myiW Current Conditions and Forecasts Community Forums Buy and Sell Services
 
Hi guest · myAccount · Log in
 SearchSearch   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   RegisterRegister 
Lets follow the money.
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 30, 31, 32 ... 45, 46, 47  Next
 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    iWindsurf Community Forum Index -> Politics, Off-Topic, Opinions
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
wsurfer



Joined: 17 Aug 2000
Posts: 1634

PostPosted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 10:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mat-ty wrote:
nw30 wrote:
mac wrote:
Daily caller--the gutter. A merchant of outrage.

mac wrote:

NW—did you know you get two sides with your daily serving of anti-semitism?

If that were true, like you say, then they wouldn't have published this story, they would have sat on it. You just stick with the liberal gutter of misinformation, you seem to be at home there.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Louis Farrakhan Goes On Unhinged Rant Against ‘Jewish Power’ And Anal Sex

For the vid~
http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/11/louis-farrakhan-jewish-power/



That's sucks!!! my last girlfriend was Jewish and she loved anal sex. Laughing Laughing Laughing


Wet-ty is really a putz now after that last comment Laughing Laughing Laughing
You mean when she pushed a spindle up yer butt???
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14834
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Tue Jun 19, 2018 3:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/how-the-koch-brothers-are-killing-public-transit-projects-around-the-country/ar-AAyRgIL?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=wispr

How the Koch brothers are killing public transit projects around the country
HIROKO TABUCHI 6 hrs ago

1/11 SLIDES © William DeShazer for The New York Times
Quote:
Mary Beth Ikard, a transportation and sustainability manager for Nashville, with a map of the proposed plan.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A team of political activists huddled at a Hardee’s one rainy Saturday, wolfing down a breakfast of biscuits and gravy. Then they descended on Antioch, a quiet Nashville suburb, armed with iPads full of voter data and a fiery script.

The group, the local chapter for Americans for Prosperity, which is financed by the oil billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch to advance conservative causes, fanned out and began strategically knocking on doors. Their targets: voters most likely to oppose a local plan to build light-rail trains, a traffic-easing tunnel and new bus routes.

“Do you agree that raising the sales tax to the highest rate in the nation must be stopped?” Samuel Nienow, one of the organizers, asked a startled man who answered the door at his ranch-style home in March. “Can we count on you to vote ‘no’ on the transit plan?”

Sign up for the Morning Briefing newsletter

In cities and counties across the country — including Little Rock, Ark.; Phoenix, Ariz.; southeast Michigan; central Utah; and here in Tennessee — the Koch brothers are fueling a fight against public transit, an offshoot of their longstanding national crusade for lower taxes and smaller government.

At the heart of their effort is a network of activists who use a sophisticated data service built by the Kochs, called i360, that helps them identify and rally voters who are inclined to their worldview. It is a particularly powerful version of the technologies used by major political parties.

In places like Nashville, Koch-financed activists are finding tremendous success.

Early polling here had suggested that the $5.4 billion transit plan would easily pass. It was backed by the city’s popular mayor and a coalition of businesses. Its supporters had outspent the opposition, and Nashville was choking on cars.

But the outcome of the May 1 ballot stunned the city: a landslide victory for the anti-transit camp, which attacked the plan as a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money.

“This is why grass roots works,” said Tori Venable, Tennessee state director for Americans for Prosperity, which made almost 42,000 phone calls and knocked on more than 6,000 doors.

Supporters of transit investments point to research that shows that they reduce traffic, spur economic development and fight global warming by reducing emissions. Americans for Prosperity counters that public transit plans waste taxpayer money on unpopular, outdated technology like trains and buses just as the world is moving toward cleaner, driverless vehicles.

Most American cities do not have the population density to support mass transit, the group says. It also asserts that transit brings unwanted gentrification to some areas, while failing to reach others altogether.

Public transit, Americans for Prosperity says, goes against the liberties that Americans hold dear. “If someone has the freedom to go where they want, do what they want,” Ms. Venable said, “they’re not going to choose public transit.”

The Kochs’ opposition to transit spending stems from their longstanding free-market, libertarian philosophy. It also dovetails with their financial interests, which benefit from automobiles and highways.

One of the mainstay companies of Koch Industries, the Kochs’ conglomerate, is a major producer of gasoline and asphalt, and also makes seatbelts, tires and other automotive parts. Even as Americans for Prosperity opposes public investment in transit, it supports spending tax money on highways and roads.

“Stopping higher taxes is their rallying cry,” said Ashley Robbins, a researcher at Virginia Tech who follows transportation funding. “But at the end of the day, fuel consumption helps them.”

David Dziok, a Koch Industries spokesman, said the company did not control the activities of Americans for Prosperity in specific states and denied that the group’s anti-transit effort was linked to the company’s interests. That notion “runs counter to everything we stand for as a company,” he said.

“Our decisions are based on what is most likely to help people improve their lives, regardless of the policy and its effect on our bottom line,” he said. Koch Industries has opposed steel tariffs, for example, even though the company owns a steel mill in Arkansas, he said.

The group’s Nashville victory followed a roller-coaster political campaign, including a sex-and-spending scandal that led to the mayor’s resignation.

But the results also demonstrate that the Kochs’ political influence has quietly made deep inroads at the local level even as the brothers have had a lower profile in Washington. (This month, Koch Industries said David Koch would step away from his political and business roles because of declining health.)

“These are outside groups,” said Nashville’s new mayor, David Briley, in an interview. “They don’t represent Nashville’s interests or values.”

A Nationwide Effort

The Nashville strategy was part of a nationwide campaign. Since 2015, Americans for Prosperity has coordinated door-to-door anti-transit canvassing campaigns for at least seven local or state-level ballots, according to a review by The New York Times. In the majority, the Kochs were on the winning side.

Americans for Prosperity and other Koch-backed groups have also opposed more than two dozen other transit-related measures — including many states’ bids to raise gas taxes to fund transit or transportation infrastructure — by organizing phone banks, running advertising campaigns, staging public forums, issuing reports and writing opinion pieces in local publications.

In Little Rock, Americans for Prosperity made more than 39,000 calls and knocked on nearly 5,000 doors to fight a proposed sales-tax increase worth $18 million to fund a bus and trolley network. In Utah, it handed out $50 gift cards at a grocery store, an amount it said represented what a proposed sales tax increase to fund transit would cost county residents per year.

“There’s nothing more effective than actually having a human conversation with someone on events that affect them on a day-to-day basis,” Akash Chougule, policy director at Americans for Prosperity, said in an interview. “It’s a great opportunity for us to activate people in their own backyards, and we’re among the first to do it in a sustained, permanent way.”

The paucity of federal funding for transit projects means that local ballots are critical in shaping how Americans travel, with decades-long repercussions for the economy and the environment. Highway funding has historically been built into state and federal budgets, but transit funding usually requires a vote to raise taxes, creating what experts call a systemic bias toward cars over trains and buses. The United States transportation sector emits more earth-warming carbon dioxide than any other part of the nation’s economy.

The Trump administration had initially raised hopes of more funding for transit by advocating a trillion-dollar infrastructure push. However, when that proposed plan was made public it reduced funding for transit-related grants.

On the Ground in Nashville

Nashville’s idea to invest in transit got off to a strong start. Introduced in October by Megan Barry, who was mayor at the time, it called for 26 miles of light rail, a bus network, and a 1.8-mile tunnel for buses and trains that would bypass the city center’s narrow streets.

The $5.4 billion proposal, the costliest transit project in Nashville’s history, was to be funded by raising the sales tax city residents pay by one percentage point, to 10.25 percent, and raising other business taxes. A coalition of Nashville businesses urged voters to endorse the spending as vital to a region projected to grow to almost 3 million people by 2040, an increase of 1 million.

“It will be far-reaching, it will serve every part of our city — north, south, east, and west — and it will help to shape our future growth and development,” said Ms. Barry, who enjoyed approval ratings near 70 percent. A poll by her team found that close to two-thirds of voters would support raising taxes to pay for transit.

The vote was set for May 1.

But then in late January Ms. Barry, who is married, acknowledged a nearly two-year affair with the former head of her security detail after a series of exposés, including reports of steamy texts, overseas trips and inappropriate spending. In March she resigned, and later pleaded guilty to theft. Ms. Barry did not respond to requests for comment.

Americans for Prosperity kicked its campaign into high gear.

Secret Weapons

The team that gathered at Hardee’s in March, two weeks after Ms. Barry’s resignation, was led by Ms. Venable and Mr. Nienow of Americans for Prosperity. Other canvassers that morning included a local Tea Party leader and a lawyer-turned-fantasy-novelist who writes about a young witch who pushes back against an authoritarian government.

Central to the work of Americans for Prosperity is i360, the Kochs’ data operation, which profiles Americans based on their voter registration information, consumer data and social media activities. The canvassers divided the neighborhoods into “walkbooks,” or clusters of several dozen homes, and broke into teams of two.

There are rules: No more than two people at a door (to avoid appearing threatening). No stepping on lawns (homeowners don’t like it). And focus strictly on the registered voter. If anyone else answers, say a polite “thanks” and move on.

“It’s the concept of opportunity cost,” said Mr. Nienow. Their data zeroed in on people thought to be anti-tax or anti-transit and likely to vote.

On a laptop in her S.U.V., Ms. Venable tracked, in real time, the progress of the four pairs working that day. By 4:30 p.m. they had knocked on 230 doors and connected with 66 people, a success rate of 29 percent. “Excellent,” she said.

“Everything we do is very scientific, very data-based, very numbers-based,” said Mr. Chougule, the Americans for Prosperity policy director. “We are able to see who are the people that are most likely to engage on this issue, who are the people most aligned with us that we need to get out, and who are the people whose minds we can change.”

Another weapon in the Koch arsenal is Randal O’Toole, a transit expert at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington that Charles Koch helped found in the 1970s. Declaring transit “dead” and streetcars “a scam,” he has become a go-to expert for anti-transit groups. Crisscrossing the country, he speaks at local events and writes opinion pieces.

At a forum in Nashville in January hosted by a conservative radio host, Mr. O’Toole gave an impassioned speech. “I think of light rail as the diamond-encrusted Rolex watch of transit. It’s something that doesn’t do as much as a real watch can do. It costs a lot more. And it serves solely to serve the ego of the people who are buying it,” he said, meaning city officials.

Public transit critics have long raised fears that rail projects are a conduit for crime, and Mr. O’Toole himself has made that argument: “Teenagers swarm onto San Francisco BART trains to rob passengers,” he warned in a blog post last year. But in Nashville, Mr. O’Toole made a different argument, namely that transit is for hipster millennials and would be a conduit for gentrification, forcing people to move further away to find affordable housing.

In another line of attack, he also argues that ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft are the future of transportation, not buses and trains. “Why would anybody ride transit when they can get a ride at their door within a minute that will drop them off at the door where they want to go?” he said in an interview.

Asked whether low-income people could afford to use Uber instead of a bus, he said that subsidizing their rides would still be more cost-effective.

Raj Rajkumar, director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Mobility21 research center, which focuses on transportation issues, said studies have shown that mass transit reduces congestion and pollution. But he also said there is some truth in concerns that transit could bring gentrification. To offset that, he said, transit plans should be paired with measures to increase affordable housing.

Still, in most places and over the long run, buses and trains are the most effective and cleanest way of moving large numbers of people large distances, he said. Ride-sharing can help people on shorter trips, Mr. Rajkumar said, or getting to and from a train station. “But if you’re going 30 miles, Uber is less suitable. I don’t think Uber and Lyft can really replace public transit,” he said.

A Money Trail, Undisclosed

The scale of the Kochs’ anti-transit spending is difficult to gauge at the local level, because campaign finance disclosure standards vary among municipalities. But at the state and national level, the picture gets clearer.

Last year Americans for Prosperity spent $711,000 on lobbying for various issues, a near 1,000-fold increase since 2011, when it spent $856. Overall, the group has spent almost $4 million on state-level lobbying the past seven years, according to disclosures compiled by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks political spending.

Broadly speaking, Americans for Prosperity campaigns against big government, but many of its initiatives target public transit. In Indiana, it marshaled opposition to a 2017 Republican gas-tax plan meant to raise roughly a billion dollars to invest in local buses and other projects. In New Jersey, the group ran an ad against a proposed gas-tax increase in 2016 that showed a father giving away his baby’s milk bottle, and also Sparky the family dog, to pay for transit improvements among other things. “Save Sparky,” the ad implores.

In Nashville, Americans for Prosperity played a major role: organizing door-to-door canvassing teams using iPads running the i360 software. Those in-kind contributions can be difficult to measure. According to A.F.P.’s campaign finance disclosure, the group made only one contribution, of $4,744, to the campaign for “canvassing expenses.”

Instead, a local group, NoTax4Tracks, led the Nashville fund-raising. Nearly three-quarters of the $1.1 million it raised came from a single nonprofit, Nashville Smart Inc., which is not required to disclose donors. The rest of the contributions to NoTax4Tracks came from wealthy local donors, including a local auto dealer.

Both NoTax4Tracks and Nashville Smart declined to fully disclose their funding.

‘I Knew We Were Going to Win’

After Ms. Barry’s resignation, Nashville’s pro-transit movement struggled. Its messaging became muddled, strategists said, with supporters claiming that the plan would do everything: create jobs, benefit the environment and even boost the health and wellness of residents.

Ultimately, the pro-transit camp failed to fend off criticism that the plan benefited a gentrifying downtown at the expense of more distant lower-income and minority areas.

“If everyone’s going to pay for it, everyone needs to benefit,” said Rev. Jeff Obafemi Carr, who threw his support behind the opposition campaign and mobilized African-American voters.

After the vote, the Americans for Prosperity crew celebrated its victory at the Nashville Palace, a country music venue. “I knew we were going to win,” Ms. Venable said. “But I wasn’t taking my foot off the gas for a second.”

_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14834
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 12:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

one of trumps favorite leaders is going to jail... ya only stole a billion...

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-s-favorite-prime-minister-arrested-over-theft-of-billions-1269890627577?playlist=associated

Trump's 'favorite prime minister' arrested over theft of billions

Quote:
Rachel Maddow reports on the arrest of Najib Razak, former prime minister of Malaysia, who is accused of siphoning billions of dollars from the country and millions in lavish spending of ill-gotten gains. Razak is also close with Donald Trump and reportedly sought the assistance of Republican fundraiser and Michael Cohen client Elliott Broidy to make the DoJ part of the investigation go away.

_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14834
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 10:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/why-trumps-inauguration-money-is-a-major-part-of-muellers-russia-investigation/ar-AAzC9j6?ocid=spartandhp

Quote:
So a week after the election, Trump named a murderer’s row of uber-rich Republicans as “finance vice chairs” for the event. They included casino billionaires Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn (the latter of whom was later accused of sexually abusing employees), defense contractor Elliott Broidy (later involved in hush money payments to a Playboy model), and Anthony Scaramucci (later White House communications director for 10 days before resigning over an obscene interview with the New Yorker).
The man in charge of it all, as chair of the inaugural committee, was Tom Barrack. A billionaire real estate investor who’s been a close friend of Trump for decades, Barrack’s business interests have recently been concentrated in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. (The Washington Post’s Michael Kranish and the New York Times’s David Kirkpatrick have both written excellent profiles of him.) His goal, he said, was for the inauguration to have “soft sensuality” and a “poetic cadence.”
To help with the planning and fundraising, Barrack turned to a Trump campaign aide: Rick Gates, the longtime right-hand man to Paul Manafort. (Barrack had known Manafort since the 1970s and helped convince Trump to bring him on to the campaign.)
Even at the time, the choice raised eyebrows, since Manafort had been ousted from the campaign after scandal-laden stories about his work for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. But, according to a November 2016 report by Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News, Gates became instrumental in fundraising and planning. Isikoff quoted a source calling Gates the “shadow” chair of the inauguration and Barrack’s “chief deputy.”
Trump’s inauguration raised an incredible amount of money
In the end, the inauguration crowd wasn’t exactly the largest in history — but the inaugural fundraising certainly was. Barrack, Gates, and the team raked in over $106 million, an astonishing sum that doubled the previous record (set by Obama in 2009).
The more you gave, the more exclusive events to which you got access. Among other perks, it took $1,000,000 to get you into the “Leadership Luncheon” at Trump’s hotel, $500,000 for a dinner with Vice President-elect Mike Pence, and $250,000 for a candlelight dinner at Union Station with the Trumps and Pences, according to a document obtained by the Center for Public Integrity’s Carrie Levine.
You can read through the full donor list at OpenSecrets.org, but among those willing to fork over such sums were:
Finance industry bigshots: Robert Mercer (who the New Yorker later dubbed “the reclusive hedge-fund tycoon behind the Trump presidency”), Paul Singer (another hedge fund billionaire who, oddly enough, had paid the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump during the primaries), and Steve Cohen (whose hedge fund group was closed down due to insider trading allegations) all donated $1 million each.
Corporate America: The inaugural committee raised $2 million from AT&T; $1 million each from Bank of America, Boeing, Dow Chemical, Pfizer, and Qualcomm; at least $500,000 each from JP Morgan Chase, FedEx, Chevron, Exxon, Fidelity, Intel, Citgo, and BP America.
Secretive conservative groups: The American Action Network, a dark money nonprofit that’s spent tens of millions on elections since 2010, gave $1 million. Another million came in from a mysterious shell company called “BH Group, LLC,” and its true source remained mysterious for over a year. Only recently did journalist Robert Maguire trace that contribution to a group tied to the conservative legal movement and Federalist Society executive Leonard Leo, who’s found a prominent role advising Trump on judicial nominations.
And then there were those donors with major ties to Russia and other foreign countries, who have reportedly caught Mueller’s interest.
Mueller has been investigating Trump’s inauguration. We have some indications about why.
The inauguration caught law enforcement’s attention back while it was happening. According to a Washington Post report, counterintelligence officials at the FBI were “concerned” by an unusual presence of politically connected Russians in DC during the event — including some of the exact people who “had surfaced in the agency’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.”
But in the last few months specifically, much of Mueller’s team’s questioning of witnesses has reportedly focused on matters related to the inauguration and possible foreign money.
In early April of this year, CNN’s Kara Scannell and Shimon Prokupecz reported that Mueller had recently stopped and questioned at least two Russian oligarchs who had been traveling to the US — to ask “whether wealthy Russians illegally funneled cash donations directly or indirectly into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and inauguration.”
The following month, ABC News reported that Mueller was questioning witnesses “about millions of dollars in donations to President Donald Trump’s inauguration committee” — specifically about “donors with connections to Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.”
The Associated Press reported that Mueller’s investigators interviewed inauguration chair Tom Barrack. The AP’s sources, however, gave conflicting accounts on what Barrack was asked about. One said he was asked only about Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Another claimed the questioning included “financial matters about the campaign, the transition and Trump’s inauguration in January 2017.”

© Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images

And in June another ABC News report stated that Mueller’s investigators wanted to know why several billionaires with “deep ties to Russia” got access to “exclusive, invitation-only receptions” during the inauguration.
Despite all that, the exact reason why Mueller has become so focused on the inauguration remains elusive, and he hasn’t shed light on it publicly. There are several possibilities, though.
Illegal foreign donations: It is against the law for foreign nationals to donate to a presidential inaugural committee. No such donations to Trump’s inauguration are currently known. But CNN reported that Mueller is exploring whether wealthy Russians used “straw donors” with American citizenship to steer money into the inauguration.
Rick Gates’s cooperation: Intriguingly, the recent stories on Mueller’s interest in the inauguration were published after Gates, the inauguration “shadow chair,” struck a plea deal in which he’d cooperate with Mueller, on February 23. It hasn’t been confirmed that Gates is providing information about inauguration shadiness to Mueller, but the timeline certainly lines up.
Gulf connections: Another somewhat mysterious focus of Mueller’s investigation in recent months has been links between the Trump team and the rulers of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. George Nader, an adviser to the UAE’s crown prince, was stopped at Dulles airport, had his electronics seized by Mueller’s team, and has since given extensive testimony to Mueller’s grand jury. And one ABC report suggested that inaugural donations tied to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar were all being scrutinized by Mueller too. (Those are the three countries where Tom Barrack’s business interests have been heavily focused.)
Russian collusion with Trump’s team: Finally, there’s the big question looming over all this: did Trump’s allies, in fact, collude with the Russian government to interfere with the 2016 election? The inauguration of course happened after the election was over, but could be important in understanding Russia’s ties to the Trump team and how their relationship progressed once he won. It also happened shortly after several curious contacts between Trump associates and Russians — Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and banker Sergey Gorkov’s visits to Trump Tower in December, Kislyak’s calls with Michael Flynn in late December, and Erik Prince’s Seychelles sitdown with a Russian fund manager (organized by George Nader) in mid-January, nine days before the inauguration.

_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14834
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Fri Jul 13, 2018 11:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

this is just one of the not top right wing contributors... again aybe 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 dems are in the top richest politically motivaded big spenders.

Koch Brothers and their 100 million to billion per year seem to be the largest political spenders..

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/05/sheldon-adelson-cuts-30-million-check-to-house-rep.html

Sheldon Adelson Cuts $30 Million Check to House Republicans, Received $670 Million in Tax Breaks from GOP Bill
By Shane Ryan | May 10, 2018 | 2:14pm

_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.


Last edited by real-human on Sat Aug 04, 2018 1:34 pm; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14834
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Tue Jul 17, 2018 8:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

another right wing trust fund political influencer...

ya the dems have Sorros and one other...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Uihlein

Richard Uihlein
Quote:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigationJump to search
Richard Uihlein
Born Richard Ellis Uihlein
1945 (age 72–73)
Residence Lake Forest, Illinois
Alma mater Stanford University
Occupation Businessman
Spouse(s) Elizabeth "Liz" Uihlein (née Hallberg)
Richard Ellis Uihlein (born 1945) is an American businessman, founder of Uline, conservative donor, and heir.

Contents
1 Personal life and education
2 Career
3 Political activities
4 References
Personal life and education
Uihlein graduated from Stanford University with a BA in history in 1967.[1] Uihlein lives in Lake Forest, Illinois, and is a descendant of the brewers of Schlitz beer.[2]

Career
Until 1980, Uihlein worked in international sales for General Binding Corp, a company co-founded by his father, Edgar Uihlein.[3] That year, Uihlein and his wife founded Uline,[4] a shipping supplies company headquartered in Wisconsin, which he and his wife continue to own.[5] Uihlein's family also owns EAU Holdings, a resort in northern Wisconsin.[3]

Political activities

Uihlein has been a Republican donor for decades, and increased his political giving after Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.[3] Uihlein has supported conservative groups and candidates including Ted Cruz, The Club for Growth, and the Illinois Policy Institute.[5][3] Uihlein is also a major donor to Liberty Principles PAC,[6] Americas PAC,[7] Scott Walker,[8] and Jeanne Ives.[3] In the 2018 election cycle, Uihlein has donated to Republican candidates such as Jeanne Ives, Chris McDaniel,[9] Kevin Nicholson, and Neal Tapio.[not in citation given][10]


https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gop-civil-war-brewing-wisconsin-senate-primary_us_5b47a5b7e4b0bc69a7855196

A GOP Civil War Comes To Wisconsin

Quote:

One of the Republican Party’s biggest donors is taking on Gov. Scott Walker’s powerful political machine.

_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14834
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Fri Jul 27, 2018 4:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

http://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari-melber/watch/trump-fmr-lawyer-on-finance-chief-subpoena-he-knows-everything-1286355523956

Trump fmr. Lawyer on finance chief subpoena: He knows everything

Quote:
Trump’s lawyer before Michael Cohen, Jay Goldberg, joins Ari Melber to discuss the Grand Jury subpoena of Trump’s finance chief Allen Weisselberg. Goldberg tells ’The Beat’ that “no one is closer” to Donald Trump than Weisselberg and that he “knows everything” and “will tell the truth”.

_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sat Aug 04, 2018 1:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

What did Manafort do for Russian mobsters that was worth $16 million? We know money laundering is involved, if he gets a 5% fee, that means he made it possible for $320 million to leave Russia. How much did Trump allow to leave? Much less, he is a small time grifter. But we should follow the money.

Quote:
By Colbert I. King
Columnist
August 3 at 4:19 PM
Email the author
What should special counsel Robert S. Mueller III do if his probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election uncovers crimes dealing with or motivated by money? Is he supposed to look the other way?

Not if Mueller holds true to his assigned mandate.

Unfolding right now is a legal saga I envisioned in a column 16 months ago: “If, during the investigation of links between Russians and Trump campaign associates, the feds come across financial transactions aimed at evading taxes on illegal income by concealing the source and amount of profit, those associated with such activities should be prepared to hear the words: ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury . . .’ ”

This week, in the Albert V. Bryan U.S. Courthouse across the Potomac in Alexandria, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been standing trial on multiple felony charges including tax fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy.

The Alexandria proceeding is not about possible coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Manafort is being prosecuted pursuant to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein’s separate mandate to the special counsel to investigate “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”

Trump’s attorney and unintended court jester, Rudolph W. Giuliani, contends that the Mueller investigation should be limited to Russian interference. Trump goes further, arguing there should not be any investigation at all. He denounces the probe as a “witch hunt” and has called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to end it.

Sessions has bowed out for good reason, and Rosenstein is not likely to pull the plug; nor should he.

Thus far, Mueller has produced multiple indictments and guilty pleas, and at this stage, we probably don’t know the half of what his team of experienced prosecutors and investigators has uncovered, possibly including other federal criminal violations.

Calls to shut down the investigation are simply the frantic response of Trump cultists who fear — if they have not already concluded — that there is more to come. Mueller is likely following the Russian money with the same vigor his team used in pursuit of Russian hackers and intelligence operatives.

This is a pattern we have seen before. Remember, the Watergate scandal more than four decades ago involved more than a break-in and coverup. That special prosecutor’s probe found tax violations, primarily involving the 1972 presidential campaign. Among its results were 18 corporate officials and 17 corporations pleading guilty to violations of campaign contribution laws.

Today, again, it’s about the money.

Fact is, a lot of Russian money has been pouring into this country for some time, especially after Russia defaulted on $40 billion in domestic debt in 1998, and some of the country’s biggest banks started to collapse. Deep-pocketed ex-Soviet citizens scrambled to get their money out and into New York real estate where reporting requirements were scant, and cash and laundered money moved with the ease of a stick floating down the Hudson.


None other than Donald Trump Jr. has admitted to the preponderance of Russian cash, claiming in 2008 that Russian investments were “pouring in” to Trump’s business ventures. Trump World Tower, which opened in 2001, was a “prominent depository” of Russian money, Bloomberg Businessweek reported last year.

Additional evidence of the money flow?



As I’ve noted before, a Financial Times investigation found title deeds and bank records showing that a family from Kazakhstan accused of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars bought apartments in a Manhattan building part-owned by Trump. More recently, an analysis by McClatchy’s D.C. bureau found that “buyers connected to Russia or former Soviet republics made 86 all-cash sales — totaling nearly $109 million — at 10 Trump-branded properties in South Florida and New York City. . . . Many of them made purchases using shell companies designed to obscure their identities.

It’s important to stop and note that there’s nothing necessarily illegal about any of these real estate transactions. But Trump’s nonstop, manic attacks on Mueller’s investigation — and the media — look to me like the behavior of the guilty hearing footsteps and finding no place to hide.

Trump’s only alternative is to discredit and whip up a body of hate against those who would expose him for what he is: an amoral liar and self-centered, money-grubbing fraud, with a loyal following that would make any other cult leader jealous.

But Mueller, too, has no alternative but to follow the Russian connections and the money and see where they lead.

Folks, tighten your seat belts, there’s a bumpy road ahead.

Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14834
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 4:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCB8VsDFQ7U

Steve Ballmer: Just the Facts | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14834
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Sun Sep 23, 2018 12:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

a very good example of following the money of the chemical dumpers...

and the outcome...

right wing policies will turn rivers to catch fire or more again.... good thing he cut funding to environmental protection... will only cost various ares billions in home values and tourist dollars.. why go to a stinky beach in tampa?


https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/18/1796569/-Red-Tide-Rick-Scott-being-booed-out-of-a-Gulf-Coast-restaurant-may-be-the-best-thing-you-see-today?detail=emaildkre

'Red-Tide Rick' Scott being booed out of a Gulf Coast restaurant may be the best thing you see today



Quote:
Florida Governor Rick Scott is running scared, as the natives become more and more restless over his disastrous environmental policies that are ravaging our beautiful and fragile watery environments.

In Venice, Florida, Scott, who is in a closely contested Senate race against Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, was booed out of the Mojo’s Real Cuban restaurant in the ruby-red county of Sarasota—only to face an even larger, angrier crowd when the coward fled out the back door.

Venice, along with other southwestern Florida communities, has been hard hit by a toxic red tide, which, although a natural occurrence, has been supercharged by agricultural runoff and subsequent discharge from Lake Okeechobee into the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers, which carry the pollution to both Florida coasts. Horrified and tearful citizens up and down the Gulf Coast have watched as red tides spread over 1 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico, obliterating beloved manatees and the rest of our treasured marine life. The red tide has slowly inched north, where it has now begun to bring to the metropolitan Tampa Bay area the same death and economic misery that has been ongoing in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico since the beginning of the rainy season.

Florida’s renowned sugar-white sand beaches, now fouled by dark and toxic seaweed and rotting marine-life carcasses, are not the only victims of Florida’ s corrupt and pro-pollution GOP-controlled government. The tourism industry has been hit hard by vacation cancellations, resulting in empty hotels and restaurants, all the while crippling the paychecks of waitresses and waiters, as well as those of deep-sea fishing captains and others dependent on a clean and flourishing marine environment for their livelihoods.

In the below presser, a campaigning Rick Scott is proud as he can be about his water-quality record as governor. Gosh! He is a special kind of dick.


It is Scott, Agriculture Secretary Adam Putnam, and Attorney General Pam Bondi who, within days of taking power in 2010, fought furiously against regulations that would have mitigated the ecological catastrophe unfolding in South Florida, which has its origin in the polluted waters of Lake Okeechobee in Palm Beach County. Julie Hauserman of the Florida Phoenix wondered what the “Republican supporters living on waterfront estates fouled by the rotting stench of dead fish think about pollution regulation now?” Good question. If the toxins wafting in the air from the algae outbreak do not disappear soon, the pampered rich will just have to winter somewhere else this year.

She writes:

Their opposition was ideological; In the November 2010 letter of objection to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, they complained that setting pollution limits for sewage, manure and fertilizer runoff would be an “onerous regulation” by an “overbearing federal government.”

It would also, they argued, interfere with the ability to squeeze every last dollar out of the cash cow that is the Sunshine State.

“We are very concerned about the cost of this onerous regulation to Floridians,” the letter said. “Businesses across Florida are struggling and our unemployment rate is nearly 12%.”

It’s not clear how they thought keeping poop out of the public’s water would make unemployment worse, but whatever.

.@FLGovScott exits back door after just 10 minutes in restaurant crowd booing and shouting Ă˘Â€Âœcoward” pic.twitter.com/ixiyxE1juV

— Zac Anderson (@zacjanderson) September 17, 2018
Senator Nelson has accepted a few Big Sugar donations (grrrr), but that in no way compares to what the corrupt Rick Scott did to the state’s waters after cutting nearly 700 million dollars from environmental agencies that oversee algae outbreaks, in addition to relaxing and/or eliminating environmental regulations.

A Tampa Bay Times piece by Steve Bousquet titled “For Rick Scott, a gusher of oil, gas, and energy campaign money” reveals the deep corruption of an unrepentant ecosystems-killing GOP candidate who has been attempting to green wash his abysmal record since Donald Trump endorsed him for Senate. It is to the polluters from Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma that Oil-Slick Rick has sworn allegiance, and not to the 86 percent of Florida citizens that want this ecological crisis stopped yesterday.

Bousquet writes:

America's oil and gas industry is making a serious investment in Gov. Rick Scott's U.S. Senate campaign.

Scott's midyear campaign report shows at least $880,000 in contributions from oil, gas and energy executives and employees to his campaign and from the industry to a pro-Scott super PAC. The industry is generally aligned with Republican candidates.

Scott's campaign or pro-Scott PACs report donations from Murray Energy PAC, Chevron Employees PAC, Occidental Petroleum PAC, Marathon Petroleum Employees PAC, Valero PAC, Chemstream, Consumer Energy Solutions and Complete Drilling Solutions.

It is essential that polluter-funded Rick Scott not bring his radical anti-environmental agenda to Washington.


...

_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    iWindsurf Community Forum Index -> Politics, Off-Topic, Opinions All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 30, 31, 32 ... 45, 46, 47  Next
Page 31 of 47

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum

myiW | Weather | Community | Membership | Support | Log in
like us on facebook
© Copyright 1999-2007 WeatherFlow, Inc Contact Us Ad Marketplace

Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group