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A story about a pathetic man's downfall


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So, did you know that Donald Trump appointed Michael Savage to the board of San Franciso’s Presidio Trust? I did not. The results were predictably insane. This whole thing is a shitshow but I think for me the most remarkable is how the safety mechanisms in place for transparency and good government and an active citizenry are treated like tyrannical injustice.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/04/michael-savage-donald-trump-presidio-trust-san-francisco/
 

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Savage proved easily fazed by routine requests. When he was asked to attend a short ethics review with a staff attorney, he grumbled, “What is this emphasis on ‘ethics’? Am I somehow suspect?” The session, he was told, was mandatory for new board members. Savage, writing from a personal email account with the handle “joe shmo,” replied, “Well i can understand the need for this procedure. But I find it offensive to answer to some lawyer.” (He eventually relented and took the training.)

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When he was told he’d have to fill out a standard financial disclosure form, Savage balked. “SINCE I AM NOT AN EMPLOYEE OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, NOR RECEIVING ANY COMPENSATION I SEE NO NEED TO FILL OUT THE ‘ETHICS’ FORM,” he wrote. After he was granted an extension, Savage said that he and his wife “are in touch with the White House about this intrusive inquisition…To open up our PRIVATE financial arrangements, for a non-paying relationship, and expose ourselves to unknown individuals is not tenable. Especially in these troubling times.” (He eventually submitted the form, which is not public.)

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The speaker was silenced after less than a minute, but this exposure to a small dose of public criticism incensed Savage. After the meeting, he fired off an emailto Grayson and trust administrators demanding, “WHO PERMITTED THE LAST SPEAKER TO ATTACK ME? HOW DID SHE GET ON THE LIST OF ‘APPROVED SPEAKERS’?” Fraser responded that public comments at board meetings are not pre-screened. “[W]e are required under the First Amendment not to censor people however offensive their comments might be,” she wrote. Savage snapped, “Yes, I am aware of the ‘law’. Do not appreciate your lecture. Not what I asked. How did this hateful person get to be chosen?…Did she indicate she wanted to verbally abuse my good name?”

 

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5 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

This is actually how it should be for all politicians post-washington for at least 5 years. 

I remember shortly after the election I was having some beers with some buddies and we talked about exactly this. DJT was rolling out his nominees and we agreed that we could understand someone like Tillerson, who has real fuck you money and can happily go back to his ranch and enjoy the fruits of being a petrochemical overlord. But anyone with broader or long term ambition, they really miscalculated, the Trump brand is just toxic and there are no cushy sinecures awaiting them and they are in no position to dole out the usual favors during their time on the other side I’d the revolving door. Their sole hope is a restoration of Trumpism— which makes them more dangerous. 

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31 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

So, did you know that Donald Trump appointed Michael Savage to the board of San Franciso’s Presidio Trust? I did not. The results were predictably insane. This whole thing is a shitshow but I think for me the most remarkable is how the safety mechanisms in place for transparency and good government and an active citizenry are treated like tyrannical injustice.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/04/michael-savage-donald-trump-presidio-trust-san-francisco/

The GOP keeps on reaffirming that they are the party of snowflakes.

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5 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

This is actually how it should be for all politicians post-washington for at least 5 years. 

One of the first things Trump did after taking office was to revoke Obama’s ethics rules that limited the time between which government officials could serve and when they could act as lobbyists, and vice versa. Without looking it up, I’m thinking Obama had a limit of three years. I could be wrong.

It’s not that Trump invented the idea of a revolving door between politicians, lobbyists, the special interests they represent, and policy. Republicans have been working that angle for decades. Trump just turned it up to 11. 

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21 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

One of the first things Trump did after taking office was to revoke Obama’s ethics rules that limited the time between which government officials could serve and when they could act as lobbyists, and vice versa. Without looking it up, I’m thinking Obama had a limit of three years. I could be wrong.

It’s not that Trump invented the idea of a revolving door between politicians, lobbyists, the special interests they represent, and policy. Republicans have been working that angle for decades. Trump just turned it up to 11. 

Actually, not true.  Obama's ban was two years, Trump extended it to five.  Obama had some other stuff that I'm not sure Trump had.

But then, like the gigantic tittybaby cunt that he is, Trump undid it all in January of this year.  https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/20/politics/trump-revokes-lobby-ban/index.html

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8 minutes ago, pyrohornIII said:

tenor.gif

He added the extra years to fuck over obama appointees.  Once he knew he wasn't coming back, he withdrew it to help out his own lackeys.

i would think he also added the years to fuck over anybody he hired and then fired for not appropriately bending the knee and doing his bidding.  of course at that point he thought he'd be king-for-life.  so of course he reversed it when they told him it was over.

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3 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Actually, not true.  Obama's ban was two years, Trump extended it to five.  Obama had some other stuff that I'm not sure Trump had.

But then, like the gigantic tittybaby cunt that he is, Trump undid it all in January of this year.  https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/20/politics/trump-revokes-lobby-ban/index.html

I was wrong about Obama’s two year rule when I recollected it as three years. But this was published just eight days after Trump’s inauguration:

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-lobbying-ban-weakens-obama-ethics-rules-234318

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President Donald Trump's much-hyped ban on administration officials becoming lobbyists removed some of President Barack Obama's ethics rules instead of strengthening them.

Trump's ethics pledge, issued as an executive order on Saturday, includes a five-year "lobbying ban" that falls short of its name, preventing officials from lobbying the agency they worked in for five years after they leave, but allowing them to lobby other parts of the government.

The order also lets lobbyists join the administration as long as they don't work on anything they specifically lobbied on for two years. Obama's order from 2009, which Trump revoked, blocked people who were registered lobbyists in the preceding year from taking administration jobs.

"Lobbyists bring special interest baggage with them when they pass through the revolving door to go to work in the very agencies they once lobbied," Norm Eisen and Richard Painter, the last two presidents' ethics lawyers now at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement. "Obama banned this practice but Trump has brought it back."

Obama's order also restricted all administration officials from contacting their former agencies for two years after they leave. Trump changed it back to one year for some 3,000 people — everyone except cabinet-level appointees.

"The single biggest insulation that we had, in retrospect, against scandal in the Obama administration was the two-year exit ban," Eisen said in an interview. "People will pay you to put you on ice for one year and then after that year is up to ply your contacts. But no one wants to pay you to put you in cold storage for two years."

Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott famously resigned from the Senate in 2007 right before a new law would have lengthened his cooling-off period from one year to two. He proceeded to start a highly successful lobbying practice with his former colleague John Breaux, a longtime Louisiana senator.

Obama issued ethics waivers for some officials, and Trump's executive order retained that ability but removed the requirement to disclose them. That opens the door to the White House departing from the policy without public scrutiny or political consequences; the White House could claim any apparent violation had been exempted.

Trump's original "Drain the Swamp" plan promised to close the loopholes in the Lobbying Disclosure Act that people frequently use to influence policy without disclosing their activities. Doing so would take congressional action. But his executive order did go so far as to use the more expansive definition of "lobbying activities," which includes preparing and strategizing for contacts that other people make, so it goes further than only restricting registered lobbyists.

White House ethics lawyer Stefan Passantino didn't answer a request for comment.

"What Trump has created is a system that incentivizes shadow lobbyists because former government employees who did not become registered lobbyists previously still had a two-year waiting period to communicate with employees of their former agency which they no longer do," Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement. "One of today's great Washington scams is former government officials running lobbying operations and attempting to affect official policy while claiming they do not technically qualify as 'lobbyists.' Such conduct remains unaddressed. Trump is just skimming the surface of the swamp."

The executive order also made good on Trump's promise to ban his officials from lobbying for foreign governments.

"If you want to come work in this administration, you can’t seek to profit from this administration," a senior administration official said.

Trump's transition initially considered a tougher ethics pledge prepared by Eisen and Painter but abandoned the proposal after Vice President Mike Pence took over the transition team from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

The transition also backslid on applying similar rules to its officials, who are allowed to resume lobbying after six months. And several campaign aides, including former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, sidestepped the restrictions by going straight to K Street.

The watchdog Group Public Citizen questioned the administration's commitment to ethics, given the president's refusal to divest from his business ties and his cabinet appointees' conflicts of interest.

“There’s every reason to expect this administration will be the most scandal-ridden in history, and today’s executive action does nothing to change that,” Robert Weissman, the group's president, said in a statement.

I’d say that was a good assessment. And we’re talking about a guy who had unregistered foreign agents on his campaign team and then appointed Scott Pruitt to head the EPA and Rick Perry to run Energy.

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4 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

It’s not that Trump invented the idea of a revolving door between politicians, lobbyists, the special interests they represent, and policy. Republicans have been working that angle for decades. Trump just turned it up to 11

"But baby I don't intend to leave empty handed"

 

 

 

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24 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

On brand...

 

Take a gander at the janky-ass award that didn’t merit a dinner or even a private office meeting. Trump gave Rick Scott 5 minutes in the corner on the way to the links. I don’t like using ‘cuck’, but Sen Scott fits the bill.

The award probably fell off 45’s cart on hole 4.

 

D5A859E1-4B3E-4698-8926-27DBC9FCC355.jpeg

Edited by TheStoicPaisano
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1 hour ago, TheStoicPaisano said:

Take a gander at the janky-ass award that didn’t merit a dinner or even a private office meeting. Trump gave Rick Scott 5 minutes in the corner on the way to the links. I don’t like using ‘cuck’, but Sen Scott fits the bill.

The award probably fell off 45’s cart on hole 4.

 

D5A859E1-4B3E-4698-8926-27DBC9FCC355.jpeg

I read that last sentence as "The award probably fell off 45's cart on cornhole #4."  

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1 hour ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

More and more and more, that Deutsche Bank connection of players is looking very much key to the entire unraveling. While Deutsche Bank has steadfastly maintained they have done nothing untoward, it all has an unsavory smell of Hamlet level conspiracy and corruption.

The Germans would never align themselves with such a man. 

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I don't really feel like digging up the old elections interference/Mueller threads, but I think that while this was the assumption, US intelligence appears to confirm it was indeed the case that Kilimnik (the guy who Manafort shared internal polling info with in 2016) shared that info with the Kremlin.

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In a call with reporters Thursday morning, a senior administration official said the U.S.'s response was intended to be "resolute but proportionate" to Russia's actions, while emphasizing that the U.S. wanted to avoid an "escalatory relationship."

The official added that elements of the U.S.'s response would "remain unseen."

One of the Russians listed is Konstantin Kilimnik, a former employee of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort whom U.S. officials have identified as a Russian intelligence agent. The Treasury Department said Thursday that Kilimnik provided Russian intelligence services "with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy" during the U.S. presidential election in 2016 and "sought to promote the narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-sanction-russia-alleged-election-interference-solarwinds-hack-n1264142

 

 

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Got a facebook post shared with a photo of Trump’s ice bucket challenge back in 2014. Showed 2 hotties dumping water on him from giant silver cups.

Not one “It’s piss” reply. Just non-stop praise that hes the greatest president ever. We’re in serious trouble.

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Got a facebook post shared with a photo of Trump’s ice bucket challenge back in 2014. Showed 2 hotties dumping water on him from giant silver cups.

Not one “It’s piss” reply. Just non-stop praise that hes the greatest president ever. We’re in serious trouble.

NOW you tell us?
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Oh yeah she will.  She's been trying to butter up to Matt for a year now, obviously gunning for a State Leg or County Commissioner role down the line.  In the immediate future, I mean.  

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Or could be the world's greatest sign that the man across the table from you, the guy who just bought you dinner including this delicious desert........yeah...he's gonna date rape you.  Trumpers do the best rapes.  Fantastic rapes.  A lot of people are saying that, and raping that.  

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16 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

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16 hours ago, Lobo said:

Or could be the world's greatest sign that the man across the table from you, the guy who just bought you dinner including this delicious desert........yeah...he's gonna date rape you.  Trumpers do the best rapes.  Fantastic rapes.  A lot of people are saying that, and raping that.  

dessert.

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  • Bozo_Casanova changed the title to Poll: President Trump's Major Announcement


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