Jill Abramson has an Op-Ed in today’s NY Times that cover an important topic. The blatant corruption of the Trump family and the many ways in which they are leveraging their new found power to do business in China.
Yet, the article carries a racist sub-text, that this corruption somehow originates from China, rather than the Trumps themselves.
The Chinese know that one of the best ways to curry favor with any ruler is to shower riches on his family members. There are so many millionaires among the children of its leaders that they have a moniker: the Princelings.
Let’s not kid ourselves NYT, everyone knows this is a good way to curry favor with politicians. It isn’t a scheme shifty orientals came up with to corrupt the unblemished American political class, forcing them to peddle influence. We’ve executed quite a lot of corruption on our own, thank you very much. Both the former speaker of the NY Assembly and the Senate majority leader have been sentenced to jail for corruption. Skelos’ son got a lot of “consulting” gigs while his father was majority leader.
This uniquely Chinese brand of influence peddling is now being lavished on President Trump’s Princelings and Princesslings. Suddenly, all kinds of business opportunities have opened up for Trump family members in the notoriously closed Chinese market.
There’s nothing “uniquely Chinese” about this. Look at the careers of the children of many a senior politician and you’ll see how they’ve been aided by the helping hand of their powerful parents’ friends. “All kinds of business opportunities” open up for politicians and their families everywhere, when they attain or leave high-office.
Perhaps the NYT is unaware that American firms, including several blue chip investment banks have faced SEC investigations and penalties for hiring the relatives of politicians and senior business people to win business. Did someone twist their arm to do that? What about the hundreds of American firms who engaged in rampant bribery, leading to the passage of the FCPA?
Their family enterprises are seeking private favors from China, the second most powerful economy in the world. This is the country that is our biggest rival in the Pacific, one that the president himself says has hurt American workers. Then he mimics its infamous Princeling culture.
This isn’t the petty Washington corruption of lobbying favors or excess campaign donations. It is far more unseemly and dangerous to democracy.
This is the truly damaging thing about the Trump presidency, and about commentary of the sort the NYT is presenting here. The Trumps are brazen about their corruption and sycophancy, flaunting it at their own country club, in full view of TV cameras. That creates a tendency to view with nostalgia the equally damaging, pervasive influence peddling that other politicians engage in. It’s a version of all the “I never thought I’d miss GW Bush” comments. I don’t miss the guy who led us into an ill-advised war that has left an entire region of the world in chaos, destroyed the lives of tens of millions and left over a million dead.
The Trump clan’s shamelessness shouldn’t blind us to the ills of the more normal forms of corruption we have grown accustomed to.
Bloomberg reported today that the Kushner tower in Jersey City has suffered several setbacks including:
Losing the anchor tenant (WeWork)
Losing NJ subsidies (because Jersey City won’t support them)
Though Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop had written a letter to the state in support of the tower and was considering issuing $10 million in city bonds to help it along, this past weekend he stated publicly what he earlier told the family: that he opposes the Kushners’ new petition for $30.4 million in city bonds and a 30-year tax abatement. — www.bloomberg.com/…
WeWork was supposed to help attract a live/work community to the towers and purchase half the property. Now that they’ve pulled out, the project need to raise equity and figure out an alternative plan to attract tenants/buyers for the commercial/residential spaces.
The China pitch illustrates an emerging pattern for the family of the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser. The Kushners increasingly are turning to international investors, often in China, to get tough deals done. It previously lobbiedAnbang Insurance Group Co., a Chinese financial behemoth, for a redevelopment of its troubled tower at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Those negotiations fell apart. — www.bloomberg.com/…
It seems as if the Kushners have also learned something else from Trump. When your initial plan fails, come up with a more bombastic one.
Oddly, the version Meyer promoted in China is bigger, grander and more than twice as expensive as plans pitched to the New Jersey Economic Development Authority in November 2015. It will cost nearly $1 billion, including $150 million from Chinese investors, $301 million in owner equity and $525 million in debt, according to a pitchbook for an upcoming meeting in Guangzhou. It will have more than double the 744 apartments originally proposed to New Jersey. — www.bloomberg.com/…
This isn’t the first time a developer has promised to build on the lot now set for One Journal Square, which the planning board chair noted when he voted to approve the newest plans.
Only hours after Kos’ most recent screed on “Bernie Sanders dead-enders”, “Bernie Bros” and the “alt-Left” hit the front page, former President Jimmy Carter responded to Kos by telling a crowd at the Carter Center he voted for Bernie Sanders.
Just kidding. Jimmy Carter doesn’t give a flying fig what Kos thinks, and neither should you.
But I wasn’t kidding about Carter saying he voted for Bernie.
Count Jimmy Carter among the Democrats with a political crush on Bernie Sanders. So much so that the former president suggests he voted for Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primary.
Carter and Sanders appeared together Monday at The Carter Center in Atlanta.
At one point, the Vermont senator launched into a version of his populist campaign pitch.
When Sanders finished railing against a growing American oligarchy, Carter smiled and said, “Y’all see why I voted for him?” — ABC News
Their entire conversation is below and worth a listen, the broad subject was human rights. The video starts with a screening of Valarie Kaur speaking at Rev Barbers’ Moral Mondays.
The exchange about Carters’ vote comes in at 20:30 minutes. President Carter made the comment immediately after Bernie spoke (at 19:00 min) about:
How Donald Trump didn’t win the election, but the Democratic party lost the election
Bringing workers of all colors into the party
a 50 state strategy that crosses red and blue states
If we had 80% voter turnout like France, the “Republican party would be a significant minority”.
Like Sanders, Carter has long railed against the influence of money in politics. He said in 2015 that the US was essentially no longer democratic in nature.
“Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery,” Carter said. — CNN
The EB-5 program allows investors to, in effect, buy a green card if they invest 1 million (or $500k in certain areas). The investment has to create or preserve a certain number of jobs in the US. Real-Estate developers have been using this program to offer investors apartments/equity with green cards attached for years. Trump himself has marketed properties and raised capital by wooing foreign investors with the same promise of a green card.
This week, Jared Kushner’s sister was in China, touting her family’s ties to the White House as she marketed there family’s development in Jersey City, NJ. The slides had a picture of Donald Trump on them, suggesting Jared’s father-in-law could expedite their visas.
— Javier C. Hernández (@HernandezJavier) May 6, 2017
Mr. Trump’s political power was palpable at the Shanghai event even if his name went unsaid. As on Saturday in Beijing, one slide that was presented to the Shanghai audience, describing who will decide the future of the visa program for foreign investors, included a photograph of Mr. Trump, as shown by a snapshot taken by an audience member. — NY Times
The Washington Post researcher for the story on the ground was threatened and harassed.
I was threatened, harassed and forced to delete recordings and photos of The Kushner family recruiting Chinese investors in US Green cards. https://t.co/8IG5LzjbaU
— Congcong Daphne Zhang (@daphnewelkin5) May 6, 2017
Journalists barred from China event pitching investment in Kushner project — The Hill
Jared Kushner still retains his interest in the family real-estate business, though he has resigned from his executive positions. The New Yorker called it his Trumpian “divestment” strategy.
Over several hours of slide shows and presentations, representatives from the Kushner family business urged Chinese citizens gathered at a Ritz-Carlton hotel to consider investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a New Jersey luxury apartment complex that would help themsecure what’s known as an investor visa. […]
The tagline on a brochure for the event: “Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States.”
And the highlight of the afternoon was Meyer, a principal for the company, who was introduced in promotional materials as Jared’s sister.
I modified the title of this diary to say “foreign investors” instead of “Chinese investors”. It was not my intent to spark any kind of anti-immigrant sentiment. As most people on this site know, I’m a first-generation immigrant.
This is a piece about the Kushner family trying to leverage their ties to the White House in their business. This isn’t about the EB-5 visa per se, though there are legitimate questions as to whether its use by real-estate developers to raise cheap capital is in keeping with the spirit of the program. There are numerous comments exploring the drawbacks of the program. Pres. Obama, Sen. Leahy and Sen. Feinstein have all been somewhat skeptical of the creative uses real-estate developers have put the program to. I have several links in a comment below that explain the concerns about gerrymandering and lobbying by developers to qualify for the lower 500k investment threshold. This PBS piece is a good place to start if you want to know more.
As several news sources have pointed out, prior to the ACA, insurers could deny coverage to victims of sexual assault.
Prior to the passage of Obamacare, survivors of sexual assault who sought medical attention for injuries sustained during the assault could be denied coverage later on because rape was considered a pre-existing condition. The National Women’s Law Center launched a campaign at the time “Being a Woman is Not a Pre-Existing Condition,” as Gina Scaramella from the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center recalled.
Under the new MacArthur-Meadows Amendment in Trumpcare, states would be allowed to waive the ban on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. It also allows states to waive preventative health services like vaccinations, mammograms and gynecological screenings. For those who survive a sexual assault, care can often be needed from the physical trauma as well as mental. Survivors can contract sexually transmitted infections and women can be impregnated, despite the claim that women’s bodies can “shut that whole thing down.”
As people learned from late-night TV last week, babies can have “pre-existing” conditions at birth. Prior to the ACA, insurance companies could treat complications during or after delivery as “pre-existing conditions” to deny coverage to mothers as well.
The new MacArthur-Meadows Amendment will allow states to discriminate based on medical history, reportedly without addressing the subsequent high cost of health care for millions of Americans.
In addition to rape, postpartum depression, cesarean sections, and surviving domestic violence are all considered preexisting conditions. Companies can also deny coverage for gynecological services and mammograms.
When the ACA was first passed in 2009, Huffington Post reported on this aspect of the health insurance debate multiple times, interviewing survivors of sexual assault who had been denied coverage:
Some women have contacted the Investigative Fund to say they were deemed ineligible for health insurance because they had a pre-existing condition as a result of a rape, such as post traumatic stress disorder or a sexually transmitted disease. Other patients and therapists wrote in with allegations that insurers are routinely denying long-term mental health care to women who have been sexually assaulted. […]
Fallon says she now has trouble getting coverage for gynecological exams. To avoid the hassle of fighting with her insurance company, she goes to Planned Parenthood instead and pays out of pocket.
A New Mexico woman told the Investigative Fund she was denied coverage at several health insurance companies because she had suffered from PTSD after being attacked and raped in 2003. She did not want to disclose her name because she feared that she would lose her group health insurance if she went on the record as a rape victim. “I remember just feeling infuriated,” she said.
Christina Turner was drugged and raped by two men in 2002. After taking anti-HIV drugs prescribed by her doctor as a preventative measure, Turner was denied health insurance. The HIV drugs, Turner was told, raised too many health questions for her insurer.
That 67% of Americans think Democrats are out of touch with their concerns should worry all of us. I don’t have a good explanation, just a few thoughts that some of our preconceptions may not be completely accurate.
Looking through the cross-tabs of this poll, I can say that it’s not just racist white people, note that 60% of non-white Americans say Democrats are out of touch.
And before we jump to the conclusion that it’s just misogynist men, please note that 59% of American women say Democrats are out of touch.
and before we jump to the conclusion that it’s just awful Republicans, please note that 75% of independents, and 44% of Democrats said the party is out of touch:
That 44% of self-declared Democrats think the party is out of touch should cause some very serious soul-searching. People who have consistently voted for Democrats, seem to be saying the party is out of touch.
Before we console ourselves that Republicans must doing worse than Democrats, note that they are not:
Before we insist that Trump must be doing worse than Democrats, please note that he is not:
It’s also worth noting that income and education don’t explain the disaffection with Democrats. Americans across levels of educational attainment and household income think Democratic party is out of touch.
We do a little better with voters from households earning <50K, but it is not as big a difference as we might think. 62% of households making less than 50K think the Democratic party isn’t in touch with their priorities.
The poll results are from a telephone survey of 1,004 randomly selected adults in the US. 74% of respondents voted in the election. Of those, 46% voted for Hillary Clinton while 43% voted for Donald Trump. In one bright spot, when all respondents (including those who didn’t vote in 2016) are asked whom they would vote for today, support for Trump drops to 37%.
the Democratic Party is viewed as far more out of touch by Democrats than Trump or the GOP are by Republicans. — WaPo
The same poll asked voters in 2014 whether they thought Democrats were in touch, 48% said yes back then. In 2013, 43% had said Democrats were in touch. How did we drop to 28% between 2014 and 2017?
PS. Obama’s “in-touch” numbers were even better than Democrats at 48% and 51% in 2014 and 2013 respectively.
Top Democratic pollsters have conducted private focus groups and polling in an effort to answer that question, and they shared the results with me.
A shockingly large percentage of these Obama-Trump voters said Democrats’ economic policies will favor the wealthy — twice the percentage that said the same about Trump. I was also permitted to view video of some focus group activity, which showed Obama-Trump voters offering sharp criticism of Democrats on the economy. […]
Skepticism about the Democratic Party was echoed rather forcefully in the focus groups that I watched. In one, Obama-Trump voters were asked what Democrats stand for today and gave answers such as these:
“The one percent.”
“The status quo.”
“They’re for the party. Themselves and the party.”
One woman, asked whether the Democratic Party is for people like her, flatly declared: “Nope.” — WaPo
So, what do you think is going on here and why do so many Americans now think the Democratic party is so out of touch?
Speaking at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Monday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross recalled the scene at Mar-a-Lago on April 6, when the summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping was interrupted by the strike on Syria.
“Just as dessert was being served, the president explained to Mr. Xi he had something he wanted to tell him, which was the launching of 59 missiles into Syria,” Ross said. “It was in lieu of after-dinner entertainment.”
As the crowd laughed, Ross added: “The thing was, it didn’t cost the president anything to have that entertainment.” — Variety
Each of those missiles will cost roughly 1.5 million to replace. That doesn’t account for the operational costs of the mission, moving materiel into position to fire those missiles, activating staff etc.
Sure, it didn’t personally “cost” Trump anything. From his perspective, it was free marketing for the chocolate dessert at Mar-a-Lago.
But what about the cost to us? This missile/bombing cost roughly $100 million. That’s a hundred million dollars we no longer have for education, infrastructure or health-care. It was set alight to create a trans-continental fireworks show and impress Trump’s “guests”?
Are the armed-forces of the United States merely “after-dinner entertainment” for Trump and the billionaires in his cabinet who weaseled out of the draft?
And what about the countries we are bombing? During Trump’s brief tenure, we have dropped bombs on Iraq, Syria and Yemen, killing hundreds of civilians. What about the moral cost of this carnage? What about the long-term implications of a superpower dropping bombs on brown people across the Middle East as “after-dinner entertainment”?
So if you’ve spent the last two days fighting for Barack Obama’s right to make $400,000 per hour for a speech, that’s great. But you damn well better spend the other 363 days of the year fighting for the 41 million American workers who need your solidarity to raise the federal minimum to a living wage.
Bobby Scott (VA) and Keith Ellison (MN) will introduce a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 within four years. Senator Patty Murray (WA) and Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) will present an identical bill in the Senate. The Senate bill has 22 co-sponsors, including Schumer, Durbin, Blumenthal, Booker, Brown, Cantwell, Gillibrand, Feinstein, Franken, Harris, Hirono, Kaine, Leahy, Markey, Merkley, Reed, Schatz, Van Hollen, Warren, Whitehouse and Wyden.
It’s the same person who recently said this in a HuffPo interview.
“There was a contingent of Bernie bros that still exist, that are still whining and crying and making demands, instead of putting their words into actions,” he said. “You had a Bernie supporter running in Kansas 4 ? an out Berniecrat. They should’ve opened up and funded this guy. Why didn’t they? Daily Kos did more for this Bernie-supporting candidate than the whiny Bernie people themselves.” […] — HuffPo
For the record, Our Revolution made several thousand phone calls, volunteers had several thousand text conversations with voters in Kansas and the “Bernie people” staffed Thompson’s campaign on the ground.
Moulitsas said he expects nothing from the party and is therefore never disappointed. “I never think, ‘What is the party going to do?’ Never. Doesn’t cross my mind. I assume the party is broken and irrelevant. So what do you do? You do it yourself. So in this case, we did it ourself and didn’t sit around asking why the D-trip wasn’t involved.” — HuffPo
It’s actually Ben Ray Lujan’s job to get more Democrats elected to the House, when are we going to begin holding the DCCC chair’s feet to the fire? In an almost comical scene, the DCCC didn’t even mention the Kansas race on Twitter. Didn’t call for phonebank volunteers, nothing.
Oh, I forgot, we have to assume the party is “broken and irrelevant”. That leaves us free to indulge in some more Bernie bashing.
For someone who believes the Democratic party is “broken and irrelevant”, Kos sure does spend a whole lot of time bemoaning the fact that Bernie hasn’t joined it yet.
Why would you ever care whether Bernie belongs to a party you assume is “broken and irrelevant”?
Perhaps there is a method to the madness. Maybe Kos is just holding Our Revolution and Bernie to a higher standard than the Democratic establishment because he believes OR/Bernie are less “broken and irrelevant”. Or else it’s just Kos being his illogical, double-standard self.
I won’t rehearse the actual quote that prompted this response, Ian Reifowitz covered it in adequate detail. There is a temptation to dismiss this too as Kos being his usual hare-brained, hair-trigger self. But it’s an instructive episode.
Ossoff interned for and had the support of John Lewis, ditto for Hank Johnson. Raul Grijalva who is chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (which Lewis and Johnson are also part of) advocated for Ossoff. So Ossoff had a lot of support from progressive Democrats in and outside of Georgia. There were four other Democrats in the primary. None of the others made much headway, but that doesn’t mean Ossoff was the most progressive, in fact Ossoff presented himself as a “moderate”. Now that he’s won the primary, he has Bernie’s support.
What is Kos and Nir’s excuse for not endorsing Thompson till two days before the general election?
And here’s a question for the people who are upset at Bernie for going to Omaha and appearing in public with Heath Mello. Let’s set aside that this is a public appearance organized as part of a national tour by the “broken and irrelevant” party. Where were you when Hillary Clinton was meeting, supported and campaigned with Joe Manchin on several occasions? Manchin “identifies” as pro-life, and as a Governor and Senator carries a lot more weight. Why weren’t you writing lengthy diatribes about how you wouldn’t back down on choice and allow the “presumptive nominee” to sell out reproductive rights? Where were you when Hillary, on the campaign trail, suggested she would compromise on a “constitutional action” to restrict abortions. Seriously, why weren’t we raking our presumptive presidential nominee over the coals on that one?
This fracas isn’t about reproductive rights, it isn’t about civil rights or any other issue really. It’s about whether or not progressives will wrest control of the Democratic party from the centrist/third-way faction who’ve held sway for 25 years. Progressives have, and will continue to unequivocally support women’s right to choose and will always support equal rights for all. And nothing will stop DailyKos’ leadership from repeated attempts to misconstrue their actions in ways that “moderate”, “compromising” Democrats don’t have to deal with.
Nomiki Konst, a journalist and a Sanders delegate in 2016, said that Kos tries to have it both ways with the Sanders movement ? embracing it in substance, but belittling elements of it. “As a lot of other pseudo-lefty groups, they want the best of both worlds, move a little left, bring Bernie people in, while at the same time trashing Bernie’s people left and right,” said Konst, who is a member of the DNC’s unity commission. “If it was a Bernie-bro-free zone, why didn’t they have the women during the primary? You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” — HuffPo
It’s instructive to note that Nomiki is a woman, one of many whose support for Bernie is dismissed by Kos and others of his ilk who indulge their prejudices (and hope to trigger others’) by repeatedly using the term “Bernie Bro”.
Finally, adding insult to injury, DKos has added to the front page a person who has spent most of the last 18 months indulging a desire to set everything in sight on fire. Here’s a small sample:
I guess it’s now acceptable for DKos front-pagers to say Bernie supports the Klan, “he ain’t shit”, and can’t get things through “his thick ass skull”.
Does this mean we’ll soon have DKos front-pagers who routinely say similarly incendiary things about Hillary and other people in senior leadership roles?
That will make for some really warm unity, in a gripping shade of scorched earth.
