Trump pulls the plug on transgenders serving in the military

[Blake]

So 2 bathrooms for 2 separate genders. Easy.

How about genderless bathrooms. Even easier.

[spurraider21]

So 2 bathrooms for 2 separate genders. Easy.

i dont think that would give you the results you want.

i think what you want is 2 bathrooms for 2 separate sexes

the fact that people still use sex and gender interchangeably shows nothing but misunderstanding. and no, it's not some "new liberal" ideology. i took psychology in high school around 2005 and we learned it back then too

sex refers to the physical parts you are born with, the x and y chromosomes, etc. gender is a mental construct of iden y. its why boys play with trucks and girls play with dolls. its a social concept. sex is a physical trait with biological implications, not social ones. the whole concept of "transgender" just refers to people who's gender and sex aren't the same. it doesnt mean they had a sex change operation

[Blake]

With the Republican card, remember you said they would tell people where to pee... if they could.

The Republican card keeps you out of the girls bathroom if it says you're born a guy on your birth certificate.

How does that card get you into the girls bathroom to see trashy pussy?

[Mikeanaro]

The Republican card keeps you out of the girls bathroom if it says you're born a guy on your birth certificate.

How does that card get you into the girls bathroom to see trashy pussy?

But since they are fascists and have double standards according to Dems, I can use the Republican card and wherever I want, in fact an article about that could appear in the Time/WaPo anytime.

[TSA]

But since they are fascists and have double standards according to Dems, I can use the Republican card and wherever I want, in fact an article about that could appear in the Time/WaPo anytime.

You are free to use the male or female restroom at your leisure.

[Mikeanaro]

You are free to use the male or female restroom at your leisure.

[Blake]

But since they are fascists and have double standards according to Dems, I can use the Republican card and wherever I want, in fact an article about that could appear in the Time/WaPo anytime.

You are free to use the male or female restroom at your leisure.

Despite the Republicans trying to play their card, yes you currently can.

You don't really understand what's going on in Texas right now, do you, Mike.

[Mikeanaro]

Despite the Republicans trying to play their card, yes you currently can.

You don't really understand what's going on in Texas right now, do you, Mike.

Texas is not the whole country, my biggest concern is the horrendous corruption going on with Dems, they rigged the primaries, had the dirtiest campaign ever with media selling crap, lost and now play the Russian card and keep whining everywhere.

[RandomGuy]

How about genderless bathrooms. Even easier.

+1

[RandomGuy]

Texas is not the whole country, my biggest concern is the horrendous corruption going on with Dems, they rigged the primaries, had the dirtiest campaign ever with media selling crap, lost and now play the Russian card and keep whining everywhere.

[RandomGuy]

Texas is not the whole country, my biggest concern is the horrendous corruption going on with Dems, they rigged the primaries, had the dirtiest campaign ever with media selling crap, lost and now play the Russian card and keep whining everywhere.

Regardless, legality does not imply propriety. Unless Trump acts to put actual distance between himself and his business ventures, these questions are likely to continue throughout his time in the Oval Office. On top of the aforementioned legal actions, the director of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, has declared Trump’s efforts insufficient, remarking, “I don’t think dives ure is too high of a price to pay to be the president of the United States,” and a number of Senate Democrats have introduced legislation that would force Trump to divest or face impeachment. Below is an attempt to catalogue the more clear-cut examples of conflicts of interest that have emerged so far. The most recent entries appear at the top:

Those Republican Fundraisers
That Estate in Palm Beach
That Temporary-Visa Program
Those State Department Expenses
That Clean-Water Rule
That Development Outside of New Delhi
That Golf Course in Westchester
Those Russian Trademarks
That Trump Organization Event Planner
That Saudi Arabian Lobbying Effort
That Golf Course in New Jersey
That Meeting in Brussels
That Tower in Toronto
That Caribbean Villa
Those Condos for Sale
Those Reelection-Campaign Funds
That Second Hotel in Washington, D.C.
That Property in Azerbaijan
That Trump Tower Penthouse
That Resort in the Dominican Republic
That Chinese Trademark
That Meeting at Mar-a-Lago
That Defense Department Trump Tower Rental
That Red Cross Ball
That D.C. Labor Dispute
Those Expansion Plans
That Hotel in Vancouver
That Reality-Television Show
That Pipeline
Those HUD Grants
That Golf Course in Aberdeen
That Other Billionaire New York Real-Estate Developer
Those Indonesian Politicians
That Emirati Businessman
That Virginia Vineyard
That Las Vegas Labor Dispute
That Kuwaiti Event
Those Certificates of Dives ure
That Carrier Deal
That Blind-Trust Issue
Those Fannie and Freddie Investments
That Phone Call With Taiwan
That Deutsche Bank Debt
That Secret Service Detail
That Property in Georgia (the Country)
That Phone Call With Erdogan
That Hotel in Washington, D.C.
That Argentinian Office Building
Those Companies in Saudi Arabia
That British Wind Farm
Those Indian Business Partners
That Envoy From the Philippines

https://www.theatlantic.com/business...erests/508382/

[RandomGuy]

Let's walk through this. One at a time, since we are concerned about corruption suddenly.

[RandomGuy]

my biggest concern is the horrendous corruption going on with Dems

Those Republican Fundraisers

By now, the myriad ways President Donald Trump may have profited from his presidential campaign, and could further profit from a 2020 reelection bid, are well-established. Holding rallies, fundraisers, and other election-related events at his hotels generated both publicity and paying guests, flying around the country meant that the Secret Service paid the president’s company for seats on his private plane every time he traveled, and housing his campaign headquarters in Trump Tower—and nearly quintupling the rent after becoming the Republican Party’s official nominee—guaranteed that some portion of his campaign expenditures would go back into his own pocket.

Now that he’s taken office, Trump is profiting from other Republicans’ campaigns too. According to Buzzfeed, Republican Party financial-disclosure do ents show at least $293,000 spent at Trump properties during the first half of 2017. While the majority of that sum came from Trump’s already-underway reelection bid, roughly $72,000 came from the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and fundraising groups affiliated with other elected GOP officials, including Republican congressmen. The overall spending represents a significant increase over the first half of 2016, during which the party and its affiliated committees spent roughly $100,000 at Trump-branded properties, almost all of which was related to Trump’s presidential bid.


The gap between last year and this one on individual expenditures is even more striking: According to Buzzfeed, only one member of Congress spent money at a Trump property in 2016, putting down $200 for food and drinks. In the first half of 2017, on the other hand, the fundraising committees for Congressmen Tom MacArthur, Dana Rohrabacher, and Bill Shuster spent $15,000, $11,000, and $7,000, respectively, for events held at golf clubs and hotels owned by the president and operated by his company.

The fact that Trump is making money from other politicians’ campaigns threatens to undermine the relationship between the president and the legislative branch. While factors other than policy and legislative a en often color interactions between members of different branches—they probably wouldn’t play as much golf together if interpersonal relationships didn’t matter—there has never before been a situation in which legislators were openly paying the president. The added financial component creates the new possibility that a congressperson may attempt to pay the president to influence his decision on a topic the congressperson finds important—if not explicitly, then by implicitly inspiring goodwill and an obligation to reciprocate. The longer the situation persists, the more likely it becomes that such payments would affect the president’s approach to policy.

Trump’s unprecedented willingness to attack members of his own party and the willingness of pro-Trump media to pile on compound this problem. The president has responded harshly toward Republican congresspeople whom he considers insufficiently supportive of his agenda, even going so far as to meet with their primary challengers, while a pro-Trump political action committee at one point purchased, then withdrew, campaign ads against a senator who was wavering on the Senate GOP’s health-care bill. And the alt-right website Breitbart, which was formerly run by Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and has associated itself with Trump since he began his campaign, continually ascribes political failures to congressional leaders like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan rather than to Trump.

Those tendencies, and the recognition that Trump supporters don’t necessarily go along with the Republican Party, only reinforce the notion that GOP elected officials must tread carefully to retain the president’s support. As long as patronizing Trump’s businesses remains a plausible means of currying favor with the commander-in-chief, there will remain the unprecedented incentive for Republican Party officials to turn their relationship with the president into a financial one in the hope of gaining his support.

[Mikeanaro]

Wow, now proceeds to post Memes, thats very useful.

[RandomGuy]

my biggest concern is the horrendous corruption going on with Dems

That Estate in Palm Beach

To many of President Donald Trump’s critics, his decision to turn Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, into a “Southern White House” epitomizes the way he’s mixing his business interests with his duties as president. With each visit to the property, he boosts the resort’s visibility and may very well prompt more people to enroll as members in attempts to get a glimpse of the commander-in-chief. That the club doubled its initiation fees in January, from $100,000 to $200,000, only adds to the impression that Trump—or, at least his namesake company—is banking on his presidency as a means of boosting revenues. And without a publicly available guest list and no word on what security protocols are in place, the possibility that somebody could be using a club membership to gain access to the president has led Democratic members of Congress to draft a bill specifically to mandate better disclosure of the goings-on at the venue.


On Monday, July 18, the ethics watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, won a major victory on that front when the Department of Homeland Security agreed to provide CREW with Mar-a-Lago’s guest logs, starting in early September. CREW, which counts among its leadership ethics counsellors from the administrations of both Barack Obama and George W. Bush and is currently suing the Trump administration over multiple issues related to the president’s conflicts of interest, announced that it would be publishing the lists as soon as it receives them. What exactly they will receive, however, remains unclear: The private club’s screening protocols appear to be significantly less strict than those at the White House, and Politico reported in March that the resort may not actually be keeping track of the comings and goings of its frequent guests.

The possibility that Mar-a-Lago may not even have visitor logs to provide comports with both the Trump administration and the Trump Organization’s poor records when it comes to transparency. The administration has, for instance, ceased to provide a guest list for the White House and challenged the Office of Government Ethics’s requests for information about Trump’s finances and those of the lobbyists he has brought into the government. The president’s company, meanwhile, has asserted that keeping track of foreign payments at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., which Trump and his lawyer Sheri Dillon pledged the company would do in January, would be “impractical ... and diminish the guest experience of our brand.”


Since May, Trump has largely shifted his weekend trips from Mar-a-Lago to his company’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. However, two stories from the months he spent frequenting his resort in Palm Beach, sometimes with high-profile diplomatic guests in tow, demonstrate the importance of making visitor logs public. In February, when Trump brought Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Florida, the trip made news in part because it resulted in an apparent breach of security protocol: When their dinner was interrupted by news of a North Korean nuclear-missile test, the two heads of state read over briefing materials by the light of cellphones, in full view of paying dinner guests, at least one of whom took pictures.

Besides the guest who posted his pictures on Facebook, it remains unknown who was in attendance that night and may have had access to the two leaders and their meeting. Indeed, posts to social media have served as the public’s best window into the president’s interactions with the public during his weekends at his property. Pictures and videos taken by paying guests showing the president golfing, hobnobbing with attendees at meals, and crashing parties have proven vital to attempts to keep track of Trump’s comings and goings. That footage reinforces the suggestion that paying to attend a Trump property offers a good chance to meet the president, in turn suggesting that doing so could create an opportunity to speak with him and influence his decisions.


Then, in April, as Trump prepared to return to Palm Beach with Chinese President Xi Jinping, The New York Times reported on a frequent Mar-a-Lago guest who could have created friction between Trump and Xi: the billionaire real-estate mogul Guo Wengui, an outspoken critic who has accused China’s ruling Communist Party of rampant corruption. Guo himself is no stranger to charges of corruption: He left China in 2008 amid allegations that he had exploited his ties with one of the country’s top security officials to enhance his businesses. Guo maintains that the reporter who implicated him in the scandal was the tool of a government plot to undermine him, and has in turn pointed the finger at multiple party officials he says have engaged in various forms of graft, although he’s pointedly stopped short of criticizing Xi. He also claims that the Chinese government has seized more than $17 billion of his assets since he left the country.

And, the Times says, Guo is a frequent attendee at Mar-a-Lago. In March, he tweeted a picture of himself with the resort’s managing director. It is unknown whether Guo attended Mar-a-Lago, or even was in Palm Beach, at the time of Trump’s meeting with Xi. Indeed, without a guest list, it may be hard to ever know who’s there at the same time as the president except via social-media posts. But Guo’s possible presence, and even the fact that Trump is—via the membership fees Guo is paying to his company—profiting from Guo, would have cast a shadow over the president’s meeting there with Xi. Trump’s relationship with his Chinese counterpart got off to a rocky start when, about a month after the election, Trump broke decades of protocol by calling the president of Taiwan, something no president has done since the 1970s. Given China’s harsh treatment of dissidents in the past, Trump’s holding a meeting with Xi at a club with Guo in attendance could be interpreted as another slight, intentional or not, toward the Chinese government and further undermine one of the world’s most important bilateral relationships.


The problem, then, is twofold: First, it’s that Trump directly profits from spending his weekends at Mar-a-Lago and bringing high-profile guests with him, although only he knows for certain the extent to which his visits to Florida are motivated by this. Second, by paying the president to be a member at the resort, Guo gains a chance at brushing shoulders with and possibly even influencing the president, although, again, only he knows if that’s his reason for doing so.

Guo is also far from the only Mar-a-Lago member who might have a stake in rubbing elbows with the president, nor is he the only controversial foreign oligarch with whom Trump has financial ties of some kind. As such, Guo is indicative of the larger problem with the president’s maintenance of his business interests, both in general and with regard to his estate in Palm Beach.

[RandomGuy]

my biggest concern is the horrendous corruption going on with Dems

That Temporary-Visa Program

On Monday, the federal government announced that it would be expanding its H-2B temporary-visa program. Citing a lack of Americans willing and qualified to do seasonal, non-agricultural jobs, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expanded the H-2B program to allow 15,000 additional foreign workers into the country for the summer to meet demand at such seasonal businesses as landscaping services, hotels, and amusement parks. The move roughly mirrors last year’s, when DHS allowed 13,382 workers to come in under the program, although it came later in the summer than usual because it took longer than usual for Congress to authorize the expansion.


Even though the decision came from the executive branch, it seems to be directly at odds with President Donald Trump’s well-known anti-immigrant stances. After spending the campaign arguing that immigrants were taking Americans’ jobs and calling for a wall along the border with Mexico, Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric has continued during his time in office. Though many of his proposals have faced obstacles that may prove insurmountable, he has, for instance, restricted H-1B visas for low-skilled immigrant laborers, and under DHS Secretary John Kelly, the government has significantly stepped up enforcement actions against illegal immigrants, including those previously protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Additionally, the expansion was announced on the first day of the White House’s “Made in America” Week, intended to promote American companies, workers, and products.

Though the allowance of more foreign workers may appear to conflict with Trump’s “America First” rhetoric, it clearly aligns with his business interests. The Trump Organization, which the president still owns, uses H-2B workers at many of its golf courses, hotels, and vineyards. According to CNN, the Trump Organization has received 1,024 H-2B visas since 2000 for workers at such properties as Mar-a-Lago and the Trump National Golf Club in Washington, D.C., along with other types of foreign visas. Mar-a-Lago in particular has benefited from temporary foreign labor: The property has requested at least 787 employment visas since 2006. The Trump Organization has continued to apply for temporary visas since Trump was elected president; for example, in December 2016, the Trump Vineyard Estates and Winery in Charlottesville, Virginia, applied for six additional H-2A visas to fit its seasonal demands, then added 23 more in February.


The Trump administration has justified the increase by asserting that many of the companies that will benefit “are at risk of suffering irreparable harm if they don’t get additional H-2B workers.” However, the Trump Organization’s own record seems to contradict this statement: Mar-a-Lago has requested hundreds of foreign visas, including 70 in 2015 alone, while reportedly rejecting 283 of 300 domestic applicants since 2010. This arguably affirms one of the major criticisms of the program, which holds that companies don’t always sufficiently attempt to fill open positions using domestic labor before applying for temporary foreign visas.

The Trump administration’s decision to expand the H-2B program is yet another example of a fairly conventional government action complicated by the president’s continued ownership of his real-estate empire. The debate about the role of immigrants in the U.S. economy means that the decision would likely have been controversial regardless of who was in office. However, that the president himself will likely financially benefit from the program means that it also raises the question of whether Trump and his administration are looking out for the needs of the country or the needs of the Trump Organization.

[RandomGuy]

my biggest concern is the horrendous corruption going on with Dems

Those State Department Expenses

As the first (and, so far, only) Trump-branded property to open since the election, the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Vancouver has prompted significant scrutiny. When it opened just five days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, ethics experts questioned whether the property presented an opportunity for anyone to attempt to influence the president by booking a stay there—a su ion that seemed to be confirmed when a pro-business lobbying group relocated a meeting from a diplomat’s house to the new hotel the day after it opened.


As with all of Trump’s foreign properties, the property arguably violates the Cons ution’s foreign emoluments clause, which says that federal officials can’t receive “any present, Emolument, Office, or le, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” But the first known government expenditure at the Vancouver hotel came not from a foreign en y—it came from the State Department. According to do ents obtained by The Washington Post, the State Department spent more than $15,000 to book 19 rooms at the new hotel when the president’s adult sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, and his younger daughter, Tiffany, visited the property for its grand opening in February.

While the Trump Organization both owns and operates some of its flagship properties in the United States, such as Trump Tower in New York, the hotel in Vancouver is one of many licensing deals through which third-party companies pay to operate their hotels under the Trump brand. Though the president’s name appears in large gold letters on the building’s facade, the property is actually owned and managed by a Canadian company called The Holborn Group, which is in turn owned by the Malaysian billionaire Joo Kim Tiah. And, because the Trump Organization is a privately held company, the actual structure of the deal remains unknown: Though Trump declared more than $5 million in revenue from the property on his most recent financial-disclosure forms, it’s unclear whether that sum represents a flat fee or a percent of the hotel’s revenue. However, Slate noted that previous court filings show that some similar Trump properties operate on the latter model, suggesting that what Trump earns from the hotel hinges on its success.


If that is indeed the case, the State Department’s expenditures represent a conflict of interest for him. As I wrote in February, when the Secret Service spent more than $97,000 to accompany Eric Trump on a business trip to Uruguay, it’s first and foremost improper that the Trump Organization appears to be directly profiting from taxpayer money because of the increased security necessary when its leaders visit their holdings.

Moreover, the State Department’s expenditure arguably violates the Cons ution’s domestic emoluments clause, which states that the president “shall not receive ... any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them” during his time in office aside from his official salary. Already, the Trump Organization is receiving taxpayer money from multiple federal agencies, including the Secret Service, which not only effectively subsidized Eric Trump’s business trip to Uruguay but also pays to accompany the president’s family on their private airplanes, and the Department of Defense, which CNN revealed in February would be renting space in Trump Tower. These expenditures raise the possibility that groups within the U.S. government as well as those outside of it may influence the president, intentionally or not, by patronizing his businesses. Because even small payments can change a person’s behavior, these payments may warm the president to one department over others, potentially shading his assessments of the advice and intelligence he receives from them.


Even if the Trump Organization doesn’t profit directly from the hotel’s success—that is, if the company makes a flat annual fee instead of a percentage of the property’s revenue—the State Department’s expenditure demonstrates the problems Trump’s continued intermingling of business and government continues to create. As of now, because Trump has disclosed only the minimum financial details he is required to by law, it's impossible to determine how exactly he makes money from properties like the hotel in Vancouver. That in turn makes it impossible to determine the precise nature of his conflict of interest—an epistemological problem that has arisen with several other business endeavors of his.

[RandomGuy]

my biggest concern is the horrendous corruption going on with Dems

That Clean-Water Rule

In February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Environmental Protection Agency to review the Obama administration’s Waters of the United States, or WOTUS, rule. The regulation, which was created in 2015 but was put on hold by a court later that year, aims to expand the federal government’s ability to apply anti-pollution statutes to a variety of bodies of water. This week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would be acting on the president’s order and rolling back the regulation.

When he first called upon the EPA to review WOTUS, Trump cited its economic cost, calling it “a disaster” and “a massive power grab” that was “putting people out of jobs by the hundreds of thousands” (a claim The Washington Post gave its lowest fact-checking rating). And while pro-business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lauded the EPA’s decision, environmental groups criticized the move, arguing that WOTUS represented a significant step forward in protecting the drinking water of more than one-third of Americans.


The decision also appears to represent a conflict of interest for the president. Along with increasing federal oversight of large bodies of water, WOTUS would have expanded the EPA’s authority to include regulation of smaller streams and ponds. As such, some of the business benefits of rolling back the rule will redound to the golf industry, which has been a major opponent of the regulation since before it was signed in the summer of 2015. The Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, a 17,000-member lobby, spent $30,000 to fight WOTUS in the quarter it was finalized, arguing that the rule would make it excessively costly to maintain golf courses without running afoul of new regulations on water use and polluted runoff. According to the association’s chief executive officer, Rhett Evans, under an earlier, somewhat more expansive, version of the rule, golf courses “would find themselves economically burdened, if not unable to operate profitably.”

Trump, of course, owns 12 golf courses in the United States, all of which would likely be impacted by WOTUS, meaning that he has a significant financial stake in ensuring that it does not ultimately go into effect. And though the decision to fully scrap the regulation was technically made by the EPA and its chairman Scott Pruitt, it was ultimately Trump who called for its review in his February Executive Order—not to mention that he was the one who appointed the notoriously anti-regulation Pruitt in the first place.


The executive branch’s decision to scale back enforcement of WOTUS specifically and clean-water regulation in general is also an example of how Trump’s broader anti-regulatory agenda often overlaps with his personal financial interests. Through his first few months in office, Trump’s domestic agenda has involved chipping away at the regulations his predecessor put in place, following a self-imposed rule that federal agencies must cut two regulations for each they implement. This will likely frequently result in policy decisions that will at least tangentially benefit Trump; for example, many of the tax cuts that Trump seems to favor, such as repealing the estate tax, would reduce his own tax burden as well as those of others in his income bracket. The result is that it’s often difficult to separate Trump’s conflicts of interest from what very well may be a genuine pro-business, anti-regulatory agenda.

[RandomGuy]

my biggest concern is the horrendous corruption going on with Dems

That Development Outside of New Delhi

President Donald Trump’s international real-estate empire continues to grow. According to The Washington Post, two new Trump-branded buildings—one residential development and one office tower—will soon be going up in Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi, India, “known for rapacious development and poor planning.”

As with many of the company’s other international projects, the deals create new conflicts of interest as they bring the Trump Organization into contact with more investors, partners, and governments that may seek to influence the president’s decisions. The nature of the real-estate business means that the company and its international partners will have all sorts of interactions with local and national governments, ranging from acquiring permits for construction to health and safety inspections once a project is complete. That creates opportunities to attempt to curry favor withTrump, whether intentionally or not, by creating favorable conditions in which he can do business.


To complicate matters, these deals in India find Trump in partnerships with less-than-savory companies. The companies involved, IREO and M3M India, have both been frequent targets of anti-corruption actions by the Indian government, which is currently investigating the former for illegal land purchases and money laundering and the latter for bribing officials to speed along construction. And Gurgaon is widely seen as a hotbed of corruption, where poor citizens and small landowners are often pushed out by developers through bribery or bullying.

As has been the case with some of the Trump Organization’s other international projects—the tower in Baku, Azerbaijan, that The New Yorker deemed “Donald Trump’s Worst Deal” springs to mind, along with his ongoing developments in Indonesia—the company’s involvement with potentially corrupt officials and companies could create problems going forward. For instance, if someone found demonstrably illegal labor practices at the sites in Gurgaon, he or she could use that information to blackmail the president’s company and its owner (that is, the president himself) into pushing for a particular policy. And to reverse that example, Indian officials seeking a favorable outcome on an issue of international concern from the American government could, explicitly or implicitly, turn a blind eye to any ethical concerns in Gurgaon in return for the president’s good graces, which could end up creating unsafe conditions that hurt the laborers working on the building. Meanwhile, the developments’ investors—currently unknown for the deal with IREO, according to The Washington Post, as the money flowed through banks in Mauritius and Cyprus—have substantial leverage over the president that they could wield by cutting off the flow of funds to the projects.


On top of the concerns regarding the specific details of the projects, the developments in Gurgaon demonstrate how little the Trump Organization’s pledge not to pursue any new foreign deals, which the president announced shortly before taking office, actually means in practice. Technically speaking, the projects in Gurgaon aren’t new deals, as the Trump Organization agreed to the partnerships before Trump became president. However, at a press conference held in January, Trump and one of his lawyers, Sheri Dillon, announced not only that “no new foreign deals will be made whatsoever” but also that the Trump Organization had already terminated “all pending deals.” That these projects in India are moving forward regardless seems to demonstrate that the Trump Organization’s definition of “new foreign deals” is so narrow that the guidelines will do little to prevent the company from continuing to expand while Trump is in office, thus creating new conflicts of interest.

[RandomGuy]

my biggest concern is the horrendous corruption going on with Dems

That Golf Course in Westchester

According to a report by ABC News, the Trump Organization is looking for a tax break for the Trump National Golf Club Westchester in Briarcliff Manor, New York. The company is attempting to halve its tax bill on the golf course by arguing that the tax assessor’s $15 million valuation of the property is twice what the course is actually worth. If the appeal succeeds, the Trump Organization could see the property taxes it owes on the 143-acre club reduced by as much as a quarter of a million dollars.

Contesting a tax assessor’s valuation of a property in the hopes of getting a tax break is a fairly common move for large property owners generally and the Trump Organization specifically. In 2016, after the town’s tax assessor valued the property at $15 million, the Trump Organization tried to assert that the course was only worth $1.35 million, but ultimately relented and paid the bill.

The difference this year is, of course, that the property’s owner is now president, which means that suddenly, Briarcliff Manor is one of many local governments that must weigh the consequences of how they deal with Trump’s businesses. It must decide if giving the Trump Organization a sweet deal is worth the loss in tax revenues, whether because doing so will create a positive affinity that could spill over into preferential treatment from the federal government or because not doing so would mean crossing the famously temperamental president and potentially facing consequences down the line.

The situation demonstrates how the president’s decision to hold onto his business while in office could have ramifications for everyday Americans. While Briarcliff Manor isn’t exactly struggling—according to the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income for the town’s 6,300 adult residents is roughly $141,000, and the poverty rate of 4.3 percent is 10 points lower than the national level—the local government nevertheless relies in part on property taxes for funding. If the town does give the Trump National Golf Club the tax break it has requested, that would mean less money for the town’s schools, police department, and other civic services.

[RandomGuy]

my biggest concern is the horrendous corruption going on with Dems

Those Russian Trademarks

One of the questions underlying the ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian officials is whether the president himself is in debt to the country’s government or state-run banks. Though Trump has insisted recently that he does not do business in Russia, that assertion conflicts with 20 years of his (and his sons’) statements to the contrary.

This weekend, The New York Times reported on details that underline his past dealings in the country: On the night of the 2016 presidential election, the Russian government granted extensions to six expiring trademarks that Trump had received between 1996 and 2007. The trademarks cover branding for a variety of products, including one for Trump Vodka, which debuted in 2007 and folded shortly thereafter, and one for the name “Trump Tower,” for a real-estate deal that the president began exploring in 1996 but that ultimately fell through.

By all appearances, the renewals in November were fairly routine and don’t indicate that the Trump Organization has any actual plans for pursuing business opportunities in Russia in the near future. As was the case with the trademarks the company received in China in February, it’s likely that registering the Trump name is more defensive than anything else, a means of securing the name to ward off potential knockoffs or patent trolls, who in some cases register well-known brand names so that, should a corporation try to expand overseas, they will have to pay to wrest the trademark back.

Even if the renewals were a mere formality, they point to the ongoing complications the president’s decision to retain his business while in office creates. Trademarks certainly aren’t direct financial compensation, but they have distinct monetary value as a means of protecting a company’s business interests, especially for a corporation like the Trump Organization, which relies so heavily on its brand appeal that the Trump name is arguably among the family’s most valuable assets. That leaves open the possibility that the president may be inclined to think more highly of a country because it has recently helped his company by approving a trademark request—which in turn opens the possibility that a foreign government seeking to influence the president might seek to curry favor with him by expediting the process or granting trademarks they wouldn’t for a less important person.

Other trademarks that Trump has received in foreign countries since taking office are not only ethically questionable but arguably violate the Cons ution. Though part of the ethics arrangement the president and his lawyer laid out before the inauguration was that the Trump Organization would cease pursuing new deals in foreign countries during Trump’s presidency, the company has continued to register trademarks around the world. China granted him not only the trademark on his name in February but also 38 others in March, on everything from hotels to insurance to escort services, followed by six more last week; his eldest daughter Ivanka, who serves as an adviser within the administration, has also received trademarks there since her father took office. Mexico, too, approved Trump trademarks in March. These developments, which all came about after Trump took office, arguably violate the Cons ution’s foreign emoluments clause, which bars federal officials from “accept[ing] of any present, Emolument, Office, or le, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Moreover, as has frequently been the case with the Trump Organization’s dealings in recent months, the timing of the renewals The New York Times reported on raises additional questions about whether Russia may have been trying to influence the president. Since November 8, the Trump Organization has seen unexpected progress on projects in multiple countries, including not only China but also Argentina and Georgia, where long-stalled developments both began moving forward in November. Though it remains unclear whether any of these actions were specifically meant to influence Trump, the ulative effect suggests that international offshoots of the Trump brand are benefiting from the Trump presidency.

[Mikeanaro]

https://www.theatlantic.com/business...erests/508382/

You are talking out of your ass with MSM fake crap, none of that is even real, if it was Donnie would have been in jail long time ago, that crap makes it sound like he is Bernie Madoff.
Yet no evidence all MSM accusations, how is that Russian thing going? closer to the truth?

There is no building in Argentina, you dont know even the kind of relationship Macri and his dad had with Trump 25 years ago.

Its nice to make a list out of nowhere, but then you need the facts to back it up.

[RandomGuy]

my biggest concern is the horrendous corruption going on with Dems

That Trump Organization Event Planner

Much has been written about how few high-level government positions President Donald Trump has filled compared to his predecessors; still more has been written about the unusual qualifications of those he has appointed. This week, the president named another appointee whose background doesn’t really comport with her new position: Lynne Patton, who will head the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Region II, which comprises New York and New Jersey.

Like Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, to whom she will soon report, Patton has little-to-no directly relevant background in urban planning or housing. According to the New York Daily News, which first reported Patton’s nomination on Thursday, though, Patton has plenty of experience with the Trumps. Patton’s LinkedIn account indicates that since 2009, she has planned and run events for the Trump Organization, including “various marketing projects, philanthropic events & golf tournaments.” From 2011 until January of this year, she was also the vice president of the now-defunct Eric Trump Foundation, which is currently under investigation by the attorney general of New York after a report in Forbes alleged that the family had used the foundation to siphon more than $1.2 billion in charitable donations to the Trump Organization.

Patton’s appointment once again demonstrates how Trump continues to mix his presidency with his business interests. In her new office, Patton will oversee the disbursement of billions of dollars in federal housing funds to the states in which the president’s company owns the most property. Though the Trump brand and federal housing would seem to occupy significantly different sectors, there’s actually significant overlap between the two. As was do ented by The American Prospect in April, the Trump Organization has repeatedly benefited from federal funding; for example, Trump owns part of a low-income housing development in Brooklyn that has received numerous grants from HUD (and that the president once called “one of the best investments I ever made”). Trump even came into conflict with the agency over the property in 2007 when he attempted to sell his stake, only to have the transaction blocked. That he has chosen a loyal business associate to administer a position that will have oversight over his own company seems to indicate how, rather than putting the best interests of the American people above all else, the president can make decisions that stack the regulatory deck in his own favor.

[RandomGuy]

my biggest concern is the horrendous corruption going on with Dems

That Saudi Arabian Lobbying Effort

Less than five months into President Donald Trump’s administration, Saudi Arabia has created a template for foreign governments looking to influence the president through his businesses. On Monday, The Daily Caller reported that the country’s government spent nearly $270,000 on lodgings and catering at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., between November 2016 and February 2017. The expenditures were part of a lobbying campaign in which the Saudi government paid for U.S. veterans to travel to D.C. to advocate against the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. The law, which passed in September despite a veto from President Barack Obama, allows American citizens to sue foreign governments that allegedly sponsor terrorist attacks and organizations.

The payment clearly demonstrates the problems with the arrangements Trump has made to prevent ethics violations, which he and his lawyer Sheri Dillon described in January before he took office. Among other steps meant to resolve the president’s conflicts of interest, one measure was specifically designed to address concerns that foreign governments might attempt to influence Trump by paying to stay at his hotel in Washington, D.C. To head off such a possibility, Dillon said in January, the Trump Organization would “voluntarily donate all profits from foreign government payments to his hotels to the United States Treasury.”

In the four months since the inauguration, the Trump Organization itself has demonstrated the insufficiency of this pledge on multiple occasions. First, in March, the company admitted that it hadn’t yet made the payments it had promised, and said it would not be doing so until the end of the calendar year. Then, in May, the organization sent Congress a pamphlet outlining the relatively meager steps it would take to uphold its commitment, stating that it wouldn’t actively attempt to identify foreign agents staying at the hotel because doing so would be “impractical.” Instead, the do ent suggested, the company would be relying on the foreign governments to identify themselves. After The Daily Caller’s report, the Trump Organization announced that it would indeed be transferring profits from the Saudi payments to the Treasury at the end of the calendar year.

However, it’s unclear whether, under the Trump Organization’s guidelines, they would have done so if not for the attention the story received from the media. The Saudi government didn’t technically pay for the hotel rooms; instead, they paid the American lobbying firm Qorvis MSLGroup, which hired a subcontractor. Qorvis was then required to disclose the source of the funds to the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and a Daily Caller reporter then reported the story based on those disclosures. Given that the Trump Organization has effectively abdicated the responsibility of tracking payments that aren’t “direct billings from the Property to a foreign government,” it’s entirely possible that the company would not have done the due diligence required to follow the money; as it is, the story didn’t emerge for several months. Moreover, the Trump Organization still hasn’t answered the question of how it will determine what portion of the revenues cons ute profits that it will pass along to the treasury.

Theoretically, the Trump Organization may have legitimately not been aware that the money Qorvis spent at the hotel came from the Saudi government, in which case Trump himself also wouldn’t have known about it, either. However, Saudi Arabia has hired Qorvis to carry out PR campaigns twice in the past, once shortly after 9/11 and once after the country invaded Yemen in 2015; both efforts were highly controversial, with the former resulting in a probe by the Justice Department in 2004. Besides, given that the Saudi government would likely have been spending that money on the campaign regardless, the mere possibility that the president would know where the payments came from and think more favorably of the country may very well have been enough of an incentive to make bookings at Trump’s hotel over its compe ion. Finally, even without the Saudi connection, the situation still cons utes an organization effectively paying the president while lobbying on a controversial issue.

It’s hardly hyperbolic to say that Saudi Arabia’s payment at the Trump International Hotel is exactly what ethics experts worried about when they first raised concerns about the president’s decision to retain ownership of his businesses while in office. As part of an active campaign to lobby the U.S. government, the Saudi government was effectively paying the president, who very well could end up significantly influencing how the policy plays out. In doing so, they demonstrated the inadequacy of Trump’s plan to avoid conflicts of interest: If the disclosure paperwork hadn’t surfaced, all it would have taken to skirt the rules Trump and his company set up was to funnel money through a lobbying firm.

[RandomGuy]

That Golf Course in New Jersey

During his first few months in office, President Donald Trump spent many of his weekends at Mar-a-Lago, which some have called his “Winter White House,” in Palm Beach, Florida. His trips there were subject to criticism on the grounds of both symbolism and substance. Symbolically, his visits both conflicted with his campaign promise to rarely leave Washington, D.C., and undermined his frequent criticisms of his predecessor for traveling while in office. Substantively, Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago make manifest one of the major problems with his decision to retain ownership of his businesses while in office: Anybody seeking to influence Trump could theoretically pay for a membership, putting money in his pocket while potentially gaining direct access to him. In this way, the president’s mere presence serves as an advertisement for the resort.

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Donald Trump's Thrifty Vacation to New Jersey

Many of the same concerns apply to Trump’s “Summer White House,” his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. It’s historically been his summer getaway, and, given his penchant for visiting his own properties, it’s expected he will be spending more time there in coming months.

But whereas the problems with Mar-a-Lago have mainly been implicit—neither Trump nor his company, the Trump Organization, has acknowledged any link between the election and, say, the decision to double the club’s initiation fees in January—the intermingling of the presidency and the Trump Organization is on more explicit display in Bedminster. While there’s plenty of evidence (especially on social media) that visiting Mar-a-Lago could lead to an encounter with the president, Bedminster appears to have been actively advertising the possibility. According to Laura Holson of The New York Times, who toured the property with Trump’s son Eric,

Mr. Trump is a selling point for prospective brides and grooms considering holding their weddings at the club. When I was there, I was given a marketing brochure that made the following pledge: “If he is on-site for your big day, he will likely stop in & congratulate the happy couple. He may take some photos with you but we ask you and your guests to be respectful of his time & privacy.”

In a remarkable piece of advertising synergy, Trump made good on the promise in the brochure the weekend after Holson published her article. Between June 9 and June 11, Trump’s second weekend visiting the property since taking office, numerous photos posted on Instagram show the president posing for pictures with his paying guests at the resort, including not only a bride and groom but also a group of eighth-graders at their middle-school graduation party.

Though Holson notes that “a spokeswoman for the club said that the specific brochure has been discontinued,” the fact that it was present after Trump took office in the first place demonstrates the conflict of interest the resort creates. Trump himself has even acknowledged that his presence is a draw for the property: In November, shortly after the election, Trump told paying guests that he would be interviewing prospective members of his cabinet at the golf club and that members might be able to “come along” to the meetings.

Bedminster offers a prime opportunity for anybody with deep enough pockets—the initiation fee reportedly runs $350,000—to attempt to buy his or her way into a meeting with the president, a fact that marketers at the Trump Organization appear to have recognized. And scientific studies show that even minuscule financial transactions can be enough to significantly influence the recipient, meaning that, if and when such a meeting happens, the fact that such visitors are paying Trump to be there will almost certainly hang over the encounter—and make him more inclined to do something in return.

The situation demonstrates how Trump’s continual choice to shirk longstanding ethical procedures threatens to compromise his decision making as president. As Trump himself has noted, the president is technically exempt from federal conflict-of-interest laws (although not, as has been frequently noted, the Cons ution’s emoluments clause). But by retaining ownership of his businesses, Trump creates the exact situation those laws were designed to prevent: On issues both large and small, it’s an open question whether Trump is prioritizing the well-being of the country or whether he’s allowing his financial interests to dictate his behavior.