Cont: Mueller Investigation pt3

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Joecool said:
Scam: a dishonest scheme; a fraud.
"an insurance scam"

What you described isn't dishonest or fraudulent.
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Yes it is. VERY DISHONEST. It's corrupt as hell.

Joecool said:
On the other hand:

https://medium.com/@RHennerley/is-the-clinton-foundation-a-scam-a7dbf01fd793
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Charity Navigator lists the Clinton Foundation as a “low concern” charity, with a four-star rating, its highest rating. The Clinton Foundation currently has a score of 93.91 out of 100 for finances, accountability and transparency.

In Contrast Charity Navigator in 2016 issued a “high concern” advisory on the Trump Foundation after news reports that the New York attorney general would investigate it and Trump would seek to close it.

The American Institute of Philanthropy’s CharityWatch gives the Clinton Foundation an “A” rating, its second-highest efficiency rating, which is based on the percent of total expenses a charity spent on its programs in the year analyzed and the cost to raise

Trump OTOH, did not donate any money to the foundation between 2008 and 2015 and most of its money was not actually his. By law, Trump wasn’t allowed to buy things for himself using the charity’s money, even if he was buying them from nonprofit groups.

Trump twice used the charity’s money to settle legal disputes that involved his for-profit businesses, the New York attorney general alleged. He also engaged in other instances of self-dealing, such as paying $10,000 to buy a portrait of Trump that was found hanging in one of his golf resorts. The foundation also donated $25,000 to a Florida political group aiding the reelection effort of state Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) — and was used to benefit his presidential campaign.

There is NO EVIDENCE at all that the Clinton Foundation is a scam. But nice try.
 
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Joecool said:
The way I see it, Trump is a successful and wealthy businessman. He is used to people kissing his a$$ and having people hang on his every word. He speaks whatever is on his mind, without filters apparently. He's not eloquent and as I stated earlier, probably would be better off avoiding social media.

But the US economy is doing well, unemployment is low, I'm on the fence with the trade tariffs. And unquestionably, the stock market is doing very well.

Not everything Trump has done is good but not everything he's done is wrong either. I ignore his tweets and enjoy the stock market returns. :)
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You may like to take an "I'm alright Jack" approach to this, but you should realise that Trump is a laughing stock everywhere else in the world. We laugh at his antics and his enraged twittering. We're looking in from the outside, unhindered by being under any direct influence of the worst of his vile policies, and we can clearly see a racist, self-obsessed, narcissistic man-child abusing the power he has been granted. The 2016 Presidential election was an intelligence test for the American people, and they failed it miserably.

Internationally, Trump has crapped all over his NATO allies and revealed classified information to potential enemies. His only friend outside of the USA is Putin; a man whose illegal hacking helped to get him elected, and who increasingly seems to have some kind of hold over him.

Trump has lowered the prestige and status of the Office of the President of the United States; The rest of the world has had an immense respect for that Office, built up over more that 240 years of shared history. Trump destroyed that respect in less than a year.
 
acbytesla said:
Yes it is. VERY DISHONEST. It's corrupt as hell.



Charity Navigator lists the Clinton Foundation as a “low concern” charity, with a four-star rating, its highest rating. The Clinton Foundation currently has a score of 93.91 out of 100 for finances, accountability and transparency.

In Contrast Charity Navigator in 2016 issued a “high concern” advisory on the Trump Foundation after news reports that the New York attorney general would investigate it and Trump would seek to close it.

The American Institute of Philanthropy’s CharityWatch gives the Clinton Foundation an “A” rating, its second-highest efficiency rating, which is based on the percent of total expenses a charity spent on its programs in the year analyzed and the cost to raise

Trump OTOH, did not donate any money to the foundation between 2008 and 2015 and most of its money was not actually his. By law, Trump wasn’t allowed to buy things for himself using the charity’s money, even if he was buying them from nonprofit groups.

Trump twice used the charity’s money to settle legal disputes that involved his for-profit businesses, the New York attorney general alleged. He also engaged in other instances of self-dealing, such as paying $10,000 to buy a portrait of Trump that was found hanging in one of his golf resorts. The foundation also donated $25,000 to a Florida political group aiding the reelection effort of state Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) — and was used to benefit his presidential campaign.

There is NO EVIDENCE at all that the Clinton Foundation is a scam. But nice try.
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Not to mention that the website Joecool sources is, to say the mildest thing about it, misrepresenting how the Foundation works. Carly Fiorina tried that tack, and it wasn't right then either-
Asked for backup, the CARLY for America super PAC noted that the Clinton Foundation’s latest IRS Form 990 shows total revenue of nearly $149 million in 2013, and total charitable grant disbursements of nearly $9 million (see page 10). That comes to roughly 6 percent of the budget going to grants. And besides those grants, the super PAC said, “there really isn’t anything that can be categorized as charitable.”

That just isn’t so. The Clinton Foundation does most of its charitable work itself.
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Essentially, the CF doesn't funnel money to charities as grants, it is the charity.
You could almost call that sort of misrepresentation "fake news."
 
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turingtest said:
Essentially, the CF doesn't funnel money to charities as grants, it is the charity.
You could almost call that sort of misrepresentation "fake news."
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Of course it is. But the actual facts don't matter to Trump or his supporters.

If you see the interviews done with the people attending Trump rallies, you will see people totally disconnected to reality. They have their 'alternative facts' which aren't facts at all. They talk about Mueller, a life long Republican as if he's a bleeding heart leftist liberal out to derail the conservative agenda. They think the deep state of people like Comey protected her. Never mind that Congress investigated Clinton non-stop over housekeeping and judgement calls. Trey Gowdy issued over 50 subpoenas in investigating Ben Ghazzi and Hillary's emails and issued zero into the 2016 elections.
 
acbytesla said:
Y
Charity Navigator lists the Clinton Foundation as a “low concern” charity, with a four-star rating, its highest rating. The Clinton Foundation currently has a score of 93.91 out of 100 for finances, accountability and transparency.

In Contrast Charity Navigator in 2016 issued a “high concern” advisory on the Trump Foundation after news reports that the New York attorney general would investigate it and Trump would seek to close it.
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Charity Navigator might not be the best source, although it fits your narrative.

75% of the giving in the U.S. is given by individual donors, not to or through foundations. You think looking through 150 proposals is tough - how are they supposed to figure out which of 1.5 million well-meaning organizations to fund? Currently, the "leading" online resource for helping them figure this out is Charity Navigator ... and that is nothing short of a tragedy, for them and the people they're trying to help.

To its credit, Charity Navigator is completely transparent with its methodology, which you can read about in all its detail right here. Unfortunately, this methodology is completely useless in separating the good from the better.

The cornerstone of the rating is the program expenses divided by total expenses, or "how much of your dollar 'really' goes to the charitable purpose." This may be useful in weeding out the charities that are literally trying to scam you, but it is a backwards way to figuring out who actually helps people as effectively as possible. Great businesses have great people (who need high salaries); great infrastructure (including technology); and constant self-evaluation. All of these are "overhead." Nobody tries to minimize overhead in business - they just try to get things done as well as possible, and that usually involves a lot of "overhead" because the quality of your plan is so much more important than the size of your budget. The emphasis on "low overhead" in charity means that charities are trying to do one of the most difficult things in the world - helping people - while skimping on salaries, technology, and evaluation. We've seen the results first hand, and we believe the needy deserve better.

The rest of Charity Navigator's criteria are even more nonsensical. Charities are rewarded for having growing revenues (i.e., good fundraisers) and growing expenses (so apparently finishing a project or reducing costs is a bad thing). They're rewarded for accumulating large amounts of assets rather than spending (makes sense sometimes, no sense other times - not a reasonable rule). Maybe the "fundraising efficiency" metric would have some meaning if ability to raise funds were at all connected to ability to help people ... but that's just the problem. It isn't, as long as donors have no sources of real information.

The Gates Foundation, and other major grantmakers and megadonors, wouldn't rely on this stuff in a million years. They have their own staffs; they question charities thoroughly; they evaluate them by doing difficult studies; in short, they gather information on what charities actually do and whether it actually works. This takes money and time, and a heck of a lot more than a glance at the I
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https://netsquared.org/blog/holden/ever-taken-good-look-charity-navigator
 
Joecool said:
Charity Navigator might not be the best source, although it fits your narrative.

https://netsquared.org/blog/holden/ever-taken-good-look-charity-navigator
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Not sure what you're pointing out. My belief is you DONT KNOW A DAMN THING about how those other charities and foundations are run, let alone any reason to compare them or say they are somehow better.

I notice you never mentioned that I also cited that the American Institute of Philanthropy’s CharityWatch gave the Clinton Foundation an “A” rating, its second-highest efficiency rating, which is based on the percent of total expenses a charity spent on its programs in the year analyzed and the cost to raise.

Or that the Trump Foundation truly was a slush fund and a cover to pretend that Trump was charitable when in fact he donated not a single penny of his own money to the foundation for almost a decade.
 
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smartcooky said:
"You read the great scholars, the great legal- there should have never been a special counsel.”​

What's he saying here, that the whole concept of a Special Counsel is illegal?
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I'd just like to note that this is Bloomberg's spelling.
 
acbytesla said:
Not sure what you're pointing out. My belief is you DONT KNOW A DAMN THING about how those other charities and foundations are run, let alone any reason to compare them or say they are somehow better.
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The way I see it, it depends on whether you wear rose colored glasses or not.

The Clinton Foundation's value is in the eye of the beholder. It has been lauded as force for good in the world. It has also been condemned as a "slush fund" for the Clinton family and a front for official corruption.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37168505
 
Joecool said:
The way I see it, it depends on whether you wear rose colored glasses or not.
The Clinton Foundation's value is in the eye of the beholder. It has been lauded as force for good in the world. It has also been condemned as a "slush fund" for the Clinton family and a front for official corruption.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37168505
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Also from the above link:
The rating group Charity Watch gives the Clinton Foundation an "A" and reports that 88% of the money the foundation brings in goes to its programmes, with the rest spent on overheads - surpassing the benchmark for reputable charity groups.
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With all the scrutiny Hillary Clinton has been under, it seems the worst her detractors can do is to make non-supported allegations.
 
smartcooky said:
"You read the great scholars, the great legal- there should have never been a special counsel.”​

What's he saying here, that the whole concept of a Special Counsel is illegal?
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He said the investigation is illegal, but it's difficult to parse what he meant by the quote you cited.

The main thing is he thinks Jeff Sessions shouldn't have recused himself.

What's in it for Sessions now to even stay in the job? I suppose it's the loyal thing to do, but I can't believe he thinks Trump deserves that loyalty. Maybe he would see resigning as harmful for the GOP. It's been said it would be too much to try to get Kavanaugh confirmed at the same time Trump is looking for votes to confirm an AG.

Once an AG is in place, does the special counsel get fired?
 
Joecool said:
Scam: a dishonest scheme; a fraud.
"an insurance scam"

What you described isn't dishonest or fraudulent.
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If the President does it, it's not illegal. :rolleyes:

Actually, an emoluments clause lawsuit is in process.

Trump Asks For Stay Pending Appeal Of Emoluments Suit. Trump is stalling.
Law360 (August 17, 2018, 10:02 PM EDT) -- In a bid to prevent discovery that could involve President Donald Trump's financial records, government attorneys asked a Maryland federal judge Friday to stay Maryland and the District of Columbia's suit alleging Trump's potential profit from foreign and domestic governments at Trump International Hotel violates the Constitution's emoluments clauses.

The U.S. Department of Justice asked U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte to certify Trump's appeal of a March decision that found the state and the district had standing to challenge "what might be the president's serious disregard...
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Rest is behind paywall but you can look for additional reports.

Trump is a world-class con-man. How do you not know that?


Joecool said:
On the other hand:
https://medium.com/@RHennerley/is-the-clinton-foundation-a-scam-a7dbf01fd793
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Dude, that's so discredited-more-than-a-year-ago news. Right wing propaganda sites never give up a fake story when the facts that come out refute their assertions.
 
Minoosh said:
He said the investigation is illegal, but it's difficult to parse what he meant by the quote you cited.

The main thing is he thinks Jeff Sessions shouldn't have recused himself.

What's in it for Sessions now to even stay in the job? I suppose it's the loyal thing to do, but I can't believe he thinks Trump deserves that loyalty. Maybe he would see resigning as harmful for the GOP. It's been said it would be too much to try to get Kavanaugh confirmed at the same time Trump is looking for votes to confirm an AG.

Once an AG is in place, does the special counsel get fired?
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I don't think Sessions is trying to be loyal to the President, but to his idea of the rule of law. I can't stand Sessions and his politics, but I do think he believes he is doing right for the country.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
...Trump is a world-class con-man. How do you not know that?...Right wing propaganda sites never give up a fake story when the facts that come out refute their assertions.
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It's a tactic. They know if they continue to repeat a story or allegation, despite it having been proven false, a certain percentage of the faithful will believe it anyway.


Sad! ;)
 
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