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Thread: Pay to Play - Trump rewards big donors with jobs and access

  1. #1
    nothingburger is offline Aaahh.. The police state banned Me! Hillary!! Help!
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    Default Pay to Play - Trump rewards big donors with jobs and access

    Trump has quite and interesting take on "draining the swamp". Good to see the pay to play concept will not only continue with the Trump administration, but be taken to levels never seen in modern times


    Trump rewards big donors with jobs and access

    More than a third of the almost 200 people who have met with President-elect Donald Trump since his election last month, including those interviewing for administration jobs, gave large amounts of money to support his campaign and other Republicans this election cycle.

    Together the 73 donors contributed $1.7 million to Trump and groups supporting him, according to a POLITICO analysis of Federal Election Commission records, and $57.3 million to the rest of the party, averaging more than $800,000 per donor.

    Donors also represent 39 percent of the 119 people Trump reportedly considered for high-level government posts, and 38 percent of those he eventually picked, according to the analysis, which counted candidates named by the transition and in news reports.
    While campaign donors are often tapped to fill comfy diplomatic posts across the globe, the extent to which donors are stocking

    Trump’s administration is unparalleled in modern presidential history, due in part to the Supreme Court decisions that loosened restrictions on campaign contributions, according to three longtime campaign experts.

    The access and appointments are especially striking given Trump’s regular boasting during his campaign that his personal fortune and largely self-funded presidential bid meant that he would not be beholden to big donors, as many of his rivals would.

    “If the people who are counseling the president-elect are the donor class — who, as Trump told us, give because they want something in return, those are his words — you will not get the policies his voters were hoping for,” said Trevor Potter, an election lawyer who advised John McCain’s 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns and founded the Campaign Legal Center.

    “The risk here is disillusionment by the voters who voted for change and are going to end up with a plutocracy,” Potter said.
    A Trump transition spokesman said: "President-elect Trump has nominated successful and qualified individuals to serve in his administration to implement a pro-growth, pro-America agenda. Together, they are committed towards ending the corrupt Washington system that have failed the American people for far too long."

    In the primaries, Trump called Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio “puppets” for accepting big money. He also attacked Hillary Clinton for meeting with donors to the Clinton Foundation when she was secretary of state, even though he overstated the proportion of such meetings, and those donations went to charity, not toward putting Clinton or other Democrats in office.

    “By self-funding my campaign, I am not controlled by my donors, special interests or lobbyists,” Trump declared on Facebook in September 2015. “I am only working for the people of the U.S.!”

    At the 2015 Iowa State Fair, Trump said he was rejecting large contributions because he knew they came with strings attached.
    “I'm turning down so much money,” Trump said. “But if [someone] put it up, I’d feel obligated, because I’m a loyal person.”
    Later, Trump did start fundraising more actively and also taking money from some of the Republican Party’s largest donors. Now several of them are joining his administration.

    Trump has stocked his Cabinet with six top donors — far more than any recent White House. “I want people that made a fortune. Because now they’re negotiating with you, OK?” Trump said, during a Dec. 9 speech in Des Moines, Iowa.

    “The way this whole transition is going so far, we have as a general matter an unbelievable and shocking disregard for propriety and conflicts, much less the raging hypocrisy,” said Norm Ornstein, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. “The bigger issue is the huge conflicts of interest, and the utterly brazen way Trump and the people around him [are] turning this into pay-to-play in a fashion never seen before.”

    The biggest donor who has met with Trump since the election is Todd Ricketts, Trump’s pick for deputy secretary of commerce. Ricketts hails from the family that founded TD Ameritrade, owns the Chicago Cubs and is among the Republican Party’s top benefactors. They handed Republicans more than $15.7 million for 2016 and more than $26 million in previous cycles. The family also organized a super PAC called Future45 that became the largest unlimited-money group supporting Trump. Todd Ricketts personally donated $63,835 to Republicans.

    Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos, and her family (heirs to auto parts and multi-level marketing fortunes) spent $10.4 million this cycle, including $445,000 to Trump’s joint fundraising committee (known as Trump Victory) and one of the super PACs supporting him. She and her husband, Dick, have contributed to the campaigns of 17 senators who will vote on whether to confirm her.

    Linda McMahon, the wrestling magnate whom Trump named to helm the Small Business Administration, gave $6 million to a pro-Trump super PAC. She and her husband, Vince, are also the largest donors to Trump’s foundation.

    Labor Secretary-designee Andy Puzder, CEO of the parent company of the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s fast food chains, and his wife gave $160,000 to Trump Victory and more than $600,000 to other Republicans this cycle.

    Trump’s pick for treasury secretary, investor Steven Mnuchin, personally chipped in $425,000, but was arguably responsible for almost everything Trump raised as his campaign’s finance chairman.

    Beyond the donors joining Trump’s administration, two of his biggest benefactors perhaps wield more influence over the transition than any individual donors in history.

    Rebekah Mercer — who with her father, the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, spent more than $22 million backing Republicans this past cycle — is closely aligned with chief strategist Steve Bannon and special counselor Kellyanne Conway, and she has taken a crucial role picking Cabinet nominees. Robert Mercer gave $2 million to a pro-Trump super PAC.

    Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist playing an influential role on Trump’s transition team, spent almost $3.3 million this cycle, including $250,000 to Trump Victory and $1 million to a super PAC.

    Trump also met with former AIG CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, who gave Republicans more than $10 million this cycle (including through his company, C.V. Starr & Co.), on Dec. 12 and with Cerberus Capital Management CEO Steve Feinberg, who gave $339,400 to Trump Victory and $1.47 million to a pro-Trump super PAC, on Nov. 16. It wasn’t clear whether they were being considered for administration jobs or why they got to sit down with the president-elect.

    Trump has reveled in the weeks-long pageant of dignitaries parading through Trump Tower, and his aides say he’s seeking out the counsel of people who are leaders in their fields. Many are not donors, including a number of public officials. Some even donated to Hillary Clinton or other Democrats.

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    Meh, so what. Oblomo got a nobel prize for ... for ... dang. Lenno, why'd Oblomo get that prize again?

    O.W.


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    Quote Originally Posted by Oscar Wilde View Post
    Meh, so what. Oblomo got a nobel prize for ... for ... dang. Lenno, why'd Oblomo get that prize again?

    O.W.
    Because some people were so happy to have the previous president (W) gone, they weren't holding the new president responsible for things.
    Sometimes history repeats.

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    The money you are talking about was just a good day for Hildabeast and chum change to the Clinton foundation. Your point is that next time he needs to turn that money train up? Looks like the losers are still hurting.

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    Quote Originally Posted by solderguy View Post
    Because some people were so happy to have the previous president (W) gone, they weren't holding the new president responsible for things.
    Sometimes history repeats.
    What?

    Heck I was glad ro see the bushes leave, I was kinda hopin to hear of them bursting into flames.

    Bein appointed the president ain't no cause for bein awarded a Nobel, no matter how often he mention "hope'n chains".

    And history? What other appointee received a Nobel for wishful thinkin?

    Nevet mind Lenno, I think I got 'er figured ....

    O.W.


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    So when a few good businessmen decided to support Trumps campaign, and are successful enough to hand out nice chunks of change to a campaign, they are disqualified from being considered for positions. Only those that opposed him or that decided to sit out the race for whatever reason are fit to be in his cabinet. Sounds like perfectly good government logic to me.

    In the private world, supporters of a business that are successful in their own right are often invited to the team, to contribute their knowledge, but usually they don't get to make the final call on strategic decisions, only offer input and then implement the final plan or exit the company. But I have only done the private world with only a few years of interaction with government work and I found some of their rules to be about that stupid.



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    Are we now in Bizarro World? It's now OK for people that donate to political campaigns to be gifted in return with positions and influence? Just when I think there is no way I can ever be more surprised than I am already with the depths to which people will sink to defend this man and his potential to destroy this nation, the next surprise is more shocking still.

    And back to another comment about sore losers. It's not about winners and losers. No matter who won the office -- and this goes back to anyone and everyone running in both primaries -- we were destined to lose. "We" meaning the average person. No candidate along the way would have been a win for us. If we haven't learned that by now . . .

    There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. -- I John 4:18-19


    Whoever derides their neighbor has no sense, but the one who has understanding holds their tongue. -- Proverbs 11:12.

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    I don't see the revelation in the OP startling or a "gotcha"
    The government works on favors and this practice has been going on a very long time.

    Now that it's "our" swamp, we can bring in "our" alligators
    Plato once said, “Wise men speak because they have something to say. Fools, because they have to say something.”

    "Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt." "Men willingly believe what they wish to believe."
    Julius Caesar

    There's no natural calamity that government can't make worse.
    Bill Bonner

  9. #9
    breezy's Avatar
    breezy is offline Tree of Liberty Benefactor
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    Actually, it is a "gotcha". It's Politico, after all.

    Personally, "pay for play" is not ok. I don't care what "side" does it.
    Fact of the matter is, this has been going on since our Founding.

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    Quote Originally Posted by breezy View Post
    Actually, it is a "gotcha". It's Politico, after all.

    Personally, "pay for play" is not ok. I don't care what "side" does it.
    Fact of the matter is, this has been going on since our Founding.
    Breezy, our "founding" was a "pay to play". Them fellas was under contract with the king ....

    O.W.


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