Trump Foundation to shut down (‘pattern of illegality’)

[Cow Poke]

Let's say, hypothetically, Bill & Hillary are investigated tomorrow for using the Clinton foundation to buy nukes for Russia in exchange for child sex slaves. They're charged with treason on Thursday, convicted on Friday, sentenced to death on Saturday, and executed on Sunday.

It's now Monday.

On this hypothetical Monday, the top news item is "Trump Foundation to shut down (‘pattern of illegality’)" . So.... what's your take?

You're a nut. You're gonna fit in here just fine!

And I'll give you your first amen, just for grins.

[Cow Poke]

...We use that method for jury service - random selection plus some vetting to ensure a reasonable panel - ...

Yeah, we have jury duty by supposed random selection, but it's extremely easy to not be selected.

Hence, the expression, "That poor [rascal] - his fate is in the hands of 12 people too stupid to get out of jury duty".

[Starlight]

Yeah, we have jury duty by supposed random selection, but it's extremely easy to not be selected.

Sure, but that's all in the implementation details. I am not advocating for any particular implementation details.

Whether individuals could 'opt out' if chosen, or what vetting the selected individual would receive, could be debated and tweaked. I am only suggesting that there could be benefit in having one of the chambers of congress filled relatively at random from the population by some sort of jury-service-like lottery.

[Cow Poke]

Sure, but that's all in the implementation details. I am not advocating for any particular implementation details.

Whether individuals could 'opt out' if chosen, or what vetting the selected individual would receive, could be debated and tweaked. I am only suggesting that there could be benefit in having one of the chambers of congress filled relatively at random from the population by some sort of jury-service-like lottery.

At least it gets back to the notion of "citizen legislators" instead of career politicians. I'm assuming, of course, these would be substantially term limited.

[Starlight]

At least it gets back to the notion of "citizen legislators" instead of career politicians. I'm assuming, of course, these would be substantially term limited.

I would suggest perhaps a single 2-year term for the randomly selected citizens, but again I'm not tied to any details.

[Cow Poke]

I would suggest perhaps a single 2-year term for the randomly selected citizens, but again I'm not tied to any details.

How bout two 2 two year terms, the first as a "junior" representative, then 2 years as the mentor. For continuity.

[Starlight]

How bout two 2 two year terms, the first as a "junior" representative, then 2 years as the mentor. For continuity.

Yup, totally possible.

Whether any 'mentoring' was needed would depend how hard the job was. In a two-chamber setup where one chamber has elected politicians who draft the laws and pass them to the People's Chamber for a yes/no vote, the People's Chamber wouldn't particularly need to be mentored as long as they had a staffer capable of explaining complicated bits of the draft laws to them. Likewise they could vote yes/no on judicial nominees, or vote to send 1-line or 1-page requests to the elected politicians' chamber saying "we would like to end the war in Yemen" or "the following 10 bullet points are what we'd like to see in a healthcare system that we'd like you to come up with" or "we're going to veto next year's budget unless it balances and spends $X on the military" and the elected politicians could respond to that (or not) and the populace could see they were or weren't ignoring the requests of the People's Chamber and vote accordingly at the next election.

In a one-chamber setup where the randomly chosen people are drafting the legislation themselves with the help of aides, a bit more training and mentoring might well be required.

[Cow Poke]

Yup, totally possible.

Whether any 'mentoring' was needed would depend how hard the job was. In a two-chamber setup where one chamber has elected politicians who draft the laws and pass them to the People's Chamber for a yes/no vote, the People's Chamber wouldn't particularly need to be mentored as long as they had a staffer capable of explaining complicated bits of the draft laws to them. Likewise they could vote yes/no on judicial nominees, or vote to send 1-line or 1-page requests to the elected politicians' chamber saying "we would like to end the war in Yemen" or "the following 10 bullet points are what we'd like to see in a healthcare system that we'd like you to come up with" or "we're going to veto next year's budget unless it balances and spends $X on the military" and the elected politicians could respond to that (or not) and the populace could see they were or weren't ignoring the requests of the People's Chamber and vote accordingly at the next election.

In a one-chamber setup where the randomly chosen people are drafting the legislation themselves with the help of aides, a bit more training and mentoring might well be required.

Check out the three classes of US Senate -- if it were something like that, with citizen legislators, and ONE six year term......

[Mountain Man]

Yeah, we have jury duty by supposed random selection, but it's extremely easy to not be selected.

Hence, the expression, "That poor [rascal] - his fate is in the hands of 12 people too stupid to get out of jury duty".

"You will be tried by a jury of your peers,"
"What? I don't want to be judged by a bunch of crooks!"

[JimL]

His charity misuse I find the most amusing is:

“At one point, Trump used the charity’s money to make a $25,000 political donation to Florida Attorney General Pamela Bondi (R). The charity didn’t tell the IRS about that, as required — and instead listed that donation as a gift to an unrelated charity in Kansas with a similar name. Trump’s team blamed accounting mistakes.”

Pam Bondi was the Florida AG who decided not to prosecute Trump University for its fraud after receiving the donation.


Eh? The whole point of Trump's campaign was to try and make money. He's been a two-bit con artist and grifter his whole life who's been regularly cash-strapped as his various dumb schemes keep falling apart around him. Even his casinos kept going bankrupt. He lies that he's mega-rich as part of his branding efforts because he wouldn't be able to do licensing deals to sell his name to hotels to use if it wasn't associated with wealth. In the mean time he desperately tries to scam a few thousand at a time by never paying any of his contractors who do work on his properties, and then not paying his lawyers who defended him when those contractors sued him, and then scamming as many people as possible for a few thousand at a time by running a fake university, etc. When his son's charity work with children with cancer brought them to his father's golf courses, Trump charged double to extract as much money from their charity as possible for himself.

His latest grift was to run for the Presidency, pocket all the campaign money, and do as many business deals with foreign countries as possible. Then, when he was shocked to find he'd won the Presidency, he organised a scam to pocket most of the money from his inauguration, quadrupled the fees at Mar-a-Lago and gave the paying guests there access to the President and ability to help him appoint cabinet members and meet foreign dignitaries. Then he jacked up the prices in Trump tower and insisted the department of defense and the secret service rent space there and pay him money for it, and insisted the secret service rent golf carts from him at Mar-a-Lago as they followed him around there. Meanwhile his son-in-law was off talking to middle eastern countries trying to use political pressure to help bail him out of his personal financial debts that he has incurred when he stupidly bought 666 Fifth Avenue NY for vastly more than it was worth in his foolish efforts to be a big-shot real-estate mogul.

Trump's other 2-bit grifts have included using his family charity as a personal piggy bank and laundering money through the Trump hotel in Panama. And I'm probably forgetting a dozen or so...

There are currently 17 open investigations that relate in some way to possible misconduct by Trump. Every aspect of his life and all his family and friends and partners in crime now seems to be under investigation by everyone from the Special Counsel, to the Southern District of NY, to States Attorneys General, to the upcoming Democratic controlled House, and so far they seem to be finding misconduct and crimes everywhere they look.

The biggest donation the foundation gave was $264,000 to New York City to refurbish a Fountain. Only thing about that was that the fountain was outside of Trumps Plaza Hotel which of course was a donation to his own benefit. The smallest was a $7.00 Boy Scouts fee for his son. Then of course he bought portraits of himself for $42,000 out of the fund, not sure how he claimed that as a charitable donation. The guy is as corrupt as they come in every aspect of his life, but then again, he is a republican, so we shouldn't be all that surprised.

[rogue06]

Don't pretend that this is a uniquely American trait.

Back when the various Clinton scandals were erupting, and CNN made it a policy to not use the word "scandal" to describe them, there were several apologists in the MSM proclaiming that in Europe scandal-plagued Administrations were often the most effective.

[Tassman]

I seriously doubt that Trump needed it as a piggy bank to help finance his campaign.

What Trump "needs" and that to which he feels entitled, are two very different things. He feels entitled to everything. The world is his piggy bank.

[Bald Ape]

How would they be convicted of treason when the action is not treason? To commit treason, you must actively aid an enemy of the country, and Russia is, at least by the definition used in the Constitution, not an enemy because we're not at war with them.

How does one hold what would possibly be the trial of the century in just one day?

What about all of the lengthy and convoluted appeals process that the government is legally required to go through in order to execute someone, which takes years to go through?

How, in all of these considerations, would the top news item be about anything other than that?

The only conclusion is that the government has completely and blatantly ignored rule of law and has the media censored to such an extent that the "top news story" is something other than the aforementioned flagrant ignoring of the rule of law. So I guess my take is that in this hypothetical situation would be that we've turned into a totalitarian dictatorship in the space of a week, likely with a civil war about to erupt (if it hadn't already).

That portion of my comment was tongue-in-cheek: a deliberately absurd hypothetical intended to undermine a fallacious line of reasoning that deceptively avoids addressing the subject at hand.

An analogy. If I get stopped for driving 70 mph in a 55, it'd be idiotic for me to try arguing to the officer, "I shouldn't be ticketed! Why should I have to pay $120 for driving 15 mph over the speed limit? My brother routinely drives 95 mph down this road... and he's never even been pulled over! Compared to him, you should be congratulating me on how safely I drive!" The officer could explain the flaw in my reasoning. He could explain to me that how my brother drives (and what legal consequences he has or hasn't faced) has absolutely zero bearing on whether I have broken the law. That driving 15 mph over the speed limit is unsafe *even if* some drivers regularly drive faster than that. Or, alternatively, the officer could directly undermine the fallacious argument by retorting; "Okay, fine. Let's pretend I ticketed your brother earlier today. In fact, let's say I caught him going 120 mph, arrested him for reckless driving, impounded his car, and took away his license. If that were the case, then would you agree you deserve a $120 ticket?". If my goal was to avoid acknowledging that I had broken the law by changing the subject, this retort would bring things right back on point.


So, for this thread:

Original point (paraphrased - essentially what I'm curious to see addressed): Hey, guys and gals who believe Donald Trump is a great man: there's mounting evidence that Trump set up a fake charity, collected donations, and then skimmed money off the top of those donations to cover his own personal expenses. If the evidence holds up to scrutiny, and it can be shown that Trump is the kind of person to (effectively) steal money out of the coffer, would that change your assessment of just how great a man he is? And if what he did was illegal, do you feel he should he be held accountable to whatever laws he broke?

Trump-supporter's idiotic red-herring / non-answer / shallow-dodge: Well, Hillary did something much worse and she got away with it! So there. What about Hillary? (Sadly, this type of red-herring is often effective. The original poster will "counter-argue" that "no, Hillary did not do something worse!"... and in short order the thread will be about Benghazi, Bill's penis, Hillary selling nukes to Russia, etc...)

My retort: (avoiding the bait, so to speak) "Are you saying that you would concede that Trump's actions make him a despicable low-life criminal, were Hillary held accountable to (and severely punished for) the many crimes you feel she committed?"

Of course, this being the internet, I have no illusions that this will work - that any Trump supporters will directly address the topic of Donald Trump's accountability for the actions of Donald Trump. Ironically, it appears that the level of absurdity-flourish in my response has been crafted into the very diversion-monster it was intended to slay...

[Bald Ape]

You're a nut. You're gonna fit in here just fine!

And I'll give you your first amen, just for grins.

Hey, thanks for the welcome mat! It's more of a "welcome-back" mat for me, but that's another story. Anyway, in the spirit of fitting in, I suppose I should respond with something, well, fitting: "I'll take that 'amen'. And I'll give you your first 'hail-the-unicorn'. Because that's how much your 'amen' means to me... What a bunch of make-believe gibberish... [ramble ramble ramble] ... and so, if santa-clause can hump the easter bunny then how do you explain evil, huh?? Checkmate."

;-)

(If the humor misses the mark there - seriously, 'preciate the welcome.)

[oxmixmudd]

What about Hillary's Foundation?

What about it? How do you suppose that Trumps foundation would be required to shut down and Hillary's not in a Republican Presidency, House, and Senate with Republican appointees to the department of Justice and FBI? Maybe because they flagrantly violated the law in a way that brought it upon themselves?

Isn't it a bit of a stretch to be clamoring 'something is unfair' given that this is the most favorable environment trump could possibly hope for in terms of having people in the wings ready to look the other way, whereas this is perhaps the most unfavorable environment possible for the Clinton foundation. I mean I know you think something is unfair here but - really?


Jim