Jump to content

The GQP: Trumpist Death Cult


Hugo Stiglitz

Recommended Posts

7 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Ahhhh….people who think Molly Ringwald is more attractive than Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club.  Everything makes perfect sense.

Pffft. So you prefer thin lips to pouty, succulent lips. To each his own.

Molly was better looking then.

IMG_2523.thumb.webp.2ce49853a4f12fac548373c3a33a12e2.webp

And she’s better looking now.

IMG_2522.png.8ebc714177f1916106b52daec4efbafb.png

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 3
  • Rage+1 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Pffft. So you prefer thin lips to pouty, succulent lips. To each his own.

Molly was better looking then.

IMG_2523.thumb.webp.2ce49853a4f12fac548373c3a33a12e2.webp

And she’s better looking now.

IMG_2522.png.8ebc714177f1916106b52daec4efbafb.png

Ally Sheedy is seven years older than Molly Ringwald too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

35 minutes ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

They are shameless.  
 

 

1) Biden's promising that nobody who makes less than 400k will see their taxes increase

2) The Trump tax cuts for the middle class are expiring because that's the way the law that Trump signed was written. The corporate tax cuts are permanent, also as written.

3) As a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, Jason Smith had a role in writing and passing the Tax Cuts and Job act. 
 

It was intentional so they could blame the next (assuming it would be Democratic) administration for letting them expire. We all saw this coming. Trumpkins were told. Of course they didn’t listen. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

And the grift goes on. The grift goes on.

Right-Wing Nonprofit Paid Millions to Companies With Ties to Insiders
The Conservative Partnership Institute’s three highest-paid contractors had connections to the group’s leaders or their relatives, raising concerns about self-dealing.

The Conservative Partnership Institute, a nonprofit whose funding skyrocketed after it became a nerve center for President Donald J. Trump’s allies in Washington, has paid at least $3.2 million since the start of 2021 to corporations led by its own leaders or their relatives, records show.

In its most recent tax filings, the nonprofit’s three highest-paid contractors were all connected to insiders.

One was led by the institute’s president, Edward Corrigan, and another by its chief operating officer. At a third contractor, the board members included the group’s senior legal fellow Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who supported Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Last year, the Conservative Partnership Institute hired a fourth company connected to an insider: a fund-raising firm run by Mr. Corrigan’s brother, Patrick Corrigan. Public filings show the company received a contract three weeks before the firm was legally formed.

The Conservative Partnership Institute applied to the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt nonprofit, and the agency approved. That means donations to the group are tax deductible, like gifts to a food bank or the American Red Cross. It also means that, by law, its money must serve the public good rather than private interests.

The nonprofit has pushed those limits by entwining itself with only one faction of American politics. It pays high salaries to some of Mr. Trump’s former officials, hosts retreats for Republican lawmakers at a rural compound and funds efforts to vet people and ideas for a second Trump term.

Legal experts say these insider transactions also raise concerns about self-dealing. While hiring insiders is permitted when certain safeguards are in place, the payments moved money out of daylight and into opaque entities that the nonprofit’s leaders helped control.

“There’s no checks and balances,” said Michael West, a lawyer at the New York Council of Nonprofits. Because there is no real third party to determine whether the insider-led companies were charging the nonprofit a fair price, Mr. West said, “the potential for overpayment here is epic.”

Mr. Corrigan, the institute’s president, did not respond to questions about what steps the group took to assure that it was not overpaying the insiders’ companies. The companies did not say what rates they charged.

cont'd:

Spoiler

Of the insiders who had dual roles at the nonprofit and its vendors, only one responded to questions from The New York Times. Wesley Denton, the institute’s chief operating officer and a former Trump administration official, said he also had been paid by Compass Professional, one of the vendors.

Mr. Denton’s annual compensation, with benefits, from the institute was $391,735. He declined to say how much he received from Compass Professional. He was on the board of both the vendor and the institute.

“We’re proud to have helped launch new, independent, nonprofit service providers that provide high-quality professional services,” Mr. Denton said in a written statement.

The institute’s donors include several Republican political campaigns, as well as conservative businesspeople. One major donor, the retired Texas aviation entrepreneur Robert Bruce, said the nonprofit’s leaders had not told him about their use of vendors with insider connections.

“I’ve never had a conversation like that,” Mr. Bruce said in a phone interview.

He estimated he had given “several hundred thousand” dollars to the institute. Mr. Bruce said he had no concerns that the nonprofit’s leaders were misusing money. “I’ve known them a long time,” he said. “They’re good people.”

The Times traced the relationships between the group’s leaders and their vendors by examining charity and corporate filings with the federal government, five states and the District of Columbia.

The records do not show what share of the $3.2 million went to the institute’s top leaders and their family members — only that the money flowed to companies where they served as an owner or a director. In at least one case, a company failed to flag that connection as required in a state filing.

The Conservative Partnership Institute was founded in 2017 by former Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, after he was ousted as the president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative nonprofit. The group’s aim was to help conservatives wield power, shepherding them “through the Washington swamps without being infected with Potomac Fever,” Mr. DeMint said in 2017.

The institute’s fund-raising actually improved when conservatives lost power.

In 2021, with Democrats in charge in Washington, the institute hired former Trump staff members, including Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff. It began courting donors as the voice of Mr. Trump’s allies and ambitions.

Fund-raising jumped to $45 million in 2021 from $7 million in 2020. The nonprofit, newly flush, bought a 2,200-acre retreat on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and a series of commercial buildings near the U.S. Capitol, with plans for a restaurant, a school and TV studios. The group also began convening workshops and seminars for conservative lawmakers and staff members as well as seeding new conservative nonprofits.

As the money flowed, the institute’s leaders began to found a series of companies in Delaware.

The first was Compass Professional. Its first annual report listed a slate of directors, including Edward Corrigan and Mr. Denton.

Next was Compass Legal Services. Its initial filing listed directors, including Ms. Mitchell and Charlotte Davis, one of the institute’s board members.

By the end of 2021, the group had paid its companies a combined $639,259, according to an audit that it filed with state-level charity regulators.

Federal law allows nonprofits like this one to hire insiders as long as they properly disclose the payments and ensure the insiders do not overcharge. Legal experts still advise against it because of the temptation for insiders to abuse their power over charity funds.

“You have an obligation to behave in the interest of that organization,” said Linda Sugin, a professor of nonprofit law at Fordham University. “The problem is, when you’re on both sides of the transaction, then we’re skeptical that you’re going to put the organization’s interests before your own.”

Ms. Sugin said the institute could have reduced its risk by soliciting bids from competing firms to gauge whether the insiders were charging market rates. The institute could have asked its leaders to recuse themselves from the decision to hire their own companies, she said.

Mr. Corrigan and other leaders did not respond to questions about whether their group took those steps.

If a nonprofit is found to have given improper benefits to insiders, the insiders could face financial penalties from state or federal regulators. In extreme cases, the I.R.S. could revoke the group’s tax exemption.

In 2022, a third Delaware company was formed: Compass Property Management. Its corporate filings show Mr. Denton as president.

During that year, the nonprofit paid the three insider-connected companies a combined $2.6 million, according to the audit that it filed with states. The institute said those payments were “for the use of facilities, personnel, human resources and other professional services.”

How much of that flowed to the insiders on those vendors’ boards of directors?

Mr. Denton offered only a partial answer.

He said the vendors did not pay their board members solely because they were board members.

However, as in his case, Mr. Denton said the companies could pay their board members for other reasons, for “doing employment work for these organizations, outside of their board duties.” The president of Compass Legal issued a statement saying his company did not pay “outside directors” but did not specify which directors were counted as “outside.”

Compass Professional and Compass Legal have worked for other clients, including Mr. Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and Gun Owners of America, according to federal campaign and charity filings. The companies’ leaders did not respond to queries about how much of their business came from the Conservative Partnership Institute.

The most recent data on what the institute paid the three original insider-connected companies is from 2022. Since then, corporate filings show, the companies’ board members have shifted, but Conservative Partnership Institute leaders or their family members remained on the boards of each.

Last year, the institute also hired a company that was partly owned by Patrick Corrigan, Compass Direct LLC, to a fund-raising contract, paying $180,000 over the next year.

In a filing in North Carolina, the institute said that contract began on July 1, 2023. But Patrick Corrigan’s company was not founded until July 24, three weeks after it won the contract.

In its own filings with North Carolina, Patrick Corrigan’s company was asked if he was related “as parent, spouse, child or sibling to ANY officer, director, trustee or employee” as his client, which was his brother’s nonprofit.

In filings for 2023 and 2024, the company answered “no.” Patrick Corrigan signed the forms.

After The Times pointed this out, Patrick Corrigan responded with a one-line email: “The NC filing has been updated,” he wrote. He did not respond to other questions.

 

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, bolverk said:

And the grift goes on. The grift goes on.

Right-Wing Nonprofit Paid Millions to Companies With Ties to Insiders
The Conservative Partnership Institute’s three highest-paid contractors had connections to the group’s leaders or their relatives, raising concerns about self-dealing.

The Conservative Partnership Institute, a nonprofit whose funding skyrocketed after it became a nerve center for President Donald J. Trump’s allies in Washington, has paid at least $3.2 million since the start of 2021 to corporations led by its own leaders or their relatives, records show.

In its most recent tax filings, the nonprofit’s three highest-paid contractors were all connected to insiders.

One was led by the institute’s president, Edward Corrigan, and another by its chief operating officer. At a third contractor, the board members included the group’s senior legal fellow Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who supported Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Last year, the Conservative Partnership Institute hired a fourth company connected to an insider: a fund-raising firm run by Mr. Corrigan’s brother, Patrick Corrigan. Public filings show the company received a contract three weeks before the firm was legally formed.

The Conservative Partnership Institute applied to the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt nonprofit, and the agency approved. That means donations to the group are tax deductible, like gifts to a food bank or the American Red Cross. It also means that, by law, its money must serve the public good rather than private interests.

The nonprofit has pushed those limits by entwining itself with only one faction of American politics. It pays high salaries to some of Mr. Trump’s former officials, hosts retreats for Republican lawmakers at a rural compound and funds efforts to vet people and ideas for a second Trump term.

Legal experts say these insider transactions also raise concerns about self-dealing. While hiring insiders is permitted when certain safeguards are in place, the payments moved money out of daylight and into opaque entities that the nonprofit’s leaders helped control.

“There’s no checks and balances,” said Michael West, a lawyer at the New York Council of Nonprofits. Because there is no real third party to determine whether the insider-led companies were charging the nonprofit a fair price, Mr. West said, “the potential for overpayment here is epic.”

Mr. Corrigan, the institute’s president, did not respond to questions about what steps the group took to assure that it was not overpaying the insiders’ companies. The companies did not say what rates they charged.

cont'd:

  Reveal hidden contents

Of the insiders who had dual roles at the nonprofit and its vendors, only one responded to questions from The New York Times. Wesley Denton, the institute’s chief operating officer and a former Trump administration official, said he also had been paid by Compass Professional, one of the vendors.

Mr. Denton’s annual compensation, with benefits, from the institute was $391,735. He declined to say how much he received from Compass Professional. He was on the board of both the vendor and the institute.

“We’re proud to have helped launch new, independent, nonprofit service providers that provide high-quality professional services,” Mr. Denton said in a written statement.

The institute’s donors include several Republican political campaigns, as well as conservative businesspeople. One major donor, the retired Texas aviation entrepreneur Robert Bruce, said the nonprofit’s leaders had not told him about their use of vendors with insider connections.

“I’ve never had a conversation like that,” Mr. Bruce said in a phone interview.

He estimated he had given “several hundred thousand” dollars to the institute. Mr. Bruce said he had no concerns that the nonprofit’s leaders were misusing money. “I’ve known them a long time,” he said. “They’re good people.”

The Times traced the relationships between the group’s leaders and their vendors by examining charity and corporate filings with the federal government, five states and the District of Columbia.

The records do not show what share of the $3.2 million went to the institute’s top leaders and their family members — only that the money flowed to companies where they served as an owner or a director. In at least one case, a company failed to flag that connection as required in a state filing.

The Conservative Partnership Institute was founded in 2017 by former Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, after he was ousted as the president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative nonprofit. The group’s aim was to help conservatives wield power, shepherding them “through the Washington swamps without being infected with Potomac Fever,” Mr. DeMint said in 2017.

The institute’s fund-raising actually improved when conservatives lost power.

In 2021, with Democrats in charge in Washington, the institute hired former Trump staff members, including Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff. It began courting donors as the voice of Mr. Trump’s allies and ambitions.

Fund-raising jumped to $45 million in 2021 from $7 million in 2020. The nonprofit, newly flush, bought a 2,200-acre retreat on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and a series of commercial buildings near the U.S. Capitol, with plans for a restaurant, a school and TV studios. The group also began convening workshops and seminars for conservative lawmakers and staff members as well as seeding new conservative nonprofits.

As the money flowed, the institute’s leaders began to found a series of companies in Delaware.

The first was Compass Professional. Its first annual report listed a slate of directors, including Edward Corrigan and Mr. Denton.

Next was Compass Legal Services. Its initial filing listed directors, including Ms. Mitchell and Charlotte Davis, one of the institute’s board members.

By the end of 2021, the group had paid its companies a combined $639,259, according to an audit that it filed with state-level charity regulators.

Federal law allows nonprofits like this one to hire insiders as long as they properly disclose the payments and ensure the insiders do not overcharge. Legal experts still advise against it because of the temptation for insiders to abuse their power over charity funds.

“You have an obligation to behave in the interest of that organization,” said Linda Sugin, a professor of nonprofit law at Fordham University. “The problem is, when you’re on both sides of the transaction, then we’re skeptical that you’re going to put the organization’s interests before your own.”

Ms. Sugin said the institute could have reduced its risk by soliciting bids from competing firms to gauge whether the insiders were charging market rates. The institute could have asked its leaders to recuse themselves from the decision to hire their own companies, she said.

Mr. Corrigan and other leaders did not respond to questions about whether their group took those steps.

If a nonprofit is found to have given improper benefits to insiders, the insiders could face financial penalties from state or federal regulators. In extreme cases, the I.R.S. could revoke the group’s tax exemption.

In 2022, a third Delaware company was formed: Compass Property Management. Its corporate filings show Mr. Denton as president.

During that year, the nonprofit paid the three insider-connected companies a combined $2.6 million, according to the audit that it filed with states. The institute said those payments were “for the use of facilities, personnel, human resources and other professional services.”

How much of that flowed to the insiders on those vendors’ boards of directors?

Mr. Denton offered only a partial answer.

He said the vendors did not pay their board members solely because they were board members.

However, as in his case, Mr. Denton said the companies could pay their board members for other reasons, for “doing employment work for these organizations, outside of their board duties.” The president of Compass Legal issued a statement saying his company did not pay “outside directors” but did not specify which directors were counted as “outside.”

Compass Professional and Compass Legal have worked for other clients, including Mr. Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and Gun Owners of America, according to federal campaign and charity filings. The companies’ leaders did not respond to queries about how much of their business came from the Conservative Partnership Institute.

The most recent data on what the institute paid the three original insider-connected companies is from 2022. Since then, corporate filings show, the companies’ board members have shifted, but Conservative Partnership Institute leaders or their family members remained on the boards of each.

Last year, the institute also hired a company that was partly owned by Patrick Corrigan, Compass Direct LLC, to a fund-raising contract, paying $180,000 over the next year.

In a filing in North Carolina, the institute said that contract began on July 1, 2023. But Patrick Corrigan’s company was not founded until July 24, three weeks after it won the contract.

In its own filings with North Carolina, Patrick Corrigan’s company was asked if he was related “as parent, spouse, child or sibling to ANY officer, director, trustee or employee” as his client, which was his brother’s nonprofit.

In filings for 2023 and 2024, the company answered “no.” Patrick Corrigan signed the forms.

After The Times pointed this out, Patrick Corrigan responded with a one-line email: “The NC filing has been updated,” he wrote. He did not respond to other questions.

 

e9096a26-9707-4dc9-aa46-67e488acc805_tex

  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, 4th&Five said:

I don’t think he even knows what he’s saying anymore. 

I was going to say, is it just me, or are his lies becoming even more ridiculous. 

"Every legal scholar in the country says my trial is a sham!". 

Or maybe he's losing his shit and just isn't as good at this stuff anymore.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Same fucking moron he’s always been. Have we forgotten when he suggested we inject disinfectant to combat the coronavirus? He’s an idiot. Always has been. 

yup, only difference is he is WAY more desperate now

  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

yup, only difference is he is WAY more desperate now

Perhaps he has the long Covid. He had a pretty bad case of it back in the day. I remember because I was hoping he would die.

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry says KKK is the military wing of the Democratic Party: https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/politics/scott-perry-closed-door-comments/index.html

Quote

WashingtonCNN — 

GOP Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania said in a closed door briefing with lawmakers on Tuesday that the Ku Klux Klan is the “the military wing of the Democratic party” and that migrants coming to the US “have no interest in being Americans,” according to audio of Perry’s comments shared with CNN.

Perry, a right-wing Republican who has repeated elements of the anti-immigrant and antisemitic replacement theory before, said this during the House Oversight Committee’s member briefing entitled “the Origins and Implications of Rising Antisemitism in Higher Education.”

The briefing comes ahead of the Oversight panel’s hearing on Wednesday about the District of Columbia’s response to the pro-Palestinian protests and encampments occurring on college campuses, as House Republicans attempt to crack down on the demonstrations making waves across the country and attempt to unify around a firm position against antisemitism. That hearing was canceled Wednesday morning after the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, cleared out a pro-Palestinian encampment on George Washington University’s campus early Wednesday and arrested 30 protesters there and three others in a separate altercation, Metro Police Chief Pamela A. Smith said.

“The KKK in modern times, a lot of young people think somehow it’s a right-wing organization when it is the military wing of the Democratic Party. Decidedly, unabashedly, racist and antisemitic,” Perry said according to the recording.

The KKK is not affiliated in any way with the modern Democratic Party.

Perry then defended replacement theory, which is the idea that white people are being slowly and intentionally replaced by minorities and immigrants.

“Replacement theory is real” Perry said according to the recording shared with CNN. “They added white to it to stop everybody from talking about it.”

While Perry said he is happy to accept people “that are here legally,” pointing to his ancestors who migrated to the US, he has an issue with migrants that are “un-American.”

“What is happening now is we’re importing people into the country that want to be in America … but have no interest in being Americans, and that’s very different and to disparage the comments is to chill the conversation so that we can continue to bring in more people that we never met that are un-American,” Perry said, according to the recording.

Perry claimed his words were twisted when presented with his closed-door remarks.

“Once again, the radical Left twists facts in order to silence conversation about its own crimes and Biden’s intentional failures to enforce laws and close or regulate our borders. My point is proven yet again: when the Left loses an argument, it debases and smears instead of engaging in debate on merits,” Perry said in a statement provided to CNN.

Replacement theory is the idea that white people are being slowly and intentionally replaced by minorities and immigrants. The xenophobic and racist rhetoric associated with the theory has found its way into the mainstream of American politics and elements of it appear to have motivated some of the most heinous recent mass murders in the US and around the world. There are specific antisemitic elements of the unfounded theory as well, that Jews specifically are organizing a flood of non-white immigrants.

 

  • Haha 1
  • Rage+1 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, C-Man said:

“Once again, the radical Left twists facts in order to silence conversation about its own crimes and Biden’s intentional failures to enforce laws and close or regulate our borders. My point is proven yet again: when the Left loses an argument, it debases and smears instead of engaging in debate on merits,” Perry said in a statement provided to CNN.

Every accusation.  Again.

  • Hook 'Em 4
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just realized the scene from Seinfeld where George is explaining how he wasn't pushing everyone down and running out of the fire is the blueprint for how the dotard (and republicans in general) lie about everything.  Obviously and absurdly.  The difference is in the scene, everyone continues to not believe George and at the end, ask him how he can live with himself.  In real life, 70 million people believe the lie or just don't care.

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Rage+1 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

I just realized the scene from Seinfeld where George is explaining how he wasn't pushing everyone down and running out of the fire is the blueprint for how the dotard (and republicans in general) lie about everything.  Obviously and absurdly.  The difference is in the scene, everyone continues to not believe George and at the end, ask him how he can live with himself.  In real life, 70 million people believe the lie or just don't care.

Man, you're obsessed on some clown from the 70's man!  Oh wait, you're literally talking about a guy with orange facepaint who first became famous in the 1970's with fake hair and cartoonishly oversized clothes? 

Got it.  ISWYDT

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, C-Man said:

Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry says KKK is the military wing of the Democratic Party: https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/politics/scott-perry-closed-door-comments/index.html

6 hours ago, Chuckie Finster said:

Ah yes, the famously woke Ku Klux Klan.

So Perry and MAGA in general should be cool if the KKK is canceled, right?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it means something related to how India is experiencing so much demand for hydrocarbons because of their growth in population and cheaper energy requirements.  But I'm likely overthinking it and it's just another right-wing, racist dog-whistle.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

“Muhsociofactors” is probably the best twitter handle I’ve seen. 

 

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

But the account is racist as hell.

Pronghorn is probably a follower.

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites



×
×
  • Create New...