US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1571

On June 25 2019 01:03 GreenHorizons wrote:


You say that defrauding the government and stealing from campaign donors isn't standard among Democrats, do you mean in the legal sense (the rules they make and enforce on themselves) or practical (as in use government/campaign funds for frivolous/selfish purposes and/or in contradiction with their constituents intentions and/or best interests) sense?

On June 25 2019 01:09 Gorsameth wrote:
Sigh
Yes people do it, no they shouldn't, no we shouldn't randomly kick people because you feel like it without evidence.
If there is proof, get rid of them. If there isn't then tough luck.
Innocent until proven guilty, pretty much the basis for any modern justice system, or do you want to change that aswell during your revolution?

On June 25 2019 01:12 Jockmcplop wrote:


I get what he means though. If the rules are such that certain people can defraud the system in certain ways,but not other people in other ways, then the priority should be fixing the broken laws and replacing everyone, rather than just replacing the people that got caught and letting everyone else keep scamming the system.

On June 25 2019 01:15 Gorsameth wrote:
Do you think 'Fix the broken laws and replace everyone' is a realistic option?

On June 25 2019 01:18 Jockmcplop wrote:

Ah realism, the enemy of any political change at all. Nothing's ever realistic if it concerns a change in the status quo - until it happens.

Sure, replacing everyone is never gonna happen, but reforming laws to allow less corruption seems reasonable to me, especially on the back of something like this happening.

On June 24 2019 09:32 KwarK wrote:
If this is all true she should allow the Democratic party to replace her. She's probably a good representative to her constituents but I doubt she's so much better than the next best representative that it's worth overlooking it all.

All the far worse cases on the other side should also resign too.

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has sold the stock she owned in one of the nation’s biggest manufacturers of highway construction materials, just days after the holding raised questions over a potential conflict of interest.

Ms. Chao sold the shares, worth $250,000 to $500,000, last Monday, according to a letter the Transportation Department released Thursday.

Days earlier, The Wall Street Journal, followed by other news media, reported that she had not cashed out, as promised, stock options she held in Vulcan Materials, an Alabama-based producer of crushed stone and asphalt, where she served on the board before joining the Trump administration.

On Wednesday, Ms. Chao sent a letter to the Transportation Department’s top ethics lawyer, notifying the agency of the sale. In the letter, she attributed the stock holdings to an “inadvertent misstatement” made after she was nominated in late 2016 to take over the top transportation job.

The Transportation Department under Secretary Elaine Chao designated a special liaison to help with grant applications and other priorities from her husband Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky, paving the way for grants totaling at least $78 million for favored projects as McConnell prepared to campaign for reelection.

Chao’s aide Todd Inman, who stated in an email to McConnell’s Senate office that Chao had personally asked him to serve as an intermediary, helped advise the senator and local Kentucky officials on grants with special significance for McConnell — including a highway-improvement project in a McConnell political stronghold that had been twice rejected for previous grant applications.

Beginning in April 2017, Inman and Chao met annually with a delegation from Owensboro, Ky., a river port with long connections to McConnell, including a plaza named in his honor. At the meetings, according to participants, the secretary and the local officials discussed two projects of special importance to the river city of 59,809 people — a plan to upgrade road connections to a commercial riverport and a proposal to expedite reclassifying a local parkway as an Interstate spur, a move that could persuade private businesses to locate in Owensboro.
...
The circumstances surrounding the Owensboro grant and another, more lucrative grant to Boone County, highlight the ethical conflicts in having a powerful Cabinet secretary married to the Senate’s leader and in a position to help him politically. McConnell has long touted his ability to bring federal resources to his state, which his wife is now in a position to assist.

Chao’s designation of Inman as a special intermediary for Kentucky — a privilege other states did not enjoy — gave a special advantage to projects favored by her husband, which could in turn benefit his political interests. In such situations, ethicists say, each member of a couple benefits personally from the success of the other.

“Where a Cabinet secretary is doing things that are going to help her husband get reelected, that starts to rise to the level of feeling more like corruption to the average American. … I do think there are people who will see that as sort of ‘swamp behavior,’” said John Hudak, a Brookings Institution scholar who has studied political influence in federal grant-making.

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao's public appearances with her family members who run an international shipping company have drawn condemnation from government watchdogs and House Democrats who argue Chao appears to have used her office to benefit her family.

The criticism has largely focused on the way in which Chao has associated her government office and title with her father, James S.C. Chao, the founder of the Foremost Group, a US-based shipping company with business ties to China.

During her time in the Trump administration, Elaine Chao has sat with her father for Chinese-language media interviews, appeared with him at an award ceremony and at a photoshoot listed on her schedule with him and other Foremost Group employees at the media center of the Department of Transportation, which oversees the US shipping industry.

A CNN review of Chinese media reports and other documents finds that Elaine Chao, who previously served as labor secretary during the Bush administration, has accompanied her father or sister, Angela Chao, the current CEO of Foremost Group, to more than a dozen events in China in roughly the last decade, which have included meetings with Chinese government officials.

While Elaine Chao's financial disclosures show she holds no stake in the Foremost Group, she and her husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, have received millions from her family -- they received a gift valued between $5 million and $25 million, according to McConnell's 2008 financial disclosures.

On June 25 2019 01:57 JimmiC wrote:
What is stopping people from digging deeper into other people use of campaign funds. Instead of letting her off the hook because others have done worse, look into those doing worse and get rid of them as well.

On June 25 2019 01:25 Ben... wrote:
I would make a pretty big wager that if the actions and finances of a significant number of politicians were examined with the level of scrutiny that Omar's have, we would likely find a lot more of this type of behaviour (I'm more talking about the questionable use of campaign funds Omar is accused of).

I mean, just look at what has happened with Duncan Hunter. He was caught because of how blatantly obvious it was he was using campaign money for personal expenses. Of course, even after his wife has pled guilty and is working with prosecutors, he still maintains the entire thing is a deep state conspiracy against him. He got busted because he was too stupid to hide it in any way. I wouldn't be shocked if other representatives did similar things but on a much smaller scale in order to avoid suspicion, especially some of the southern Republicans who know that even if caught, they likely won't face any punishment for it either from within the party or at the polls.

And if we're going to be talking about blatantly obvious corruption and potential fraud, we need to talk about Elaine Chao. If the accusations against her, and to a lesser extent, Mitch McConnell, are true, both should be resigning immediately.

First, while Secretary of Transportation she owned stock in a company that supplied highway construction materials, and took over 2 years to get rid of the stock, even after promising to. Of course, whenever large infrastructure plans were announced, the stock value would climb.

www.nytimes.com

Second, she greenlit around $80M in infrastructure funding for Kentucky, the state her husband just happens to represent. She even designated a person to focus specifically on Kentucky in terms of helping with grants, something other states did not get.

www.politico.com

Third, and likely most damning of all, it appears she has been using her office to aid her family and associated business, both in the US and in China. Among things she has done in this case include appearing at business functions for her father's business, hosting people from his business in the Department of Transportation's media room, and using her office to attempt to set up meetings in China that include family members. She and Mitch McConnell received a "gift" from her dad's company to the tune of millions of dollars. It's pretty bad.

www.cnn.com

On June 25 2019 02:20 Acrofales wrote:

Aren't every single one of Trump's appointees mixed up in double dealing, corruption and other shady shit?

On June 25 2019 03:18 IyMoon wrote:
So the SC is still yet to decide on the census rule and gerrymandering.

How do people think they will come down?

Does the new information gathered from the dead GOP consultant change the game for the census question or will it be ignored?

On June 25 2019 04:55 Ben... wrote:
It was actually just announced within the last hour or so that the judge (this is not the Supreme Court. A previous judge looking at the case) is reopening discovery in that case because of the new evidence from Hofeller (AKA the dead guy):
https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1143228422962995201
I can't see this boding well for the administration's case. The entire basis of their case was that adding this question was not to discourage minorities from participating, but instead to help with enforcing the Voting Rights Act. The primary source evidence from Hofeller apparently directly contradicts this, and also shows that he was directly involved with the creation of the census question. There are apparently drafts of what would later become parts of statements on this topic put out by various departments in the administration within Hofeller's documents. There also is a previous plan he created for a smaller version of this citizenship question plan that was designed for Texas and within it there is discussion on how it would systematically undercount minority, particularly Latinx people, and give the GOP an advantage in elections in a similar way to how gerrymandering does. Of course the key thing to remember is that Hofeller was one of the primary architects of modern gerrymandering. He was responsible for several electoral boundary maps in which have since been declared illegal, such as North Carolina.

It'll certainly be interesting to see where it goes from here.

Here's a good article from NYT that sums up what was discovered:
www.nytimes.com

On June 24 2019 20:34 GreenHorizons wrote:


Not a big fan of "the rules" either since they seem to largely be used to punish (some people more than others) and maintain oppressive systems rather than lead to a productive distribution of behavioral improvements.

Or as MLK put it.

On June 25 2019 06:21 Ayaz2810 wrote:
“They were given a lice shampoo, and the other children were given two combs and told to share those two combs ... which is something you never do with a lice outbreak.

“One of the combs was lost, and Border Patrol agents got so mad that they took away the children’s blankets and mats. They weren’t allowed to sleep on the beds, and they had to sleep on the floor ... as punishment.”

Simply inexcusable. Any person who support this is a monster. I guess that's half of my country. This is going to get very ugly before it's over. I can't believe that we as a people haven't taken to the streets to put an end to this entire administration. I think the thing I'm most disappointed in is our apathy. That is the only thing that has allowed 2.5 years of this shit. We're better than this.

INB4 Obama did it too. Not true. They're here illegally! Not true. Dems won't give more money. It's their fault! Not true. It's not a concentration camp because people aren't being killed! Not true. They're human traffickers/drug smugglers/terrorists/cartel members! Not true.

I'm so fucking fed up I don't even know what to do anymore. Do I just stop engaging with morons who keep regurgitating the lies they are told by right-wing media and Facebook? Do I engage with them and be hostile as fuck to either change their minds or at least get them to leave me alone? Do I politely try to redirect them to facts (LOLYEAHRITE)? I'm just happy my parents aren't open Trump supporters. I would hate to cut ties with them like so many others have had to do with their evil and stupid family members.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/migrant-detention-centres-texas-conditions-children-cbp-ice-latest-trump-border-a8971521.html

On June 25 2019 06:27 IyMoon wrote:


My cousin is hardcore MAGA, and everytime I try to point out flaws in his arguments he calls me "some name" liberals

So I have just resorted to calling him a dumbass instead of being nice.... it actually works a bit better than being nice did

On June 25 2019 06:33 Ayaz2810 wrote:


That's why I appreciate this thread so much. I have not had a conversation with a Trump supporter face to face that has been had in good faith and based on facts. Literally 100% of those conversations ended with the other person using the word "snowflake" or making a "wahhhhh" baby noise to dismiss whatever I'm saying. funnily enough, 100% of those conversations also involved Hillary, emails, and Obama. They're like a fucking stupid inbred hivemind.