• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

Trump's swamp

This is from last October.

281 lobbyists have worked in Trump administration: report | TheHill

President Trump hired 281 lobbyists to his administration by the halfway point of his first term, which is four times more than President Obama hired six years into office.

One lobbyist was hired for every 14 political appointments made, according to a ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Investigations analysis released Tuesday.

Trump had named more ex-lobbyists to his cabinet by September than Obama and President Bush did in their eight years in the White House, The Associated Press reported at the time. That includes recent additions Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia and Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
Click to expand...
 
blastula said:
Trump health official Seema Verma spent millions of taxpayer funds to polish her image, report finds - Baltimore Sun
Click to expand...

The entire consultant class needs to be the first up against the wall.


So, am I getting this right? Apparently, this is bad:

“Documents indicate that, in multiple instances, CMS’s expenditures on private communications consultants were made to benefit Administrator Verma personally beyond her role as CMS Administrator and therefore appear to violate the prohibition on use of appropriated funds for personal expenses,” the report states.
Click to expand...

However, if it had merely been this:

The report also found Barlow, who was previously Verma’s spokesperson while she ran her Indiana consulting firm, was heavily involved in communications. The White House reportedly blocked Verma from hiring Barlow as communications director due to critical comments he made about President Donald Trump, but through his consulting work, Barlow billed CMS at a rate that would amount to more than twice the $179,700 annual salary of the agency’s top communications official.
Click to expand...

It would have been OK? So, in other words, as long as they were able to make it seem like the consulting work was only to benefit Verma in her role as CMS Administrator, then the fact that this consultant was billing 300K+ a year after having previously worked for Verma it would have been ok?
 
This swamp will never dry up, but at least this is better news than usual.

Trump organizations agree to pay $750,000 to settle lawsuit with D.C. - wapo
The Trump Organization and former president Donald Trump’s presidential inaugural committee on Tuesday agreed to pay the District $750,000 to settle a lawsuit the city filed alleging the organizations misused nonprofit funds to benefit the former president and his family.

The city’s Office of the Attorney General filed a lawsuit in 2020 in D.C. Superior Court alleging the inaugural committee, a nonprofit corporation, coordinated with Trump’s family to overpay for event space in the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington and even paid for space on days when it did not hold events. Lawyers for the District also accused Trump’s organization of improperly using nonprofit funds to throw a private party on Jan. 20, 2017, for Trump’s children — Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric — which cost $300,000. The city also alleged that the Trump Organization, the inaugural committee and the Trump International Hotel misused $1.1 million.
Click to expand...
 
It's like a perpetual tire fire.

www.yahoo.com

Watchdog: Ex-Interior head Zinke lied during casino probe

Former Interior secretary Ryan Zinke lied to investigators about conversations he had with lobbyists, lawmakers and other officials regarding a bid by two Indian tribes to operate a casino in Connecticut, the department’s internal watchdog said Wednesday. Both Zinke and his former chief of...
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com

Ryan Zinke, former interior secretary, lied to investigators in casino case, watchdog finds - The Washington Post.
 
ZiprHead said:
Click to expand...

The biggest issue is the message going out. The message isn't "make better choices", but rather "don't get caught", and even "snitches get stitches".
 
www.rawstory.com

Trump told guests he wasn’t using same White House toilet as Obama: ‘You understand what I’m talking about’

Donald Trump mistook a racially mixed group of Democratic staffers for domestic aides and asked them to serve the hors d’oeuvres, according to a new book.The recently sworn-in president turned to the staffers for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and others during a January...
www.rawstory.com www.rawstory.com
Trump periodically told visitors that his White House workspace had a "secret bathroom," and explained that he'd completely renovated the restroom after taking over for Barack Obama, but staffers would correct him and explain that only the toilet seats had been changed, which is customary during presidential transitions.

”You understand what I’m talking about," Trump said to one visitor, according to Haberman.

The guest, Haberman reported, “interpreted [the remark] to mean Trump did not want to use the same bathroom as his Black predecessor.”
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom