Op-ed: The U.S. could be in a quagmire that makes Brexit look like a puddle if Donald Trump is elected.
What would it do to Wall Street, Congress and the people in general if Trump was wearing orange. It has happened before. Though so far only a president, the late Richard Nixon, was ousted, his vice President Spiro T. Agnew was also ousted. And Agnew made it through their first four years, but not their second term. He had committed extortion, tax fraud, bribery and conspiracy while serving as governor of Maryland and in other government jobs in the state. It was only a measly $100,000, peanuts by today’s standards. Nixon didn’t pardon him, being under investigation himself for the much more serious Watergate. Some scholars believe Trump could pardon himself if convicted in the Florida Gate or other scandals, and name Mike Pence President. Congress would select a new vice president. Imagine the fiasco, because in Agnew’s case nothing was known of his crimes when he was elected and served five years. Trump is already under investigation, and set to go on trial for the fraud at Trump University. And news sites have listed dozens of other potential scandals he could be held responsible for. In Floridagate he is accused of bribing Florida Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi $25,000 to drop the Trump University case. It will go to trialin other states around Election Day. Mere statements of fact cannot even come close to all Trump got away with. A quotation from H.L. Mencken, about someone else, put it this way: "No man ever came to market with less seductive goods, and no man ever got a better price for what he had to offer." The true American Hustle – turn all attention former First Lady’s problems with emails. Can Americans really not care? Even after reading this list of ripoffs. The Many Scandals of Donald Trump: A Cheat Sheet The Republican nominee’s charitable foundation made a large gift to a Florida politician right before she dropped a damaging investigation. But what else has the foundation done? “As the old saying goes, those who give to glass foundations shouldn’t throw stones. Or something like that. In any case, after hitting Hillary Clinton hard over the Clinton Foundation, Donald Trump is under fresh scrutiny for his own foundation. Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold has been reporting for months on the dearth of actual giving that Trump has done, despite repeated vows to donate to charity over the decades, but the story that’s broken through concerns a donation that Trump made to “Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Republican, in 2013. At the time, Bondi’s office was deciding whether or not to pursue a fraud case against Trump University and the Trump Institute. According to an aide, Bondi personally spoke with Trump, soliciting a donation to And Justice for All, a group backing her reelection. The Trump Foundation cut And Justice for All a $25,000 check, and four days later Bondi dropped the investigation. “There are two questions at play here. One is the appearance of a quid-pro-quo. While Trump and Bondi say there was none, this is also precisely the mode Trump has described in the past. “As a businessman and a very substantial donor to very important people, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal in July 2015. “As a businessman, I need that.” He reprised those boasts early in the GOP primary, positioning himself as the only candidate honest enough to say how the game was played—and the only one rich enough to be exempt from it. Now, however, he’s singing a different tune. “Improper influence or not, the donation was illegal. The Trump Foundation, as a nonprofit, cannot give to political causes. Making things more complicated, the Trump Foundation recorded the incorrect recipient as the gift. “Eventually, it had to pay a $2,500 penalty to the IRS. Even then, it has not recouped the money, as is required. “That’s not the end of the story. The liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed a complaint with the IRS, accusing the Trump Foundation of violating another rule by using charity to benefit a group’s leader. Meanwhile, The Huffington Post reports that Trump’s help for Bondi didn’t stop with that $25,000 donation. His family gave more to her, and he also hosted a fundraiser at his tony Mar-A-Lago in Florida—charging less than market rate, and less than he charged his own campaign to host events there. … “The breadth of Trump’s controversies is truly huge, ranging from allegations of mafia ties to unscrupulous business dealings, and from racial discrimination to alleged marital rape. The stretch over more than four decades, from the mid-1970s to the present day. To catalogue the full sweep of allegations would require thousands of words and lump together the trivial with the truly scandalous. Including business deals that have simply failed, without any hint of impropriety, would require thousands more. This is a snapshot of some of the most interesting and largest of those scandals. The Beauty Pageant Scandals “Where and when: Various, 1992-present The dirt: The Boston Globe’s Matt Viser reports on the mess of the American Dream pageant in 1992. After years of attending beauty pageants—Trump seems to have always enjoyed the company of beautiful, scantily clad women—he decided he wanted to get in on the business himself, meeting with George Houraney and Jill Harth, a couple that ran the American Dream pageant. It was an ill-fated effort. Harth and Houraney alleged that Trump started making passes at her almost immediately. On one occasion, Trump allegedly asked them to bring some models to a party. Harth alleges Trump groped her at the party. In a limo afterwards, another model said she heard him say that “all women are bimbos” and most “gold diggers.” Trump reportedly joined another model in bed, uninvited, late at night. On other occasions, he forced Harth into bedrooms and made passes at her, she said. But after the contest, Trump broke off dealings. Harth sued Trump, alleging sexual misbehavior, while the couple together sued him for breach of contract. In the suit, they also alleged that Trump had kept black women out of the pageant. “The upshot: The couple settled with Trump for an unannounced sum, and Harth dropped her suit. Trump has denied all the allegations. “But it wasn’t Trump’s last turn in the pageant business. A few years later, he bought the Miss Universe pageant, which also includes Miss USA and Miss Teen USA. “Honestly, when I bought [Miss Universe], the bathing suits got smaller and the heels got higher and the ratings went up,” he boasted to Vanity Fair later. In 2012, he won a $5 million suit against a former contestant who claimed the contest was rigged. By 2015, he operated Miss Universe as a joint venture with NBC, but after he slurred Mexican immigrants at his campaign launch, Univision and NBC both announced they would not air the pageant. Trump bought out NBC’s share, then promptly sold the company. He sued Univision but settled in February. The terms were undisclosed. Racial Housing Discrimination “Where and when: New York City, 1973-1975 The dirt: The Department of Justice sued Trump and his father Fred in 1973 for housing discrimination at 39 sites around New York. “The government contended that Trump Management had refused to rent or negotiate rentals ‘because of race and color,’” The New York Times reported. “It also charged that the company had required different rental terms and conditions because of race and that it had misrepresented to blacks that apartments were not available.” Trump called the accusations “absolutely ridiculous.” “The upshot: The Trumps hired attorney Roy Cohn, who had worked for Joe McCarthy and whom Michael Kinsley once indelibly labeled “innocent of a variety of federal crimes.” They sued the Justice Department for $100 million. In the end, however, the Trumps settled with the government, promising not to discriminate and submitting to regular review by the New York Urban League—though crucially not admitting guilt. The Times has much more on the long history of allegations at Trump-owned properties. Mafia Ties Where and when: New York and Atlantic City, 1970s- ? “The dirt: Trump has been linked to the mafia many times over the years, with varying degrees of closeness. Many of the connections seem to be the sorts of interactions with mobsters that were inevitable for a guy in the construction and casino businesses at the time. For example, organized crime controlled the 1980s New York City concrete business, so that anyone building in the city likely brushed up against it. While Trump has portrayed himself as an unwitting participant, not everyone agrees. There have been a string of other allegations, too, many reported by investigative journalist Wayne Barrett. Cohn, Trump’s lawyer, also represented the Genovese crime family boss Tony Salerno. Barrett also reported a series of transactions involving organized crime, and alleged that Trump paid twice market rate to a mob figure for the land under Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. Michael Isikoff has also reported that Trump was close to Robert LiButti, an associate of John Gotti, inviting him on his yacht and helicopter. In one case, Trump’s company bought LiButti nine luxury cars. “The upshot: Though Trump has been questioned in court or under oath about the ties, he’s never been convicted of anything. A New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement report after Barrett’s 1992 book on Trump generally found no mafia-related wrong-doing on Trump’s part. Trump Plaza was fined $200,000 for keeping black employees away from LiButti’s table, at his behest, and for the gift of the cars, though Trump personally was not penalized. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-scandals/474726/
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Op-ed: Donald Trump has moved closer to Hillary Clinton in many polls, but she still holds a lead. Some leading pollsters had Mitt Romney ahead in 2012, only to see a Democratic landslide.
Will the same thing happen this year? There are signs that Clinton is ahead in most swing states, and that even the Senate could be taken over by Democrats. 538 warns that there is no guarantee her strong position in the swing states means she will win in the electoral college. However, the election site also says: “Overall, Clinton’s leads in the tipping-point states — the ones most likely to determine the Electoral College winner in a close election — average about 4 percentage points, close to her numbers in national polls.” It is difficult to determine how to fit reports that show Trump is losing badly among some increasingly important demographic groups, including Hispanics, African-American, millenials and women. How important these groups will be depends to a large extent on how many turn out. Trump has not charmed them, but Clinton remains distrusted. Reviewing how polls were done is no guarantee that a reader will be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. There are so many issues, though one can be tracked fairly easily. Does a pollster consistently lean towards Republicans or Democrats? Even that may not mean they will likely be wrong. We do know the white population has not been growing as fast as other groups as birth rates decline. “The U.S. electorate this year will be the country’s most racially and ethnically diverse ever. Nearly one-in-three eligible voters on Election Day (31%) will be Hispanic, black, Asian or another racial or ethnic minority, up from 29% in 2012. Much of this change is due to strong growth among Hispanic eligible voters, in particular U.S.-born youth. We do know the white population of registered voters has grown less than other groups. “An analysis of changes in the nation’s eligible voting population – U.S. citizens ages 18 and older – offers a preview of profound U.S. demographic shifts that are projected to continuefor decades to come. While the nation’s 156 million non-Hispanic white eligible voters in 2016 far outnumber the 70 million eligible voters that are racial or ethnic minorities, their growth lags that of minority groups. As a result, the non-Hispanic white share of the electorate has fallen from 71% in 2012 to 69%,” the Pew Research Center reports. “There are 10.7 million more eligible voters today than there were in 2012. More than two-thirds of net growth in the U.S. electorate during this time has come from racial and ethnic minorities. Hispanics, blacks, Asians and other minorities had a net increase of 7.5 million eligible voters, compared with a net increase of 3.2 million among non-Hispanic white eligible voters.” Keep in mind, some minority groups are more likely to vote than others. Although Clinton had trouble with millenials when she was battling Bernie Sanders, the younger voters have taken the advice of Sanders and seem likely to vote for her now. “Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is consolidating the support of the Millennials who fueled Bernie Sanders' challenge during the primaries, a new USA TODAY/Rock the Vote Poll finds, as Republican Donald Trump heads toward the worst showing among younger voters in modern American history. “The survey shows Clinton trouncing Trump 56%-20% among those under 35, though she has failed so far to generate the levels of enthusiasm Sanders did — and the high turn-out that can signal — among Millennials.” CNN had a poll with Trump leading that was outdated several hours after it came out by a Washington Post poll that showed Clinton winning when all 50 states were polled. A standard argument from those who believe climate change is not new is that coastlines have risen and fallen in the past.
And the “consensus” was a rise of three feet was the most likely by 2100. "But now some of them are starting to say that six or seven feet may be possible. A rise that large over a span of decades would be an unparalleled national catastrophe, driving millions of people from their homes and likely to require the abandonment of entire cities,” the New York Times reports. “The inundation of the coast has begun. The sea has crept up to the point that a high tide and a brisk wind are all it takes to send water pouring into streets and homes. “Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding — often called “sunny-day flooding” — along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too.” While politicians like Donald Trump disdain global warming and climate change, the U.S. and China are in agreement that something must be done. It has taken three years. “U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday outlined new plans for expanding their joint efforts on climate change, showcasing one of the few areas of agreement in an otherwise tense relationship between the two leaders. “U.S. officials detailed the agreement reached by Messrs. Obama and Xi ahead of what is likely to be their final meeting before a new president enters the White House in January,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “The new steps include formal adoption by both the U.S. and China of the international climate-change agreement reached in Paris in December 2015, as well as a road map for achieving emissions reductions in commercial aircraft and for phasing out hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, a potent group of gases that are linked to climate change but aren’t covered by the Paris agreement,” the Journal said. If Trump is elected, and he is moving closer to Hillary Clinton in some polls, this agreement could go in the dustbin of history. This could advance the rise of oceans, and Houston could have a real problem. Consider a rerun of Hurricane Ike, says NASA. “Under Hurricane Ike, there was a 12-foot storm surge. Now add that on top of an extra 8 or 17 inches of projected sea level rise over the next few years from climate change,” says a NASA blog. The Johnson Space Center sits just 13 feet above sea level, according to the blog. NASA is already preparing a plan to protect buildings. Imagine regions without NASA’s resources in the U.S. and other richer countries, and the devastation in countries unable to present even a feeble defense. “Wealthy countries that have contributed the most to climate change tend to be most immune to its effects, according to new research, a finding that has implications for the question of who bears responsibility for addressing the crisis. “The study, published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, shows that more than half of the highest-emitting countries rank among the least vulnerable to climate change and nearly two-thirds of the countries with low or moderate emissions are acutely vulnerable to the effects. “Researchers classified more than 10% of countries as “free riders,” ranking in the top fifth in terms of emissions and the bottom 20% in terms of vulnerability. These countries include the United States, much of Europe and Australia,” Time reported. Imagine a flood of refugees filling the seas connecting them with the wealthy world. It could be many times that of the Middle East wars. Op-ed: The most consistent criticism of Hillary Clinton throughout the election campaign has been how much people distrust her.
This is heard as often, or even more often, than her email problems, Benghazi deaths or her foundation’s perceived but unproven corruption. Donald Trump’s failure to disclose his taxes as all major candidates have since 1960 is given far less coverage. Many dutifully report that Donald Trust is trusted even less. Does that mean the issue should stop being the lead story? Given that it is being promoted by journalists, voters should be reminded how little respect they have for journalists. I wonder what a poll of who they trust more, Clinton or journalists, would show. Whatever. It would stop neither from carrying on. I heard this almost every day in the offices of the Association Press I worked in around the world. Our editors tried to be wizards, and find ways to make people believe us. Such as using fewer unnamed sources, or just having more sources to begin with. Some of these ideas were well thought out, even if they had no impact. There is too much untrustworthy news out there for people, throughout the world, to not question what they read or see. “Another poll came out this week showing that in the hierarchy of trust, journalists figure near the bottom of the heap. “Some of us take a perverse pride in being down there with the money-changers and the harlots (actually, the latter sometimes rate rather highly in these surveys.) “The comforting theory is that if everybody hates us, we must be doing something right. “The Ipsos MORI poll published on Friday found that among 1,018 British respondents, only one in five trusted journalists to tell the truth — on a par with bankers and below real estate agents,” the New York Times reported. If people do not trust journalists to tell them the whole story why should they support demands for Hillary to have traditional news conferences. In this election, fund raising and “front porch” journalism has helped keep her in the lead, though it is no guarantee she will win. She generally holds about a 5 percent lead among those most likely to vote. There’s more good news. She has had enormous success fund raising, instead of seeking cable TV coverage of rallies. “Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party just had their best fundraising month yet. “The presidential candidate released her fundraising totals for the month of August when she raised $143 million for her campaign and party—an impressive 58% jump from July’s $90 million. According to the Washington Post, $62 million was donated to her campaign committee and $81 million went to the Democratic National Committee and state parties,” Fortune reported. Rallies got Bernie Sanders and Trump lots of free coverage but it remains to be seen whether they can win the Big Kahuna in the absence of a ground game. Trump’s branding sells many products but no one knows if it can win a majority of 146 million registered voters. The fact that the polls are so close likely helped raise money for Hillary, and will keep Democrats from trying to run out the clock in expectation of a landslide. Some say she should not push Trump too hard; let him blow the election. Don’t do anything that might wake him up. “… there is evidence to support the idea that Trump very well doesn’t actually want to be the next U.S. president. There is a scenario where he is a dog who was chasing a car, and just so happened to catch one right before it hopped on the freeway. And it’s a little hard to jump off at that point, so he is rolling with it. “Famed documentarian Michael Moore posted on his personal blog recently that he knows ‘for a fact’ that Trump does not actually want to be president. That the whole thing started because he wanted to get a better deal for his NBC show The Apprentice and thought he could garner some nice publicity and leverage by running a stunt campaign. He is not the first to accuse Trump of such a thing during this campaign,” Modern Times reports. Op-ed: Unlike Charles Dickens, Donald Trump does not need centuries to change his narrative, only several hours and a jet flight across the border. But then in the Dickens’ novel, A Tale of Two Cities, poverty and wealth are changed by battles in the streets of Paris and London. Trump switched Mexico City for Phoenix, and showed no sign that he cares one whit for the poor. Why should he? He never worked in a factory as a child. It doesn’t take a huge imagination to see a guillotine falling on Trump’s neck. Indeed, he once again showed he has no regard for the truth, claiming he had avoided discussing who would pay for the wall he would build to separate the U.S. from Mexico. Usually, Trump can count on shooting someone in the street and not losing any popularity, and not get much criticism in the media either. Many in the media were not willing this time to allow Trump to get away with the lie when the Mexican president stated strongly that he had ruled out paying for the wall in their brief meeting. Trump said, “Who pays for the wall? We didn't discuss," Trump had said when asked by a reporter during a news conference following their meeting in Mexico City. "We did discuss the wall. We didn't discuss payment of the wall. That'll be for a later date,” CNN reported. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said in a Tweet, “At the beginning of the conversation with Donald Trump I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall.” Trump replied: “Mexico will pay for the wall, believe me — 100 percent — they don’t know it yet, but they will pay for the wall,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re great people, and great leaders, but they will pay for the wall,” according to the New York Times. He said he might even deport one American, his opponent Hillary Clinton, along with millions of illegal workers. Trump lacks the eloquence of Dickens. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” Centuries from now Trump will be lucky to be an asterisk. It is so much easier to observe the disappearance of creatures than in the past for at least two reasons.
The first, of course, is technology. Even the dwindling of the population of the smallest creature can be detected. Secondly, the species now disappearing include huge animals like the african elephant, both the bush's that weight ranges to 13,000 pounds and the forest that grows to almost half that size. The main reason for this environmental crime is poaching for their coveted ivory. World-wide efforts to outlaw its sale are not working with the lure of money in desperately poor African nations. The Guardian calls them “our living dinosaurs….” It quoted scientists saying, "They are our living dinosaurs, the romance of a bygone era, and if we can't conserve the African elephants, I'm fearful to think about the fate of rest of Africa's wildlife,” say Mike Chase and Larry Patterson. Chase is the founder of Elephants without Borders and Patterson is with the Department of Animal Science at Cornell. Chase adds: "I don't think anybody in the world has seen the number of dead elephants that I've seen over the last two years," he says. Chase organized the first Africa-wide census of elephants. “Before the GEC, total elephant numbers were largely guesswork. But over the past two years, 90 scientists and 286 crew have taken to the air above 18 African countries, flying the equivalent of the distance to the moon -- and a quarter of the way back -- in almost 10,000 hours.” A continent that once is believed to have been home to 20 million elephants now has only 1.3 million. Making matters worse for smaller elephants is “their slow reproduction rate. Unlike the bigger, more abundant savannah elephants – which start breeding from the age of 12 – female forest elephants begin breeding only at 23. They then only give birth only once every five to six years,” reports New Scientist. The socalled African Forest Elephant could be gone in 10 years. “In 2013 the estimated remaining population was 100,000,” says study co-author Peter Wrege at the Elephant Listening Project, part of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Ithaca, New York. “But poaching rates suggest that 12,000 to 15,000 forest elephants are being killed every year. At this rate, forest elephants will be essentially extinct in one decade – by 2023. This should worry everybody.” The forest elephant has its own built-in birth control and will reproduce more slowly as it fears it is threatened. More difficult to determine is what effect the decline of the elephant population with have on flora and fauna affected by their presence on the landscape. Poaching has also affected the male population of Indian elephants, which totals only about 20,000 and exists in several Asian countries. http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/31/africa/great-elephant-census/ http://bit.ly/2bVplYN The entertainment media has already begun a review of the murder of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, four months before the 20th anniversary of her death in Boulder, Colo., in December of 1996. “There are four separate TV projects about the JonBenét Ramsey case airing this fall, from CBS, Investigation Discovery, Lifetime, and A&E. The first of these to premiere will be A&E's two-hour documentary, The Killing of JonBenét: The Truth Uncovered, on Sept. 5,” Cosmopolitan reports. Viewers have already seen a trailer of an interview with JonBenet’s three-year-older brother, Burke, who has himself been a suspect in the case. It entices viewers to view a three-part interview with Dr. Phil. Phil McGraw, who was educated as a psychologist, became a TV personality on the Oprah Winfrey Show and now has a large following. His show is an odd place for Burke to give his first interview because of Dr. Phil’s in-your-face style. It seems likely those who believe JonBenet’s death was no mystery, and that she was killed by her mother, won’t find much time devoted to that theory. E! Online reports that “nothing will be off-limits during the interview, which will explore the public scrutiny of Burke and his parents.” Again, magazines are unlikely to sell if they suggest the interview is aimed at defending the family members, mother, father or brother. There was much bad publicity because of how much time was spent by the former beauty queen mother to turn her daughter into a replicant. Patsy Ramsey died in 2006 of cancer. The detective in the case, who has moved to Australia after being sued by the family, has said her death means the case is solved. The family published its own book but was unable to block the publication of an account of the case by detective Steve Thomas: JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation Those who believe Patsy was responsible tend to believe father John Bennett Ramsey covered up her actions. In the trailer for the Burke Ramsey interview the sibling says:"I remember my mom searching my room that night saying, 'Where's my baby? Where's my baby?'" Burke Ramsey tells Dr. Phil in a new preview clip from the three-part interview, which will air on Sept. 12, 13, and 14. "I know people think I did it, that my parents did it," he continues, asked by Dr. Phil about those lingering suspicions. "I know that we were suspects … I want to honor her memory by doing this interview. I don't want anyone to forget.” Anyone who has pushed the theory that the Rasmseys were involved in the death of their daughter, even close friends, have faced threats from the family’s lawyers, according to ShadowGov. Cosmopolitan ShadowGov Eonline |
Robert Weller
2016 US election news and other news from the USA
Bio
Worked in journalism, including on the Internet, for more than 40 years. Started as a news editor at the Colorado Daily at the University of Colorado, joined a small Montana newspaper, the Helena Independent-Record, and then United Press International. Archives
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