Liz Oyer

So I guess it's a kind of revolving door protection racket thing.

I sic my DOJ dogs on you, and when they send you up, you pay me to get your ass out?

This whole joint is nine kinds of fucked up.

That Ballroom Thingie

My basic position on Trump's decision to tear down the East Wing of the White House in order to put up a grand ballroom:

1. It pissed him off that Melania refuses to spend any more time in DC than she absolutely has to (ie: than she's contractually obligated to), so he tore it down out of spite
2. It's a great opportunity to launder a shit load of bribe money - funny how the price tag has ballooned from the original $150-200M to over $400M now

White House ballroom: Judge signals skepticism of Trump administration arguments

The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued to stop the project.

The federal judge presiding over a challenge to the White House ballroom project signaled deep skepticism of the Trump administration's argument that the president has the legal authority to undertake the East Wing renovations and to fund them with private donations.

In a hearing on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon pressed an administration lawyer on both of those issues -- as he questioned whether the president has the power to tear down part of what he called "an icon that's a national institution," and described the intent to fund it with private gifts as a "Rube Goldberg contraption" that would evade congressional oversight.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a lawsuit last month seeking to stop the ballroom construction until the project completes the federal review process standard for federal building projects and the administration seeks public comment on the proposed changes.

White House ballroom architect says West Wing additions considered for 'symmetry'
The National Trust, the privately funded nonprofit designated by Congress to protect historic sites, was seeking a preliminary injunction.

At the end of the hour-long hearing Thursday, Judge Leon said he will likely not issue a decision this month, but "hopefully" in February. He said he expects the losing side to appeal.

In a statement provided to ABC News, White House spokesman Davis Ingle said: "President Trump is working 24/7 to Make America Great Again, including his historic beautification of the White House, at no taxpayer expense. These long-needed upgrades will benefit generations of future presidents and American visitors to the People's House."

The White House announced the construction of a 90,000-square foot ballroom in late July, and demolition began suddenly on the East Wing in late October, when workers were spotted tearing down the wing of the White House that contained the first lady's offices.

The size and cost of the project have increased since first being unveiled. In November, Trump said the project would cost $400 million, after an initial estimate of $200 million. The White House has said the project will be funded by private donations.

Judge Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, said the Trump administration appears to be making an "end run" around congressional oversight with the president's plan to privately raise $400 million for the ballroom project, and he admonished the Justice Department's lawyer to "be serious" in justifying a legal rationale for it.

National Trust for Historic Preservation sues to try to stop White House ballroom construction
While the case presents a series of complicated and overlapping legal issues, the judge spent much of the hearing focused on just two federal statutes -- one, which says that no "building or structure" can be built on any federal public grounds in the District of Columbia "without express authority of Congress," and another that calls for yearly appropriations for the "maintenance, repair, alteration, refurnishing [and] improvement" of the White House.

Leon noted that Republicans control both houses of Congress, and that the president could have gone to lawmakers to seek approval for the demolition and rebuild. He also suggested the $2.5 million Congress recently appropriated for White House maintenance was for "very small-size projects," not a ballroom.

Justice Department lawyer Yaakov Roth responded that Trump didn't want $400 million in taxpayer money to be used for the project, when he could solicit gifts to the National Park Service to fund it instead. Roth also noted that Congress was never asked in Gerald Ford's era to approve the building of a swimming pool, or a tennis pavilion during Trump's first term.

Trump says no plans to name White House ballroom after himself

Leon said he saw "no basis" in the legislative history of the park service's gift authority that would allow Trump to use it to raise $400 million to build a new White House ballroom. "None," Leon said. "Zero."

Arguing for the National Trust, attorney Tad Heuer described the president as a "temporary tenant of the White House, not the landlord." Leon suggested "steward" might be a more fitting term.

What we know about the donors funding the White House ballroom

As Roth took the podium to begin his argument on behalf of the administration, he attempted to convince the judge that the National Trust has no standing to sue. Leon abruptly cut him off.

"I'm very comfortable with standing in this case," Leon said. "Sorry to disappoint you. You'll get your chance at the Court of Appeals."

Roth warned the judge that an order halting construction at this stage could expose the existing White House structure to damage and potentially lead to security concerns, since it's widely believed that a replacement for a previously-existing underground bunker is part of the project. The National Trust has said it would not object to continued construction on the security portion of the work.

"It can't be divided out that way," Roth said of the security-related construction, "unless we want the court to be the project manager on site."

Leon declined to issue an order from the bench. He said the coming winter storm made it unlikely he would issue a ruling on the National Trust's motion for a preliminary injunction before the end of this month.

The Bartender

Trump's "Ballroom" is a laundry for bribe money. The bidding has been going up almost daily, and when it gets to some kind of saturation point, he'll open the bidding on his "Arc".

He's not building anything new, he's just expanding the Russian Mob Money operation to include Influence Peddling.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Spacie Gracie (@spaciegracie99)

Dots

So okay - are we looking at the first indication of what Trump says he'll deliver for the billion-dollar "donation" he solicited from the Dirty Fuels Cartel?

Maybe we're getting a hint at why Elon Musk's breath smells of Trump's asshole - because Trump is giving him a plausible-sounding excuse for when Tesla goes tits up (?)

I'm not asking for Boy Scouts and a world painted in soft pastels, but I'd like to get back to thinking that people will at least try to deal above board and with some honor. 

Donald Trump Says He'll Stop All Electric Car Sales

"You won't be able to sell those cars," says the legally embroiled former president

Former United States President Donald J. Trump, currently facing 34 felony counts in criminal court, is campaigning for re-election this fall by taking shots at the increasingly popular electric car industry. Trump has already called for oil and gas industry executives to donate significant campaign funds in exchange for a reversal of Biden administration climate policies. If elected this November, Trump would roll back tailpipe emissions targets and dramatically slash EV tax credits. These policies may prove unpopular even among Republican voters, as electric vehicle production has spurred job growth and investment in southern states.

The automotive landscape is a far different place than it was in 2016 when Trump gained the presidency. Despite his best efforts, the EV market has grown significantly in the last eight years. Just 159,139 electric vehicles were sold in the U.S. in 2016, and that number is expected to exceed 1.5 million (or 10 percent of U.S. new car sales) in 2024. Even if Donald Trump were to be elected and hit the brakes on EV tax credits, the market may already be at a tipping point of growth. The electric car market has jumped the chasm between early adopters and mainstream consumers. Analysts predict widespread EV adoption will continue to develop regardless of Donald Trump’s actions, though perhaps at a reduced pace.

William Clay Ford Jr., executive chair of Ford Motor, told the New York Times: “Our time frame as a company, our planning time frame, is a lot longer than election cycles,” Mr. Ford said at an event organized by the Detroit Free Press last month. “When we’re whipsawed back and forth by politicians that becomes really difficult for us.”

Investment in U.S. manufacturing spurred by President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act will continue apace even with a second term for Donald Trump. Hyundai, for example, is investing $13 billion on electric vehicle production in Georgia, a state Donald Trump narrowly lost by 12,000 votes in 2020. By threatening the livelihoods of blue collar American workers, Trump may be doing more harm than good for his case in these manufacturing-reliant states.

New Cybertruck Sends Owner to the Emergency Room Before He Even Gets a Chance to Drive It

With billions of investment on the books from automakers, charging companies, dealership networks, and advertising, it seems unlikely that Donald Trump can stop the rolling bolder that is the EV market. Republican strongholds Texas and Florida are increasingly adopting electric vehicles as their chosen mode of transport, trailing only California in terms of EV registrations. Electric vehicles seem to be equally popular among Republican and Democrat consumers. Alienating regular working-class Americans in an appeal to his fervent base seems to be Donald Trump’s raison d’etre, so we’ll have to wait until November to see if it actually works.

It's The Money, Stupid

Headline Translated:

Billionaire demonstrates next level usury

And does this not pose a threat by way of furthering Trump's graft?

How long before we decide coin-operated politicians need to be driven out, and not molly-coddled?

How a California billionaire known for auto loans provided Trump’s bond

Don Hankey, who made a fortune offering high-interest auto loans to customers with poor credit, said providing the $175 million bond to Trump is a good business deal

As former president Donald Trump struggled last month to post a bond for more than $450 million to keep authorities from seizing his properties, California billionaire Don Hankey and his wife, Debbi, started discussing a solution: Hankey’s business could cover it.

Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.
Hankey, a Trump supporter who made a fortune providing high-interest auto loans to customers with poor credit, soon reached out to Trump’s team to negotiate a deal that would allow Trump to stay the penalty while he appealed a massive New York civil fraud judgment. But when a court reduced the bond to $175 million last week and Trump said he had the cash to post it himself, the matter seemed moot, Hankey told The Washington Post.

Then, to his surprise, the Trump team last week revived the talks and asked Hankey if he would back the new amount. Hankey promptly agreed. He said that his company is charging Trump a “modest fee,” which he declined to disclose, and that the arrangement allowed Trump to hold onto his money, adding, “At least he’s getting interest on his collateral.”

With the bond, which Trump posted Monday, Hankey appears to have facilitated a final step in Trump’s narrow escape from a cash crunch that a few weeks ago had the New York attorney general vowing to come after his assets and experts wondering if he would have to file for bankruptcy as he faced more than half a billion dollars in penalties from two civil cases, with only weeks to find the money.

The financial boost for the presumed GOP nominee has thrust Hankey into the midst of a presidential campaign, bringing a new national profile to a colorful 80-year-old worth $7.4 billion, according to Forbes, who worked his way from car salesman to major player in the car loan industry and owner of Xanadu, formerly Olivia Newton-John’s Malibu estate. If Trump is elected, their relationship could come under new scrutiny if the government is involved in matters affecting Hankey’s business.

Hankey said the bond, which was provided by one of his companies, a subsidiary of Knight Insurance, was a good business deal, not a political statement.

“I’m chairman of the board of several companies, and we just carry on our business and we try to stay away from political issues or taking sides,” said Hankey, who said he has been a Trump supporter “and I will support him in the future, but I wouldn’t consider myself a major supporter.” He said that while many of his contributions have gone to Republicans, he has also donated to Democrats.

Hankey also said he provided the bond to Trump in part because he agreed with the former president’s defense in the New York civil case, in which he was convicted of committing fraud by overvaluing his assets and getting loans at lower rates than otherwise would have been available. Trump argued that even if the property values were overstated, it was a common practice and that the loans were repaid in full.

Hankey said that one of his businesses, Westlake Financial Services, provides loans to 1.5 million customers and that “quite often, when credit statements or financial statements are submitted to us, the values are exaggerated on some of the assets. … I would say it probably happens on 75 percent of our applications.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment, referring instead to a post by the former president on his social network, Truth Social, in which he said, “I had to pay New York State in order to appeal a corrupt decision by a biased, crooked and highly overturned judge.”

Hankey is also the largest individual, non-institutional shareholder of Axos Bank, a little-known online company that in 2022 provided $225 million in crucial loans to keep Trump’s businesses afloat after many of his longtime lenders cut ties in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Hankey said he was unaware of the Axos loans until after they were provided to the Trump Organization. Axos’s president and chief executive previously told The Post he approved the loans because they were profitable for his bank, not for political reasons.

While not as well-known nationally as some other billionaires who support Trump, Hankey is a prominent figure in California, where his best-known business has revolved around providing high-interest auto loans to customers with poor credit. Remembering how he once had to turn away such customers when he was a car salesman, he said, he established a business that provided loans to higher-risk customers at higher rates.

A 2015 article in Forbes magazine described Hankey calculating how he might provide a hypothetical customer with a low credit score a loan at 23.99 percent. The article said that his company at the time had 336,000 outstanding car loans from 23,000 auto dealerships, and that his company repossessed 250 cars per day because of problems with repayment.

While the business provided financing to many customers who couldn’t get it elsewhere, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that it sometimes went too far.

The agency on Oct. 1, 2015, announced that it had ordered Westlake Financial Services and another company, Wilshire Consumer Credit, to provide $44.1 million in relief to customers and to pay a civil penalty of $4.25 million for what the agency called “illegal debt collection tactics.” The news release did not name Hankey, and he was not accused of wrongdoing. Hankey said in the interview that the companies relied on an “electronic program” and that he didn’t think they did anything wrong.

In the bank case, brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruled in February that Trump, several of his companies, his two elder sons and former executives were civilly liable for fraud by lying about the true value of his assets to obtain better rates.

Attorneys for the Trump Organization and family have argued that the company was engaged in normal business practices and that the judge’s financial penalty was wildly excessive and ought to be waived or reduced.

After Engoron’s ruling, Trump moved to appeal — but first needed to either post a bond of more than $450 million to stay the financial penalty, or pay it. Weeks later, Trump’s attorneys told the court that he couldn’t do so after approaching 30 surety companies.

But the Hankeys had already begun discussing a potential deal. Hankey said his wife, Debbi, first suggested providing the bond, and then contacted a friend who knew the campaign and connected them with Hankey.

A round of negotiations soon commenced, but last week, an appeals court panel in New York ruled that Trump needed to post only $175 million to appeal.

“We thought our negotiations were finished,” Hankey said. “And we were thanked by the Trump Organization.”

But Trump’s company soon reached out again. “They called back and asked us if we would put up the bond for $175 million,” he said.

It took only a few days to complete the new deal.

By posting the $175 million bond Monday, Trump appeared — at least for now — to escape from a financial jam that weeks ago appeared so untenable that experts wondered if he would file for corporate bankruptcy.

Instead, he has gained stays in the two most daunting civil cases against him without having to forfeit any of his assets or sell any of his properties. Nor did he have to touch stock he has in his social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., a stake that was still valued at around $4 billion Tuesday afternoon despite the stock price’s recent slide.

Nonetheless, depending on how the appeals process plays out, Trump still may face substantial judgments in the bank case as well as in an unrelated defamation case, in which an insurance company posted a $91 million bond.

By using the bonds and the appeals process, Trump has given himself additional chances to argue his position in court, in front of different judges, and — perhaps most important — gained more time to pay any penalties that are ultimately levied upon him.

Robert E. Malchman, a longtime New York lawyer who has been following the bank case, said that the appellate court’s decision to reduce the bond amount had given Trump a lifeline and that James will probably now have to press her case well after the election through the appeals process.

Trump still may face the full penalties, Malchman said, even if he returns to the White House.

“He can be president of the United States again, but that’s not going to affect his civil judgments,” he said.

He said Trump remains under the purview of a court monitor, former judge Barbara S. Jones, who must approve major financial transactions by the Trump Organization. And he can no longer use the money he has provided as collateral for the bond for other purposes, which could strap him financially. “That’s $175 million that you can’t use for anything else,” Malchman said.

Hankey said he has never spoken to Trump. But after the bond deal was made public, he heard from one of Trump’s sons, who effectively runs the company.

“I talked to Eric Trump this morning,” Hankey said. “He called and thanked us for posting the bond.”

President Underwood

Yeah, yeah, it's Kevin Spacey. For just a bit, pay attention to the writing - what the character says, not the off-camera shittiness of the actor.

Quick Question

Why is this shit OK?

Politics is undoubtedly the Blunt family business: His wife, Abigail, is the top D.C. lobbyist for Kraft Foods. His son Matt served one term as Missouri governor and now leads the main lobbying group for Detroit automakers. Son Andy and daughter Amy are both lobbyists in Missouri; Andy is managing his father’s Senate campaign.

A Giant Killer

Elizabeth Warren continues to be a great example of what political courage looks like; and what happens when somebody who knows a little something about leadership in a representative democracy stands up and speaks the kind of truth that makes oligarchs very uncomfortable.

(Reuters) - Big Wall Street banks are so upset with U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren's call for them to be broken up that some have discussed withholding campaign donations to Senate Democrats in symbolic protest, sources familiar with the discussions said.

Representatives from Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, have met to discuss ways to urge Democrats, including Warren and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, to soften their party's tone toward Wall Street, sources familiar with the discussions said this week.

Bank officials said the idea of withholding donations was not discussed at a meeting of the four banks in Washington but it has been raised in one-on-one conversations between representatives of some of them. However, there was no agreement on coordinating any action, and each bank is making its own decision, they said.

The amount of money at stake, a maximum of $15,000 per bank, means the gesture is symbolic rather than material.

Moreover, banks' hostility toward Warren, who is not a presidential candidate, will not have a direct impact on the presumed Democratic front runner in the White House race, Hillary Clinton. That's because their fund-raising groups focus on congressional races rather than the presidential election

Still, political strategists say Clinton could struggle to raise money among Wall Street financiers who worry that Democrats are becoming less business friendly.

The bit that I hi-lited in yellow wins this week's Corporate Bullshitter award.  A "cap" of $15,000 is window dressing.  It's "symbolic rather than material"?  Well dip me in shit and call me lonesome - whooda thunk it?  When you threaten to take that away from a candidate, it's a signal - it means you'll (prob'ly) be spending hundreds of times that amount on attack ads and mailings and blowjobs for the pimps at AEI so they'll pop up on DumFux News & Meet The Press Poodles to spout warnings about all the horribleness that's just gotta happen if Bad Ol' Perfesser Egghead won't let the Giant Vampire Squid continue sucking the life out of everything we thought we were all supposed to be working for.

But the red part's the real kicker.  More and more, it's not about who lives in the White House.  It's about who owns the US Senate and the Governors' mansions, and the state legislatures and on down the line.

So we're busy arguing over the Federal-level shit - where we get to have a president and a coupla dozen high-profile Senators and Representatives in order to maintain the illusion of "self-government" (and that's not bound to last much past the next few cycles if things don't change in a big fuckin' hurry) - while the American Aristocracy is even busier puppeteering the rubes into slashing and burning at the state- local- and municipal levels.

And one last item: I know it sounds like I'm railing against all the doom-and-gloom coming from "the right" by railing about doom-and-gloom from what you might see as "the left".  If that's how you hear it, then you've internalized all the Middle-Ground bullshit we hear every day from practically every media outlet everywhere, and you must get the fuck over it.  

The difference is that I'm arguing in favor of the firewalls that have to be in place as a way of preventing the toxic and corrosive effects of having too much power concentrated in too few hands, while the other side is pimping the wholesome goodness of outright authoritarian rule.

Get up on your hind legs and make some noise.

Ownership Society

Or more accurately: The owners of our society.

The last item on the To-Do List of Capital in the US is to purchase the government, which is all but complete now.



I don't advocate blowing shit up.  I don't condone it; I don't approve of it; I see nothing but rationalized stupidity in a term like Creative Destruction, and it doesn't matter if you apply it to wrecking our manufacturing sector or you try to use it to justify revolution.   I've spent my life trying to learn how to build things up and make them work, so I don't want anybody thinking I see anything noble or heroic in the actions of some jag-off who decides to set fire to something just to watch it burn.

But that's not to say I don't understand the impulse.

Closing The Circle

The continuing bad news in West Virginia is that Freedom Industries "Oops-ed" again by neglecting to mention there'd been a second chemical spilled at the same time as the MCHM (it appears they occurred at the same time - tho' nobody's saying for sure).  So there was also a spill of PPH (polyglycol ethers).  But since this other shit is a bit less toxic, we can just kinda overlook all that.

Let's leave aside for just a moment that a 30-year campaign to weaken shitcan our Regulatory Infrastructure continues to produce this ongoing nightmare scenario - from Enron to Wall Street to Deepwater Horizon to Mayflower AR to Charleston WV to everywhere else there's still one GOP/Glibertarian moron bitchin' about how da gubmint just needs to leave us all alone.

OK OK - try a little harder to leave all that shit aside, cuz here's the thing:  The circle is closing.

In West Virginia, the governor has come out and said he doesn't know what's up because he's not a scientist.  The scientists are a little baffled because they've all been working on something other than Air and Water Quality cuz a guy really can't make much of a living doing that anymore (or they're all working for the chemical companies, so they're not likely to bite the hand that feeds 'em).  Da Gubmint is pretty useless because the people who used to work on things like Environmental Health have been forced out by budget cuts etc (see "working for the chemical companies" above), plus the "regulators" who're still on the job were put there by Coin-Operated Politicians who needed to pay off their contributors by demonstrating how Business Friendly they really are.  Of course the private-sector Water Utility can't be expected to do anything because they're held hostage to Big Coal just like everybody else.

And now, Freedom Industries has filed for bankruptcy protection - with a twist:



Everybody's guity; nobody's responsible; nobody can be held accountable.

So they close the loop, which basically indemnifies everybody who by right should be crucified - which is exactly how it's supposed to work - and guess who gets left holding the bag.

One last thing - while everybody's running around yelling about how they don't know anything and they can't do anything, and and and - there is this little thing called The West Virginia Poison Center, and there's a "branch office" right there at The Charleston Area Med Ctr, 3110 Maccorkle Ave SE, Charleston, WV 25304   (800) 222-1222

A Blind Hog

Even a blind hog roots up an acorn once in a while.

With that in mind, let's check in with the late great WaPo, where it doesn't matter what's true or what's good or what's right (this is the age of "New Media" y'know - all that matters is delivering readers to advertisers).  But I'll pat 'em on the back on that rarest of occasions when they manage to break through the deafening clutter (that they're helping to create) with something that isn't just their usual Red Team / Blue Team bullshit:

For prosecutors, the key question is whether there was a clearly articulated “quid pro quo.” If so, the gifts were bribes. If not, they were gifts. To me, as an anthropologist, this largely misses the point.

Across the massive cornucopia of human culture, anthropologists have found relatively few universals. One of the strongest of these, however, concerns gift-giving. Gifts are given in all cultures, and to remarkably similar effect. As every graduate student in anthropology learns, gifts by their nature create social ties and a sense of reciprocal obligation. To give a gift is to expect something in return, though it undermines the power and mystique of the gift to spell out too clearly what that something is. It would be uncouth to give a friend a birthday present and say “now when it’s my birthday I expect you to give me this model of this product,” but the expectation of a well-chosen gift in return is no less powerful for that. The failure to give something in response can end a friendship.

 --and--

When politicians accept gifts such as Rolex watches and Oscar de la Renta gowns from multimillionaires, they often lack the means to reciprocate as equals. Surely, Williams has wealthy friends — his equals — with whom he exchanges gifts, but the McDonnells are not wealthy. From an anthropological perspective, Williams gave McDonnell gifts that the governor lacked the means to repay in order to subordinate him. Unable to afford, say, a $10,000 purse for Williams’s wife in return for what was given to his own wife, the governor can only return Williams’s generosity by lending him the power of his office in some way. Whether the expectation of a return was ever crisply articulated as a “quid pro quo” is really beside the point — even if it is the whole point to lawyers.

My guess is that Vaginal Bob will dodge the indictment, and maybe get slapped around a bit by an "ethics committee" stacked with politicians who will give us a great look at Irony In Action by deciding not to be so "hypocritical" as to condemn McDonnell for something most of them have been doing for as long as they've been in politics - all in the name of good government and bipartisanship and fairness.

But, of course in the end, it all fits neatly into the "Both Sides Do It" narrative.

If everybody does it, then there's nobody to hold anybody accountable for anything - and we're right back to status quo.  Never mind.