The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: No smocking guns. - Page 885 - Politics and Economics

Yes I think a lot of people have a very hard time with this. It's like accepting that your parents aren't perfect or that there is no God and all that religion stuff you were taught as a kid is a total lie. We were also taught that The Constitution was basically handed down from God to Thomas Jefferson and contains every solution to every problem and could essentially be an appendix in The Bible. But Comey isn't playing straight, the intelligence committees aren't playing straight, the Attorney General is lying to us, and elections are being stolen--before Russian collusion it was through gerrymandering and voter suppression. We have to fight back but in order to fight these things we have to recognize that there is a problem in the first place. Apathy is not the answer. More people voting and being involved in our democracy is the answer.

The Electoral College, the redistricting process itself, the voting process (voter suppression), they're all broken. Either broken by Republicans weaponizing flaws in the system or just broken by the fact that they don't match up with today's modern world. But broken and if we don't fix these problems, we'll be attacked like this again. Russia attacks where we are weak--if the Electoral College didn't exist, for example, they never would have been able to push Trump over the top.

One interesting little footnote. Trump was calling the November elections "rigged" all through 2016. He often has a tendency to project his own nefarious intentions or designs onto his opponents.

I don't have any issues calling an election rigged. The stuff the Russians did, i.e. Dumping unflattering oppo, wasn't rigging. I consider the voting restrictions passed by Republicans to be election rigging, for instance.

03-27-2017 , 11:07 AM

#22102

Money2Burn

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Quote:

Originally Posted by einbert

Working with a hostile foreign power to steal an election is corruption. That's like, about as pure an example of corruption as you can get. Stealing money is one thing, but this is corruption amped up to the highest power. The kind of corruption that if it goes unchecked gets you somebody like Putin in power who can completely subvert "democracy" and get rid of all our precious checks and balances.

I agree!

03-27-2017 , 11:08 AM

#22103

einbert

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How the 2000 Election in Florida Led to a New Wave of Voter Disenfranchisement
https://www.thenation.com/article/ho...franchisement/

Quote:

n November 7, 2000, Willie Steen, a Navy vet who had served in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm, went to cast his ballot for president at the St. Francis Episcopal Church in Tampa, Florida.

He brought his 10-year-old son, Willie Jr., to the polls for the first time. They waited a half hour to reach a poll worker. When Steen gave the poll worker his name, she searched a list of registered voters in the precinct and told him, “You can’t vote. You’re a convicted felon.”

“You must be mistaken,” a shocked Steen replied. “I’ve never been arrested in my life.” He worked at a hospital, a Tampa orthopedics center, that wouldn’t employ anyone with a felony conviction.

The poll worker gave him a number to call at the board of elections, but no one picked up. The 75 people behind him in line grew antsy. Few would look him in the eye.

He left in embarrassment, struggling to explain to his son what had just happened. After fighting for his country abroad, he wasn’t able to exercise his most fundamental right at home. “I felt I was shafted,” Steen said. “I think there were a lot of things that weren’t done properly. My name was dragged through the mud.”

He later found out from journalist Greg Palast that he’d been confused with a convict named Willie O’Steen, who had committed a felony between 1991 and 1993, when Steen was in the Persian Gulf. Little did Steen know that the same thing was happening to voters across the state of Florida—and disproportionately to voters like him, who were African-American.

Before the election, Florida sent its county election supervisors a list of 58,000 alleged felons to purge from the voting rolls. Florida was one of eight states that prevented ex-felons from voting. The felon-disenfranchisement law dated back to 1868, when the state banned anyone with a felony conviction from voting unless the governor issued a pardon. The law targeted newly emancipated African-Americans, who during slavery were far more likely to be arrested than whites, including for such offenses as looking at a white woman. This racially discriminatory policy was still on the books in 2000. Blacks made up only 11 percent of registered voters in the state, but 44 percent of those on the purge list, which turned out to be littered with errors.

Hanging chads, butterfly ballots, the antics of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and thousands of Jews accidentally voting for Pat Buchanan in Palm Beach were among the stories that captured the headlines during the chaotic 36-day Florida recount between Al Gore and George W. Bush. The widespread and wrongful purging of registered voters was the most consequential—and least discussed—aspect of the Florida election.

“The parties and the candidates did not want to focus on the racial impact of decisions that were made in Florida,” said civil-rights lawyer Judith Browne Dianis. “It was one of those moments when race was being swept under the rug.”

The NAACP sued Florida after the election for violating the Voting Rights Act (VRA). As a result of the settlement, the company that the Florida legislature entrusted with the purge—the Boca Raton–based Database Technologies (DBT)—ran the names on its 2000 purge list using stricter criteria. The exercise turned up 12,000 voters who shouldn’t have been labeled felons. That was 22 times Bush’s 537-vote margin of victory.

No one could ever determine precisely how many voters who were incorrectly labeled felons were turned away from the polls. But the US Civil Rights Commission launched a major investigation into the 2000 election fiasco, and its acting general counsel, Edward Hailes, did the math the best that he could. If 12,000 voters were wrongly purged from the rolls, and 44 percent of them were African-American, and 90 percent of African-Americans voted for Gore, that meant 4,752 black Gore voters—almost nine times Bush’s margin of victory—could have been prevented from voting. It’s not a stretch to conclude that the purge cost Gore the election. “We did think it was outcome-determinative,” Hailes said.

The 2000 election in Florida forever changed American politics and kicked off a new wave of GOP-led voter disenfranchisement efforts. “Other people began to see that in very competitive elections, you could make a difference by keeping certain voters from participating,” Hailes said. Bush’s election empowered a new generation of voting-rights critics, who hyped the threat of voter fraud in order to restrict access to the ballot, and remade a Supreme Court that would eventually gut the centerpiece of the VRA.

[...]

03-27-2017 , 11:10 AM

#22104

fatkid

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Lulz

03-27-2017 , 11:10 AM

#22105

einbert

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Money2Burn

Active measures taken by the Russians is one thing. That's what we have sanctions for. But if the Trump campaign worked with the Russians to either collude on the hacking, the dissemination of the e-mails, or a quid pro quo (we know Trump publicly called for Russia to hack Hillary's emails many times!) that's still treason in my book. We need a real investigation to get to the bottom of this, and that cannot be led by Devin Nunes.

03-27-2017 , 11:11 AM

#22106

microbet

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Clinton/Gore had a program called "Reinventing Government" where they sent out a bunch of MBAs slathered in hubris to make change in every department.

Kushner though isn't looking to turn government into business. He's just looking to deregulate and steal.

03-27-2017 , 11:12 AM

#22107

einbert

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Anyway, we should definitely take the result of the failed RepubliCare "health plan" as a template for how to resist going forward. Phone calls, protests, town halls, focusing on these issues that really impact working class and middle class families. We need to be pushing for Universal Health Care, and Democrats should start pushing a bill for a $15 minimum wage immediately. And then we need to get to work marketing those policies to everyone and explaining exactly why they will help a middle class family making $100,000 a year living in Ohio for example.

03-27-2017 , 11:15 AM

#22108

einbert

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My question is, why aren't Dems on the committee calling for this guy to step down? What a joke. He is making a mockery of our precious bipartisan Intel Committee. This is not a trivial thing.

https://twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/846363700344901632

03-27-2017 , 11:16 AM

#22109

Riverman

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Real Estate development is super risky and highly dependent on economic conditions. Getting a company off the ground is hard and takes time. However, once scale is achieved it is much easier to maintain than build, provided you have some discipline. Trump has none, and he went busto multiple times. He avoided BK only because his banks didn't want to recognize losses and bailed him out.

03-27-2017 , 11:17 AM

#22110

dinopoker

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Quote:

When the balky hardliners of the House Freedom Caucus visited the White House earlier this week, this was Steve Bannon's opening line, according to people in the conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building:

Guys, look. This is not a discussion. This is not a debate. You have no choice but to vote for this bill.

One of the members replied:*"You know, the last time someone ordered me to something, I was 18 years old. And it was my daddy. And I didn't listen to him, either."

Oh please let this be true.

03-27-2017 , 11:20 AM

#22111

TheHip41

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the 2000 election was stolen by Jeb Bush and Co.

03-27-2017 , 11:22 AM

#22112

einbert

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Oh for anyone who missed it.

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/846166137939341313

Quote:

Originally Posted by Washington Post

Ryan got down on a knee to plead with Rep. Don Young, an 83-year-old from Alaska who is the longest-serving Republican in Congress and remains undecided.

03-27-2017 , 11:23 AM

#22113

raradevils

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Riverman

Real Estate development is super risky and highly dependent on economic conditions. Getting a company off the ground is hard and takes time. However, once scale is achieved it is much easier to maintain than build, provided you have some discipline. Trump has none, and he went busto multiple times. He avoided BK only because his banks didn't want to recognize losses and bailed him out.

He avoided BK because he owed the banks too much money. It was in their interest to make him solvent.

03-27-2017 , 11:25 AM

#22114

Trolly McTrollson

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Quote:

Originally Posted by fatkid

Lulz

This isn't even true, FWIW. He went golfing on Saturday and Sunday.

03-27-2017 , 11:25 AM

#22115

Max Cut

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Quote:

Originally Posted by dinopoker

Oh please let this be true.

speaking of HFC...

Quote:

Rep. Ted Poe announced Sunday he has resigned from the conservative House Freedom Caucus over its opposition to the Republican health care plan, becoming the group's first public casualty in the fall-out over its role in defeating the bill.

www.cnn.com/2017/03/26/politics/poe-resigns-freedom-caucus/

---

^^ For News is bad for America.

03-27-2017 , 11:27 AM

#22116

einbert

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Quote:

Originally Posted by raradevils

He avoided BK because he owed the banks too much money. It was in their interest to make him solvent.

So basically scamming people just makes Trump smart, right? Well he's about to be the smartest person in the country on that scale lol.

03-27-2017 , 11:33 AM

#22117

Lestat

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Quote:

Originally Posted by einbert

I feel the only benefit the Russian investigation could possible turn up [that would directly hurt Trump] is if they unearthed him being blackmailed or having shady business deals that prevents him from objectively dealing with a hostile Russian government.

Otherwise, it's a near certainty that any generic collusion will be pinned on campaign staff members who will serve as the fall guys and Trump will emerge unscathed making it even more difficult to nail him on the much more impeachable emolument clauses that he continues to break every day.

03-27-2017 , 11:35 AM

#22118

einbert

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In case you missed it:
Anti-corruption protests in 80 cities across Russia on Sunday.

https://twitter.com/_mustaphaitani/s...35146235170816

03-27-2017 , 11:36 AM

#22119

einbert

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Lestat

Well I think the Emolument issue is very serious and there needs to be an independent investigation into all of that right now as well. And again, i don't think Devin Nunes is impartial enough to lead such an investigation.

03-27-2017 , 11:36 AM

#22120

raradevils

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Quote:

Originally Posted by einbert

So basically scamming people just makes Trump smart, right? Well he's about to be the smartest person in the country on that scale lol.

if you say so. The time he was close to going BK is when the real estate market took a turn for the worst.

03-27-2017 , 11:39 AM

#22121

einbert

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Quote:

Originally Posted by raradevils

if you say so.

Don't just take my word for it.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...e-constitution

Quote:

Since the moment President Donald Trump finished his oath of office on Friday, some ethics experts argue he’s been violating the Constitution.

The breach stems from the massive conflicts of interest between his presidency and his business empire. Trump has a huge stake in a real estate holding underwritten with a loan from the Chinese government. He has tens of millions of dollars riding on building projects in Saudi Arabia. Foreign diplomats have already admitted to spending money at his hotels to curry favor with the president.

Trump has said that the president is exempted from the federal conflict-of-interest regulations that usually bind elected officials — and he’s right about that.

But that answer misses another big barrier presented by Trump’s clinging to a sprawling business empire: that it will directly violate the Constitution, which says no elected official can take an “emolument” of “any kind whatever” from a king, prince, or foreign state. The restriction, known as the emoluments clause, is intended to prevent political officials from receiving gifts from foreign governments.

He's scamming you and all the other taxpayers, but you don't care because you think that makes him smart, isn't that right?

03-27-2017 , 11:41 AM

#22122

einbert

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In other words, all that right-wing talk about being so concerned about fraud and corruption regarding various issues, it was always just complete and utter bull****. They don't care about any of that stuff. They believe in the power of lies. They believe lies get things done. They believe that lies are the currency the world runs on, and it's not about whether you lie but whether you lie better than the next guy. That's their worldview, that's their universe, and liberals need to understand that and get real if they want to compete.

03-27-2017 , 11:46 AM

#22123

Lestat

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Quote:

Originally Posted by einbert

Universal Healthcare - check.

$15 minimum wage - Sounds good. But there had better be checks and balances in place first, to make sure it's coming out of greedy corporate profits and not consumers pockets. Simply raising the minimum wage to $15/hr. doesn't solve anything otherwise.

I also think what's even more important than a minimum wage increase is not allowing companies to put employees on a p/t schedule in order to avoid having to pay healthcare and other benefits. So make sure that's ironed out first as well. Otherwise, raising minimum wage is putting the cart before the horse imo and I'm not at all convinced it should be a first priority.

03-27-2017 , 11:55 AM

#22124

einbert

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That makes sense. We should be as smart as we can about this because we can afford to take our time and be surgical about what exactly are the best priorities. Maybe fixing public education and finding a way to bring down costs for public University should take priority over $15/hr minimum wage. That's what people really need in the long run.

03-27-2017 , 11:57 AM

#22125

Huehuecoyotl

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Too bad Ikestoys isn't here. Here's Rand Paul's "principled opposition" the Civil Rights Act in context

Quote:

Williamson does feel obliged to mention Barry Goldwater’s opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but defends it as a “principled” opposition to the “extension of federal power.” At the same time, he savages southern Democrats for their opposition to the 14th and 15th Amendments, Reconstruction, anti-lynching laws, and so on. It does not seem to occur to him that many of these opponents also presented their case in exactly the same pro-states’ rights, anti-federal power terms that Goldwater employed. Williamson is willing to concede that opponents of civil rights laws have philosophical principles behind them, but only if they are Republican. (Perhaps is the process by which figures like Thurmond and Jesse Helms were cleansed of their racism and became mere ideological opponents of federal intrusion.)

....

But conservative Republicans — those represented politically by Goldwater, and intellectually by William F. Buckley and National Review — did oppose the civil rights movement. Buckley wrote frankly about his endorsement of white supremacy: “the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically.” More often conservatives argued on grounds of states’ rights, or freedom of property, or that civil rights leaders were annoying hypocrites, or that they had undermined respect for the law.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...il-rights.html

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