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real-human
Joined: 02 Jul 2011 Posts: 14892 Location: on earth
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Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2020 11:40 pm Post subject: |
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2020/10/23/forbes-estimates-china-paid-trump-at-least-54-million-since-he-took-office-via-mysterious-trump-tower-lease/?fbclid=IwAR3PT4RdFTVRn-OVnDWh3aYxLJrKMGK6P6ErBuDm_3xBlgcrhTZqjoZkJH4#22a9025ed11e
Forbes Estimates China Paid Trump At Least $5.4 Million Since He Took Office, Via Mysterious Trump Tower Lease
Quote: | President Donald Trump, who declared “I don’t make money from China” in Thursday night’s presidential debate, has in fact collected millions of dollars from government-owned entities in China since he took office. Forbes estimates that at least $5.4 million has flowed into the president’s business from a lease agreement involving a state-owned bank in Trump Tower.
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China signed a lease for space in 2008, years before the president took office, paying about $1.9 million in annual rent. Trump is well-aware of the deal. “I’ll show you the Industrial Bank of China,” he told three Forbes journalists touring Trump Tower in 2015. “I have the best tenants in the world in this building.”
Trump moved from the skyscraper to the White House in 2017, but he held onto ownership of the retail and office space in the building, through his 100% interest in an entity called Trump Tower Commercial LLC. That put him in an unusual position, given that government-owned entities in China hold at least 70% of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Suddenly, a routine real estate deal became a conduit for a foreign superpower to pay the president of the United States.
Trump Tower
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China maintained an office space inside President Trump's Fifth Avenue skyscraper. ROBERT ALEXANDER/GETTY IMAGES
The arrangement posed legal concerns, since the U.S. Constitution prohibits federal officials from accepting “any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state” without Congressional approval. Ethics experts, who have often focused on the president’s hotel in Washington, D.C., argued that the president would be in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause from the moment he took office.
On January 11, 2017, Trump and his team held a press conference inside Trump Tower, not far from the office of the Chinese bank. Trump’s lawyer, Sheri Dillon, claimed that routine business transactions are not violations of the so-called Emoluments Clause. But she also said the president planned to donate all foreign government profits at his hotel to the U.S. Treasury. The next month, first son Eric Trump, who had just taken over day-to-day operations of his father’s business, told Forbes the donations would come from “all the properties.”
Perhaps Eric Trump meant all hotel properties, because it sure doesn’t seem like the Trump Organization handed over all their profits from the deal with the Chinese. The Trump Organization reportedly donated a total of $343,000 to the U.S. Treasury in 2017 and 2018, Trump’s first two years as president. Yet, a document connected to Trump Tower suggests that over those same two years, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was set to pay about $3.9 million in rent. Operating profit margins inside the building are an estimated 42%, which would suggest that the deal yielded $1.6 million of earnings over those two years. Even if you only count roughly 70% of that money as coming from the Chinese government, it still adds up to $1.2 million—or more than three times what the Trump Organization reportedly gave to the Treasury.
Debate
President Trump debates Joe Biden in the closing days of the 2020 election. JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
The lease was set to expire on October 31, 2019, according to a debt prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2018, the state-owned bank agreed to a new lease in a different office building nearby, suggesting it might leave Trump Tower. But then, the bank decided to stay in the president’s building anyway. “They are keeping a couple of floors,” Eric Trump confirmed onstage at a business conference in October 2019.
The new arrangement is somewhat murky. Contacted Friday morning, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization initially said that the bank had “consolidated with their other offices in New York.” When told that Forbes might publish that statement, the spokesperson then seemed to confirm that the Chinese bank was in fact maintaining space in the building: “They’ve exited the vast majority of their space in Trump Tower.” The website for the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China still lists an address inside Trump Tower.
Trump has other financial connections to China. The New York Times revealed Tuesday that the U.S. president has a bank account in China. His daughter, Ivanka Trump, received 41 Chinese trademarks from the time she was appointed a White House adviser in March 2017 to April 2019, according to an analysis of documents. The review also showed that the trademarks Ivanka applied for after her father’s inauguration got approved about 40% faster than those she sought out beforehand. |
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real-human
Joined: 02 Jul 2011 Posts: 14892 Location: on earth
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Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2020 4:26 pm Post subject: |
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https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-team-spent-16-billion-raised-years/story?id=73795897
How Trump’s team spent most of the $1.6 billion it raised over 2 years
Quote: | President Donald Trump's reelection team kicked off 2020 with what seemed like an unbeatable cash advantage, boasting a massive fundraising operation, bolstered by the joint efforts of the Republican Party.
Fast-forward 10 months and they've burned through a whopping $1.4 billion of the more than $1.6 billion raised over the last two years, struggling to keep up with former Vice President Joe Biden, more than what former President Barack Obama's reelection campaign and the Democrats had raised and spent by the end of the 2012 cycle.
By mid-October, the Trump campaign and the Republican Party reelection team were left with $223.5 million in the bank. The Trump campaign itself only had $43 million entering the final three weeks of the presidential election.
The revealing figures, released as the two presidential candidates debated on stage Thursday night for the last time before Election Day, came after the campaign blew through $63 million in the first two weeks of October alone -- a critical time when it only brought in $44 million. The vast majority of the money spent during that time -- nearly $45 million -- went to television and online advertising, according to the latest disclosure report filed to the Federal Election Commission, as Biden and pro-Biden efforts ramped up his ad spending.
MORE: Trump campaign trailing behind Biden in funding, weeks before Election Day, new filings show
By comparison, the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party had a total of $331 million in the bank by mid-October -- with the Biden campaign boasting $162 million of that. |
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real-human
Joined: 02 Jul 2011 Posts: 14892 Location: on earth
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Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2020 3:37 pm Post subject: |
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this is a shocker...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/billionaire-charles-koch-regrets-his-partisanship?source=facebook&via=mobile&fbclid=IwAR2GWPNWl4IfOGvAs8jFghULQb-FyZ_9KRR6_Cc45oZIUKbo2ltMMAZNjXQ
‘What a Mess!’: Billionaire Charles Koch Regrets His Partisanship
Quote: | Kansas billionaire Charles Koch now says that he regrets his partisan spending—admitting in his new book that it only made things worse, according to The Wall Street Journal. The 85-year-old tycoon’s book, Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World, says that he is shifting his focus from intense Republican partisanship to finding unifying answers to social issues instead. “Boy, did we screw up!” Koch writes. “What a mess!” He now wants to work together with Democrats and liberals like the American Civil Liberties Union, the LeBron James Family Foundation, and Democratic state legislative campaigns. “I congratulate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on their victory,” he said in an email to the Journal. “I look forward to finding ways to work with them to break down the barriers holding people back, whether in the economy, criminal justice, immigration, the Covid-19 pandemic, or anywhere else. At the same time, I hope we all use this post-election period to find a better way forward. Because of partisanship, we’ve come to expect too much of politics and too little of ourselves and one another.” |
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wsurfer
Joined: 17 Aug 2000 Posts: 1635
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999 Posts: 17749 Location: Berkeley, California
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Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2020 11:32 pm Post subject: |
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So true. For some reason i ended up on the Trump-Pence campaign e-mail list. I was happy to let them waste money e-mailing me. I get about 3 a day asking me for money. A grifter born, a grifter to the bitter end. |
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coachg
Joined: 10 Sep 2000 Posts: 3551
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Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2020 12:56 am Post subject: |
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I wonder how much money Iso’s has given to him? Probably not as much as Matty gave to Steve Bannon’s wall fund.
Coachg |
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real-human
Joined: 02 Jul 2011 Posts: 14892 Location: on earth
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Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2020 4:21 pm Post subject: |
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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ice-jeffrey-sprecher-turns-billionaire-134115808.html
ICE’s Jeffrey Sprecher Turns Billionaire on Eve of Wife’s Georgia Runoff
Quote: | (Bloomberg) -- For a guy who turned a few dollars into a company that oversees everything from the New York Stock Exchange to Libor, Jeffrey Sprecher was remarkably unknown outside of Wall Street.
And it may have stayed that way except that his wife, Kelly Loeffler, was appointed to a U.S. Senate seat from Georgia to fill a vacancy late last year.
Within months, the couple faced public scorn over a series of stock trades made before the coronavirus outbreak jolted global markets. Their wealth has now become a focal point in the Jan. 5 runoff election between Loeffler and Raphael Warnock, a Democrat -- one of two Senate races that day that will determine control of the chamber.
His company’s 22% rally this year has helped make Sprecher, 65, a billionaire, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and cemented Loeffler’s place as the wealthiest member of Congress. |
_________________ when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard. |
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real-human
Joined: 02 Jul 2011 Posts: 14892 Location: on earth
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Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2021 9:47 am Post subject: |
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buys media and huge trump mega donor.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sheldon-adelson-obituary-131047045.html
Sheldon Adelson, conservative megadonor and casino mogul, dies at 87
Quote: | Sheldon Adelson, a rags-to-riches casino mogul who built one of the largest fortunes in the United States and spent it aggressively to bolster conservative politicians and causes, has died at the age of 87, his wife Dr. Miriam Adelson said on Tuesday.
Since 2019, Adelson had received treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which limited his travel and hours at the office, but he continued to helm his casino empire, Las Vegas Sands Inc. (LVS). He had struggled to walk since 2001, when he was diagnosed with a neuromuscular disorder.
His wife, Miriam, said on Tuesday that he had died after complications from a long illness.
“Sheldon was the love of my life. He was my partner in romance, philanthropy, political activism and enterprise. He was my soulmate,” she wrote in a press release announcing his death.
Over the past decade, Adelson and Miriam cemented themselves as two of the largest donors to conservative politicians and causes in the U.S. In the 2012 election cycle, Adelson and Miriam reportedly spent about $150 million on Republican candidates and the conservative organizations seeking to elect them.
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Quote: | Over the 1990s and early 2000s, Adelson underwent a rightward political shift, moving from his roots as a liberal Democrat in the blue state of Massachusetts to Republican activism in purple Nevada. The change of heart coincided with his fight against the Culinary Workers Union, the biggest union in the state, both in court and at his properties. Though unions made some inroads at his hotels, the Venetian remains the only major hotel in Las Vegas that is non-union.
After the turn of the century, as he amassed a net worth in the tens of billions, Adelson spent generously in support of rightwing political causes in the United States and Israel, becoming a close ally of likeminded political leaders such as President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu, both of whom received praise in editorials on the pages of newspapers Adelson owned in their respective countries |
_________________ when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999 Posts: 17749 Location: Berkeley, California
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Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2021 2:51 pm Post subject: |
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More help for the buggy whip makers, more damage to public health.
Quote: | By
Juliet Eilperin and
Dino Grandoni
Jan. 15, 2021 at 5:47 p.m. PST
Add to list
The Trump administration has gone on a spree of environmental rollbacks in its final days, loosening standards for equipment Americans use to heat their homes, reducing protected habitat for the northern spotted owl and opening conservation lands in California and Utah to development.
The flurry of new rules — several of which will help the fossil fuel, logging and mining industries — sets up a clash with the incoming Biden administration. As the president-elect gears up to cut greenhouse gas emissions and put more land off limits to development, his aides will have to spend months unwinding these policies unless congressional Democrats or federal judges overturn them.
Every president rushes to lock in his agenda before leaving office: Bill Clinton protected tens of millions of acres of national forest from logging just before stepping down, and Barack Obama finalized a slew of rules on everything from energy efficiency to the disposal of toxic waste by dental offices. |
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real-human
Joined: 02 Jul 2011 Posts: 14892 Location: on earth
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Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2021 4:05 pm Post subject: |
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trumped increased government spending out of the country by 20%.....
Biden signs 'Buy American' order
Quote: | U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Monday aimed at strengthening U.S. manufacturing. At a press conference, Biden said he'd close loopholes in existing 'Buy American' provisions to ensure the federal government purchases American-made products. To revitalize the manufacturing sector, which accounts for about 12 percent of the U.S. economy, Biden will make federal contracts more transparent and create a senior position in the White House to oversee the process. "Under the previous administration, the federal government contracts awarded directly to foreign companies went up 30 percent. That is going to change on our watch. Today I'm taking the first steps in my larger 'build back better' recovery plan that invest in American workers unions and businesses up and down the supply chain." White House officials say Biden's push to revitalize manufacturing is key to driving up wages, creating union jobs, and strengthening U.S. supply chains, all of which have proved vexing for previous administrations, including former President Donald Trump. Biden's executive order applies to about a third of the $600 billion in goods and services the federal government buys each year. "When we buy America, we'll buy from all of America. That includes communities that have historically been left out of government procurement: Black, brown, Native American, small businesses and entrepreneurs in every region of the country." |
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