The New York Times reports that Jared Kushner and his wife Ivanka continued to engage in business deals while they were both federal employees, increasing their net worth by more than $100 million. This could be investors buying access to the Trump administration. Or not.
Whatever it is, it is unethical and possibly illegal.
When I worked in the federal government in the Bush 1 administration, ethics laws were rigidly and swiftly enforced.
I couldn’t have lunch with anyone without paying my own check.
Meanwhile, Trump never divested from his business, and he is being sued for owning a hotel a few blocks from the White House where foreign dignitaries often stay. He is violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution, the suit claims, which forbids the president from taking any income from foreigners.
How low can we go?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I wish the GOP would step up and DO something. This is outrageous. I remember reading that Jared is a slum lord. Disgusting lack of morals. But, he’s bringing peace to the Middle East just as Trump is bringing peace and love to N. Korea. HA!
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Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump made at least $82 million in outside income last year while serving in the White House, filings show..LA Times
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s daughter and son-in-law, brought in at least $82 million in outside income while serving as senior White House advisors during 2017, according to financial disclosure forms released Monday.
Trump earned $3.9 million from her stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, while Kushner reported over $5 million in income from Quail Ridge, a Kushner Cos. apartment complex acquired last year in Plainsboro, N.J.
The filings show how the couple are collecting immense sums from other enterprises while serving in the White House, an extraordinary income flow that ethics experts have warned could create potential conflicts of interests…
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-jared-kushner-ivanka-trump-20180611-story.html
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This is a quote from the movie Red October and one of my favorite quotes:
Jeffrey Pelt:
“Listen, I’m a politician which means I’m a cheat and a liar, and when I’m not kissing babies I’m stealing their lollipops. But it also means I keep my options open.”
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slight correction – hotel is not next door to the White House. It is in Old Post Office Pavillion, on 12th ST NW between Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues. It was site of National Endowment for the Arts when my spouse worked there. White House is 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, between 17th and 17th Streets, or about 4.5 blocks away
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All the Trumps are cashing in on Daddy’s position through trademarks, overseas deals, real estate and other interests. It is shameless profiteering, and this does not include the hefty tax cut #45 gave his family. They are opportunistic kleptocrats that disregard our laws and Constitution.
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Sickening.
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Both are zombies.
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How low can “they” go? As low as the Alt-Right Deep State wants to go — as low as Putin and/or Kim.
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Low enough take children from parents who are seeking asylum. Low enough to let Puerto Rico have more missing that the mosques can hold and count.
Low enough to do nothing to save a system of voting attacked by Russia and aided/abetted by tech “innovators.”
I am exhausted by the lows.
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I think you meant church — not mosques.
Puerto Rico only has nine mosques but more than 10,000 Christian churches.
Puerto Rico is 85% Catholic and 8 percent Protestant. Muslims in Puerto Rico represent about 0.1 percent of the population. That’s one-tenth of one percent.
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“How low can we go?”
It’s not “we”.
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So low that they separate terrified children from their parents and put them in cages resembling dog kennels. ARE WE BETTER THAN THIS? The Los Angeles Times reported (5/26/18) Federal Judge Robert Brack, who has sentenced more than 15,000 immigrants, sadly saying: “I have presided over a process that destroyed families for a long time, and I am weary of it. And I think we as a country are better than this.”
Is he right? Are we better than this, or are we an angry, vindictive nation who puts the blame for our problems on defenseless people, especially children whom we forcibly separate from their parents, sometimes forever?
Judge Brack isn’t some flaming liberal. He was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush and, as The Times reports, “He takes seriously his oath to uphold the laws of the United States. But he is a cog in a system he believes is unjust.” It is important to remember that justice and law a seperate things; segregation laws were law, but they were unjust and immoral, and there are countless unjust laws on the books today that were written to benefit special interests, such as the laws that require American workers to give up their constitutional right to a trial and instead submit to arbitration that strongly favors corporations because the salaries of arbitrators are in fact paid by corporations.
Judge Brack says of immigrants: “I have learned why people come, how and when they come, and what their expectations are. The people that I see are for the most part hardworking, gentle, undereducated, and completely lacking in criminal history. Just simple people looking for work.”
Right now, the Administration clearly isn’t better than this — than tearing families apart, terrorizing children, and making criminals of their parents — because the voices of those angry people dominate and control our politics. Can those angry people control their anger and see what evil they are doing? If they can, and if they can vote in favor of justice over mere law, then we are a better nation than we have been in recent years. If not, asking God to bless our nation will fall on deaf ears.
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Uh…let’s see… There are reports of babies at the breastfeeding age being ripped from their immigrant mother’s arms…We’ve also learned a little about what happens to these children after they’ve been taken. NBC News reported that the U.S. is running out of room to house the children, and they are being placed into holding cells that don’t have adequate medical resources:
https://rantt.com/as-trump-embraces-human-rights-violators-abroad-his-administration-commits-them-at-home/a flood of reports continued to detail the horrific policy of immigrant children being separated from their parents at America’s southern border – including a Washington Post story detailing a Honduran father killing himself after his child was taken from him.
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Susan: The US has been reported to the UN Human Rights Council for how we deal with extreme poverty. We criminalize it. This is a summary a longer report that has been written up by an UN independent expert. I sent it to my local paper, hoping they might publish it.
Immigrants and the poor are our targets. There is only money for NSA, the military and tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations who are making huge profits. Money seems to be the current GOD of this country. Compassion, meaningful action to help and caring have left.
What possesses Jared and Ivanka to work the system to become even richer? I can only believe that the wealthy think they deserve more because they are superior humans. I think they are at the bottom of the pot. They have the means to make a difference and only look out for themselves, following the lead of our Orange IDIOT.
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The United States’ principal strategy for dealing with extreme poverty is to criminalize and stigmatize those in need of assistance says a new report written by UN independent expert, Phillip Anston. It will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council on June 21, 2018.
Anston went on a fact-finding mission to California, Alabama, Georgia, Puerto Rico, West Virginia and Washington, D.C. from December 1-15, 2015.
“For one of the world’s wealthiest countries to have 40 million people living in poverty and over five million living in ‘Third World’ conditions is cruel and inhuman”.
“Locking up the poor precisely because they are poor, greatly exaggerating the amount of fraud in the system, shaming those who need assistance, and devising ever more obstacles to prevent people from getting needed benefits, is not a strategy to reduce or eliminate poverty. …It seems driven primarily by contempt, and sometimes even by hatred for the poor….”.
“On Skid Row in Los Angeles, 14,000 homeless persons were arrested in 2016, including for urinating in public and other “quality of life” offences, …. In 2016 there were only nine public toilets available for some 1,800 homeless individuals on Skid Row. The resulting ratio of one public toilet per 200 individuals would not even meet the minimum standards the UN sets for Syrian refugee camps.
“The legal system is used to raise revenue for states, not to promote justice, a pervasive problem across the country. Fines and fees are piled up so that low level infractions become immensely burdensome, a process that mostly affects the poorest members of society.”
Judges set high bail for people awaiting trial. The poor have to sit in jail unable to work or provide for their families. Some 11 million people are admitted to local jails annually, and on any given day more than 730,000 people are being held, of whom almost two thirds are awaiting trial and presumed to be innocent.
Our current system does not connect people with services or affordable housing. It drags them into the criminal justice system, making it more difficult to get a job or housing.
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Trump, Putin, Kim: New World Disorder
Not just corruption and narcissism, a marked lack of empathy and various kinds of human rights abuse.
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We began to live under a kleptocracy, but the Republican majority was focused on tax cuts for the donor class and didn’t care. About 50 have announced they aren’t running for re-election–either they had twinges of conscience or they made their pile and will segue into a well-upholstered/paid position at a bad idea factory (right-wing think tank). The corruption is so blatant it is breathtaking. We have some work to do in the fall elections.
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