Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Republicans in disarray!

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Republicans don’t trust women.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

The willow is too close to the house.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

A consequence of cucumbers

No one could have predicted…

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Friday Morning Open Thread: ALWAYS Be Grifting!

Friday Morning Open Thread: ALWAYS Be Grifting!

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High praise, from a professional who knows how investigative reporting should work. USAToday, “Trump gets millions from golf members. CEOs and lobbyists get access to president”:

Dozens of lobbyists, contractors and others who make their living influencing the government pay President Trump’s companies for membership in his private golf clubs, a status that can put them in close contact with the president, a USA TODAY investigation found.

Members of the clubs Trump has visited most often as president — in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia — include at least 50 executives whose companies hold federal contracts and 21 lobbyists and trade group officials. Two-thirds played on one of the 58 days the president was there, according to scores they posted online.

Because membership lists at Trump’s clubs are secret, the public has until now been unable to assess the conflicts they could create. USA TODAY found the names of 4,500 members by reviewing social media and a public website golfers use to track their handicaps, then researched and contacted hundreds to determine whether they had business with the government.

The review shows that, for the first time in U.S. history, wealthy people with interests before the government have a chance for close and confidential access to the president as a result of payments that enrich him personally. It is a view of the president available to few other Americans.

Among Trump club members are top executives of defense contractors, a lobbyist for the South Korean government, a lawyer helping Saudi Arabia fight claims over the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the leader of a pesticide trade group that sought successfully to persuade the Trump administration not to ban an insecticide government scientists linked to health risks.

Members of Trump’s clubs pay initiation fees that can exceed $100,000, plus thousands more in annual dues to his companies, held in a trust for his benefit.

The arrangement is legal, and members said they did not use the clubs to discuss government business. Nonetheless, ethics experts questioned whether it’s appropriate for a sitting president to collect money from lobbyists and others who spend their days trying to shape federal policy or win government business…

Presidents have long socialized with the wealthy and well-connected, including campaign donors. But although the Kennedys visited country clubs in Palm Beach and the Roosevelts “were hobnobbing with the moneyed rich in the Hudson Valley or in Manhattan, the very people (Trump) is hanging out with are paying to be there in that setting with him,” said Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

“This is unprecedented on so many levels,” she said…

Reader Interactions

78Comments

  13. 13.

    Patricia Kayden

    “This is unprecedented on so many levels,” she said…

    Everything about Trump is unprecedented. He has practically destroyed the norms surrounding the presidency and I wonder if we’ll ever have a normal President again who feels that he/she has to play by the rules. Sigh.

  16. 16.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Speaking of grifting:

    Bernie is ripping off the marks by selling another “book”. It’s titled “Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution”, going for $10.73 on amazon. Since when do “revolutionaries” join forces with corporations and seek personal profit and charge money. You would think a s0ciâlizt would just give away for free on the net.

    Making matters worse, it’s not only a rip off, it’s a cheap rip off: He took the junk out of his waste basket and pasted together.

    Not a guide but a collection of thoughts and tweets
    By Nathanon August 29, 2017

    Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase

    First let me say i love bernie sanders but this is not a guide to political revolution. This a collection of his thoughts and tweets into a book. There are no actionable items for you to do. As a local organizer and reader of political guide books this falls far short.

    Well, criminal defense teams cost a lot of of money.

    Sad.

  17. 17.

    Kay

    I had a long drive in rural Michigan yesterday so I listened to 2 Right wing radio shows- they’re really upset at Trump talking to Pelosi. They never mention Schumer- it’s always Pelosi :)

    They’re having trouble switching gears because they all hated Ryan and McConnell already so it was “The Establishment versus Trump” and now they have to defend Republicans again. It may take a week or two to sort out the enemies list but one thing is sure- Pelosi is still on it.

  22. 22.

    MJS

    @Patricia Kayden: If this country is smart enough collectively to elect a Democrat, we’ll see a normal, decent president again who adheres to ethical standards. Not only because she/he is inclined to do so, but also because as soon as a Democrat is in office, the media will rediscover an interest in things like “ethics” and “conflicts of interest”.

  27. 27.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I was thinking MAYBE it was a plan to force them to defend congressional Republicans as a way to make congressional Republicans more popular among the GOP base but that’s too attenuated.

    If Democrats really want to make the base furious with Trump they’ll kill The Wall. The Wall has become a kind of symbol of their “movement”. It’s fitting, right? A spiteful, expensive, useless wall as their monument. Not a bridge or a highway – a blank wall.

  30. 30.

    Baud

    @Kay: I’m sympathetic to those who say we should deal on the Wall to save DACA. But as with any hostage situation, you cut a deal and it encourages more hostage taking.

  31. 31.

    bystander

    @Kay:

    A spiteful, expensive, useless wall as their monument. Not a bridge or a highway – a blank wall.

    Gee, you’d almost think it was a metaphor for the trumpleton mentality. Naaaaahh. Sounds like a cheap novel.

  32. 32.

    MJS

    @Baud: Well, whoever the next Democratic president is will in all likelihood have met and spoken to one or more of the Clintons, which by the media’s definition makes them accomplices in the email/Clinton Foundation/Whitewater/Lewinsky/Travelgate/every other nontroversy matter, so it’s not like there won’t be any evidence of their inherent corruption.

  34. 34.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    That’s because she’s

    Fixed. 99% of the callers are men. As a woman who spends a lot of time fighting with Right wing men in my job, I recognize this. It’s daily for me. Years, daily. People joke about “mansplaining” and I’m always late to the party but mansplaining was this amazing revelation for me- “that’s what that is!” I had no language for that :)

  35. 35.

    bystander

    Dave Price, a tv weatherman, was on MSNBC last night. I have avoided Price as insufferable since he started in NYC so I was dismayed to see he was now on NBC. He was so torqued up about Irma, he was doing jazz hands in 15 second intervals, with eye bulging to match. Really annoying. Sorry to see Bill Cairns amping up like Lloyd Bridges’s character in Airport!

  37. 37.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    If they want to hurt Trump politically, block the wall. That’s his Katrina :)

    You know how they are- just like they need their son to be gay or their wife to lack health insurance they need a physical symbol to wrap that movement around. Tangible. Physical. They’ll visit it like normal people visit the Vietnam memorial.

  40. 40.

    satby

    @rikyrah: Good morning ? and happy to hear your sister is doing so much better!

    @Aimai: holding them and all the others in my thoughts. Waiting is all any of us outside the path can do now.

  41. 41.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I heard one of them refer to it as The Great Wall of America (on the tennis court, not on the radio) so I thought “ooh, they have a website and a name!” – but I looked and I think they are referring to this Time story.

    I’m a little disappointed. I was hoping they came up with that themselves.

  42. 42.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby: Unfortunately for some in the path, waiting is all they can do. Was talking to someone who’s brother is at ground zero for Irma. He says he can’t evacuate because he can’t get any gas.

  44. 44.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Trump probably knows it. It would be very Trumpian to give away the store to Pelosi in return for a “down payment” on his stupid fucking wall. He knows he, personally, needs that wall. I’m opposed to stupid, expensive, mean-spirited vanity projects. Period.

  47. 47.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: awful. I still haven’t gotten hold of my sister to find out what’s going on with my late mother’s condo. Newly remodeled, of course. My sisters are absentee landlords and I just hope the condo association or the neighbors contacted her to arrange board up if needed. It’s on the Gulf side, but that storm may cover the entire state if it goes straight up the middle.

  48. 48.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    The religious Right are making much more progress with Sessions and Pence than the Trumpian faction are making on economic issues. People should stop asking why the religious Right stick with Trump – they get Pence and Sessions. That’s why.

    DeVos is part of that faction too, but she doesn’t get anything done other than deliver nasty speeches. Thankfully she’s an incompetent ideologue.

  50. 50.

    Baud

    @Kay: Yeah I saw that thread yesterday. Frankly, I have more respect for right wing Christians who voted for Trump than I do to anyone on our side who stayed home or voted third party.

  52. 52.

    Luthe

    DeVos is part of that faction too, but she doesn’t get anything done other than deliver nasty speeches. Thankfully she’s an incompetent ideologue.

    You forgot she’s cutting back Title IX protections against campus sexual assault.

  54. 54.

    Gvg

    I have been wondering in the gas shortages were related to Harvey hitting Houston. There are always some gas shortages but I don’t remember them as being quite this bad. An ap called gasbuddy is being touted.
    Gov. Rick Scot has been sending police escorts to get the tanker trucks through the traffic to the gas stations. A store near me got a load in and I saw the tanker beside the station with already long lines of cars late at night with the empty station across the street deserted. I had wondered how people found out so fast. Line was too crazy for me so I got up early the next morning to get some. They were out of all but high test which they were selling at regular gas prices. I hope it doesn’t hurt my car to have high test.

  56. 56.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    Thanks for the discussion a while back regarding hot bird seed. I filled my bird feeders with it for the first time this week — I see cardinals and a woodpecker and titmice and chickadees, but NO SQUIRRELS.

  57. 57.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Gvg:

    I hope it doesn’t hurt my car to have high test.

    Your car will be fine. The shortages are due to a couple of factors Harvey being a big one (even up here I’ve seen a few stations out of gas) but also *panic* buying on the part of Floridians wanting to be prepared for the worst.

    **hard to call it panic buying when an existential threat is bearing down on one, but I lack a better word just now

  58. 58.

    Kay

    @Luthe:

    I don’t think she’s “cutting” them. She gave a speech saying she wants to roll back Obama rules. Her education budget is going down in flames in congressional committees. She’s not good at this job, which shouldn’t surprise anyone because she really was completely unqualified. I don’t even think she works regularly, as in “goes to work”- she seems to appear only for these speeches.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    @Luthe:

    I saw one of her yachts this summer. The DeVos yachts race on Lake Michigan. It was just perfect to me- there’s the Trump populist yacht! ONE of her yachts. I think they have 11. The DeVos’ family is serious wealthy.

  60. 60.

    Peale

    @Baud: I think we can build 10 feet of that wall…60 feet high…in a far away place so they’ll have to spend hours to get to it. We can open a hotel six, charge 200 a night. Plus the gas station. We’ll have enough so that we can hire some Mexicans to wear sombreros with bullet belts and everything, looking menacing but frustrated so that when the tourists look on the other side, they can imagine that the $2 billion spent on that 10 feet was worth it.

  61. 61.

    Baud

    @Peale:

    We’ll have enough so that we can hire some Mexicans to wear sombreros with bullet belts and everything, looking menacing but frustrated so that when the tourists look on the other side

    Haha.

    “¡Ay caramba! La pared es demasiado alta. ¡Pero es tan hermosa!

  64. 64.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    @Kay: ahahahahah

    that’s great visualization

    it’s like a scene out of 2001, when the apes pilgrimage around the monolith.

  71. 71.

    Jeffro

    Btw Krugman ties it together: Dreamers, Liars, and Bad Economics

    It’s true that Trump and company tell a lot of lies about economics (and everything else).

    The day after announcing that he would rescind DACA, Trump gave a speech on tax reform in which he claimed, as he has on multiple occasions, that America is the “highest-taxed nation in the world.” As fact-checkers have pointed out every time he says this, this isn’t just false, it’s almost the opposite of the truth — the U.S. collects less in taxes, as a share of national income, than almost any other advanced economy. But Trump just keeps repeating the lie.

    So having officials make false claims about the economics of DACA is, in a way, just standard operating procedure for this administration. Yet I’d argue that in this context it’s especially noteworthy, and especially vile.

    For one thing, what was stuff about jobs even doing in a statement by the attorney general?

    The official administration line is that Trump had no choice, that he was regretfully taking harsh action because DACA was an illegal exercise in executive power — which was also supposedly the reason the statement came from Sessions rather than the president himself. Actually, the legal case for DACA is pretty strong, and putting Sessions in front was probably about Trump’s cowardice more than anything else. But in any case, adding “and besides, they’re stealing our jobs” undercuts the whole pretense.

    Furthermore, the claim was, as I said, junk economics. The idea that there are a fixed number of jobs, so that if a foreign-born worker takes a job he or she takes it away from a native-born worker, is completely at odds with everything we know about how the economy works. Hearing it from a conservative is especially surreal.

    Rs simply cannot give an honest take on economics, because they’re in the business of stealing, or at least undervaluing, other peoples’ labor. This dovetails neatly with their racism, so that non-whites are always the ones to bear the brunt of their thievery.

  72. 72.

    TriassicSands

    He has practically destroyed the norms surrounding the presidency…

    Patricia, I think you could safely omit the word “practically.”

    Will we ever have a normal president again? That depends on how we deal with Trump. If he is allowed to finish his term without having to answer for his various crimes and ethical breaches, then the future of the American presidency will be changed forever. If, on the other hand, Trump is held accountable, impeached, and removed from office the future should be brighter.

  73. 73.

    Ksmiami

    @TriassicSands: I’ve been thinking that perhaps after /during Trump, Democratic Party goals should include reigning and redefining a Presidency downward. The role is too powerful and dare I say monarchical to serve the interests of 330 plus million people. I adored Obama but id like to see a competent Congress and Judiciary reassert their power

  74. 74.

    StringOnAStick

    @OzarkHillbilly: So, I ho read the story about the trump ethics lawyer’s wife and the prison inmate affair, and the next ad I get here is for workout supplements. I guess that’s better than the ad offering me $400 for my plasma.

  75. 75.

    Boatboy_srq

    @MJS: There’s a part of me that thinks Dems are scrutinized precisely because ethics are significant to them, and that Republicans are given a pass because they’re expected to be cooked and that’s just how they work.

  76. 76.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @Kay:

    ONE of her yachts. I think they have 11. The DeVos’ family is serious wealthy.

    That they are.
    There’s a ton of money to be made when you found and run a legal Ponzi er….multi level marketing scheme like Amway.
    The DeVos family grifting makes Trump & Snowbilly Sookie look like amateurs.

  77. 77.

    J R in WV

    @Peale:

    If you pick the right spot you could build a few thousand feet of wall and have it go from horizon to horizon. Then all you discuss would fall into place. No one would believe it was only a Potempkin wall for show. No Republican, anyway.

    And have a TRUMP TOWER hotel, carefully sited so that you can’t see the ends of the wall from the rooms. $5000 a night, well-done steaks for $190+$25 for a potato side+$50 for iceberg lettuce salad + $15 Coke. No free refills, water is $12. Showers are free if they’re water. Other substances available for an undisclosed (high) fee.

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