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| Bought by the Foundation, hung at a Trump hotel |
Trump's Foundation uses veteran charity funds for personal use.
"President Trump paid more than $2 million in a court-ordered settlement to end a lawsuit in which he was accused of misusing funds at his charitable foundation for political gain."
Fox News
In the settlement with the NY Attorney General:
Trump admits to personally misusing funds.
Who noticed? It was a drop in the bucket, no big deal.
Meanwhile, Buttigieg fights off accusations of scandalous wrongdoing.
Buttigieg is playing defense. Twitter and Facebook call him a Wall Street tool, a neo-liberal poseur, a sellout. Included in the criticism:
1. LGBTQ activists say he stabs them in the back by volunteering as a bell ringer one afternoon in December, 2017. The Salvation Army had a history of opposing transgender rights, but in recent years revised that policy, now saying the organization "stands against homophobia, which victimizes people and can reinforce feelings of alienation, loneliness and despair.”
Not good enough.
One critic from a gay advocacy group told NBC News, “I know the photos are two years old, but still, I can't help but wonder if Mayor Pete just looks at what LGBTQ activists have been working on for years and then chooses to spite it."
The Guardian reports: "After growing and intense criticism from Democratic rivals and the media. Buttigieg’s list includes more than half a dozen clients he worked for between 2007 and 2010. Among them are several environmental nonprofits, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, and government agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency, for whom he produced an energy efficiency report.
But the list also included clients that have already raised red flags for critics on the left, such as a healthcare firm that raised insurance rates and a Canadian company involved in a price-fixing scandal."
Buttigieg quit McKinsey because it wasn't fulfilling his aspirations for a career of significance in the public interest.
Not good enough.
3. Warren criticizes Buttigieg for holding fundraisers, saying the fundraisers should be open to the public. Warren: "Those doors shouldn’t be closed, and no one should be left to wonder what kind of promises are being made to the people that then pony up big bucks to be in the room.”
(I had attended a fundraiser for Buttigieg in Portland in June. People were asked to turn off recording devices during the question and answer portion of the fundraiser. He said the same things he always says, prior and since.)
Buttigieg responded to the criticism by listing all his fundraising leaders and now opening all fundraisers to the media. He is still blasted on Twitter as a Wall Street tool with fundraising secrets.
Not good enough.
What is going on?
By any objective standard, Trump's scandal should be a disqualifying embarrassment. He was caught stealing. He raised money from people giving to veterans whose money did not go to veterans. It cheated taxpayers. It reflects selfish motives and dishonesty.
It doesn't hurt Trump. Trump is a rascal, so of course he cheats. Trump has his brand: it takes a cheater to change a flawed system. Trump tells his base that the economy is great, the best ever due to him, and simultaneously that he is shaking it up for the benefit of them--deserving Americans--against raids by the undeserving: lazy cheating foreigners, immigrants, and domestic dissidents.
It does hurt Buttigieg. Buttigieg brand is to be the good guy. The criticism does not need to be fair or reasonable. Criticism itself hurts his brand. Is he smart? Yeah, too smart. Is he white? Yeah, white, the color of privilege, shame on him. Is he gay? Yes, but not the right kind of gay. Did he check all the boxes of merit? Yes, how awful, Mr. Meritocracy.
The brand of good cannot possibly thrive in this political and media environment. The brand of bad does just fine. This is a problem for Democrats. All of them are trying to look good and nothing is good enough.
3 comments:
My perspective on the Trump financial scandals stems from my experience working for a large US company bought out by an international investment firm. Their management manipulated the stock price and service delivery to give the appearance of wildly greater economic growth. (Completely legal!) All the while they were siphoning off the liquid assets and preparing to sale the corpse of the company to some hapless investor group. With all the distractions employed by Trump and his cronies, they will continue to loot the treasury of the US by tax giveaways and Federal contracts to friends and family. What’s left will be an empty shell of what we were. Yet everyone of those MAGA hat-wears will be smiling because they really socked to the liberal snobs! Who will save us from our own political and economic distruction? The whistles have been blowing but who’s listening?
The Social Justice Warrior religion is inherently unstable because it is unforgiving toward its own members; it lacks a Golden Rule that promotes harmony within its own congregation. Members that step out of line even a bit are 'cancelled,' and cancellation is total and forever. Members that are too successful are pulled down and told to shut up and go to the back of the bus and contemplate their privilege.
The LGBTQ rainbow is particularly dogmatic, more so every day, demanding all of society pretend to believe in Queer Theory and post-modernism and gender ideology -- even though it contradicts gays and lesbians as 'same-sex attracted,' and now demands they be 'same-gender attracted,' with 'womanly penises' now frequenting lesbian events. It's a crazy mess, the theory is not even coherent within the rainbow umbrella. Of course it wouldn't take much for Mayor Pete to run afoul of the LGBTQ outrage squad.
(RIP MichFest, the lesbian music festival that refused to comply, and finally closed in 2015 after 20 years of annual protests from trans activists. In 2016, one of the trans activists brutally murdered a MichFest lesbian couple and their teen son in Oakland California. The transwoman murderer is in the women's jail in Alameda County awaiting trial. No LGBTQ activist group is monitoring or publicizing the trial, no protests in front of the courthouse demanding justice for the victims: Charlotte Reed and Patricia Wright and their son Benny Diambu-Wright. They were murdered by Dana Rivers, who is ranked higher on the Sacred Totem Pole of Oppression)
On the other hand, Christianity is based on a Golden Rule and forgiveness is a fundamental tenet. When white Christianity becomes both a culture and a religion that feels itself on the defense, it is willing to forgive the sins of its members in the interest of group solidarity and cohesion and group security in the larger, hostile world.
Interesting article about all this here https://medium.com/handwaving-freakoutery/social-justice-is-a-crowdsourced-religion-87dc3ae3a82b
Antidote to bad boy v. good boy is consistent, straight-talking man (aka, Bernie Sanders). BTW, my preferred pronouns are
"we, our, us." Why?
"When we say, 'I, me, mine' that takes us to markets. That's the side of us that is a consumer. 'We, ours, and us' that takes you to a different area where we're citizens not of just the United States but also of a biosphere and a moral sphere." -- David Orr, Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics, Oberlin College.
We must stop the war against government (we, our us) when and where we can with a shift in pronoun use. Not "me," "us!" Sound familiar?
Andy Seles
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