Maybe it is just the candidate that is responsible for disclosure, but, was Manafort responsible for disclosing his past relationships with foreign governments?

August 9, 2017

By Carol D. Leonnig, Tom Hamburger and Rosalind S. Helderman

FBI agents (click here) raided the home in Alexandria, Va., of President Trump’s former campaign chairman, arriving in the pre-dawn hours late last month and seizing documents and other materials related to the special counsel investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The raid, which occurred without warning on July 26, signaled an aggressive new approach by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team in dealing with a key figure in the Russia inquiry. Manafort has been under increasing pressure as the Mueller team looked into his personal finances and his professional career as a highly paid foreign political consultant.

Using a search warrant, agents appeared the day Manafort was scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee and a day after he met voluntarily with Senate Intelligence Committee staff members....

June 27, 2017
By Tom Hamburder and Rosalind S. Helderman

A consulting firm (click here) led by Paul Manafort, who chaired Donald Trump’s presidential campaign for several months last year, retroactively filed forms Tuesday showing that his firm received $17.1 million over two years from a political party that dominated Ukraine before its leader fled to Russia in 2014.

Manafort disclosed the total payments his firm received between 2012 and 2014 in a Foreign Agents Registration Act filing late Tuesday that was submitted to the U.S. Justice Department. The report makes Manafort the second former senior Trump adviser to acknowledge the need to disclose work for foreign interests....

We know for a fact, Viktor Yanukovych broke the law of the 2004 Constitution (click here) that lead to a very controversial rewrite of the Ukraine Constitution of 2014. There were deaths in the Ukraine Maidan. Yanukovych was elected as President of the Ukraine in 2010. Financial relationships with Yanukovych is questionable. Yanukovych disarmed the national military and armed the Oligarchs with their own militias.

April 14, 2017
By Lucian Kim

Paul Manafort quit (click here) as Donald Trump's campaign manager last summer amid questions about his consulting work for a disgraced Ukrainian leader who now is a wanted man in his own country.

While Manafort vanished from Ukraine's political scene even earlier, his name lives on in Kiev.

Ukrainian investigators are seeking to understand his ties, if any, to former President Viktor Yanukovych at the time of the shooting of anti-government protesters on the capital's central square, known as the Maidan, in February 2014....

Making money at the cost of the sovereign state of any country is against the law. It is subversive to the stability of the government. That is a hostile act. 

July 15, 2017
By Andrew E. Kramer

Kiev, Ukraine — Paul J. Manafort, (click here) President Trump’s former campaign chairman, recently filed financial reports with the Justice Department showing that his lobbying firm earned nearly $17 million for two years of work for a Ukrainian political party with links to the Kremlin.

Curiously, that was more than the party itself reported spending in the same period for its entire operation — the national political organization’s expenses, salaries, printing outlays and other incidentals.

The discrepancies show a lot about how Mr. Manafort’s clients — former President Viktor F. Yanukovych of Ukraine and his Party of Regions — operated.

And in a broader sense, they underscore the dangers that lurk for foreigners who, tempted by potentially rich payoffs, cast their lot with politicians in countries that at best have different laws about money in politics, and at worst are, like Ukraine in those years, irredeemably corrupt.

Mr. Yanukovych was driven from office in the Maidan Revolution of 2014, after having stolen, according to the current Ukrainian government, at least $1 billion. In the years before his fall, Mr. Manafort took lavish payments to burnish the image of Mr. Yanukovych and the Party of Regions in Washington, even as the party acknowledged only very modest spending....

It is more than interesting that Mr. Manafort used the same plutocratic strategy to advance Mr. Yanukovich as he did with Mr. Trump. There is something very wrong here. This is Ukriane politics and not that of the highly expensive politics of the USA. Neither is moral.

Mr. Manafort is an influential figure in both countries and in Ukraine where President Putin appeared in support of Viktor Yanukovych. The friendliness alone is a violation of the relationship with Russia by the USA. Of course, Mr. Manafort ended his influence when Yanukovych fled to Russia. That doesn't mean Mr. Manafort is not suspect in the activities prior to that ESCAPE through Crimea.

What followed was an invasion by the Russians to Ukraine while annexing Crimea.

It is easy to say Mr. Manafort was a Yanukovych crony. He benefited by the Presidency of Yanukovych.

How all this transcends into the link between the Trump Organization and Russia is more than interesting. That link existed during the time the USA set sanctions against Russia. I have stated more than once on this blog that companies seeking business in countries without strong democracies, such as Russia, are risking their investment. If relationships sour between countries the monies are gone. There are courts to seek return of those monies, but, actually receiving those investments back is not likely unless a better relationship results.

HOW MUCH DID THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION INVEST DURING THE TIME SANCTIONS WERE IMPOSED?

How many other individuals and/or companies trusted Trump in being lead into investments in Russia they can no longer retrieve?

This is the real issue, isn't it? Does the USA government conduct the business of the people or the business of the Plutocrats.

I don't hear any huffing and puffing about the climate, yet it is far more deadly than any nuclear weapon on Earth.

If Earth loses it's oxygen content, game over.

We have not been here before. The planet is supporting billions of people and the consumer demands insult the troposphere with greenhouse gases such as methane.

As far as I am concerned the USA is in a very dangerous place, but, it has absolutely nothing to do with nuclear weapons.

August 8, 2017
By Michael D. Shear and Brad Plumer

Washington — The impending (click here) release of a key government report on climate change will force President Trump to choose between accepting the conclusions of his administration’s scientists and the demands of his conservative supporters, who remain deeply unconvinced that humans are the cause of the planet’s warming.

A White House official said on Tuesday that it was still reviewing the draft document that was written by scientists, some of whom have said they fear Mr. Trump will seek to bury it or alter its contents before it is formally released. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said the administration would not comment on the report before its scheduled release this fall.

But the looming publication of the climate report — which concludes that “evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans” — once again raises a contentious policy issue that has deeply divided Mr. Trump’s closest advisers since he arrived in the Oval Office....

Governor Eddie Baza Calvo is the ELECTED Governor of Guam.

Pangasinan Governor (click here) Amado T. Espino, Jr. and Guam Governor Eddie Baza Calvo lead the signing of the Sister City Agreement between the Province of Pangasinan and the island of Guam as members of the Provincial Board of Pangasinan look on.  Other signatories to the agreement include, (L-R) Philippine Consul General to Guam, Hon. Bayani V. Mangibin, Guam Lt. Governor Ray Tenorio, Pangasinan Vice Governor Jose Ferdinand Z. Calimlim, Jr., and Major Vic Rivo, Sr. (Ret), President of the Federation of Pangasinanses of Guam.

The military that exists in Guam is not that of the people of the islands, it belongs to the USA. North Korea has no argument with the people of Guam.

Pangasinan (click here) was among the earliest political and administrative units in the Philippines. It was officially conquered and colonized by D. Martin de Goiti in 1571. On April 5, 1572, Pangasinan was made an encomienda by the Spanish royal crown to receive instruction on the Catholic Faith, which means that Pangasinan was organized under one leadership and has identity before the Spanish royal court. Eight years later, in 1580, Pangasinan was organized into a political unit under an alkalde mayor who at that time has authority as head of the province or provincial government with judicial function indicating that Pangasinan has become a province. To commemorate the day when Pangasinan became an encomienda and the year it became a province, Pangasinan celebrates April 5, 1580 as the official founding day of the Province of Pangasinan. At that time, its territorial jurisdiction included the Province of Zambales and parts of La Union and Tarlac. By the middle of the 19th century however, the northern towns of Agoo to Bacnotan were separated from the province and became parts of La Union. The provincial territory was further diminished in 1875 with the annexation of Paniqui and other towns south of it to Tarlac.

Pangasinan, derived its name from the word “panag asinan”, which means “where salt is made”, owing to the rich and fine salt beds which were the prior source of livelihood of the province’s coastal towns....