TRUMP - Just because.....................Naw, I just can't say it!
POSTED BY: SHINYGOODGUY
UPDATED: Monday, March 9, 2026 20:06
VIEWED: 244478
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Official in charge of ethics harshly condemned Trump’s plan
www.vox.com/2017/1/11/14243146/trump-conflicts-office-government-ethic
s-speech
The nonpartisan director of the federal Office of Government Ethics ripped into President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for his businesses in an unusually public and blisteringly critical speech Wednesday afternoon. Walter Shaub went so far as to say that Trump’s conflicts of interest put democracy at risk, break with decades of tradition, and call into doubt whether Trump’s own patriotism stands up to history.
Trump’s plan to step back from his businesses day to day is “meaningless from a conflict of interest perspective,” Shaub said in his remarks at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
“Every president in modern times has taken the strong medicine of divestiture,” Shaub said.
The Office of Government Ethics has hammered out hundreds of divestiture agreements involving federal officials. They have had to “divest assets, break open trusts, and dissolve businesses,” Shaub said, and taking those steps can be expensive and painful.
But, Shaub said, “their basic patriotism usually prevails as they agree to set aside their personal interests to serve their country’s interests.” When officials were reluctant to take the required steps, the ethics office’s demands were backed up by “the unwavering example of presidents who resolved their own conflicts of interest.”
Trump’s lawyers did NOT run their plans past Shaub. If they had, he said, he would have told them it was very possible for the president to sell his real estate assets, and that other officials in the past have done so.
As for Trump’s justification — that the president “can’t have a conflict of interest” — that’s nonsense, Shaub said.
“A conflict of interest is anything that creates an incentive to put your own interest before the interests of the people you serve,” Shaub said, quoting a Supreme Court decision from 1961 that called conflicts of interest “an evil which endangers the very fabric of democratic society.”
If anything, Shaub said, it’s more important for presidents to avoid conflicts of interest: “The potential for corruption only grows with the increase in power.”
Remarks of Office of Government Ethics Director Walter M. Shaub Jr.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/11/us/politics/trump-conflicts-of-
interest.html
This is a copy of prepared remarks that Mr. Shaub gave Wednesday during a news conference at Brookings Institution in Washington, addressing a plan by President-elect Donald J. Trump to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interest as president. Mr. Shaub made clear that he believes Mr. Trump's plan is inadequate. The whole speech is only 4 pages. Here is one quote:
Quote:
I think Politico called {Trump's plan} a “half-blind” trust, but it’s not even halfway blind. The only thing this has in common with a blind trust is the label, “trust.” His sons are still running the businesses, and, of course, he knows what he owns. His own attorney said today that he can’t “un-know” that he owns Trump tower. The same is true of his other holdings. The idea of limiting direct communication about the business is wholly inadequate. That’s not how a blind trust works. There’s not supposed to be any information at all.
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Quote:During the campaign, about a dozen Republican Party senators indicated that they would not vote for him. One might think that US senators who deemed Trump too dishonest, unstable, unethical, and possibly corrupt to vote for would, after his victory, insist on rigorous congressional oversight of his business dealings and his appointees. But one would be mistaken.
Originally posted by G:
Hate to say it, but this is a dead end without any legal mandates. And just thinking of how it could possibly work in real life it's just damn impossible to do or monitor. Would someone sit in on his visits and phone calls so he doesn't talk business with his kids or some other legal estate guardian? It's not going to happen, this is going to die like many other road blocks, er, acts of wishful retaliation.
While Trump has received some pushback from Capitol Hill on this or that, by and large the Republican senators who opposed him are currently trying to implement a strategy of “forgive and forget,” thinking that if they agree to ignore his financial conflicts of interest, he will sign the laws they pass, and all will end happily ever after.
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Not to worry............Trump is going to do something so Constitutionally stupid that he's going to get Impeached for being to stupid fuck that he is.
Plain and simple; he will join Nixon in the annals of Stupid Fucking Moves...........End of Story.
SGG
Quote:
Originally posted by G:
Hate to say it, but this is a dead end without any legal mandates. And just thinking of how it could possibly work in real life it's just damn impossible to do or monitor. Would someone sit in on his visits and phone calls so he doesn't talk business with his kids or some other legal estate guardian? It's not going to happen, this is going to die like many other road blocks, er, acts of wishful retaliation.
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The answer is D...............All of the Above!!!
SGG
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND you've spent your entire time since Hillary lost shifting from one "explanation" to another: Bernie supporters, people being "deplorable", Comey, DNC emails, BUT PUTIN!, the Electoral college, vote hacking ... I can't even begin to remember them all!
You've argued fervently and at GREAT length, and when you fail to get traction with one argument, you'll shift to (once again) to one that's you've already argued several times before.
Your mind is skittering around like a drop of water in a hot pan. In reality, there were multiple reasons why Hillary lost, but I believe the biggest one is that she ran as the "more of the same" candidate, and in the end too many people outside of liberal urban areas simply couldn't stand the thought of "more of the same". Bill Clinton said it best when he wrote "It's the economy, stupid", and Obama forgot that. Numbers like per-capita-GDP and percent unemployed hid the fact that nearly all jobs added under Obama were low-paying, part-time, no benefits, service jobs, and that the vast majority of people saw their economic prospects DEcrease even as wealth inequality went thru the roof. Obama might have successfully shucked and jived liberals into believing that HE wasn't at fault, but that anger about the economy was real, and shifted onto Hillary.
-----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
"If you aren't aware, Texans don't have much concern for the well-being of Yankees or Californians, even Yankee factory workers in Indiana "- SECOND
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Quote:Not "End of Story". The Vietnam War didn't end when Nixon resigned. Nor were Nixon's laws and executive orders repealed. His appointees to the Supreme Court and elsewhere did not step down.
Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:
Not to worry............Trump is going to do something so Constitutionally stupid that he's going to get Impeached for being to stupid fuck that he is.
Plain and simple; he will join Nixon in the annals of Stupid Fucking Moves...........End of Story.
SGG
There is an article about Underestimating Trump.
www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_good_fight/2017/01/stop_u
nderestimating_donald_trump.html
Even if Trump is impeached, his VP Mike Pence will calmly take power and the Republican Congress and Trump's Republican controlled Supreme Court and Trump's Cabinet and thousands of Trump's appointees will finish what Trump started. They won't finish with Trump's unique style, but they will get the job done. Without Trump, the GOP machinery will run faster, smoother and quieter. It will run better without Trump, but it will still be going to the same old Trump destinations.
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Ethics chief reminds Trump what ethics are
https://qz.com/885497/in-a-new-memo-us-ethics-chief-walter-shaub-remin
ds-everyone-in-the-executive-branch-what-ethics-are/
Walter Shaub, the director of the US Office of Government Ethics, which as emerged as an unexpected hurdle to Donald Trump’s plan to keep his business while president, published a “director’s note” on Friday.
It doesn’t name Trump, but seems clearly aimed at him.
Shaub’s note, the first director’s note the agency has published on its website in almost two months, explains the executive branch employee rule about “misuse of position,” which reflects a view that “that one definition of corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.” The rule, he notes, prohibits executive branch employees from:
1) Using public office for their own private gain, for the private gain of friends, relatives, or persons with whom they are affiliated in a non-government capacity;
2) Endorsing any product, service, or company;
3) Engaging in financial transactions using nonpublic information, or allowing the improper use of nonpublic information to further private interests; and
4) Misusing government property or official time.
https://www2.oge.gov/web/oge.nsf/Director's%20Notes/BA9EE0185F52C2
FB852580A70063149F
It is part of the “Standards of Ethical Conduct” for the US government’s executive branch employees, Shaub explains. “These rules serve to guard the federal service against ethical problems that could undermine public confidence in the integrity of the government’s operations,” he said. “By focusing on this rule and their other basic ethical obligations, employees can truly honor the principle that public service is a public trust.”
One mainstay of the Trump Organization is endorsements, and Trump’s daughter and son-in-law both have businesses of their own which create potential conflicts for the incoming president. Those have already cropped up—in one instance his daughter Ivanka accompanied Trump on a meeting with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, as her company was negotiating a deal with a Japanese firm with state backing.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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I see in today's newspaper:
House Republican summons ethics chief over his criticism of Trump
Oversight Committee Chair calls director’s actions ‘highly unethical’ public relations.
www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/house-republicans/
It is an often used trick by Republicans: if caught in a lie, accuse your accuser of being a liar and if caught being unethical, then your accuser must have questionable ethics, too.
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Even if Trump is impeached, his VP Mike Pence will calmly take power and the Republican Congress and Trump's Republican controlled Supreme Court and Trump's Cabinet and thousands of Trump's appointees will finish what Trump started. They won't finish with Trump's unique style, but they will get the job done. Without Trump, the GOP machinery will run faster, smoother and quieter. It will run better without Trump, but it will still be going to the same old Trump destinations.
You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
Trump has always been to the left on most issues not regarding fiscal policy.
You can start crying when something happens to Trump and Mike Pence is at the helm with all of those appointees. You guys better hope that nothing bad happens to Trump, either physically or via impeachment.
Put the two of them in two different columns, and on the side write down your top 10 political issues and compare the two of them and how they will likely shape politics for the next 4-8 years.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:If you judge him by what he has actually done with many decades of his life, rather than what he said in the last year about what he believes is good, Trump is not to the left on anything.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
Trump has always been to the left on most issues not regarding fiscal policy.
Trump has never taken any actions that show he believes in anything so he won't be fighting against the GOP's tendencies. He does not care about those issues. He is simply a very successful salesman making a pitch to a bunch of suckers who wanted to be told that President Trump loves and respects them and has the power to fix what is wrong with their lives. He is committing fraud here. Mr. I-Don’t-Settle-Lawsuits will pay $25,000,000 next week to settle his lawsuits over "alleged" fraudulent practices. Alleged his ass -- by paying he is admitting to fraud.
And don't give me this crap that Trump settled because he was busy. The judge estimated the trial would last 3 days. At 8 hours a day, Trump was valuing his time at a million dollars per hour. Not even he thinks his time is worth that much.
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Let's just be honest here Second... You would be going out of your way to say any negative things you could about any republican who beat Hillary. Trump just happens to be the guy who won this time.
I believe that I was just as pissed off when Obama won 8 years ago, and even more the second time he won.... but yanno what? Since I didn't have anything good to say, I didn't say anything at all.... not at least until after his second term began.
We're still almost a week away from Trump taking office and you can't shut up about the guy. I held my tongue here about Obama for nearly 5 years before saying anything.
I know in your mind, it's a much different story, but just take a step back and show a little empathy. Believe it or not, just about half of the country was as unhappy about Obama 8 years ago as you are about Trump right now.
I hope you're wrong about Trump. This was the first time I voted for a President and was actually kind of excited about it. I do not consider myself a stupid or gullible person.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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