The Trump Swamp

[happyhoix]

McConnells wife, Transportation secretary Elaine Chao, as a special liaison to help with grant applications and other priorities from her husband's home state of Kentucky. So far, she's gotten 78 million dollars in grants for Kentucky projects that had previously been rejected - just as McConnell is preparing to run for reelection.

www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/chao-created-special-path-for-mcconnells-favored-projects/ar-AACEPS7

I was trying to remember what the score card is now, on Trump's cabinet cronies. I found this list:

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/watchdog-ben-carsons-table-spending-broke-law/589804/

Ben Carson, lavish spending on redecorating

Scott Pruitt - $124,000 on excessive travel, including first class tickets.

Ryan Zinc - several scandals

Tom Price - excessive spending

Wilbur Ross - Office of Government Ethics refused to certify his financial disclosure because he hadn't sold a stock he claimed he had.

David Bernhardt - multiple investigations into ethics violations less than a week after being confirmed.

Alexander Acosta signed off on a sweetheart deal with a child sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, when he was a US attorney

Robert Wilkie did not disclose links with a pro Confederate group

So Trump fired all these guys - just kidding.

 I wanted to compare that to the previous administration, and found this nice summary:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_scandals_in_the_United_States  Compare the number of Trump executive branch political scandals from 2.5 years with 8 years of Obama executive branch scandals.

Which raises the question - was Trump trying to drain the swamp, or just replace it with his own personal swamp?

[happyhoix]

By the way, just finished a podcast about Spiro Agnew, who was taking packets of cash in the WH to grease the wheels for vendors wanting federal contracts (a habit he started when he was the Governor of Maryland).

Nixon/Agnew and Trump/his Cabinet make me think about that old saying, birds of a feather flock together.

[Wisconsin Beth]

Replace it with his people.  I honestly think that graft is so common in his circles that he assumed it was the same in the White House.  I think so much of it has been "business as usual" and he doesn't understand that government works differently.  And now that he's learning that, he doesn't like it.  He's got what, 50+ years of $ talking and at 70+, I feel he can't change that mindset. 

[happyhoix]

NYC real estate is a notoriously corrupt, mobbed up business venue. Which is the main reason Trump is fighting tooth and nail to prevent anyone from seeing his taxes of business records. So I agree, he's used to working in a much less ethical environment - and as dirty as politics tend to be, that's saying something, for NYC real estate to be worse.

Here, for example is his SIL, supposedly Trump's senior advisor, accepting 90M in opaque money in one of his real estate companies, since 2017.

www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/company-part-owned-by-jared-kushner-got-dollar90m-from-unknown-offshore-investors-since-2017/ar-AACE9am

“It will cause people to wonder whether he is being improperly influenced,” said Jessica Tillipman, a lecturer at George Washington University law school, who teaches government ethics and anti-corruption laws.

Yup.

[djAdvocate]

Trump is under SEVENTEEN investigations?

wow.