Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital
A form of corporations declaring bankruptcy. Google, it is your friendPurple wrote:For those of us not familiar with what ever that is supposed to mean could you explain what that is supposed to mean? What is the significance of the number 11 in regard to chapter numbering?
Bah! cock post-blocker!Thanas wrote:bankruptcy filings
Chapter + number is way too generic to give me any decent google results when I have no idea what qualifying terms to use. So thanks for the explanation.Flagg wrote:A form of corporations declaring bankruptcy. Google, it is your friendPurple wrote:For those of us not familiar with what ever that is supposed to mean could you explain what that is supposed to mean? What is the significance of the number 11 in regard to chapter numbering?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=chapter+11Purple wrote:Chapter + number is way too generic to give me any decent google results when I have no idea what qualifying terms to use. So thanks for the explanation.Flagg wrote:A form of corporations declaring bankruptcy. Google, it is your friendPurple wrote:For those of us not familiar with what ever that is supposed to mean could you explain what that is supposed to mean? What is the significance of the number 11 in regard to chapter numbering?
For you. Google tailors searches differently for different people.Elheru Aran wrote:http://lmgtfy.com/?q=chapter+11Purple wrote:Chapter + number is way too generic to give me any decent google results when I have no idea what qualifying terms to use. So thanks for the explanation.Flagg wrote: A form of corporations declaring bankruptcy. Google, it is your friend
Very. First. Result.
"Chapter 11-- Bankruptcy Basics"
It's all perfectly legal, just very very Sleezy.
Washington (CNN)Donald Trump has directed nearly one-fifth of his campaign cash to companies that are part of his vast business empire, new federal records show.
Trump, hurting for cash after he suddenly stopped self-funding his campaign last month, has mixed his public campaign and his private ventures for nearly the entire 2016 race. He has promoted Trump products at campaign events, publicly litigated a federal civil suit he's facing over Trump University on talk shows, and, this week, will bring the political press to Scotland for a tour of a Trump golf course.
READ: Donald Trump's 'Mad Men'
And it shows in his latest campaign finance report, filed Monday: Trump-linked businesses account for 17% of all campaign expenses to date. He's paid almost $11 million to Trump organizations since launching his campaign a year ago.
The setup shows how unusual Trump's campaign is -- presidential candidates generally don't own buildings or resorts in multiple states or companies that could be used as contractors.
He's paid $420,000 to Mar-a-Lago, the private Florida club where Trump has led many an Election Night celebration, and $4.6 million to TAG Air, so he can use his private jets. Even about $5,000 to Eric Trump Winery Manufacturing LLC, the Virginia producer owned by his son.
That spending has created fodder for Hillary Clinton.
"What is Trump spending his meager campaign resources on? Why, himself, of course," she tweeted Tuesday.
What Trump is doing is legal: He is required to pay fair market value for the goods and services enjoyed by his campaign -- otherwise, they would have to be considered in-kind contributions. For those items, Trump would be, essentially, donating them to himself. Yet every time Trump uses one of his planes to drop in on hangars in swing states, his official campaign will be funneling dollars back to a Trump-backed entity.
It also highlights a concern some Republican donors have stated about Trump -- that because his personal donations to his campaign are classified as loans, he could end up using campaign gifts from others to pay himself back.
Trump has told donors their money will be used for the campaign, not for himself.
"I have absolutely no intention of paying myself back," Trump said in a statement last month.
Other expenses include $577,000 for payroll and rent at Trump Tower, which doubles as campaign headquarters, and $4.7 million to Ace Specialties, which supplies Trump's online store and whose owner is Christl Mahfouz, who sits on the board of directors of Eric Trump's foundation.
And $400 to Trump Ice LLC, which makes bottled waters.
Trump may be facing a serious cash crunch, with only $1.3 million on hand at the beginning of this month. But that's not stopping down this Trump "spending."
Just in May, he spent $208,000 on hats, $5,000 on signs and $694,000 on t-shirts, mugs and stickers.
Oh, yes, that's why when I Google search "Purple" I don't get any results related to the color at all, it just links me to your member page here on SDN.Purple wrote: For you. Google tailors searches differently for different people.
Why would you want to get rid of them? Those insane voters gave them Congress in 1994, 2010, and 2014, and are exceedingly likely to give them the Senate in 2018. Hell, those voters are practically the sole reason why the GOP controls half of the states root and branch.bilateralrope wrote:Which makes me wonder how the Republican party members plan to deal with it for the next election cycle. How do they get rid of the influence of the insane primary voters ?Napoleon the Clown wrote:They had exactly zero good contenders this cycle, they just got saddled with the most hated of the bunch because GOP primary voters are insane.
That and he's constitutionally incapable of asking people for money, which is, you know, what you have to do if you want to get elected.Crossroads Inc. wrote:SO, Trump finally starts to spend some money... Almost 7 million dollars.... on himself...
[SNIP]
It's all perfectly legal, just very very Sleezy.
Further proof of what really Fuels Trumpe...
Ego and Money.
Thrilling Christian conservative audience, Trump vows to lift ban on politicking, appoint antiabortion judges
by Michelle Boorstein And Julie Zauzmer June 20, 2016
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump met with Christian conservatives in New York City. Trump talked about Supreme Court nominees, the-ban on tax-exempt groups' – including churches — politicking, and religious liberty.
Donald Trump won a standing ovation from hundreds of Christian conservatives who came to New York City on Tuesday with a somewhat skeptical but willing attitude toward a man who has divided their group with comments on women, immigrants and Islam. In his comments, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said he would end the decades-old ban on tax-exempt groups’ — including churches — politicking, called religious liberty “the No. 1 question,” and promised to appoint antiabortion Supreme Court justices.
“I think maybe that will be my greatest contribution to Christianity — and other religions — is to allow you, when you talk religious liberty, to go and speak openly, and if you like somebody or want somebody to represent you, you should have the right to do it,” Trump said. A ban was put in place by then-U.S. Sen. Lyndon Johnson on tax-exempt groups making explicit political endorsements. Religious leaders in America today, Trump said, “are petrified.”
As president, he said, he’d work on things including: “freeing up your religion, freeing up your thoughts. You talk about religious liberty and religious freedom, you don’t have any religious freedom if you think about it,” he told the group, which broke in many times with applause.
Throughout the talk Trump emphasized that America was hurting due to what he described as Christianity’s slide to become “weaker, weaker, weaker.” He said he’d get department store employees to say “Merry Christmas” and would fight restrictions on public employees, such as public school coaches, from being allowed to lead sectarian prayer on the field.
The audience included leaders and founders of many segments of the Christian Right, the evangelical movement that began in the 1970s under people including the late Jerry Falwell. Among those present and involved in the program Tuesday were Focus on the Family founder James Dobson (who is no longer with that group), former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed and evangelist Franklin Graham (son of evangelical icon Billy Graham).
While polls show that the majority of evangelicals — who make up about a fifth of the country — are favorable toward Trump, his campaign has bitterly divided Christian conservatives in general. Those who oppose him do so strongly, and later Tuesday, a separate group of conservatives — including leading evangelicals — were meeting to strategize about a possible third candidate. Some leading Christian conservatives used the meeting to speak out against Trump and his comments about immigrants, women, Muslims and others.
“This meeting marks the end of the Christian Right,” Michael Farris, a national homeschooling pioneer and longtime figure of the Christian Right, wrote on his Facebook page Tuesday. He noted that he was present at the first gathering of the Moral Majority in 1980: “The premise of the meeting in 1980 was that only candidates that reflected a biblical worldview and good character would gain our support. … Today, a candidate whose worldview is greed and whose god is his appetites (Philippians 3) is being tacitly endorsed by this throng. … This is a day of mourning.”
Catholic conservative Robert George, former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and a Princeton professor, declined to attend the meeting, saying that while he may think even lower of Hillary Clinton, he fears Trump will “in the end, bring disgrace upon those individuals and organizations who publicly embrace him. For those of us who believe in limited government, the rule of law, flourishing institutions of civil society and traditional Judeo-Christian moral principles, and who believe that our leaders must be persons of integrity and good character, this election is presenting a horrible choice. May God help us.”
Also Tuesday, Clinton picked up the endorsement of Deborah Fikes, well-known for her years as a leader with the National Association of Evangelicals and the World Evangelical Alliance.
Many conservative evangelicals — particularly their leaders, many of whom were supporters of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) — are skeptical about Trump’s commitment to everything from abortion opposition to religious liberty. But they see him as more of an ally than they do Clinton, and many are attracted to his nostalgic framework about taking America “back” to a better time. Some are hopeful that Trump, as a political neophyte, is open to their perspective.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, said she didn’t identify as a millennial with the nostalgia and anger of older conservatives, and was waiting for Trump to give a more hopeful and detailed description for how he came to call himself anti-abortion. She also wanted to hear him address comments he’s made about women that many consider sexist.
“Yes, we know he’s definitely better than Clinton [on abortion issues], but are we going to work for a candidate who has said these things? I’m sitting here thinking: How will pro-life millennials hear the things he said? How hard will they work for him?” Hawkins said. The meeting, she said, “was like the dating site ‘Just Lunch.’ It was just lunch.”
Some of those attending said the reception for Trump was very warm. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, Dobson and others who spoke from the stage praised Trump and thanked him for spending time with the group.
“I believe that he came across very well as a messenger for everybody in the room, not just as a beneficiary of evangelical votes but as a fellow traveler. That’s not necessarily an easy distance for him to have traveled because people didn’t see him like that before,” said Marjorie Danenfelser of Susan B. Anthony List, which works to oppose abortion. “He made no missteps. There were no explosions.”
She said she couldn’t recall a candidate explicitly stating they would pursue “pro-life” justices. “They usually couch it in other words, like ‘constitutional,’ ” she said.
At the end of the event, the campaign announced an “evangelical executive board,” which included 21 names: 20 men and one woman, former congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Others on the list included Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr. of Liberty University and Reed.
The event wasn’t described as an endorsement, and there was no vote at the end. While many attendees may lean toward Trump (or are open to leaning), the question the event aimed to answer was how enthusiastically they will work for him.
The meeting was a display of many old-guard conservative Christian leaders. The event opened with former GOP candidate and neurosurgeon Ben Carson talking about unity, and then Graham saying a prayer before Trump spoke. Huckabee moderated a question-and-answer session.
About 50,000 questions were submitted, organizers said; 20 were chosen. Here are the leaders who asked questions and on which topics: Dobson asked about religious liberty; Reed about national security; prominent Latino pastor Samuel Rodriguez about immigration; Texas mega-church pastor Jack Graham about leadership; Maryland Bishop Harry Jackson about marriage; Ronnie Floyd, immediate past president of the Southern Baptist Convention, about racial tensions; and California televangelist David Jeremiah about Israel policy.
The religiosity of the meeting was deliberately light. In introducing Trump, Huckabee told him: “I don’t think anyone here expects you to be theological today. I want to put you at ease. I don’t think anyone here thinks we’re interviewing you to be our next pastor,” he said. “You’re off the hook on the deep theological questions.”
Organizers did hand out a pre- and post-meeting prayer guide, but its direction was more encouraging than theological. “Ask God to help you recognize any tensions that you feel participating in this meeting,” the guide said.
The meeting was closed to most media, but some attendees shared audio clips or reports.
Although Americans in general have been moving away from institutional faith, evangelicals in particular have always been skeptical of such hierarchy, and it’s hard to say how much sway the group will have in firing up the evangelical base.
The crowd responded with applause several times when Trump criticized the ban on tax-exempt groups endorsing candidates.
A 2014 survey by Pew Research found that 63 percent of Americans believe churches and other houses of worship should not come out in favor of candidates, while 32 percent said they should. Support for endorsing was highest among white evangelicals, at 42 percent. The survey found Americans much more split — pretty much evenly — on whether churches should express their views on social and political problems or keep out.
By evening, a very different evangelical effort got going in Manhattan. That included members of a new group called Better for America, a coalition of social conservatives and other moderate Republicans who are opposing Trump. That effort was described a few days ago by my colleague Jennifer Rubin. The meeting Tuesday night, one evangelical leader attending said, will include topics including recruiting a candidate, improving ballot access and “strategies for causing trouble at the [GOP] convention.”
Social conservatives in the group say a hallmark is willingness to compromise — to a degree.
“To be frank, at this point, there’s a widespread feeling it would be hard to do worse than a choice between Trump and Clinton. There are threshold issues like [opposition to abortion], but this is not a group that will be overly strict about ideology. The circle of trust is wide,” said the evangelical leader with Better for America, who wasn’t authorized to speak for the group.
Also Tuesday, Fikes, a longtime leader in major evangelical organizations, in particular on human-rights and religious-freedom issues, said Clinton represents Christian values far more than Trump.
“I feel like years of all the work that has been done on advancing international religious freedom in the last 15 years is in danger of unraveling with the policies of Donald Trump,” said Fikes, who was for years a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals and the United Nations’ representative for the World Evangelical Alliance. The WEA is an umbrella group of national evangelical organizations from dozens of countries.
Fikes said that she hears regularly from evangelicals overseas who are concerned that Trump’s comments on immigration and Islam could harm Christians who are minorities in other nations. Clinton, Fikes said, is associated with things such as health care and anti-poverty work.
“People refer to her as Sister Hillary, evangelicals! They don’t question her faith,” she said.
At least it's not the corruption of the Clinton Foundation donations.Crossroads Inc. wrote:It's all perfectly legal, just very very Sleezy.
Further proof of what really Fuels Trumpe...
Ego and Money.
Well to be fair he is only one man. And one that newer held office either. There is only so much he can do under those conditions.TimothyC wrote:At least it's not the corruption of the Clinton Foundation donations.Crossroads Inc. wrote:It's all perfectly legal, just very very Sleezy.
Further proof of what really Fuels Trumpe...
Ego and Money.
No he only literally owns businesses in foreign countries.TimothyC wrote: At least it's not the corruption of the Clinton Foundation donations.
It's not corruption, so much as it is unseemly and wrong. Trump's spent nearly $7M of his fundraising haul on essentially overhead expenses, including expenses in buildings, especially Mar-A-Lago, that he owns and could have rented for free. Those overhead expenses were something like 20% of his total haul. He's paying his thirty staffers, particularly his high command, much more money to do much less work than Clinton's campaign. He has no ground game. He has no significant paid media yet. His own self-funding has been pretty minimal relative to what he needs.Patroklos wrote:How is it corruption at all? All of the expenses mentioned in the article are normal. Air travel, lodging, event venues, and alcohol for said events. All normal stuff. He happens to own stuff that caters to those needs. Why would you not spend that money in your own camp to vendors you know and will tailor services to you?
Unless you want to show that he DIDN'T pay for it, and it was rather given to him through the connection, and this somehow violates the law due to campaign contribution rules or some corporate shtick I don't see what the issue is. The article did not saw either of those two things happened.
Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has made the term “Make America Great Again” popular during his campaign, but Tennessee restaurant owner Rick Tyler is giving him a run for his money — or slogan. Tyler, who is campaigning to represent Tennessee’s 3rd District in the U.S. House of Representatives, put up a billboard that read, “Make America White Again.”
Criticism first erupted in Polk County, where the sign was erected, and soon spread to social media. Attention is exactly what Tyler wanted. “With its towering and massive stature, the billboard sign is difficult to ignore and its message comes across as authoritative and influential,” he wrote on his website.
The Polk County resident said he was inspired by Trump. “For these reasons we are confident that a widespread and creative billboard advertising game plan could go a long way toward making the Rick Tyler for Congress candidacy both viable and a force to be reckoned with,” Tyler said. “Clearly we are in uncharted waters, in that there has never been a candidacy like this in modern political history. Of great significance, as well, is the reality of the Trump phenomenon and the manner in which he has loosened up the overall spectrum of political discourse.”
Tyler wants America to return to the “1960s, Ozzie and Harriet, ‘Leave It to Beaver’ time when there were no break-ins; no violent crime; no mass immigration,” he told Nashville’s WSMV-TV.
The sign was taken down Tuesday evening after the news went viral. Tyler has no hatred in his heart for “people of color,” he told WSMV-TV. He describes himself as an “Entrepreneur, Pastor and Political Candidate” on his Facebook page.
Even though there was a major backlash, a “majority of the people in [Polk County] like it,” Tyler told Chattanooga’s WRCB-TV. “I saw people taking pictures beside it right after I posted it.”
But one of those people was not U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann. The Tennessee Republican slammed the slogan in a statement Tuesday. “I totally and unequivocally condemn the billboard and Mr. Tyler’s message and will vigorously fight any form of racism in the 3rd district of Tennessee or anywhere else in the nation,” Fleischmann said, according to WRCB-TV. The politician is vying for re-election against Allan Levene and Geoffrey Suhmer Smith.
Kaine. First rule of Veep nominees is "do no harm" and Kaine's certainly that. Wish she'd take a gamble on Castro though. Warren should stay in the Senate where she can be most effective.The Romulan Republic wrote:So, with the report that Clinton has narrowed her VP shortlist down to Julian Castro, Tim Kaine, and Elizabeth Warren, does anyone want to take a guess at who the winner's going to be?
Meh. Dude's a perennial candidate trying to get attention for himself. Also this is East Tennessee. I'd be more surprised if we *didn't* see shit like this.The Romulan Republic wrote:Congressional candidate Rick Tyler and Trump fan put up a billboard saying "Make American White Again." Just in case anyone hadn't figured out what "Make America Great Again" really means.
Overhead expenses? The article mentions nothing about overhead, which is an expense that is spread over an entire activity and generally relates to prices charged for a product. How exactly do you imagine "overhead" expenses apply here?maraxus2 wrote: It's not corruption, so much as it is unseemly and wrong. Trump's spent nearly $7M of his fundraising haul on essentially overhead expenses, including expenses in buildings, especially Mar-A-Lago, that he owns and could have rented for free. Those overhead expenses were something like 20% of his total haul. He's paying his thirty staffers, particularly his high command, much more money to do much less work than Clinton's campaign. He has no ground game. He has no significant paid media yet. His own self-funding has been pretty minimal relative to what he needs.
So if he were to do that they would be considered contributions to his campaign on the part of the businesses, and those contributions would fall under all of the rules that govern such things.What Trump is doing is legal: He is required to pay fair market value for the goods and services enjoyed by his campaign -- otherwise, they would have to be considered in-kind contributions.
Do fuck all with it? How do you think campaigns get access to all those conference centers, ball rooms, and stadiums they make all of their speeches from? Do you think Hillary doesn't pay for that out if her campaign cash? How do you think she pays for her giant caravan of coach buses when she wants to pretend-slum it? How do you think she pays for her air fare? These types of things are EXACTLY what candidates raise money for. Its the whole damn point.Do you think it's right for Trump to solicit donations from a bunch of rubes, do fuck all with most of it, and spend the rest on his own businesses? Because I don't. This is a scam on a vast scale.
Well no. It's not that they can't give him services for free. They probably do it all the proverbial time as he owns the place. It's just that his campaign is a legally independent entity so when he campaigns there he his campaign literally has to legitimately pay. Otherwise there'd be...issues.Patroklos wrote:Overhead expenses? The article mentions nothing about overhead, which is an expense that is spread over an entire activity and generally relates to prices charged for a product. How exactly do you imagine "overhead" expenses apply here?maraxus2 wrote: It's not corruption, so much as it is unseemly and wrong. Trump's spent nearly $7M of his fundraising haul on essentially overhead expenses, including expenses in buildings, especially Mar-A-Lago, that he owns and could have rented for free. Those overhead expenses were something like 20% of his total haul. He's paying his thirty staffers, particularly his high command, much more money to do much less work than Clinton's campaign. He has no ground game. He has no significant paid media yet. His own self-funding has been pretty minimal relative to what he needs.
I feel he's somewhat splitting hairs now, and you could say its a bit disingenuous, but I get why he's holding out, at least in part. He was on The Colbert Report last night, and made it pretty clear that he's holding out for concessions on the platform and such. Understandable that he'd want to be able to show his supporters he's gotten them something, and he kind of has to do that if he wants to convince more of them to come over to Clinton.In what is amounting to a very drawn-out, gradual concession, Bernie Sanders said during an MSNBC appearance Friday morning that he planned to vote for Hillary Clinton this fall.
Asked point blank if he would "vote for Hillary Clinton in November," Sanders only slightly paused before answering, "yes."
In explaining why, Sanders didn’t mention Clinton herself, but instead focused on the dangers of a Trump presidency. "The issue right here is I'm gonna do everything I can to defeat Donald Trump," Sanders said, adding that Trump would be "a disaster for this country."
However, Sanders was also pretty clear about why he hasn’t ended his campaign or officially endorsed Clinton just yet: because he’s hoping to negotiate with her over the party platform.
"What my job right now is, is to fight for the strongest possible platform in the Democratic convention," he said, adding, "That means a platform that represents working people, that stands up to big money interests."
This makes subtext text
This shouldn’t really be a surprise — after all, Sanders said back in April that he’d support Clinton should she win the Democratic nomination (though he did say he wasn’t sure how "enthusiastic" he’d be about it). And he's long been clear that he views Ralph Nader's third party run in 2000 as a "mistake" that helped hand the presidency to George W. Bush.
Still, as June has stretched on without a concession from Sanders, some observers have suspected that he might bitterly withhold his support from Clinton entirely, that he dreamed of deposing her at the convention somehow, or that he could be fantasizing that an FBI indictment of Clinton could hand the nomination to him.
I’ve argued for some time that this isn’t the case, that Sanders is no longer actually trying to win the nomination, and that he is instead just doing some basic negotiating here, trying to win as many concessions as he can from Clinton before he gives her the one thing she really wants from him — his full-throated endorsement.
And with these new comments, Sanders is pretty explicit that that’s indeed what he’s doing. For the time being he’s still holding back from ending his campaign, enthusiastically backing Clinton, or urging his millions of supporters to vote for her, because he’s trying to push for a liberal platform at the convention. But he’s pretty straightforwardly saying that he’ll back her in the end.
Now, it's unclear how much leverage Sanders actually still has here, considering he's already saying he's going to vote for Clinton and going to do everything he can to defeat Trump (which would mean, er, helping elect Clinton). But in making a fine yet somewhat puzzling distinction between saying he'll vote for someone and "endorsing" someone, Sanders has a lot of company this year.
And what will happen if the "Bernie Bots" (because obviously anyone who supports Sanders must be a mindless automatonFireNexus wrote:He isn't even going to get concessions. There is no clear incentive to green light candidates like Sanders hijacking the process and damaging the eventual nominee going forward. If he gets his primary process concessions the BernieBots will absolutely try to primary Clinton in '20.
) get nothing, if the Democratic establishment makes it clear they are not wanted or valued in the party? 
