Wednesday, April 24, 2019

While on the topic of corruption and quid pro quo. So many tenticles it is called the Koctopus.

April 23, 2019
By David Safier

Did I mention (click here) that ASU’s Center for the Study of Economic Liberty was created in November, with a little help – OK, $3.5 million worth of help – from the Charles Koch Foundation?

And did I mention that Ducey is basically a Koch creation?

It's a classic quid pro quo. (click here) The Koch brothers' network of donors helped fund then-Treasurer Doug Ducey's 2012 campaign against a one cent sales tax for schools, then it contributed big bucks to his gubernatorial campaigns. In return, Ducey made sure state funds go to the latest additions to the Koch's nationwide network of think tanks and university outposts: UA's Freedom Center and ASU's School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership.

Ducey gets a few millions in contributions. The many-tentacled Koch network, often referred to as the Kochtapus, gets $7.5 million a year from the state to extend its influence. Small investment, big return. That's how the rich and powerful like to do things.

In 2014, 2015 and 2016, UA's Freedom Center received half a million dollars each year from the state. In 2017, the amount increased to three-quarters of a million. In 2018 and 2019 it leapt to $3.5 million. It's on track to get the same amount in this year's budget.

ASU's School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership began getting state funding in 2016, with half a million. In 2017 it went up to three-quarters of a million. In 2018, 2019 and most likely in this year's budget, its allocation is $4 million.

Over the last few years, the two programs have pulled in a total of $7.5 million per year....              

Yep. All the Russian money the NRA could shovel into circulation for candidates.

April 24, 2019
By Bob Brigham

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) (click here) was sued in federal court on Tuesday for allegedly failing to enforce campaign finance laws against the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Giffords, the nonprofit organization founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) after she survived an assassination attempt, sued the FEC for allegedly allowing the NRA to violate campaign finance law — including to help Donald Trump.

The new lawsuit, reported by BuzzFeed court and justice reporter Zoe Tillman, mentions the word “Trump” thirty-five times.
“Plaintiff’s complaints demonstrate that the National Rifle Association (“NRA”) violated the Federal Election Campaign Act by using a complex network of shell corporations to unlawfully coordinate expenditures with the campaigns of at least seven candidates for federal office, thereby making millions of dollars of illegal, unreported, and excessive in-kind contributions, including up to $25 million in illegal contributions to now President Donald J. Trump,” the lawsuit charged.
The lawsuit attempted to explain the scale of the alleged campaign finance violation....

Trump angrily states he is the most transparent president in history (click here for the truth - thank you)

There was a statement I thought I heard. I wasn't listening very intently for such statements, so much as content, but, I thought I heard someone say, "Donald Trump stated, Congress is nothing more than palls."

If that is the statement, my assessment is this:

l. That is not Trump talk. Donald Trump doesn't speak like that. Insulting, yes, but, using the image of Congress as a pall to the country is not in Trump vocabulary normally.

2. When I heard that my first impression was that was Vladimir Putin talking. See, the Russian Duma is very different than the US Congress. The leadership of Communist Russia would say that of the Congress because it doesn't understand the dynamic that exists with the country and the Congress. 

So, Trump may have said something like that about Congress as an insult to raise his own spectrum of authority, but, those are not original words and they are grossly out of context it is obvious to me he learned that from a far different source.

My estimation is that Trump is still talking to Putin and garnering all sorts of ideas of grandeur inappropriate in every way for a president of the USA to think about himself.

The Special Council's foot note stands.

April 24, 2019
By Stephanie Baker and Helena Bedwell

A Georgian-American businessman (click here) is accusing Special Counsel Robert Mueller of “glaring inaccuracies” and sensationalizing texts about alleged salacious tapes involving Donald Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow.

In a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday, lawyers for Giorgi Rtskhiladze demanded a retraction to a footnote in Mueller’s 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election....

The paragraph below is a lie.

...Rtskhiladze said the full exchange of his texts with Cohen shows he was only communicating a rumor a friend had overheard at a Moscow party. He said his friend, whom he declined to identify, called to alert him about the rumor because of Rtskhiladze’s business dealings with Trump. Rtskhiladze said he passed along the identity of his friend to Mueller....

Oh, dear. In typing the word "some" was left out and it completely changes the entire meaning of the conservation. That is a man that does not understand the English language. SOME? SOME?

...In his texts, Rtskhiladze tells Cohen: “Stopped flow of some tapes from Russia.” But in the footnote, Mueller dropped “some” from the text, which is a “crucial” word because “it establishes the fact that Mr. Rtskhiladze had no knowledge of the tapes’ content,” according to the letter to Barr. Mueller didn’t disclose the rest of the text exchange, which shows Rtskhiladze didn’t have direct knowledge of the rumor involving the tapes, the letter says....

“Stopped flow of some tapes from Russia.” 

The only person that would be interested in the word SOME would be Donald Trump. Some is meaningless to the Special Council. It doesn't matter if there are some stopped coming from Russia or one stopped coming from Russia or a million; there is at least ONE tape that Rtskhiladze was interested in talking to Michael Cohen about. 

Donald Trump would definitely be interested in the word some, because that would indicate there are others that were not stopped coming from Russia. But, for the Special Council, if there is just one tape stopped coming from Russia, the question is, "Why would a Russian call Michael Cohen to pass on a message that there was at least one tape that was stopped coming from Russia?" My guess is the word some was allowed to be absent from the footnote because it is completely irrelevant to the fact there was at least one tape stopped coming from Russia.

I don't care if a Russian by the name of Rtskhiladze has his pants in a wad because his text message was included in a footnote of the Special Council. WHAT IN THE HELL IS BILL BARR ENTERTAINING RUSSIANS FOR?

How did a personal friend of Trump get to write an introduction to an official government document?

July 7, 2018
By Ryan W. Miller

Harvard law (click here) professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said backing President Donald Trump in certain cases has been harder than defending O.J. Simpson and other celebrity clients, according to an interview with.

The New York Times.

When asked, "Is this actually worse than when you defended O.J. Simpson?" of his defense of the president, Dershowitz replied:

"Of course. Or Claus von Bulow or Leona Helmsley or Michael Milken or Mike Tyson. This is much worse than all that."

Dershowitz continued, "In those cases people were critical of me, but they were prepared to discuss it. They were prepared to have a dialogue. Here, the people that I’m objecting to want to stop the dialogue. They don’t want to have the conversation."

Dershowitz was an appellate adviser to O.J. Simpson during his murder trial and also defended Claus von Bulow....

I want to know how much Dershowitz was paid for his introduction and is he receiving royalties from document sales. Why are the words "Authorized Edition" missing from the cover of the Special Council Report? This is not the Mueller Report, that is a populist rendition of the fact the Special Council compiled this report.

Harvard needs to carry out an ethics review of Dershowitz.

I won't buy this book. It's cover alone is corrupted by Trump's administration.

Jupiter, Fla. detectives say they found $43,000 in unreported cash in Shen Mingbi's bank safe deposit box.

April 23, 2019
By Chloe Teboe

West Palm Beach — A second massage therapist (click here) has been arrested and faces several prostitution charges after detectives in Florida say she performed a sex act on New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

A hearing was held for Shen Mingbi in Palm Beach County on Tuesday, a day after she was arrested. Through a Mandarin interpreter, Mingbi was ordered to surrender her passport and stay away from massage parlors.