US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5057

On September 21 2016 00:04 Incognoto wrote:
Honestly, if I had to compare disgraceful riots with something as trivial as saying "I pledge allegiance to the group of people with whom I share common values and live with every day", I'd say I'd rather say good morning to the damn flag every day. That's what patriotism is, it's not as empty as people (read Europeans mostly) make it out to be.

On September 21 2016 00:04 Incognoto wrote:
Pledging allegiance to a flag every morning does not mean that you're condoning drone strikes in the Middle East, unlike what some people will insinuate.

On September 21 2016 00:26 Incognoto wrote:


I'd be a hypocrite to say that pledging allegiance to a flag should be compulsory or that you shouldn't criticize the USA. The black athletes in question have their reasons and I'm not going to say nay to what they're doing (not informed enough on whatever issue they have either way).

What gets me ticked is conceited Europeans looking down on American patriotism, assuming that it's automatically bad and comparable to fascism. I think a little reality check is needed there.

Could we argue that the United States foreign policy is a mess? Sure we could debate on that.

Could we argue that media outlets in the USA are presenting a one-side of the issue only? Sure we could talk about that (though I don't necessarily think it's entirely one-sided).

Could we argue that an American displaying patriotism is barbaric, fascist, gun-shooting brainwashing? Is any patriotism whatsoever bad? I think that's a more than a bit of a stretch; it's also conceited and haughty. I know that Europeans are quickly abandoning any form of national pride (because of Nazi German history? maybe) and I'm not thinking that that's a good thing.

It's fine to be a patriot as long as you're able to evaluate the society or country you're in and say "yeah, this is a good place for me to be in". To be quite frank, if I'm living in Europe or in the United States, I think I can say that.

Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses, according to interviews and a review of legal documents.

Those cases, which together used $258,000 from Trump’s charity, were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against “self-dealing” — which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses.
In one case, from 2007, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club faced $120,000 in unpaid fines from the town of Palm Beach, Fla., resulting from a dispute over the size of a flagpole.

In a settlement, Palm Beach agreed to waive those fines — if Trump’s club made a $100,000 donation to a specific charity for veterans. Instead, Trump sent a check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a charity funded almost entirely by other people’s money, according to tax records.

In another case, court papers say one of Trump’s golf courses in New York agreed to settle a lawsuit by making a donation to the plaintiff’s chosen charity. A $158,000 donation was made by the Trump Foundation, according to tax records.

The other expenditures involved smaller amounts. In 2013, Trump used $5,000 from the foundation to buy advertisements touting his chain of hotels in programs for three events organized by a D.C. preservation group. And in 2014, Trump spent $10,000 of the foundation’s money for a portrait of himself bought at a charity fundraiser.

Or, rather, another portrait of himself.

Several years earlier, Trump had used $20,000 from the Trump Foundation to buy a different, six foot-tall portrait.

If the Internal Revenue Service were to find that Trump violated self-dealing rules, the agency could require him to pay penalty taxes or to reimburse the foundation for all the money it spent on his behalf. Trump is also facing scrutiny from the office of the New York attorney general, which is examining whether the foundation broke state charity laws.

More broadly, these cases also provide new evidence that Trump ran his charity in a way that may have violated U.S. tax law and gone against the moral conventions of philanthropy.

“I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I’ve never encountered anything so brazen,” said Jeffrey Tenenbaum, who advises charities at the Venable law firm in Washington. After The Post described the details of these Trump Foundation gifts, Tenenbaum described them as “really shocking.”

“If he’s using other people’s money — run through his foundation — to satisfy his personal obligations, then that’s about as blatant an example of self-dealing [as] I’ve seen in a while,” Tenenbaum said.

The Post sent the Trump campaign a detailed list of questions about the four cases, but received no response.

The New York attorney general’s office declined to comment when asked whether its inquiry would cover these new cases of possible self-dealing.

Trump founded his charity in 1987 and, for years, was its only donor. But in 2006, Trump gave away almost all of the money he had donated to the foundation, leaving it with just $4,238 at year’s end, according to tax records.

Then, he transformed the Trump Foundation into something rarely seen in the world of philanthropy: a name-branded foundation, whose namesake provides none of its money. Trump gave relatively small donations in 2007 and 2008, and afterward: nothing. The foundation’s tax records show no donations from Trump since 2009.

Its money has come from other donors, most notably pro-wrestling executives Vince and Linda McMahon, who gave a total of $5 million from 2007 to 2009, tax records show. Trump remains the foundation’s president, and he told the IRS in his latest public filings that he works half an hour per week on the charity.

The Post has previously detailed other cases in which Trump used the charity’s money in a way that appeared to violate the law.

In 2013, for instance, the foundation gave $25,000 to a political group supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R). That gift was made around the same time that Bondi’s office was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. It didn’t.


Tax laws say nonprofits such as the Trump Foundation may not make political gifts. Trump staffers blamed the gift on a clerical error. After The Post reported on the gift to Bondi’s group this spring, Trump paid a $2,500 penalty tax and reimbursed the Trump Foundation for the $25,000 donation.

In other instances, it appeared that Trump may have violated rules against self-dealing.

In 2012, for instance, Trump spent $12,000 of the foundation’s money to buy a football helmet signed by NFL quarterback Tim Tebow.

And in 2007, Trump’s wife, Melania, bid $20,000 for the six-foot-tall portrait of Trump, done by a “speed painter” during a charity gala at Mar-a-Lago. Later, Trump paid for the painting with $20,000 from the foundation.

In those cases, tax experts said, Trump was not allowed to simply keep these items and display them in a home or business. They had to be put to a charitable use.

Trump’s campaign has not responded to questions about what became of the helmet or the portrait.

After the settlement, Trump put a slightly smaller flag farther from the road and mounted it on a 70-foot pole as pictured in this Nov. 1, 2015 photo. (Rosalind Helderman/The Washington Post)
The four new cases of possible self-dealing were discovered in the Trump Foundation’s tax filings. While Trump has refused to release his personal tax returns, the foundation’s filings are required to be public.

The case involving the flagpole at Trump’s oceanfront Mar-a-Lago Club began in 2006, when the club put up a giant American flag on the 80-foot pole. Town rules said flagpoles should be 42 feet high at most. Trump’s contention, according to news reports, was: “You don’t need a permit to put up the American flag.”

The town began to fine Trump, $1,250 a day.

Trump’s club sued in federal court, saying that a smaller flag “would fail to appropriately express the magnitude of Donald J. Trump’s . . . patriotism.”

They settled.

The town waived the $120,000 in fines. In September 2007, Trump wrote the town a letter, saying he had done his part as well.

“I have sent a check for $100,000 to Fisher House,” he wrote. The town had chosen Fisher House, which runs a network of comfort homes for the families of veterans and military personnel receiving medical treatment, as the recipient of the money. Trump added that, for good measure, “I have sent a check for $25,000” to another charity, the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial.


Trump provided the town with copies of the checks, which show that they came from the Trump Foundation.

In the town of Palm Beach, nobody seems to have objected that the fines assessed on Trump’s business were being erased by a donation from a charity.

“I don’t know that there was any attention paid to that at the time. We just saw two checks signed by Donald J. Trump,” said John Randolph, the Palm Beach town attorney. “I’m sure we were satisfied with it.”

In the other case in which a Trump Foundation payment seemed to help settle a legal dispute, the trouble began with a hole-in-one.

In 2010, a man named Martin Greenberg hit a hole-in-one on the 13th hole while playing in a charity tournament at Trump’s course in Westchester County, N.Y.

Greenberg won a $1 million prize. Briefly.

Later, Greenberg was told that he had won nothing. The prize’s rules required that the shot had to go 150 yards. But Trump’s course had allegedly made the hole too short.

Greenberg sued.

Eventually, court papers show, Trump’s golf course signed off on a settlement that required it to make a donation of Martin Greenberg’s choosing. Then, on the day that the parties informed the court they had settled their case, a $158,000 donation was sent to the Martin Greenberg Foundation.

That money came from the Trump Foundation, according to the tax filings of both Trump’s and Greenberg’s foundations.

Greenberg’s foundation reported getting nothing that year from Trump personally or from his golf club.

Both Greenberg and Trump have declined to comment.

Several tax experts said that the two cases appeared to be clear cases of self-dealing, as defined by the tax code.

The Trump Foundation had made a donation, it seemed, so that a Trump business did not have to.

Rosemary E. Fei, a lawyer in San Francisco who advises nonprofits, said both cases clearly fit the definition of self-dealing.

“Yes, Trump pledged as part of the settlement to make a payment to a charity, and yes, the foundation is writing a check to a charity,” Fei said. “But the obligation was Trump’s. And you can’t have charitable foundation paying off Trump’s personal obligations. That would be classic self-dealing.”

On September 21 2016 00:55 Plansix wrote:


Source

Hmmmm nothing like good old fashion fraud, tax evasion and general law breaking. I am sure Trump will be very mad at the Post outing his little scam letting him spend other people’s money on settling his legal disputes.

On September 21 2016 00:04 Incognoto wrote:

You can say it's fascism if you want, my interpretation is that I'm living in a country which protects fundamentally important values. A country is basically a group of people living together with common values, they will work together to protect those values. Shit on the USA all you want (and for sure, there are lots of good reasons to criticize the USA), it's still a far cry better than China, Russia, African countries, etc. You think pledging to the flag every morning is fascism? Quite rich coming from someone who has never lived in an actual fascist regime to begin with..

Compare it to France where everyone hates the French, including the French themselves, everyone here is just looking out for number 1.

Never mind history, never mind the soldiers who died in the World Wars, never mind that France has done immense work in the area of social equality. People in France aren't going to thank France (generic term regrouping all French people working together to protect national interests) for what it's done for them, they're going to spit at France's face for not giving them enough welfare. http://anonhq.com/violent-protests-labor-strikes-halt-france-hollande-attempts-slay-workers-rights-investigative/

Pledging allegiance to a flag every morning does not mean that you're condoning drone strikes in the Middle East, unlike what some people will insinuate.

On September 21 2016 00:28 Plansix wrote:
Requiring the pledge of allegiance in schools discourages the healthy self loathing other populations have for their own nation. It encourages people to assume America values are great, regardless of merit. Rather than the much more realistic view that our country is flawed beyond reason, but it’s our home and we should strive to make it better.

Requiring it is like requiring everyone to stand during the national anthem. Or the US military paying the NFL for pro-patriotic advertising(you know, propaganda) during games, and then everyone getting really upset when one player did not stand.

On September 21 2016 01:29 IgnE wrote:


plansix is here to remind everyone that they need a "healthy self-loathing". wat?