has nothing to do with shady individual gifts. If Trump is willing to obfuscate and mislead about something as simple as which charities he gives money too, what else is he refusing to tell the truth about?
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The Vox article on the Trump Foundation's shady dealings, as promised!
-- Dot Calm's shadow
"People reporting on Trump [scandals], by contrast, have an embarrassment of riches to pursue. There’s his campaign team’s ties to the Russian government, his mismanagement of Atlantic City casino properties, the possibility his wife worked illegally in the United States without a proper visa, credible allegations that his modeling agency employed illegal workers, Trump’s past business ties to the mafia, his employing of undocumented Polish workers on construction sites, his long history of racist statements, his campaign’s flirtations with anti-Semitism, and his history as a discriminatory landlord. On top of that — there’s the foundation."
Updated by Matthew Yglesias on September 13, 2016
Donald Trump runs a charitable foundation named after him that’s been good for his personal business and political aspirations and appears to have no particular philanthropic mission or focus.
At one point, the Trump Foundation operated like a fairly normal rich person’s poorly managed family foundation, receiving money from its founder and handing it out to this or that randomly selected cause. But in more recent years, as its founder has gotten less interested in real estate development and more interested in media celebrity and politics, it’s become rather unusual.
The Trump Foundation isn’t funded by Trump’s own money. Instead, contributions mostly seem to come from a range of Trump’s business partners, allowing him to parlay celebrity into securing credit for charity work.
But much of the foundation’s spending doesn’t really fit the traditional conception of philanthropy at all. Some of the money seems to flow back into Trump’s pockets through his businesses, while other funds are used to punish his political enemies or try to gain new friends in the conservative movement.
At times the level of self-dealing becomes downright comical. It spent $20,000 on a portrait of Donald Trump, for example, and $12,000 on buying Trump an autographed Tim Tebow helmet.
Trump has also lied about the foundation repeatedly, claiming credit for charitable contributions that never happened. One illegal thing the Trump Foundation did appears to have been linked to efforts to shield Trump’s fake university from legal scrutiny.
Trump’s Foundation is considerably smaller in scale than the much-more-covered Clinton Foundation, but it also gives every appearance of being much less involved in actually helping people and much more clearly involved in rule-breaking. Yet while the Clinton Foundation has been the subject of dozens of investigations and thousands of takes over a period of nearly a decade (my first Clinton Foundation take was published in October 2007, for example) the Trump Foundation has gone largely unscrutinized.
The vast majority of reporting on it has been done by a single person, David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post. And while his reporting has uncovered plenty of wrongdoing and raised plenty of questions, it hasn’t driven cable news segments, follow-up reporting, or even much aggregation.
In that sense, the Trump Foundation both reveals something disturbing about Trump himself and something disturbing about the functioning of the American media ecosystem, where the basic idea that you should have a similar number of reporters covering each campaign creates a skewed view of what’s actually going on.
What does the Trump Foundation do?
The Trump Foundation does not have what you would call a clear and straightforward charitable mission. It doesn’t focus on a particular social problem or set of social problems. Instead, it reflects the shifting agendas of its notoriously mercurial founder.
For example, back in 2014 the Trump Foundation made a $100,000 contribution to David Bossie’s conservative activist group Citizens United.
At this time, New York attorney-general Eric Schneiderman was launching a fraud prosecution against Trump and Trump University. Bossie and Citizens United, meanwhile were suing Schneiderman in federal court over his effort to require nonprofits like Citizens United to disclose their donors under seal to the New York State Charities Bureau. The lawsuit was dismissed, and it’s hard to characterize this as a quid pro quo since Bossie’s interest in the cause of nontransparent political fundraising is well-known and sincere.
But Trump had never previously supported Citizens United, and, as Michael Isikoff reports, the Citizens United donation "was by far the largest it gave to any organization that year, substantially exceeding its contributions to more traditional charities, such as the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (which got $50,000), the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute ($25,000) and the Police Athletic League ($25,000)."
Trump, in essence, had an enemy in Schneiderman, so Trump used his foundation money (money which, recall, was not donated out of his own pocket) to help an enemy of his enemy.
Another oddity of the Trump Foundation is that even though it gives the superficial appearance of being a normal family foundation, he doesn’t actually fund it anymore and hasn’t done so for years.
Trump is rich, and back in 1988 he created the foundation and bestowed it with the proceeds of his book, Trump: The Art of the Deal. The foundation’s specific undertakings didn’t receive much attention over the years, as Trump wasn’t running for office and nitpicking the details of a wealthy individual’s charitable giving is considered rude. Trump’s campaign has changed that to an extent, and shined some light on a variety of unorthodox practices.
"For one thing," Fahrenthold writes "nearly all of its money comes from people other than Trump. In tax records, the last gift from Trump was in 2008. Since then, all of the donations have been other people’s money — an arrangement that experts say is almost unheard of for a family foundation."
Wait — Trump’s foundation isn’t his own money?
That is correct. It’s not unusual for a nonprofit to be primarily financed by donors rather than by the founder, but that’s a very unusual situation for a family foundation.
And, indeed, Trump’s foundation didn’t start out this way. Between 1987 and 2006, Trump gave $5.4 million to his foundation with the vast majority of the money going out the door quickly to a range of fairly banal nonprofits. It never amassed a large war chest, and by the start of 2007 it had just $4,238 in assets. Nor did the Foundation ever hire professional staff or independent directors, relying instead on unpaid work by a five-person board composed of Trump himself, his daughter Ivanka, his sons Eric and Donald, and Allen Weisselberg, the Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Foundation. Tiffany Trump did not make the cut for some reason.
Trump’s donations trickled in 2007 and 2008, and from 2009 onward Trump has given no money to the Foundation. Its largest donor, instead, is wrestling executives Vince and Linda McMahon, who’ve given $5 million as part of a relationship with Trump that’s included him making appearances on their wrestling broadcasts.
Another noteworthy donor is NBC Universal, the company that aired Trump’s television show, The Apprentice (NBC Universal is also an investor in Vox Media, Vox.com’s parent company), on which Trump pledging to make charitable contributions was a regular feature.
The same thing happened numerous times on "The Celebrity Apprentice." To console a fired or disappointed celebrity, Trump would promise a personal gift.
On-air, Trump seemed to be explicit that this wasn’t TV fakery: The money he was giving was his own. "Out of my wallet," Trump said in one case. "Out of my own account," he said in another.
But, when the cameras were off, the payments came from other people’s money.
In some cases, as with Kardashian, Trump’s "personal" promise was paid off by a production company. Other times, it was paid off by a nonprofit that Trump controls, whose coffers are largely filled with other donors’ money.
As Christine Wilkie of the Huffington Post has detailed, many of the contributions seem to be transactional in a similar way. People Magazine gave $150,000 in exchange for exclusive photos of Trump’s son, Barron. Comedy Central gave $400,000 as an appearance fee for Trump appearing on The Comedy Central Roast of Donald Trump. Norwegian Cruise Lines gave $100,000 as an appearance fee for Melania Trump. Depending on whether or not the money was put to good use (more on this later), this could be seen as a form of Trump channeling his celebrity to philanthropic ends or else as not much more than a glorified tax dodge.
Some of the donations reflect ambiguous business relationships. Wilkie reports that Donna Clancy gave the Foundation $100,000 while she was also a tenant at a Trump-owned office building, while the Foundation’s most frequent donor over time is Stark Carpets, a company that Trump uses as a carpet-supplier for many of his buildings.
But while some of the donations to Trump’s foundation seem like a form of thinly disguised employee compensation, others are more enigmatic. The high-end ticket scalper Richard Ebers, for example, is one of the Trump Foundation’s biggest donors, and Ebers declines to comment to the media about it.
Who else has Trump given to?
Over the years, Trump’s foundation certainly has given money to a grab-bag of basically banal uncontroversial charities. But since 2012, the Trump Foundation has given a lot of money to conservative political groups as part of Trump’s effort to establish his bona fides in the movement.
This is perfectly legal — the tax code doesn’t draw a distinction between what a normal person would call a "real charity" and what a normal person would call a political advocacy shop — but there is a common sense difference between donations that aim to help people and donations that aim to advance the donor’s own political career.
Some examples gathered by Wilkie:
- $100,000 to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and $35,000 to Samaritan’s Purse, both run by Franklin Graham who later defended Trump during the controversy over his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States.
- $40,000 to the Drumthwacket Foundation, a charity whose mission is the upkeep of the New Jersey governor’s mansion and whose donors mostly have close ties to Chris Christie.
- Trump sponsored one of Sen. Rand Paul’s trips to Guatemala where the senator in his capacity as a physician performed eye surgeries for needy patients.
- He’s also given money to a grab-bag of second-tier conservative advocacy groups including the American Conservative Union, Justice for All, and the Family Leader Foundation.
The Foundation also engages in a certain amount of what seems to be self-dealing.
- Melania Trump paid $20,000 at a charity auction for a portrait of Donald Trump. The Foundation cut the check, and the portrait reportedly landed at one of Trump’s golf courses.
- Trump himself paid $12,000 at a charity auction for a football helmet autographed by Tim Tebow.
- The Foundation also donated money to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, which was clearly illegal and resulted in a fine when it came to light. According to Fahrenthold, "Trump’s staffers said a series of errors resulted in the payment being made — and then hidden from the IRS."
There are also mixed cases, such as Trump giving Foundation money to the Palm Beach Police Foundation, which then in turn spent large sums of money on renting out the Trump-owned Mar-a-Lago resort for its annual gala.
Last but by no means least, the Foundation simply seems to sometimes just not do anything.
"Five times," Fahrenthold reports in a separate story, "the Trump Foundation's tax filings described giving a specific amount of money to a specific charity — in some cases, even including the recipient's address. But when The Post called, the charities listed said the tax filings appeared wrong. They'd never received anything from Trump or his foundation."
In one of the five cases, the phantom donation is related to the paperwork errors that led Foundation money to be sent to the Bondi campaign. But the other four — phantom donations to the Giving Back Fund, Children’s Medical Center in Omaha, the Latino Commission on AIDS, and Friends of Veterans — remain unexplained.
Why isn’t this getting covered more?
The seemingly different levels of scrutiny afforded to Trump’s activities versus Hillary Clinton’s is an enduring source of frustration for many grassroots Democrats. It’s certainly a source of frustration for Clinton’s campaign.
The bar for "Clinton Foundation scandal" is so low that a staffer for the Clinton Foundation trying and failing to get a diplomatic passport so that he could help Bill Clinton rescue Americans being held captive in North Korea was played up as a major revelation in the New York Times. Imagine if the Clinton Foundation was flagrantly breaking campaign finance law, making phantom donations to charities that never saw the money, blowing cash on sports memorabilia, and persecuting Hillary Clinton’s political enemies.
The fundamental structure of the national media, however, makes disproportionate coverage somewhat inevitable.
One step in this is that, as University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket writes, the press is almost invariably tougher on front-runners. He cites John Zaller and Mark Hunt, who found that historically "the more popular a candidate was, the more negative coverage he received." All three authors believe this is because "members of the media provide more scrutiny for candidates they expect to win."
That’s not to say reporters and editors deliberately slant coverage against the front-runner. It’s to say that reporters and (especially) editors need to make concrete decisions about resource-allocation. Major news organizations will dedicate resources to raking muck in the vicinity of both Clinton and Trump. Since Clinton has consistently seemed more likely than Trump to win, at the margin more resources are aimed at her.
Scrutiny of Clinton has been relatively narrow — overwhelmingly focused on two big negative narratives about her, one related to her use of a private email server and one related to potential Clinton Foundation conflicts of interest. With lots of resources chasing two stories, both incidents have been examined under a fairly exacting microscope with fairly minor developments and banal revelations getting ample airtime.
People reporting on Trump, by contrast, have an embarrassment of riches to pursue. There’s his campaign team’s ties to the Russian government, his mismanagement of Atlantic City casino properties, the possibility his wife worked illegally in the United States without a proper visa, credible allegations that his modeling agency employed illegal workers, Trump’s past business ties to the mafia, his employing of undocumented Polish workers on construction sites, his long history of racist statements, his campaign’s flirtations with anti-Semitism, and his history as a discriminatory landlord.
On top of that — there’s the foundation.
As a simple matter of math, to cover the Trump Foundation as thoroughly as the Clinton Foundation has been covered while also giving all of these other issues their due would require news organizations to devote many more resources to Trump-investigations than to Clinton-investigations. To people in Clinton’s corner, that seems appropriate — Trump has done more investigation-worthy stuff. But from a journalistic traditionalist’s point of view, that would be a form of bias. And, indeed, a perverse form of bias since Clinton is probably going to be president — it’s more important to investigate her.
A Trump administration will be a cesspool of self-dealing
Media narratives aside, the bottom line is this: There is every reason to believe that if Donald Trump is elected president, his administration will be a vehicle for his own personal enrichment.
The key to making this argument isn’t any kind of investigation into the Trump Foundation, it’s the basics of Trump’s business ownership. Many past presidents have been rich, but their wealth has typically taken the form of passive ownership of financial instruments. The standard practice is to put the assets — stocks and bonds and such — into a blind trust that is managed independently of the president so he can’t know what he is specifically invested in.
Trump has not promised to liquidate his assets and put the proceeds into a blind trust. He has simply said that day-to-day management of the Trump Organization will be passed on to his children, people who are already key advisers in his political operation anyway. While out on the campaign trail, Trump has been open about his continued involvement in Trump business affairs, stopping by for the opening of a golf resort in Scotland and the construction of a hotel in Washington, DC.
The fact that Trump is openly funneling campaign money to Trump-owned businesses further clarifies that Trump does not have a problem mixing business and politics. And the fact that Trump has refused to release any of his tax returns or do meaningful financial disclosure on who exactly he owes money to further confirms that Trump is maintaining no pretense of running a transparent operation.
It’s 100 percent true that everything Fahrenthold and others have uncovered about the Trump Foundation suggests that Trump will use the powers of the presidency to benefit his businesses. But even if you’d never read any coverage about the Trump Foundation, the basic lack of personal financial disclosure and unwillingness to promise he’ll shift to a blind trust if he wins is all a person worried about conflicts of interest need to know. Trump is telling you, quite openly, that as president there will be no meaningful separation between the Trump Organization and the Trump administration.
That this doesn’t seem to bother many of the people who are voting for Trump — even as many of those same people complain about "Clinton cash" and other much more second-order alleged conflicts of interest — is legitimately frustrating. But there’s little reason to believe that a few more stories about Trump’s use of charitable money to buy a Tim Tebow helmet will change that.
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MOAR Headlines!
-- Dot Calm's shadow
Vox: President Obama: the media is completely failing to hold Donald Trump to account
...Ya THINK?!??
Vox: Donald Trump's plan to fund a paid family leave program is totally absurd
...He thinks he can fund it all by saving the $3B in unemployment fraud--which is only 3% of total unemployment budget, and he's not even counting the cost of recouping that loss. Consider this 3% compared to 5% fraud in business in general...not to mention that a family leave plan would cost several times more than $3B...and, as a headline below says, he only wants to offer family leave to mothers. Good thing babies don't have no daddies! Remember, Donald Trump once bitched that pregnancy is dreadfully inconvenient for businesses that employ women.
Vox: There's no Hillary Clinton "email scandal." There are four of them. Or maybe six. Or none.
...I really wish the media would dig up and air out all of Trump's scandals and crimes. Inquiring minds want to know!
FiveThirtyEight: Election Update: Has Clinton's 'Bad Weekend' Moved The Polls?
...Well, it hasn't helped, but it hasn't done a ton of damage, either. Basically, neither candidate can take the election for granted. We may well be looking at a post-convention equilibrium.
FiveThirtyEight: Polls Show Trump's Momentum Has Stalled — For Now
...Here's hoping Hillary pulls out the heavy guns and dusts the bastard. I hope Elizabeth Warren or Bernie or someone...anyone...gets under Trump's skin and drives him to say something so crazy that his campaign jumps the shark so obviously and undeniably that even my Tea Party Christian friend puckers at the mention of "Donald Trump"!
FiveThirtyEight: How Many Of Trump's Supporters Really Are 'Deplorable'?
...And the answer is: over 60% just counting Islamophobes! Hillary was being generous. Throw 'em into a bigger basket, Hillary!
VICE: Donald Trump says only mothers deserve paid family leave
...And that's because, as all good Christians know, women get preggers by masturbating--no sperm needed--because, as the Bible says (in Revelation 14:4 and throughout Paul, who I suspect was gay), it is not good for men to defile themselves [by having sex] with women. Don't believe me that women get pregnant without sex? Ask Jesus' mother!
VICE: We're suing the IRS for audits of Donald Trump's tax returns
...THANK YOU, VICE!!!!!
********************************************
Hey, Friends:
Here is one Great Big YUUUGE Deal...
According to Vox,
The middle class's incomes are finally growing faster than the rich's
And, according to FiveThirtyEight,
The Recovery Finally Reached Most Americans In 2015
THANKS, OBAMA!!!!!
Dear Millennials, Undecideds, & Independents:
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
DON'T LET TRUMP KILL IT!!!
Here is one Great Big YUUUGE Deal...
According to Vox,
The middle class's incomes are finally growing faster than the rich's
And, according to FiveThirtyEight,
The Recovery Finally Reached Most Americans In 2015
THANKS, OBAMA!!!!!
Dear Millennials, Undecideds, & Independents:
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
DON'T LET TRUMP KILL IT!!!
********************************************
Mailbag
From Watchdog.net--Saving US as a species is more important than padding corporate profits!
It’s official: Climate change directly fueled the likelihood and severity of the deadly flooding in Louisiana last month.1
But
in the face of the worst storm disaster since Hurricane Sandy,
President Obama didn’t commit to stopping fossil fuel extraction.
Instead,
President Obama threw fuel on the fire by auctioning off an area – the
size of Virginia! – for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico to the
highest bidder.
With
clear evidence that Louisiana’s superstorm was directly linked to
climate change, President Obama should be rushing to positively impact
climate change.
But he's continuing with business as usual instead.
This month, on September 20th, the White House will hold yet another auction to sell public lands and waters to fossil fuel companies.
And to keep this sale under the radar, the administration is moving this next auction to be online only.
We
can’t be quiet as President Obama facilitates more fossil fuel drilling
that will only increase the threat from climate change.
We’re
joining a massive coalition to demand President Obama protect our
communities and stop contributing to further climate change.
But we need to get loud to stop this sale.
We’re delivering the petition to the White House this week. Can we count on you to join us?
Thanks for all you do,
Kate Kizer and the team at Watchdog.net
Sources:
1. USA Today, “Climate change fueled deadly Louisiana rainstorm,” September 7, 2016 |
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| |
| Tell the Treasury Department: Investigate Big Pharma tax-dodging | |
| Petition to U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew:
"Immediately investigate Gilead Sciences for shifting billions of dollars in U.S. profits offshore in order to dodge taxes. If you find wrongdoing, force Gilead to pay the nearly $10 billion in taxes it owes to American taxpayers."
Add your name:
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From Rep. Diane Russell--Paul LePage is America's most racist governor
Maine Governor Paul LePage says that people of color are "the enemy" and should be shot.
He claims that 90 percent of the people bringing drugs into Maine are black or hispanic (for the record, this isn't even close to true). He told the Maine NAACP to "kiss my butt." He even left a voice mail message for a Democratic state legislator calling him a "socialist c**ksucker." This man is the governor who brags that he was "Trump before Trump," and who Trump says he would include in his cabinet. Will you help fight back against Paul LePage and his racism by making a donation to the Portland Maine Democratic Party? Some say LePage uses "racially charged" words. But I believe Gov. LePage is just plain racist. The Portland Democrats have been leading the charge to hold Gov. LePage accountable since day one. When LePage hosted a rally with Donald Trump last month where he attacked our Muslim and immigrant communities, Portland Democrats turned out in force to show the world that we reject LePage and Trump's hate. Paul LePage represents the absolute worst of America, and it's up to all of us to fight back. Will you help fight back against Paul LePage and his racism by making a donation to the Portland Maine Democratic Party? Thank you. Maine State Rep. Diane Russell |
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From UltraViolet--Demand MORE women debate moderators! CALL TODAY!!!
| We have 2 weeks left until the first presidential debate. Will you call the Presidential Debates Commission and demand they name more women anchors to moderate? Here's the phone number: (202) 872-1020  |
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Protect Planned Parenthood and all women's health!
I spend every day on the front lines of the fight to preserve
women's right to access the full range of reproductive health care — and
Governor Maggie Hassan is right there with me.
She has always stood up for a woman's right to make her own
health care decisions in New Hampshire, and I know she will continue to
do so in the U.S. Senate. And her race is our best chance to take back
the Senate and secure the future of the Supreme Court.
But right now, extreme anti-women's health politicians in
Washington are desperately trying to make sure we don't elect a true
women's health champion to the Senate. Maggie
needs our help to fight back, so please give $3, or what you can, to
take back the Senate, build a firewall against Supreme Court nominees
who would roll back Roe v. Wade, and ensure that women have access to the health care they need for generations to come.
With the Mitch McConnell-led Senate pushing new anti-women's
health attacks every time we turn around, our fight is more important
than ever before. As the extreme far-right talks about "punishing women"
for seeking abortions and blocking access to critical health care,
Maggie is fighting for more care, leading the successful charge to
restore funding for Planned Parenthood health centers in New Hampshire.
The choice is clear — Maggie Hassan is a fighter for women's health care rights and we need her in the U.S. Senate. Donate $3 or what you can to elect Maggie, take back the Senate, and help stop the anti-choice attacks.
If you've saved payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:
Cecile Richards
Planned Parenthood Federal PAC
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|
| |
| #ISitWithColin: Speak out – Sit with Colin Kaepernick | |
| Petition to Colin Kaepernick:
"Thank you, Colin Kaepernick, for making a bold rebuke of police violence against Black people and people of color."
Add your name:
|
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From UltraViolet--This ad will destroy Trump!
We've just created a TV ad calling out Donald Trump for blaming women in the military for their own sexual assault. Will you chip in $5 to help get it on the air and hold him accountable?
|
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You’ve seen our television ads running in swing states, you’ve seen our work organizing Gold Star family members against Trump, and you’ve seen our efforts with veterans swindled by Trump University. All of it has made a big difference in this election.
And the truth is, we’re just getting started.
VoteVets is gearing up for the homestretch in our campaign to stop Donald Trump and more than 3,000 people have stepped up to invest in that work because veterans and military families can cut through the election clutter. But there’s one contribution missing that would go a long way: yours.
Contribute $3 today to help VoteVets hit our fundraising goals in the campaign to ensure Donald Trump NEVER becomes our nation’s Commander in Chief.
Like General Wes Clark said in his email to VoteVets supporters yesterday, “Trump is a guy who brags about his short attention span and snap judgments, doesn’t study, and he doesn’t seem to know much about national security, foreign policy or veterans.”
When you consider his words, it’s clear why the voices of veterans and military family members are so important in this campaign. Your $3 contribution to VoteVets will help us continue our work to ensure Donald Trump never becomes our Commander in Chief.
Thank you for investing in our work. As you watch the polls and election returns come in, know that your support made a difference.
All our best,
- The team at VoteVets
CONTRIBUTE
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Foreign countries are interfering with OUR elections.
- They’re hacking political committee emails.
- They’re trying to tamper with voting machines
- They’re even exploiting campaign finance loopholes to fund corrosive super PACs.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) will meet TOMORROW to discuss closing a loophole in the law meant to ban foreign spending in our elections.
Tell the FEC to tighten up the ban on foreign political spending in our elections.
Thank you for taking action.
Onward,
Bret Thompson
Public Citizen’s Online Action Team
© 2016 Public Citizen • 1600 20th Street, NW / Washington, D.C. 20009
------------------------------------------------
 "I would certainly like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody from having an abortion—a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman. Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the Medicaid bill." That charming quote comes courtesy of Rep. Henry Hyde, the congressman behind the amendment that, to this day, makes abortion a right in name only for far too many women. The 40th anniversary of the Hyde Amendment is coming up on September 30th, and reproductive rights advocates are mobilizing all month long to call attention to this discriminatory policy that prevents millions of women from accessing their legal right to abortion. Join us: Sign the petition to support the repeal of the Hyde Amendment. Hyde, which has been reaffirmed by every Congress for the past 40 years, prohibits insurance coverage for abortion services in government health-care programs, including Medicaid. Long story short? This means that low-income women, who are disproportionately women of color, can't count on their insurance to cover their medical expenses. That's discrimination, plain and simple. And because anti-choice politicians are obsessed with controlling women's health care whenever possible, Hyde also means women in the military, volunteers in the Peace Corps, Native American women, and federal employees—all of whom rely on health insurance through the government—can't have an abortion covered by their insurance, either. Right now, whether or not a woman can have an abortion when she needs it depends on where she works, how much she makes, and what kind of insurance she has. This isn't fair, and it isn't right. Your voice is most powerful right now, during our month of action around repealing Hyde. Add your name to say you believe a woman's access to abortion shouldn't depend on her income level. Support the repeal of the Hyde Amendment. Together, we've shifted the national conversation around Hyde quite a bit in the past year alone. As a movement, we saw the introduction of the EACH Woman Act in Congress, which would repeal this harmful legislation. And on the national stage, Hillary Clinton has stood strong and called for a repeal of the Hyde Amendment, spurring widespread conversation about how this discriminatory policy impacts American families. And for the first time ever, the Democratic Party included the repeal of Hyde as a plank in its party platform at the convention in July. We're making progress, and now is the time to capitalize on it. I hope you'll join us, and I thank you for all you do for reproductive freedom.  Ilyse Hogue President, NARAL Pro-Choice America 
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The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would be an enormous giveaway to corporations – and its fate is being decided right now.
That’s why we’ve joined forces with dozens of organizations across the spectrum to make TODAY a nationwide Stop TPP Call-In Day – and get every member of Congress’s phones ringing off the hook.
The TPP’s backers know the deal has become massively unpopular as Americans learn more about it.
Elected officials are realizing they cannot be for the TPP and then face the voters at the ballot box.
That’s why both major parties’ presidential nominees oppose the TPP,
along with a majority of House Democrats and a solid bloc of House
Republicans.
But the corporations pushing the TPP think
they have a trump card: Their last hope is to schedule a vote during the
“lame duck” period after Election Day – when elected officials'
accountability to their constituents is at its absolute lowest.
But we’ve got a plan of our own: Push every member of Congress to make a public statement before Election Day that they will oppose a lame duck vote for the TPP.
If we can get a majority of the House of Representatives to publicly oppose the TPP now, we’ll derail this disastrous deal.
Thank you,
Kate Kizer
Campaigner
Demand Progress
Campaigner
Demand Progress
P.S. After you call, forward this email to your friends and family so we can really get Congress’s phones ringing off the hook!
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From Amy Goodman at "Democracy Now!"--Please help!
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From http://xkcd.com/, 9/12/16
(go click through for yourself!)
Mouseover: [After setting your car on fire] Listen, your car's temperature has changed before.
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Democracy Now!
Stories |
As the much-anticipated movie Snowden,
about one of the most wanted men in the world, hits theaters, we spend
the hour with its director, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Oliver ... Read More →
|
The release of Oliver Stone's film Snowden
comes amid a stepped-up campaign by the ACLU, Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International for President Obama to pardon Edward ... Read More →
|
On the release of Oliver Stone's new film, Snowden,
we speak with WikiLeaks editor Sarah Harrison, who accompanied NSA
whistleblower Edward Snowden on his flight from Hong Kong ... Read More →
|
Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has said Edward Snowden "stole
very important information that has unfortunately fallen into a lot of
the wrong hands." We get ... Read More →
|
Stories |
This
was supposed to be the second week of classes at Long Island
University's campus in Brooklyn, but the administration barred all 400
members of the faculty union from its Brooklyn ... Read More →
|
We speak with Chase Strangio, lawyer for imprisoned Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, about the hunger strike she launched Friday to protest her prison conditions. In a statement, ... Read More →
|
This week marks the 15th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks. They were followed within three days by a nearly unanimous vote in Congress to approve the Authorization for ... Read More →
|
Rep. Barbara Lee on Hillary Clinton's Health: Transparency is Important, But We Need to Move Forward
As
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says she'll release
more medical records related to her bout with pneumonia and dehydration,
Congressmember Barbara Lee ... Read More →
|
North Carolina Sees Economic Fallout from Anti-LGBT Law as NCAA Moves Championships Out of the State
The
NCAA has announced it will move its seven championship events out of
North Carolina in response to the state's decision to pass the anti-LGBT
law known as HB 2, or the "bathroom bill." ... Read More →
|
As
many as 20 transgender women have been killed so far this year,
including 28-year-old Rae'Lynn Thomas, a black transgender woman who was
fatally shot by her mother's ex- ... Read More →
|
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Daily Kos
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...and the concern trolls know it!
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AlterNet
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At the Values Voter Summit,
Matt Bevin,
...He's calling
for Republicans to go to war
against HILLARY
...NO JOKE!!!
And that, Friends, is a perfect example
of REPUBLICAN "values"
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Movies!
MUST WATCH!!!!! Samantha Bee: Calling a liar a liar isn't an opinion if you can prove it! Sam Bee SOOOOO nails it! Worth watching even if only for the funny--one amazing one-liner after another. But don't just watch it for the funny--watch it for the facts. You'll get more facts in this 5-minute clip of Sam Bee than you will in 24 hours of corporate "news" media!
And now...a Mr. Deity "fun bit" from 2010--Mister D talks to Conan
Sorry, loves--that's all I had time for this time.
'Til next time, check out these great channels:
...or, if you just want something mindless and fun, try Tested
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Stick a fork in me...I'm DONE!
See ya next time!
Stick a fork in me...I'm DONE!
See ya next time!
posted by Dot Calm @ 8:46 PM
