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On January 13 2017 00:47 TheTenthDoc wrote:It will be interesting to see how Trump leverages his unique tactical position of 1) having heavily nebulous policies and 2) having no compunction whatsoever about bashing Congressional Republicans. GDP doesn't push 6%? Either he'll say the numbers are fake (likely) or Congressional Republicans and Paul Ryan didn't pass his stupendous plan so it's their fault (also likely). (also, we've got a likely name for the ex-MI6 agent; looks like /pol/ definitely trolled themselves: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38591382)
It is much likely that both will occur to the confusion of us all.
"Obviously a fake, but if its not, its Congress' fault!"
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On January 13 2017 01:02 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 00:47 TheTenthDoc wrote:It will be interesting to see how Trump leverages his unique tactical position of 1) having heavily nebulous policies and 2) having no compunction whatsoever about bashing Congressional Republicans. GDP doesn't push 6%? Either he'll say the numbers are fake (likely) or Congressional Republicans and Paul Ryan didn't pass his stupendous plan so it's their fault (also likely). (also, we've got a likely name for the ex-MI6 agent; looks like /pol/ definitely trolled themselves: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38591382) It is much likely that both will occur to the confusion of us all. "Obviously a fake, but if its not, its Congress' fault!"
Populists in other countries have been known to use red herrings, deflections, and smoke and mirrors to create the illusion that they're doing great. The aim is to muddy the waters of truth - it's a media driven strategy of maintaining office. The initial promises are just too unrealistic to keep.
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On January 12 2017 23:15 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 08:27 oBlade wrote:On January 12 2017 08:07 Biff The Understudy wrote:On January 12 2017 07:51 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:fivethirtyeight seems to have a good summary of the problem. One of the most interesting moments in Donald Trump’s news conference Wednesday came when Trump wasn’t even on the podium: Sheri Dillon, one of Trump’s lawyers, spent several minutes explaining why Trump couldn’t realistically put his assets in a blind trust, as many ethics watchdogs have demanded.
Dillon’s argument was complex, and she may very well be right. But that doesn’t mean concerns about Trump’s conflicts of interest are invalid.
The words “blind trust” have been thrown around a lot in recent weeks, but it’s worth explaining what that phrase really means. True blind trusts aim to shield politicians or other public figures from conflicts of interest (real or perceived) by ensuring that they have no control over their assets, or even know what those assets are.
A typical case works like this: Hypothetical Sen. Jane Johnson owns $2 million in stock in the tech company where she used to be an executive and an additional $3 million in stocks, bonds and other investments. She transfers her assets into a blind trust, overseen by an independent trustee. That trustee then sells the existing holdings (either all at once or over time) so that when Johnson has to vote on a bill affecting the tech industry — or even affecting her old company — she doesn’t know whether that vote could affect her personal finances.
But Trump’s situation is far from typical. Most of his wealth isn’t held in stocks or bonds that can be easily sold; it’s in a company that he owns and operates, it’s in buildings and golf courses around the world, and it’s in his personal brand (and the licensing deals based on it). Simply transferring his assets to a blind trust wouldn’t accomplish much as long as the company remained in business. “President Trump can’t un-know he owns Trump Tower,” Dillon said Wednesday.
To put his assets in a true blind trust, Trump would need to liquidate his assets by selling the company and its holdings, stripping his name off his hotels and resorts, and canceling his licensing deals. Dillon on Wednesday argued that such a plan would be impractical if not impossible. Some of her reasons boiled down to one: It would cost Trump a lot of money. She argued, for example, that if Trump sold his assets without retaining the rights to his brand, he would “greatly diminish the value of the assets and create a fire sale.” In other words, she said, the assets would be worth far less without Trump’s name on them.
But there are practical hurdles to a true blind trust even if you aren’t worried about Trump’s personal net worth. The process of selling his assets would take time, perhaps years. And because the sales would undoubtedly make headlines, Trump could easily keep track of what he still owned and what he didn’t, meaning that even then the trust wouldn’t be truly “blind.” (It would also create the strange situation of having a business named after the president of the United States but not controlled by him.)
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-one-has-a-good-plan-to-get-rid-of-trumps-conflicts-including-trump/ That being said, another really simple solution to prevent conflict of interest is simply not to elect a billionaire or anyone obscenely rich, and... Oh wait. I'm jocking but I'm serious. The idea that having made a shitton of money qualifies you for office is typically american and bat shit crazy. It's not limited to Trump, but i always cringe when i hear people complain about the porosity between politics and bug money. Hey, what about not voting for millionaires and even less for billionaires if you don't want your country to be a ploutocracy? Your US bashing aside, where there should be a difference is that wealth per se isn't a bad thing if you drop the revolutionary undertones. What we don't want is people using public office to enrich themselves and entangling policy with their own greed. There's an argument to be made that people who are independently comfortable are if anything in a position to be less susceptible to that. Well what you want is someone who works for the public good and in the interest of everyone. I don't think it's too marxist to say that if your lifegoal has been to make an obscene amount of money for yourself, it's unlikely your vision of a good society is based on the common good. Also one of the great challenges of our time is inequalities. Not sure billionaires are really good at tackling those. In general, i believe that the super rich should be kept as far as possible away from politics, simply because their interest and the interest of the majority (working class and middle class) don't align at all. The closest to Trump i can think of in recent time is Berlusconi. On top of being one of the most embarassing time in Italian history, his time as PM has been one giant conflict of interest.
You realise that the life goal of most super rich isn't to make an obscene amount of money for themselves right? You're just projecting what you think is their motivation on them.
For every Berlusconi there's a Bloomberg. Wealth as a single factor is a poor predictor of how competent someone is regarding politics.
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Take a look at Trump's history - he LOVES money and ALWAYS wants more of it.
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On January 13 2017 02:00 Doodsmack wrote:
Take a look at Trump's history - he LOVES money and ALWAYS wants more of it.
Lets just get to brass tacks about this; how much money one has is absolutely meaningless when it comes to being a leader.
The reason we don't want personal interests in the leader's decision making is to protect the market from being skewed by governmental meddling. Its not some moral stance, its not some personality test. Its the need for us to ensure that things that affect the market are objective and helps as many people within the market as possible.
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Money was a cornerstone of Trump's allure. Talking about how he was using his own money for his campaign so he wouldn't be indebted to special interests. It's pretty much what "drain the swamp" was built on. A lot of people bought into that and admired him for it. It has sure come back to bite him in the ass though ever since his cabinet picks and his conflicts of interest became a greater issue of focus.
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On January 13 2017 02:33 Tachion wrote:
Money was a cornerstone of Trump's allure. Talking about how he was using his own money for his campaign so he wouldn't be indebted to special interests. It's pretty much what "drain the swamp" was built on. A lot of people bought into that and admired him for it. It has sure come back to bite him in the ass though ever since his cabinet picks and his conflicts of interest became a greater issue of focus.
Well, buying into the actual swamp saying "drain the swamp" was pretty stupid in any case. It was clear from the beginning that Trump was perhaps a different swamp to the usual stuff in Washington, but at least as putrid and gassy (to perhaps draw the analogy slightly further than it should be).
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So the Senate laid the groundwork for a practically complete, filibuster-proof repeal of Obamacare in the House.....through voting that took place during the dead of night. Must have been a popular move, ehh?
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On January 13 2017 02:46 farvacola wrote:
So the Senate laid the groundwork for a practically complete, filibuster-proof repeal of Obamacare in the House.....through voting that took place during the dead of night. Must have been a popular move, ehh?
what makes it the dead of night? I hadn't followed the daily happenings.
the house sometimes works until very late.
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On January 12 2017 23:15 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 08:27 oBlade wrote:On January 12 2017 08:07 Biff The Understudy wrote:On January 12 2017 07:51 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:fivethirtyeight seems to have a good summary of the problem. One of the most interesting moments in Donald Trump’s news conference Wednesday came when Trump wasn’t even on the podium: Sheri Dillon, one of Trump’s lawyers, spent several minutes explaining why Trump couldn’t realistically put his assets in a blind trust, as many ethics watchdogs have demanded.
Dillon’s argument was complex, and she may very well be right. But that doesn’t mean concerns about Trump’s conflicts of interest are invalid.
The words “blind trust” have been thrown around a lot in recent weeks, but it’s worth explaining what that phrase really means. True blind trusts aim to shield politicians or other public figures from conflicts of interest (real or perceived) by ensuring that they have no control over their assets, or even know what those assets are.
A typical case works like this: Hypothetical Sen. Jane Johnson owns $2 million in stock in the tech company where she used to be an executive and an additional $3 million in stocks, bonds and other investments. She transfers her assets into a blind trust, overseen by an independent trustee. That trustee then sells the existing holdings (either all at once or over time) so that when Johnson has to vote on a bill affecting the tech industry — or even affecting her old company — she doesn’t know whether that vote could affect her personal finances.
But Trump’s situation is far from typical. Most of his wealth isn’t held in stocks or bonds that can be easily sold; it’s in a company that he owns and operates, it’s in buildings and golf courses around the world, and it’s in his personal brand (and the licensing deals based on it). Simply transferring his assets to a blind trust wouldn’t accomplish much as long as the company remained in business. “President Trump can’t un-know he owns Trump Tower,” Dillon said Wednesday.
To put his assets in a true blind trust, Trump would need to liquidate his assets by selling the company and its holdings, stripping his name off his hotels and resorts, and canceling his licensing deals. Dillon on Wednesday argued that such a plan would be impractical if not impossible. Some of her reasons boiled down to one: It would cost Trump a lot of money. She argued, for example, that if Trump sold his assets without retaining the rights to his brand, he would “greatly diminish the value of the assets and create a fire sale.” In other words, she said, the assets would be worth far less without Trump’s name on them.
But there are practical hurdles to a true blind trust even if you aren’t worried about Trump’s personal net worth. The process of selling his assets would take time, perhaps years. And because the sales would undoubtedly make headlines, Trump could easily keep track of what he still owned and what he didn’t, meaning that even then the trust wouldn’t be truly “blind.” (It would also create the strange situation of having a business named after the president of the United States but not controlled by him.)
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-one-has-a-good-plan-to-get-rid-of-trumps-conflicts-including-trump/ That being said, another really simple solution to prevent conflict of interest is simply not to elect a billionaire or anyone obscenely rich, and... Oh wait. I'm jocking but I'm serious. The idea that having made a shitton of money qualifies you for office is typically american and bat shit crazy. It's not limited to Trump, but i always cringe when i hear people complain about the porosity between politics and bug money. Hey, what about not voting for millionaires and even less for billionaires if you don't want your country to be a ploutocracy? Your US bashing aside, where there should be a difference is that wealth per se isn't a bad thing if you drop the revolutionary undertones. What we don't want is people using public office to enrich themselves and entangling policy with their own greed. There's an argument to be made that people who are independently comfortable are if anything in a position to be less susceptible to that. Well what you want is someone who works for the public good and in the interest of everyone. I don't think it's too marxist to say that if your lifegoal has been to make an obscene amount of money for yourself, it's unlikely your vision of a good society is based on the common good. Also one of the great challenges of our time is inequalities. Not sure billionaires are really good at tackling those. In general, i believe that the super rich should be kept as far as possible away from politics, simply because their interest and the interest of the majority (working class and middle class) don't align at all. The closest to Trump i can think of in recent time is Berlusconi. On top of being one of the most embarassing time in Italian history, his time as PM has been one giant conflict of interest.
I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the world by conflating wealth with greed and opulence. Controlling capital is a form of power to run the things that let our world turn.
Just because someone has a smaller net worth, it doesn't mean they're proportionally less consumed by avarice, it just means they haven't gotten to the same level, by whatever combination of different priorities, skill, and chance. To wit, people aren't Cincinnatus simply because they're only upper middle class. I get if you don't like Berlusconi or even Trump, but the outlier net worth of one guy who managed to get the highest office doesn't extrapolate broadly. I don't get the sense you've looked through wider politics (I haven't either) because off the top of my head, it would be easy for a lot of especially career politicians, the people who are supposed to be competent experts that we want to perpetuate, to be millionaires. A million dollars isn't that much. Mainly this is chastising success.
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On January 13 2017 02:33 Tachion wrote:
Money was a cornerstone of Trump's allure. Talking about how he was using his own money for his campaign so he wouldn't be indebted to special interests. It's pretty much what "drain the swamp" was built on. A lot of people bought into that and admired him for it. It has sure come back to bite him in the ass though ever since his cabinet picks and his conflicts of interest became a greater issue of focus.
Its the same populist argument both Bernie and Trump spewed and was able to skew weaker minds with.
Trump Says: I'm already rich, so no way can donations hurt me; fuck policy details!
Bernie Says: Who gives donations is WAY more important than policy details!
By skewing their audience to think that policy details was unimportant, they forced a narrative that could only argued on an existential base instinct level. "Who's the bad guy?" "Who's the good guy?" "Fire bad, tree pretty"
Its what populists do, make dumb people feel loved so that they can think that they're thinking. Democrats were smart enough to see past the Bernie bullshit, but conservatives were not able to do that for Trump.
Unfortunately BernieBros were able to mirror the echo chamber of the right and suddenly Hillary was attacked by people from both sides trying to ensure policy and details was considered unimportant in the social network sphere. Compile that with their bad spending strategy the last month of the election and she lost two too many key states.
You could see it in the way Bernie and Trump talked about damn near anything.
Trump: Free Wall! Isolationism! I don't believe in Globalization! Screw Climate Research!
Bernie: Free Everything! Isolationism! I don't believe in Globalization! Screw GMOs!
Everything is always free, other people are always the bad guys, isolationism, protectionism, are all core to both politician's agendas.
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On January 13 2017 02:48 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 23:15 Biff The Understudy wrote:On January 12 2017 08:27 oBlade wrote:On January 12 2017 08:07 Biff The Understudy wrote:On January 12 2017 07:51 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:fivethirtyeight seems to have a good summary of the problem. One of the most interesting moments in Donald Trump’s news conference Wednesday came when Trump wasn’t even on the podium: Sheri Dillon, one of Trump’s lawyers, spent several minutes explaining why Trump couldn’t realistically put his assets in a blind trust, as many ethics watchdogs have demanded.
Dillon’s argument was complex, and she may very well be right. But that doesn’t mean concerns about Trump’s conflicts of interest are invalid.
The words “blind trust” have been thrown around a lot in recent weeks, but it’s worth explaining what that phrase really means. True blind trusts aim to shield politicians or other public figures from conflicts of interest (real or perceived) by ensuring that they have no control over their assets, or even know what those assets are.
A typical case works like this: Hypothetical Sen. Jane Johnson owns $2 million in stock in the tech company where she used to be an executive and an additional $3 million in stocks, bonds and other investments. She transfers her assets into a blind trust, overseen by an independent trustee. That trustee then sells the existing holdings (either all at once or over time) so that when Johnson has to vote on a bill affecting the tech industry — or even affecting her old company — she doesn’t know whether that vote could affect her personal finances.
But Trump’s situation is far from typical. Most of his wealth isn’t held in stocks or bonds that can be easily sold; it’s in a company that he owns and operates, it’s in buildings and golf courses around the world, and it’s in his personal brand (and the licensing deals based on it). Simply transferring his assets to a blind trust wouldn’t accomplish much as long as the company remained in business. “President Trump can’t un-know he owns Trump Tower,” Dillon said Wednesday.
To put his assets in a true blind trust, Trump would need to liquidate his assets by selling the company and its holdings, stripping his name off his hotels and resorts, and canceling his licensing deals. Dillon on Wednesday argued that such a plan would be impractical if not impossible. Some of her reasons boiled down to one: It would cost Trump a lot of money. She argued, for example, that if Trump sold his assets without retaining the rights to his brand, he would “greatly diminish the value of the assets and create a fire sale.” In other words, she said, the assets would be worth far less without Trump’s name on them.
But there are practical hurdles to a true blind trust even if you aren’t worried about Trump’s personal net worth. The process of selling his assets would take time, perhaps years. And because the sales would undoubtedly make headlines, Trump could easily keep track of what he still owned and what he didn’t, meaning that even then the trust wouldn’t be truly “blind.” (It would also create the strange situation of having a business named after the president of the United States but not controlled by him.)
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-one-has-a-good-plan-to-get-rid-of-trumps-conflicts-including-trump/ That being said, another really simple solution to prevent conflict of interest is simply not to elect a billionaire or anyone obscenely rich, and... Oh wait. I'm jocking but I'm serious. The idea that having made a shitton of money qualifies you for office is typically american and bat shit crazy. It's not limited to Trump, but i always cringe when i hear people complain about the porosity between politics and bug money. Hey, what about not voting for millionaires and even less for billionaires if you don't want your country to be a ploutocracy? Your US bashing aside, where there should be a difference is that wealth per se isn't a bad thing if you drop the revolutionary undertones. What we don't want is people using public office to enrich themselves and entangling policy with their own greed. There's an argument to be made that people who are independently comfortable are if anything in a position to be less susceptible to that. Well what you want is someone who works for the public good and in the interest of everyone. I don't think it's too marxist to say that if your lifegoal has been to make an obscene amount of money for yourself, it's unlikely your vision of a good society is based on the common good. Also one of the great challenges of our time is inequalities. Not sure billionaires are really good at tackling those. In general, i believe that the super rich should be kept as far as possible away from politics, simply because their interest and the interest of the majority (working class and middle class) don't align at all. The closest to Trump i can think of in recent time is Berlusconi. On top of being one of the most embarassing time in Italian history, his time as PM has been one giant conflict of interest. I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the world by conflating wealth with greed and opulence. Controlling capital is a form of power to run the things that let our world turn. Just because someone has a smaller net worth, it doesn't mean they're proportionally less consumed by avarice, it just means they haven't gotten to the same level, by whatever combination of different priorities, skill, and chance. To wit, people aren't Cincinnatus simply because they're only upper middle class. I get if you don't like Berlusconi or even Trump, but the outlier net worth of one guy who managed to get the highest office doesn't extrapolate broadly. I don't get the sense you've looked through wider politics (I haven't either) because off the top of my head, it would be easy for a lot of especially career politicians, the people who are supposed to be competent experts that we want to perpetuate, to be millionaires. A million dollars isn't that much. Mainly this is chastising success.
The problem with Trump is not that he is rich.
Its that is not willing to follow basic standards to limit conflicts of interest.
"He has to much stuff to do so" is not an excuse. He knew what he was getting into when he decided to run.
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Yes, those utterly despicable populists abandoned all reason to victimize poor, poor Hillary Clinton, a delectably electable candidate who should have never lost because she had the only policy that made sense - the people were just too liberal or deplorable to see her truly brilliant vision.
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On January 13 2017 02:48 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 02:46 farvacola wrote:
So the Senate laid the groundwork for a practically complete, filibuster-proof repeal of Obamacare in the House.....through voting that took place during the dead of night. Must have been a popular move, ehh?
what makes it the dead of night? I hadn't followed the daily happenings. the house sometimes works until very late.
some weird thing called voterama in the senate. I don't really get it myself. don't think it was an attempt to slip it by just how the senate works.
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On January 13 2017 02:48 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 02:46 farvacola wrote:
So the Senate laid the groundwork for a practically complete, filibuster-proof repeal of Obamacare in the House.....through voting that took place during the dead of night. Must have been a popular move, ehh?
what makes it the dead of night? I hadn't followed the daily happenings. the house sometimes works until very late.
We're now in the midst of the "vote-a-rama" that takes place in the Senate every year as they attempt to play catch up. How the votes are scheduled and at what time is usually a good indicator of controversy (much of the congressional action on the CRA of '64 took place at night, for example). Accordingly, that the repeal of Obamacare, something many Republicans have claimed is wildly popular, was handled by the Senate around 1 AM suggests that all is not right with the repeal Obamacare movement.
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On January 13 2017 02:52 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 02:48 oBlade wrote:On January 12 2017 23:15 Biff The Understudy wrote:On January 12 2017 08:27 oBlade wrote:On January 12 2017 08:07 Biff The Understudy wrote:On January 12 2017 07:51 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:fivethirtyeight seems to have a good summary of the problem. One of the most interesting moments in Donald Trump’s news conference Wednesday came when Trump wasn’t even on the podium: Sheri Dillon, one of Trump’s lawyers, spent several minutes explaining why Trump couldn’t realistically put his assets in a blind trust, as many ethics watchdogs have demanded.
Dillon’s argument was complex, and she may very well be right. But that doesn’t mean concerns about Trump’s conflicts of interest are invalid.
The words “blind trust” have been thrown around a lot in recent weeks, but it’s worth explaining what that phrase really means. True blind trusts aim to shield politicians or other public figures from conflicts of interest (real or perceived) by ensuring that they have no control over their assets, or even know what those assets are.
A typical case works like this: Hypothetical Sen. Jane Johnson owns $2 million in stock in the tech company where she used to be an executive and an additional $3 million in stocks, bonds and other investments. She transfers her assets into a blind trust, overseen by an independent trustee. That trustee then sells the existing holdings (either all at once or over time) so that when Johnson has to vote on a bill affecting the tech industry — or even affecting her old company — she doesn’t know whether that vote could affect her personal finances.
But Trump’s situation is far from typical. Most of his wealth isn’t held in stocks or bonds that can be easily sold; it’s in a company that he owns and operates, it’s in buildings and golf courses around the world, and it’s in his personal brand (and the licensing deals based on it). Simply transferring his assets to a blind trust wouldn’t accomplish much as long as the company remained in business. “President Trump can’t un-know he owns Trump Tower,” Dillon said Wednesday.
To put his assets in a true blind trust, Trump would need to liquidate his assets by selling the company and its holdings, stripping his name off his hotels and resorts, and canceling his licensing deals. Dillon on Wednesday argued that such a plan would be impractical if not impossible. Some of her reasons boiled down to one: It would cost Trump a lot of money. She argued, for example, that if Trump sold his assets without retaining the rights to his brand, he would “greatly diminish the value of the assets and create a fire sale.” In other words, she said, the assets would be worth far less without Trump’s name on them.
But there are practical hurdles to a true blind trust even if you aren’t worried about Trump’s personal net worth. The process of selling his assets would take time, perhaps years. And because the sales would undoubtedly make headlines, Trump could easily keep track of what he still owned and what he didn’t, meaning that even then the trust wouldn’t be truly “blind.” (It would also create the strange situation of having a business named after the president of the United States but not controlled by him.)
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-one-has-a-good-plan-to-get-rid-of-trumps-conflicts-including-trump/ That being said, another really simple solution to prevent conflict of interest is simply not to elect a billionaire or anyone obscenely rich, and... Oh wait. I'm jocking but I'm serious. The idea that having made a shitton of money qualifies you for office is typically american and bat shit crazy. It's not limited to Trump, but i always cringe when i hear people complain about the porosity between politics and bug money. Hey, what about not voting for millionaires and even less for billionaires if you don't want your country to be a ploutocracy? Your US bashing aside, where there should be a difference is that wealth per se isn't a bad thing if you drop the revolutionary undertones. What we don't want is people using public office to enrich themselves and entangling policy with their own greed. There's an argument to be made that people who are independently comfortable are if anything in a position to be less susceptible to that. Well what you want is someone who works for the public good and in the interest of everyone. I don't think it's too marxist to say that if your lifegoal has been to make an obscene amount of money for yourself, it's unlikely your vision of a good society is based on the common good. Also one of the great challenges of our time is inequalities. Not sure billionaires are really good at tackling those. In general, i believe that the super rich should be kept as far as possible away from politics, simply because their interest and the interest of the majority (working class and middle class) don't align at all. The closest to Trump i can think of in recent time is Berlusconi. On top of being one of the most embarassing time in Italian history, his time as PM has been one giant conflict of interest. I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the world by conflating wealth with greed and opulence. Controlling capital is a form of power to run the things that let our world turn. Just because someone has a smaller net worth, it doesn't mean they're proportionally less consumed by avarice, it just means they haven't gotten to the same level, by whatever combination of different priorities, skill, and chance. To wit, people aren't Cincinnatus simply because they're only upper middle class. I get if you don't like Berlusconi or even Trump, but the outlier net worth of one guy who managed to get the highest office doesn't extrapolate broadly. I don't get the sense you've looked through wider politics (I haven't either) because off the top of my head, it would be easy for a lot of especially career politicians, the people who are supposed to be competent experts that we want to perpetuate, to be millionaires. A million dollars isn't that much. Mainly this is chastising success. The problem with Trump is not that he is rich. Its that is not willing to follow basic standards to limit conflicts of interest. "He has to much stuff to do so" is not an excuse. He knew what he was getting into when he decided to run.
That wasn't the subject but I'll take you up on it, you think he should have started liquidating his global multibillion dollar empire in June 2015? Or even earlier?
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On January 13 2017 02:56 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 02:52 Gorsameth wrote:On January 13 2017 02:48 oBlade wrote:On January 12 2017 23:15 Biff The Understudy wrote:On January 12 2017 08:27 oBlade wrote:On January 12 2017 08:07 Biff The Understudy wrote:On January 12 2017 07:51 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:fivethirtyeight seems to have a good summary of the problem. One of the most interesting moments in Donald Trump’s news conference Wednesday came when Trump wasn’t even on the podium: Sheri Dillon, one of Trump’s lawyers, spent several minutes explaining why Trump couldn’t realistically put his assets in a blind trust, as many ethics watchdogs have demanded.
Dillon’s argument was complex, and she may very well be right. But that doesn’t mean concerns about Trump’s conflicts of interest are invalid.
The words “blind trust” have been thrown around a lot in recent weeks, but it’s worth explaining what that phrase really means. True blind trusts aim to shield politicians or other public figures from conflicts of interest (real or perceived) by ensuring that they have no control over their assets, or even know what those assets are.
A typical case works like this: Hypothetical Sen. Jane Johnson owns $2 million in stock in the tech company where she used to be an executive and an additional $3 million in stocks, bonds and other investments. She transfers her assets into a blind trust, overseen by an independent trustee. That trustee then sells the existing holdings (either all at once or over time) so that when Johnson has to vote on a bill affecting the tech industry — or even affecting her old company — she doesn’t know whether that vote could affect her personal finances.
But Trump’s situation is far from typical. Most of his wealth isn’t held in stocks or bonds that can be easily sold; it’s in a company that he owns and operates, it’s in buildings and golf courses around the world, and it’s in his personal brand (and the licensing deals based on it). Simply transferring his assets to a blind trust wouldn’t accomplish much as long as the company remained in business. “President Trump can’t un-know he owns Trump Tower,” Dillon said Wednesday.
To put his assets in a true blind trust, Trump would need to liquidate his assets by selling the company and its holdings, stripping his name off his hotels and resorts, and canceling his licensing deals. Dillon on Wednesday argued that such a plan would be impractical if not impossible. Some of her reasons boiled down to one: It would cost Trump a lot of money. She argued, for example, that if Trump sold his assets without retaining the rights to his brand, he would “greatly diminish the value of the assets and create a fire sale.” In other words, she said, the assets would be worth far less without Trump’s name on them.
But there are practical hurdles to a true blind trust even if you aren’t worried about Trump’s personal net worth. The process of selling his assets would take time, perhaps years. And because the sales would undoubtedly make headlines, Trump could easily keep track of what he still owned and what he didn’t, meaning that even then the trust wouldn’t be truly “blind.” (It would also create the strange situation of having a business named after the president of the United States but not controlled by him.)
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-one-has-a-good-plan-to-get-rid-of-trumps-conflicts-including-trump/ That being said, another really simple solution to prevent conflict of interest is simply not to elect a billionaire or anyone obscenely rich, and... Oh wait. I'm jocking but I'm serious. The idea that having made a shitton of money qualifies you for office is typically american and bat shit crazy. It's not limited to Trump, but i always cringe when i hear people complain about the porosity between politics and bug money. Hey, what about not voting for millionaires and even less for billionaires if you don't want your country to be a ploutocracy? Your US bashing aside, where there should be a difference is that wealth per se isn't a bad thing if you drop the revolutionary undertones. What we don't want is people using public office to enrich themselves and entangling policy with their own greed. There's an argument to be made that people who are independently comfortable are if anything in a position to be less susceptible to that. Well what you want is someone who works for the public good and in the interest of everyone. I don't think it's too marxist to say that if your lifegoal has been to make an obscene amount of money for yourself, it's unlikely your vision of a good society is based on the common good. Also one of the great challenges of our time is inequalities. Not sure billionaires are really good at tackling those. In general, i believe that the super rich should be kept as far as possible away from politics, simply because their interest and the interest of the majority (working class and middle class) don't align at all. The closest to Trump i can think of in recent time is Berlusconi. On top of being one of the most embarassing time in Italian history, his time as PM has been one giant conflict of interest. I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the world by conflating wealth with greed and opulence. Controlling capital is a form of power to run the things that let our world turn. Just because someone has a smaller net worth, it doesn't mean they're proportionally less consumed by avarice, it just means they haven't gotten to the same level, by whatever combination of different priorities, skill, and chance. To wit, people aren't Cincinnatus simply because they're only upper middle class. I get if you don't like Berlusconi or even Trump, but the outlier net worth of one guy who managed to get the highest office doesn't extrapolate broadly. I don't get the sense you've looked through wider politics (I haven't either) because off the top of my head, it would be easy for a lot of especially career politicians, the people who are supposed to be competent experts that we want to perpetuate, to be millionaires. A million dollars isn't that much. Mainly this is chastising success. The problem with Trump is not that he is rich. Its that is not willing to follow basic standards to limit conflicts of interest. "He has to much stuff to do so" is not an excuse. He knew what he was getting into when he decided to run. That wasn't the subject but I'll take you up on it, you think he should have started liquidating his global multibillion dollar empire in June 2015? Or even earlier?
Probably, yes. If he was indeed serious about winning the presidency he should have done the research to assess what was necessary under current good practice and law, rather than babbling about blind trusts at debates and not looking into the matter at all.
If he truly wanted to MAGA a few hundred million of lost profits out of his billions seems a small price to pay, yeah?
Ultimately, though, the problem is that he is someone who has spent his whole life believing rules are for other people and then can be changed at the drop of a hat. This is a tremendously poisonous attitude for anyone with power to have-even YuGiOh figured that out.
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On January 13 2017 02:56 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 02:52 Gorsameth wrote:On January 13 2017 02:48 oBlade wrote:On January 12 2017 23:15 Biff The Understudy wrote:On January 12 2017 08:27 oBlade wrote:On January 12 2017 08:07 Biff The Understudy wrote:On January 12 2017 07:51 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:fivethirtyeight seems to have a good summary of the problem. One of the most interesting moments in Donald Trump’s news conference Wednesday came when Trump wasn’t even on the podium: Sheri Dillon, one of Trump’s lawyers, spent several minutes explaining why Trump couldn’t realistically put his assets in a blind trust, as many ethics watchdogs have demanded.
Dillon’s argument was complex, and she may very well be right. But that doesn’t mean concerns about Trump’s conflicts of interest are invalid.
The words “blind trust” have been thrown around a lot in recent weeks, but it’s worth explaining what that phrase really means. True blind trusts aim to shield politicians or other public figures from conflicts of interest (real or perceived) by ensuring that they have no control over their assets, or even know what those assets are.
A typical case works like this: Hypothetical Sen. Jane Johnson owns $2 million in stock in the tech company where she used to be an executive and an additional $3 million in stocks, bonds and other investments. She transfers her assets into a blind trust, overseen by an independent trustee. That trustee then sells the existing holdings (either all at once or over time) so that when Johnson has to vote on a bill affecting the tech industry — or even affecting her old company — she doesn’t know whether that vote could affect her personal finances.
But Trump’s situation is far from typical. Most of his wealth isn’t held in stocks or bonds that can be easily sold; it’s in a company that he owns and operates, it’s in buildings and golf courses around the world, and it’s in his personal brand (and the licensing deals based on it). Simply transferring his assets to a blind trust wouldn’t accomplish much as long as the company remained in business. “President Trump can’t un-know he owns Trump Tower,” Dillon said Wednesday.
To put his assets in a true blind trust, Trump would need to liquidate his assets by selling the company and its holdings, stripping his name off his hotels and resorts, and canceling his licensing deals. Dillon on Wednesday argued that such a plan would be impractical if not impossible. Some of her reasons boiled down to one: It would cost Trump a lot of money. She argued, for example, that if Trump sold his assets without retaining the rights to his brand, he would “greatly diminish the value of the assets and create a fire sale.” In other words, she said, the assets would be worth far less without Trump’s name on them.
But there are practical hurdles to a true blind trust even if you aren’t worried about Trump’s personal net worth. The process of selling his assets would take time, perhaps years. And because the sales would undoubtedly make headlines, Trump could easily keep track of what he still owned and what he didn’t, meaning that even then the trust wouldn’t be truly “blind.” (It would also create the strange situation of having a business named after the president of the United States but not controlled by him.)
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-one-has-a-good-plan-to-get-rid-of-trumps-conflicts-including-trump/ That being said, another really simple solution to prevent conflict of interest is simply not to elect a billionaire or anyone obscenely rich, and... Oh wait. I'm jocking but I'm serious. The idea that having made a shitton of money qualifies you for office is typically american and bat shit crazy. It's not limited to Trump, but i always cringe when i hear people complain about the porosity between politics and bug money. Hey, what about not voting for millionaires and even less for billionaires if you don't want your country to be a ploutocracy? Your US bashing aside, where there should be a difference is that wealth per se isn't a bad thing if you drop the revolutionary undertones. What we don't want is people using public office to enrich themselves and entangling policy with their own greed. There's an argument to be made that people who are independently comfortable are if anything in a position to be less susceptible to that. Well what you want is someone who works for the public good and in the interest of everyone. I don't think it's too marxist to say that if your lifegoal has been to make an obscene amount of money for yourself, it's unlikely your vision of a good society is based on the common good. Also one of the great challenges of our time is inequalities. Not sure billionaires are really good at tackling those. In general, i believe that the super rich should be kept as far as possible away from politics, simply because their interest and the interest of the majority (working class and middle class) don't align at all. The closest to Trump i can think of in recent time is Berlusconi. On top of being one of the most embarassing time in Italian history, his time as PM has been one giant conflict of interest. I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the world by conflating wealth with greed and opulence. Controlling capital is a form of power to run the things that let our world turn. Just because someone has a smaller net worth, it doesn't mean they're proportionally less consumed by avarice, it just means they haven't gotten to the same level, by whatever combination of different priorities, skill, and chance. To wit, people aren't Cincinnatus simply because they're only upper middle class. I get if you don't like Berlusconi or even Trump, but the outlier net worth of one guy who managed to get the highest office doesn't extrapolate broadly. I don't get the sense you've looked through wider politics (I haven't either) because off the top of my head, it would be easy for a lot of especially career politicians, the people who are supposed to be competent experts that we want to perpetuate, to be millionaires. A million dollars isn't that much. Mainly this is chastising success. The problem with Trump is not that he is rich. Its that is not willing to follow basic standards to limit conflicts of interest. "He has to much stuff to do so" is not an excuse. He knew what he was getting into when he decided to run. That wasn't the subject but I'll take you up on it, you think he should have started liquidating his global multibillion dollar empire in June 2015? Or even earlier?
If he was actually trying to become president, yes.
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On January 13 2017 02:54 LegalLord wrote:
Yes, those utterly despicable populists abandoned all reason to victimize poor, poor Hillary Clinton, a delectably electable candidate who should have never lost because she had the only policy that made sense - the people were just too liberal or deplorable to see her truly brilliant vision.
I was not arguing for poor-poor Hillary, just restating the events that transpired. She got 3 million more votes than her opponent, so it's clear what the choice was for the American people. Where she lost was in strategic voting, unable to get word-of-mouth traction because social media was inundated by memes instead of discourse--an axis she was weak on. As such, costs to get door-knockers and precinct walkers was much higher for her than normal elections, forcing her team to be more deliberate in their GOTV strat.
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On January 13 2017 02:55 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 02:48 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 02:46 farvacola wrote:
So the Senate laid the groundwork for a practically complete, filibuster-proof repeal of Obamacare in the House.....through voting that took place during the dead of night. Must have been a popular move, ehh?
what makes it the dead of night? I hadn't followed the daily happenings. the house sometimes works until very late. We're now in the midst of the "vote-a-rama" that takes place in the Senate every year as they attempt to play catch up. How the votes are scheduled and at what time is usually a good indicator of controversy (much of the congressional action on the CRA of '64 took place at night, for example). Accordingly, that the repeal of Obamacare, something many Republicans have claimed is wildly popular, was handled by the Senate around 1 AM suggests that all is not right with the repeal Obamacare movement.
Congressional republicans are a bunch of pussies. I'm just glad that they got the vote through.
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EPT
