Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

When I was faster i was always behind.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

People are complicated. Love is not.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Their freedom requires your slavery.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

The lights are all blinking red.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Everybody saw this coming.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Open Thread: Calling the Trump Org to Account

Open Thread: Calling the Trump Org to Account

by | 140 Comments

This post is in: , ,

… Trump will remain a wealthy man regardless of whether his company is convicted of any of the charges. But the indictment adds to a growing pile of uncertainties about his company that experts say makes its future less clear than at any time since Trump’s much publicized financial collapse in Atlantic City and New York in the 1990s.

If convicted, the company could face hefty fines or other court-imposed penalties, according to legal experts. A felony conviction can complicate companies’ efforts to secure bank loans or even municipal licenses to sell alcohol or get construction permits.

Trump — referred to as the “former CEO” by prosecutors — has relocated to Florida. His two eldest children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, have followed his path out of business and into the political sphere. And some of his top properties have suffered severe drops in revenue, with more than $300 million in debts to refinance or pay off in the next few years.

“The immediate prosecution isn’t going to threaten to wipe out the company,” said Michael D’Antonio, who wrote two Trump biographies. “But what it does is open the possibility of so many secrets spilling out that the ramifications could last for years. It could be five or six years before all of this gets sorted. And that’s a long time for a company that’s built, in large measure, on the value of its reputation.”…

If Weisselberg, 73, were to unexpectedly leave the company, whether for reasons related to the case or not, D’Antonio said, it could cause a major disruption. He said Weisselberg has effectively run the business with Trump for several decades, managing the details and the finances while Trump built his brand and cut deals…

The next (official) hearing in the case isn’t till September 20th, so we’ve got all summer to speculate. And under any circumstances, the whole meshugas is expected to spread out over the next several years. If we can’t see TFG in an orange jumpsuit being led off to prison in shackles, IMO the next best punishment is torturing the old man with a steady stream of legal threats & business losses through his remaining sundown years… not to mention keeping his depraved progeny and their bedmates too busy hiding to run for any political office.

From a long (gloating) thread, which I don’t have the financial acumen to judge:

Actual lawyer pours cold water on one popular speculation:

But there’s always hope…

Reader Interactions

140Comments

  1. 1.

    RaflW

    As a Bloomberg opinion writer said in 2019 (paywalled, I think)
    “Trump+Taxes+Deutsche Bank+Mnuchin+Barr = Cover-Up”

    I sure hope the house of cards comes crashing down. DB seems like they are not out of the woods on things like financing a probably money launderer. And Barr’s ties, while indirect, are intriguing.

  2. 2.

    JPL

    The State is bringing charges, and we’ll soon find out whether or not the Federal Government will.   It would not surprise me if trump issued blanket pardons to his family and Weisselberg.

  4. 4.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @RaflW:

    I still want to know a lot more about the skeevy connections between DB, their loan officer who handled some of the Trump accounts and just happened to be Justice Kennedy’s son, the abrupt resignation of Kennedy from the SC, what exactly Trump said to Kennedy at the White House that apparently shocked Kennedy so much he stopped in his tracks and stood dead-still, and the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to replace him and who or what entity paid off all his massive debts just before his confirmation hearings began. I hope all those events haven’t been entirely scrubbed from journalists’ awareness.

  5. 5.

    Scamp Dog

    @JPL:  Doesn’t issuing pardons require holding executive office? Because right now, a Trump-issued pardon is about as effective as one I could issue…

  6. 6.

    hells littlest angel

    … his remaining sundown years …

    The more common parlance is “sunset years,” but I like this better. I imagine him babbling and aimlessly wandering until he dies.

  8. 8.

    dr. bloor

    Popehat’s right when he points out that Trump’s blathering is a defense, not an admission.  But it’s a defense that works only for him, at the expense of Wesselberg’s chances in court and his freedom.  It should come as a surprise to no one that TFG will sell your soul to Old Scratch the instant it is in his best interests to do so, but it still won’t set well with other underlings who have evidence to offer.

  9. 9.

    Jill

    @RaflW:  As soon as you bring in Deutsche Bank, don’t we also have to open up the Anthony Kennedy retirement/Brett Kavanaugh ascension as well? It won’t happen, but it should.

  11. 11.

    mrmoshpotato

    with more than $300 million in debts to refinance or pay off in the next few years.

    What foolish banker would refinance anything associated with this Soviet shitpile mobster crime family?

  13. 13.

    mrmoshpotato

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I still want to know a lot more about the skeevy connections between DB, their loan officer who handled some of the Trump accounts and just happened to be Justice Kennedy’s son, the abrupt resignation of Kennedy from the SC, what exactly Trump said to Kennedy at the White House that apparently shocked Kennedy so much he stopped in his tracks and stood dead-still, and the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to replace him and who or what entity paid off all his massive debts just before his confirmation hearings began. I hope all those events haven’t been entirely scrubbed from journalists’ awareness. 

    Same here.  All of that.

  14. 14.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Scamp Dog: Because right now, a Trump-issued pardon is about as effective as one I could issue…

    Blanket pardon, please!  I got some holiday weekend criming errr….totally legaling I wanna get off my list.

  16. 16.

    Redshift

    @JPL:

    It would not surprise me if trump issued blanket pardons to his family and Weisselberg. 

    If so, that still only covers federal charges, and the states are taking the lead on this.

  17. 17.

    Sure Lurkalot

    Besides loan covenants like ones relating to financial statements as expounded on by Kurt Eichenwald, loan agreements also contain representations and warranties that are to be true when the documents are signed and throughout the loan, dealing with such things as authority to do business, hazardous substances, taxes, litigation…and given that asshole lies about everything, IMHO he was likely in default of every loan he ever entered into before the ink was dry on the signature pages.

    In my experience, lenders primarily foreclose on payment defaults, covenant defaults, not as much. Still hoping that Mr. Eichenwald is onto something though.

  20. 20.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Redshift:

    If so, that still only covers federal charges, and the states are taking the lead on this.

    Also, blanket pardons?  ?A-criming I will go, A-criming I will go, hi ho the dareio, A-criming I will go?

    ETA – sounds like a “Fuck you, coppers!  Yah see, naaahh!!!!” card.

  21. 21.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: Oooh.  It would be fun to throw some conspiracy charges on top (like for the 1/6ers who told each other to erase all their online stuff).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  22. 22.

    WaterGirl

    I get pissed at PopeHat sometimes because he doesn’t tell me what I want to hear.

    It’s not that I don’t want to hear the truth, it’s that I want the truth to be what I want to hear.

    The difference between that and all the crazies on the other side is that I pretty much accept his take, but am chagrined about it.  Instead of just making shit up and spreading it around.

    PopeHat had a long Q&A podcast this weekend and it was really interesting.

  24. 24.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @JPL: it wouldn’t surprise me if he has federal pardons in his pocket,  for himself and whoever’s covering his ass, but those wouldn’t apply here

  25. 25.

    germy

    @SiubhanDuinne:  the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to replace him and who or what entity paid off all his massive debts just before his confirmation hearings began.

    I still think Rich Dad & Mom paid off Brett’s debts.  I’m sure they’ve bailed him out before.

    Gifts from parents don’t have to be reported IIRC.

  26. 26.

    WaterGirl

    @debbie: I agree with you, but who knows whether the courts will.

    To me it’s the act of a brazen man who has never really experienced any consequences for his actions in his life.

    What is so appalling to me about this is learning this week that for white collar crimes, they have to prove intent, but intent certainly wasn’t relevant with George Floyd, obviously.

    I knew there was one set of rules for the rich and another for the rest of us, but it’s built into the law, right there in plain site.

    It’s disgusting.

  28. 28.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @germy: beyond the annual exempt amount– about 17K now I think?– I think larger gifts to family count against the estate tax exemption (IANAL)

  29. 29.

    WaterGirl

    @germy:

    Gifts from parents don’t have to be reported IIRC.

    I believe that they do, if they are over a certain amount.  And with the amount of his debts, I think they had to be over that amount.

    Maybe ask one of the attorneys in the morning thread tomorrow.

  30. 30.

    bbleh

    we’ve got all summer to speculate trash the brand until it collapses from sheer rottenness.

    FIFY

    As to “intent” and “awareness,” I don’t think a way-after-the-fact (and even after the indictment) proclamation that “I din’t  know nothin’” is gonna carry much evidentiary weight.  And that’s especially true given that, if he’s gonna claim that, guess who he’s gonna have to throw under the bus, and guess how many rooms that guy was in.  (ETA, what @dr. bloor: said)

    it would be seriously irresponsible not to speculate.

  32. 32.

    Just Chuck

    A secret blanket pardon for any and all crimes committed by a personal and business associate?  If that sort of thing could hold up for even a nanosecond, then we’re already done, with democracy and the rule of law already dead and rotting.

  33. 33.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @debbie:

    Even as a defense, it strains credulity.

    all it takes is one Staten Island MAGAt on the jury

  34. 34.

    WaterGirl

    @Mousebumples: It really is.  I’ve been listening for several months now.  It might be my favorite.

    I listen to Pod Save America, All the *Presidents Lawyers, Rational Security by the Lawfare folks, and one or two more.  I think PopeHat is my current favorite.

    Pod Save America has gotten downright depressing and anxiety-producing for me.

    *I know they moved the apostrophe after Trump was beaten by Biden, but I don’t recall where it is exactly.

  36. 36.

    OGLiberal

    Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns were huge organizations with deep histories, mostly bad, some good, that no longer exist.  They were legit institutions..  How does the Trump Org, having never done anything profitable or meaningful, continue to exist?  And my guess is this Cy Vance stuff is “see, I did something”, on his way out the door that will amount to nothing.  How does Trump just always slide by?  He fails at everything but became president and has about 40 percent of this country in his cult.  He’s terrible but, have to say, I can kind of see where his ego comes from – the man has been failing upwards for decades…no fucking consequences..  He’ll die rich and comfortable…I will not, nor will many, many people.  Wtf?

  39. 39.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @JPL:

    Trump could have issued blanket pardons before he left office. We wouldn’t know unless charges were brought.

    We would know.  The Trump White House leaked like a sieve.  Trump can’t keep his mouth shut.  We would already know if they existed.

  41. 41.

    Mike in NC

    Would love to see the entire rotten family destitute and living in cardboard boxes in some alleyway.

  42. 42.

    Geminid

    I am looking forward to the trump winery being sold. It’s about ten miles south of Charlottesville. trump scarfed up the property when Patricia Kluge got caught up in the crash of 2008. There are some local contractors trump screwed who will be glad to see him gone.

  45. 45.

    germy

    But reading between the lines of his answers to Whitehouse, it’s clear that Kavanaugh has gotten a substantial amount of financial help from his parents, in-laws, or other family members. (Kavanaugh had a privileged, private-school upbringing as the son of a Washington lobbyist for the cosmetics industry and a state prosecutor.) “We have not received financial gifts other than from our family which are excluded from disclosure in judicial financial disclosure reports,” he wrote.

    Kavanaugh wouldn’t be the first Supreme Court nominee or justice to receive a windfall from his parents.  Both Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Elena Kagan inherited money from parents who had died, but unlike Kavanaugh, they disclosed the estate transfer on their federal forms.

    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/09/the-many-mysteries-of-brett-kavanaughs-finances/

  46. 46.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @bbleh: on my jury it was ten-to-two in favor of acquittal, and the two hold-outs just could not, would not, grok the idea that the burden of proof was on the prosecutors and not the defense. It was a long time ago, but “I’m not sure he’s guilty, but I’m also not sure he’s innocent” is the phrase I remember. We eventually brought them around.

  47. 47.

    debbie

    @WaterGirl:

    One person said it was, but I had never heard of her source. There’s nothing on Snopes.

    The snoopiness, however, does not surprise me in the least.

  51. 51.

    Another Scott

    @SiubhanDuinne: Whitehouse hasn’t forgotten. Whitehouse letter to Garland from March 15:

    03.15.21
    WHITEHOUSE RELEASES LETTER TO GARLAND ON OVERSIGHT MATTERS, OLC POLITICIZATION

    Washington, DC – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released today a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland seeking U.S. Department of Justice cooperation in four important Judiciary Committee oversight matters, and raising concerns with the politicization of the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).

    During Senate confirmation hearings for Garland and nominee for Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and in an oversight hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray, Whitehouse asked the Department to clean up the “unfinished business” of stonewalled Judiciary Committee oversight during and even before the Trump administration. Garland, Monaco, and Wray all assured Whitehouse they would cooperate. This letter responds to Department requests that the senator describe which matters to prioritize.

    The stonewalled oversight included the Department’s review of civil litigation, based on tobacco industry precedent, concerning climate change denial and obstruction by the fossil fuel industry; the cursory and politically constrained FBI investigation of allegations of sexual assault regarding Brett Kavanaugh; the Antitrust Division’s interaction with automakers regarding their California fuel efficiency standards negotiation; and the Department’s failure to investigate apparently false statements made by politically active nonprofit groups to the Internal Revenue Service.

    Whitehouse also raised in his letter the troubled record of the Office of Legal Counsel, which has issued a number of decisions in recent years that failed to meet the standards of the Department or crumbled under scrutiny in the courts.

    Full text of the letter is below. A PDF copy is available here [10 page .pdf].

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  54. 54.

    WaterGirl

    @debbie: My dogs would be upset!

    She stole his package out of his mailbox, sprayed him with something from her bottle.  Is it just me, or was there too much of a time delay when she finally grabbed her arm in so-much-pain that she had to fall to the ground, on cement, in terrible pain.

    WTF?

  57. 57.

    WaterGirl

    @WaterGirl: Speaking of Amazon, does anyone buy at amazon using the link under Support Our Site?

    I know Cole gets some % if we do that, but even I don’t use that for ordering.  Does anyone?

  59. 59.

    WaterGirl

    @A Good Woman: Yeah, but no more so than my questions here, so I’m not sure.

    If that’s fake, and someone identifies the woman and she gets fired, that would be kind of funny.

    I get kind of annoyed at ‘fake’ stuff that we are supposed to know is fake, but is so close to the crazy that it’s impossible to know anymore.

  60. 60.

    senyordave

    I hope at some point the prosecutors go to Weisselberg and offer him a deal like this:

    You have 1 minute to decide whether you want to take a chance at dying in prison followed by:

    60

    59

    58

  61. 61.

    Miss Bianca

    “Does anybody know the answer to this stuff?”

    YES, you fucking moron. That “anybody” would be your accountant, or your team of accountants, in your case. Always provided that they, of course, are not as crooked as a washtub full of snakes, like their boss.

  64. 64.

    WaterGirl

    @JPL: I agree that it’s possible.  But it would be foolish to do that and act like it’s real.  That’s why I wondered if someone might ID her and she could lose her job.

  65. 65.

    JPL

    @senyordave: If it’s just state charges, the odds are slim that he’d die in prison.   Of course there is the Epstein example.   Where the heck is LAO when we need her?

  67. 67.

    WaterGirl

    @jeffreyw: Yeah, I think mine still goes to the nature conservancy or something I signed up for years ago.  I should probably make another choice given how fucked up everything is.

  69. 69.

    Yutsano

    @WaterGirl: I support the ASPCA through Amazon Smile, so I haven’t ever used John’s link. I do use an ad blocker on my computer but not on my phone and I use the phone more during the week. It balances out for me I think.

  70. 70.

    bbleh

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: on one of mine, a criminal case, it took a while, plus some carefully ambiguous diplo-speak, to get our holdouts on board. But when you’ve got 10 or 11 people, with whom you’ve bonded to some degree (very important first step!), staring at you and battering at your defenses, with nowhere to run, and the weekend approaching …

    I have a lot of respect for the jury system, imperfect as it is.

  71. 71.

    lurker

    @WaterGirl: not my area of expertise at all…

    two potential issues here:

    reporting by judges (Kavanagh was on the DC Circuit) – sounds like gifts from family do not have to be disclosed on the forms judges have to file yearly

    reporting to IRS – gifts from family do not have to be reported to some degree (there is a yearly threshold that gets a little tricky), however, total gifts over a lifetime impact some aspects of the estate tax exemption, and that is supposed to be tracked, even though it may not be well tracked.

    Your mileage may vary … a lot … depending on various individual factors.

  76. 76.

    laura

    The rotted log has been rolled over and I’m ready to see everything that lies beneath. I’m convinced that this initial tax avoidance case is the tip of an iceberg of shit that’s going to come out. tfg went defcon 5 to avoid losing the election. He knows what’s coming due, what the loss of cash flow means and who owns his sorry ass. The large adult children are a mixed bag – the fail sons have been running their mouths but junior miss senior advisor and first daughter was alleged to be an employee and consultant and the stench rolling off that financial arrangement must be a bit of a bother. Even if they never see prison from inside a cell, I hope to see the total and permanent destruction of each of them – just reviled as the unamerican scum and thieves without a single redeeming quality.

  78. 78.

    Patricia Kayden

    "What we're seeing right now is a cultural identity crisis that we are undergoing as a community that is completely splitting and dividing Latinos," Paola Ramos says about Latinos' decreasing support for Democrats. https://t.co/pAi0uvhhLA— MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 5, 2021

  79. 79.

    Brachiator

    Battling a heavy debt load, toxic brand and now felonies. Can the former president’s company pull out of its downward spiral?

    Well, I certainly hope not.

  80. 80.

    laura

    @laura: if failson jr dies face down on the last line of a real cut 8 ball in the coming months I will not be surprised.

  81. 81.

    sab

    I spent last night (for hours) with frightened demon kitty snuggled up to my chest and neck. Aside from pissing off my husband ( Mr Cat Charisma) I was actually a bit scared because this little guy has claws he uses. Fire crackers so he was scared. He nuzzled and felt safe. Weird night.

  87. 87.

    Anoniminous

    shitscheißemerde

    Two studies from Israel (60% vaccinated) reporting a drop in Pfizer efficiency.

    “Are hospitalizations increasing now in Israel? Yes, up “like clockwork” says @JeffSmithi24.  Israel is 60% 2-dose Pfizer fully vaccinated. No other country has vaccinations higher than [Israel]. This, Delta Variant is a threat to every country right now. Leadership pay attention.”

    [minor edit to quote]

    Cite

    Time to hunker down again

  88. 88.

    Gvg

    @sab: you are making progress.

    I have had a couple of cats that when frightened, wanted to get into my clothes with me. I learned to wear a lose jacket or poncho when taking them to the vet. They would hide underneath the cloth and smell me, and I think there was a degree of if I don’t see it, it’s not a threat thinking. You could wear layers as armor, but I really think both of my friady cats needed to smell protector person too and probably the clothing had more me scent.

  89. 89.

    J R in WV

    @WaterGirl:

    I know Cole gets some % if we do that, but even I don’t use that for ordering. Does anyone?

    I use the B-J Amazon link to order everything but the Kindle Books, which I order with my tablet, on which I read the books. I think the Kindle purchases donate to the Heifer Project, which donates livestock Iike pure bred milk cows to farm families in nations that need help.
    I would be fascinated to know how much Cole receives via the Amazon link over all, I also Patreon donate monthly to B-J…
    Whatever it takes to feed the squirrels that drive the Balloon Juice servers!​

  90. 90.

    Anne Laurie

    @germy: Gifts from parents don’t have to be reported IIRC.

    Unless the Trump tax cuts managed to gut the relevant provisions, oh yes they *do* have to be reported, over a certain threshold.  The Trump family has been getting cute with reporting ‘gifts’ from Fred to his kids, and from Donnie’s generation, to their kids, for at least 50 years, IIRC — that was one of the key points in Mary Trump’s doc-dump.

    Twenty years ago, the threshold was $10K, but no idea what it might be now.

  91. 91.

    tallred

    debbie:

    “I told you to tear up those goddamn spreadsheets!”

    It’s always projection with these people. First, it was “But her emails” (which had a pasta recipe and such), then “Hunter Biden’s laptop” (which supposedly has somehow been both in a Delaware repair shop and Giulianni’s garage), when all along there was a second set of ledgers on a Trump Org office computer. And by “all along”, I mean since the Reagan administration (assuming the books were on paper prior to the eighties).

  93. 93.

    Kay

    This is interesting. Supreme Court reform:

    jurisdiction channeling and stripping are only the most obvious reforms that finetune court power by preempting or reassigning certain kinds of cases or protecting and
    shielding certain laws from Article III courts. A supermajority rule for Supreme Court
    decision, requiring a 7-2 or other high threshold for constitutional invalidation, can be
    institutionalized by statute under Congress’s substantial powers under Article III to structure
    the judiciary and provide it jurisdiction. The same is even true of the legislative override
    option. Just as Congress possesses the power to use its own statutory authority to channel
    and limit jurisdiction or impose decision rules, it could also reassign finality of decision to
    itself through a jurisdictional statute that makes Supreme Court invalidations of federal law
    provisional unless and until Congress passes on the result (or fails to exercise its option to
    do so in some time frame). In this sense, all three reforms can be conceived as jurisdictional
    fine-tuning by statute

  94. 94.

    Jay

    @Gvg:

    SWMBO always called me out for “mollesting” the cats. Picking them up, cradling them and snuggling them. Tucking them inside my fleece, where they would curl up on my belly, until they wanted to go.

    Now, when I come home from work, they come running to cuddle on the couch. Jellyman becomes boneless against my legs, Bitsy lays her head in my lap like a dog.

  95. 95.

    Splitting Image

    @WaterGirl:

    Can that be for real??? I watched it twice. Entitled doesn’t even begin to cover it.

    The doggie is way too well-behaved for its owner to be a real Karen.

  96. 96.

    J R in WV

    @Kay:

    This is SO interesting.

    Obviously, since the Supreme Court has practically NO limitations, not ever a requirement to recuse one’s self from issues that carry an obvious conflict of interest, it is incumbent upon the Congress to repair this lack of ethics regulation with regard to the Court.

    Creating a super-majority requirement for over-turning legislation as unconstitutional, requiring justices (including the Chief Justice(hahaha)) to recuse themselves in case of a conflict of interest, all that appears to be great house-keeping in the top of the judicial pyramid of power.

    Justice Thomas in particular has been hearing cases in which his wife Virginia has a serious personal interest for years, and no one can do anything to stop that corrupt activity.

  97. 97.

    Kay

    @J R in WV:

    It is isn’t it? It would only apply to federal laws, so in the most recent example the Supreme Court could still say a state voting law passed muster UNDER the VRA, they would no longer be permitted to gut the Voting Rights Act and throw it in the trash. It limits their power. It also forces Congress to reassert THEIR power and start using it the way it was intended to be used, so that’s a side benefit.

    We need new thinking.

  98. 98.

    TomatoQueen

    New boy Blackjack curled up in his new bed, a large sturdy felted half-tipi with loose cushion, under which a quantity of loose catnip (Werebear’s best) was sprinkled. He was clearly stressed  but bearing up well with the help of  catweed. My neighbors demonstrated they are complete assholes one and all, the cops decided not to answer fireworks calls unless works were being shot at people, not buildings (never mind the people inside the buildings), and the mayor’s public answer to my query was remarkably thickheaded. By this morning my Fb feed revealed that this shit went on all over the country to an extreme level that shocked a lot of folks. Every single lost pet notice starting early this morning began “my dog ran away because of the fireworks”.

  99. 99.

    bcw

    Since it’s all in a spreadsheet already, the judge can just add a column with an entry on each line “for jail time.”

  100. 100.

    Kay

    @J R in WV:

    I like this too, because Breyer, like so many others in my view, has lost the point of the exercise. He seeks institutional legitimacy for the sake of institutional legitimacy, and he sees only one way to get there- everything must forever remain exactly the same:

    Conceding in much of his lecture how politically fraught the Supreme Court’s role
    has often been, however, Breyer implied that the sole alternative to shoring up institutional legitimacy is mere despotism, exemplified by “other countries.” “Turn on the television,” he
    counseled. If judicial power just as it exists now is abandoned, tyranny results.

    They need to be reined in.

  101. 101.

    Suzanne

    @dmsilev:

    Risotto. That, somehow, made it worse I guess. 

    Risotto is fancy-people food to Trump’s trash. Remember arugula- and Dijon mustard-gates?
    Soooo much of our politics is about the fact that we really hold one another in contempt.

  102. 102.

    CaseyL

    If the Trump Crime Family is in bed with the Russians, then Weisselberg might choose dying in prison in preference to seeing his entire family murdered.

  104. 104.

    Kay

    Jan Wolfe
    @JanNWolfe
    · 1h
    Rudy Giuliani’s legal defense fund only has 92 online donations so far, totaling less than $8,000. They set a goal of $5 million by late August. And at this rate they won’t hit $100,000 by then.

    Guffaw. They bled the marks dry.

  105. 105.

    James E Powell

    I read a post at DailyKos on a Pew poll on the 2020 election.

    Biden made a solid nine-point gain with suburban voters, winning 54% of their vote compared to Hillary Clinton’s 45% share.

    This shift was also seen among White voters: Trump narrowly won White suburban voters by 4 points in 2020 (51%-47%); he carried this group by 16 points in 2016 (54%-38%).

    I’m thinking corruption, tax fraud, and the like are good issues with these voters. Better than culture war. Am I wrong?

    We need to do more than just hold onto those gains, we need to continue expanding them, but not at the expense of our core issues.

  106. 106.

    Kay

    @James E Powell:

    I’m hoping public school parents, who, after all, actually know something about the school their child attends, are not stupid enough to fall for the anti-CRT panic which seems to be the single issue the GOP has settled on. The focus on Virginia isn’t an accident. They think it’ll win them the governor’s race.

  107. 107.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Anne Laurie: Gifts are not taxable income to the recipient.  Gifts over the yearly exclusion amount are potentially subject to gift tax, but that is payable by the donor and there are exceptions.  Further, a gift larger than the exclusion amount can be set off against any potential inheritance from the estate of the donor.  If that estate is smaller than the estate tax threshold, no tax is owed.  And people with sense and generational money do it all with trusts anyway, so no one pays tax and no numbers make into the press.

  108. 108.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kay: Cry harder, Ghouliani.  Enjoy a trial by, well, the rule of law, because Democrats aren’t fascist, Trump-humping shitstains.  Lucky you.

  109. 109.

    Steeplejack

    Been saving this tidbit:

    You know who else should be facing charges? Steven Mnuchin, he hid Trump’s taxes for four years along with Bill Barr’s daughter. How is that not aiding and abetting a criminal enterprise; he defied congressional subpoenas to keep Trump’s returns hidden.

    — NoelCaslerComedy (@CaslerNoel) July 1, 2021

  110. 110.

    Kay

    @mrmoshpotato:

    8000 wouldn’t even get him a defense for a bigger case in rural Ohio. The going rate is 25, up front.

    Where are all his fancy friends?

  111. 111.

    Kay

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Giuliani must be particularly bad with money because he has been high level grifting for 20 years and all he has to show for it are big ugly houses with huge mortgages.

  113. 113.

    Tony Gerace

    @JPL: Well, in his fantasy world Trump won the election and still has authority to pardon his cronies.  In the real world, he doesn’t.

  114. 114.

    Bill Arnold

    @Kay:
    That piece is fascinating; the language style is odd but I don’t read much legal writing. What are the politics of the author? (Samuel Moyn. Read his Wikipedia page of course.)

    The bit at the end about “jurisdictional fine-tuning to curtail the Supreme Court’s authority over state law” is noted; such changes do seem a worrying possible outcome (to me at least) in the fullness of time if fine tuning is normalized at all, if regional differences (in legal matters) continue to increase in the US.

  116. 116.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Anoniminous: That is (a) inconsistent with other reports I’ve read about efficacy against Delta infection which claim numbers more like 80%, and (b) coming via Eric Feigl-Ding who has been generally pushing maximum panic for the past year, so I’d seek additional corroboration.

  118. 118.

    ian

    @J R in WV:

    Well, if one of our two political parties wasn’t completely broken, impeachment would be a no-brainer for Thomas.  That is what Madison, Hamilton, and Jay figured would have happened to him a long time ago.

    goes to show they got some things pretty darn wrong.  They figured Congress would act in congress’ own self-prerogatives over party loyalty.  That was a doozy of a mistake.

  119. 119.

    Kay

    @Bill Arnold:

    I don’t know his politics. He admits there’s risk with any change (which I appreciate) but I don’t think there’s much risk of judicial review of state law being subject to the reforms. I think the bigger risk is what he writes happened in Canada and Israel with reforms like this- the legislature accepted the court’s interpretation rather than take the political risk of actually legislating. The last renewal of the VRA passed with 98 senate votes in 2006. The GOP  wanted the court to gut it for them. They didn’t have the balls to do it themselves.

  120. 120.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: There have been occasional ads on the TV here in NoVA (along with the Wimbledon tennis coverage, IIRC).  It’s from an obvious GQP front group calling itself “free” something or other even before they start screaming about CRT.

    I’m hopeful that people will ignore them  I haven’t seen anything to contradict it yet which is always a little worrying, but their black money groups have more than ours…)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  121. 121.

    Another Scott

    @Matt McIrvin: The actual news story makes clear the distinction between infection and serious illness – something the tweets elide (as you point out).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  122. 122.

    SFAW

    @debbie:

    When I was a kid, lo these many years ago, we used to shoot bottle rockets at each other. The stuff in that video seemed to be much heavier “artillery” than bottle rockets, however.

  123. 123.

    SFAW

    @ian:

    Well, if one of our two political parties wasn’t completely broken,

    Not to pick nits, but the GQP (if that’s whom you meant) is not broken. They are, and have been, quite united and proficient in their attempts to destroy American democracy. Whether they are ultimately successful is immaterial re: their “brokenness.”

  125. 125.

    Kay

    @Another Scott:

    The Virginia group is a GOP front. They’re Koch funded. They claim to be “national” but the majority of the people listed on the website are conservative activists based in Virginia. One of them is well known enough as a (generally, and nationally) anti-public school activist that I recognized her name. She’s the lone non-Virginian. I hate-read her Twitter. She went directly from linking to Bari Weiss on “cancel culture” to a paid job inciting the anti-CRT panic. They use the terms “cancel culture” and “CRT” almost interchangeably. Occasionally they throw in some anti-mask or anti-school covid closure. They have a whole list of grievances.

    I’m sorry they’re running ads. Not surprised but sorry. Everything I’ve seen has Virginia as the top target. Not a coincidence.

  126. 126.

    OGLiberal

    • @James E Powell: That Trump won white suburban voters by 4% is still frightening.  I’m not shocked or surprised, just kind of disgusted.  I’ve lived most of my life among white suburban people (and I am one) so, again – not surprised.  The shit some of these seemingly “normal” people believe is batshit crazy.  And then there are the people with Trump 2024 – No More Bullshit/Fuck Biden flags.  They pass for “moderates” in some of the whiter places.
  128. 128.

    Anoniminous

    @Matt McIrvin:

    “Some of these mutations lead to significant reductions in the neutralization potency of several monoclonal Abs, convalescent sera and Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2- or Moderna mRNA-1273-elicited Abs (19, 34–40). The B.1.1.7 variant has become dominant worldwide due to its higher transmissibility (33), underscoring the importance of studying and understanding the consequences of SARS-CoV-2 antigenic drift.”

    <skip>

    “Using a vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) pseudotyping system, we observed a 2.2-fold average reduction of Moderna mRNA1273-elicited plasma neutralizing activity against B.1.427/B.1.429 S (GMT: 213) compared to G614 S (GMT: 464) pseudoviruses (Fig. 2, E and F; figs. S1 and S2; and table S3) and a 2.5-fold average reduction of Pfizer/BioNtech BNT162b2-elicited plasma neutralizing activity against B.1.427/B.1.429 S (GMT: 113) compared to G614 S (GMT: 285) pseudoviruses (Fig. 2, G and H; figs. S1 and S2; and table S3). We also analyzed plasma from 18 individuals, 5 of whom were previously infected with wildtype SARS-CoV-2, who received two doses of Pfizer/BioNtech BNT162b2 vaccine and whose samples were collected between 14 and 28 days after booster immunization. We compared the neutralization potency of Pfizer/BioNtech BNT162b2 vaccine-elicited Abs against D614 S, B.1.427/B.1.429 S, B.1.1.7 S, B.1.351 S and P.1 S VSV pseudotyped viruses using Vero E6 expressing TMPRSS2 as target cells. GMTs plasma neutralization potency was reduced 2.9-fold for B.1.427/B.1.429 S (GMT: 197) compared to D614 S (GMT: 570), which is a comparable decrease to that observed with B.1.351 (GMT: 180, 3.2-fold reduction) and greater to that observed with B.1.1.7 and P.1 (GMT: 450 and 330, 1.3-fold and 1.7-fold reduction, respectively) pseudotyped viruses (Fig. 2, I and J; figs. S1 and S2; and table S3). These data indicate that the three B.1.427/B.1.429 S residue substitutions lead to a modest but significant reduction of neutralization potency from vaccine-elicited Abs.”

    SARS-CoV-2 immune evasion by the B.1.427/B.1.429 variant of concern

  130. 130.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Another Scott: Personally, I really don’t want to even get a “mild” COVID infection–they can be bad news–and there does pretty clearly seem to be some reduction in efficacy against infection by Delta, so I do regard the CDC’s guidance that vaccinated people just don’t have to worry about masking and distancing as obsolete.

    Peter Hotez has been recommending revised guidance in which they tell people to look at infection rates in their area before deciding what to do in indoor public places. This seems sensible to me.

  131. 131.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: My parents live in a small town in Virginia, and they invited me to a Facebook group about goings-on around town. I noped out of there recently when the group was suddenly full of people freaked out about Critical Race Theory in their schools. Didn’t feel comfortable telling them off because it’s not my town, or even my state any more–as an outsider living in Massachusetts I’d probably just antagonize them. But I just don’t have time for this.

  132. 132.

    Another Scott

    @Matt McIrvin: I still wear a mask everywhere myself.  I might change when VA infection rates are below 0.1/100,000 and no deaths in VA for a week.  We’re not close to that yet.

    I got the flu in the summer at the end of a trip to Nara, Japan a couple of years ago.  It was a miserable time and took 2-3 weeks before I was close to normal. Covid isn’t the flu but can have similar symptoms (rarely even when fully vaccinated).  Continued mask wearing seems like incredibly cheap insurance to me when so many aren’t vaccinated…

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  135. 135.

    yellowdog

    @Another Scott: The problem is that an increase in cases, whether serious or not, will provide a bigger pool for the evolution of new, possibly worse, variants.

  136. 136.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Suzanne:  Soooo much of our politics is about the fact that we really hold one another in contempt.

    And it’s just as bad on this side of the aisle as the other. So many of yinz luuuuuuv to point at and mock the tastes of “Trump’s trash”. Like eating T-bone steaks well done with ketchup. That made me shake my head in dismay. What the fuck business is it of yours what any other human being stuffs down their piehole? The only justification that makes any sense is that you’re all pissed off that some very rich people make a lot of $$$ selling lots of low-quality stuff at a yoooge markup to “Trump’s trash” that they gobble up because it tastes good to them, and it just shouldn’t be allowed – not just the “selling” but the “tasting good.”

    The truth is that most of you Jackals are snobs. Food snobs, book snobs, film snobs, travel snobs, even pet snobs (“Trump’s trash” shouldn’t be allowed to have animals because they can’t possibly be trusted to take care of them properly). Do they hate you for it? Of course they do – because you strut about as if you were the rulers of the cultural universe telling them that their tastes prove they’re shit.

    I grew up with the kind of folks yinz are happy to call “Trump’s trash” (while chortling, of course), and remain friendly with many of them. I am morally certain that the forces of reason and decency could reach and move many of them – once the people allegedly representing those forces relinquish their arrogance. But that won’t ever happen; too many of their “cultural betters” are too invested in their alleged wonderfulness to make any effort to understand them. You all are more than happy to whip out your Sharpies and write them off by scrawling a single catchy word over their foreheads (“bigot,” “fundie,” “Nazi,” etc.) – and then whine your arses off over the completely understandable fact that a third of the population hates you for everything you do to turn them into unpersons, and every individual one of them has as many votes as each individual one of you.

  137. 137.

    NotMax

    @Uncle Cosmo

    Speaking only as an individual, I don’t begrudge anyone their tastes in things cultural, so long as it does not impinge on (or worse, deny or exclude) that of others. At the same time have no reticence about waving the flag for and sharing my own, from the mundane to the pecuiar. It takes all kinds to make a horse race.

    Any cultural appreciation beats the pantaloons off of none, and there’s a panorama of degrees of difference between snarkery and snobbery.

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