The following article by Emma Brown was posted on the Washington Post website February 18, 2017:
Newly minted Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had a hard time getting inside the District’s Jefferson Middle School Academy last week when protesters briefly blocked her from entering. But at the end of her visit — her first to a public school since taking office — she stood on Jefferson’s front steps and pronounced it “awesome.”
The following article by Michael J. Martinez was posted on his blog February 7, 2017. If you, like us, have been amazed at how the conservative talking heads and even elected officials continue to carry on about “paid protesters”, please read on. Mr. Martinez does some math:
Warning: I’m about to commit math! And politics! TOGETHER IN ONE POST!
It’s now the lie du jour for the Trumpist/Bannonist elements of the Republican Party — and let’s face it, gang, they don’t speak for the mainstream GOP anymore — to state that the protesters who have taken to the streets in the past few weeks are not, in fact, Americans like you and I who are exercising their Constitutional rights to free speech, freedom of assembly and the like.
Nope, they’re paid protesters. Because Trump won the presidency and the globalist/elitist/Wall Street cabal behind Hillary Clinton and the Democrats simply cannot allow the real voice of the people to go unchallenged. See? Even the president has an opinion:
In all fairness — a quality not usually associated with the President or Mr. Bannon — this tweet was about protests near Oakland that got violent when an alt-right provocateur and demagogue went to go talk at Berkeley. Which…dude, you went to Berkeley to talk alt-right politics? OK, then.
But the myth of paid protesters goes far beyond one or two incidents, and the echo chamber is filled with all kinds of conspiracy theories. Apparently, the hardcore Trumpist/Bannonist folks think that the protests we’ve seen all around the country were funded by…someone. (George Soros is always a favorite bogeyman for such shenanigans, for some damn reason.) But whatever — deep pockets and irrational hatred of Trump equals paying to undermine him via protests.
I’m gonna tackle this utter fallacy in two parts. First, the actual costs and logistics of paying protesters, and second, the potential return on that investment. Here we go.
How many people have protested against Trump or his proxies since he was inaugurated? Let’s put aside the international protests for a moment and just go with domestic. On January 21, there were massive protests in Washington and in hundreds of cities and towns all around the country. The lowest estimates of turnout for that day is 3.3 million people, so we’ll use that.
How about those airport protests? I’m just eyeballing it here, but let’s go with 25,000 more people around the country. We’ll do another 5,000 for the bodega protests in New York last week, and another 25,000 protesting at Trump’s Xanadu in Fort Lauderdale and around the country this past weekend, and let’s not forget the thousands in Philly who protested when Trump showed up. In total, let’s say another 300,000 protesters still at it after inauguration weekend. That feels super conservative, but OK.
Add it all up, and that’s 3.6 million people carrying signs and protesting Trump since the inauguration here in the U.S. (Again, you could make a case for 5 million easy.)
So let’s say you want to pay these protesters. Can you get folks to protest for minimum wage? I doubt it, but let’s keep it cheap. Call it $8 an hour. And given the size and scope of those protests, not to mention staging and travel time, we’ll assume an eight-hour day. So that’s $64 a head, multiplied by 3.6 million heads. That’s a price tag of just over $230 million just in protester wages alone! Wow. That’s a lot of money, y’all.
But you can’t just pay people. You have to get them to the protests and give them signs! Call it $10 per person in transportation costs, and let’s say one out of every five has a sign (or a black mask if you like your conspiracies violent), which cost another $5. So that’s another $36 million for transportation, and $3.6 million in protest materials.
That’s $269.6 million. But let’s be generous and say that, maybe, only a third of the protesters around the country were paid by the globalist/elitist cabal led by Satan in a George Soros suit. We’ll call it $90 million to keep the math even.
So in order to believe the myth of the paid protester, you have to believe that there’s a shadowy cabal of America-haters out there willing to spend $90 million to pay protesters, bring them to protests and give them signs. And that’s just for one third of the most conservative estimated turnout over the past few weeks. Why would you even pay for that, when you already have two-thirds of the protesters out there working for your shadowy cabal for free? I mean, if the Women’s March had 2.2 million marchers around the country instead of 3.3 million, then you’d still have the single biggest day of protests in our nation’s history. So that $90 million really wasn’t that well spent.
And honestly, how are you even going to manage the logistics of paying all those people? Is the Soros cabal gonna cut a check? Don’t you think there are bank tellers in the U.S. who would note a huge influx of checks come Monday, Jan. 23, all from the same source? (Or multiple sources, if the Soros cabal is trying to be clever.)
Or hey, let’s say the protesters were paid in cold hard cash. That means $90 million in small bills had to be withdrawn from the nation’s banks between the election and the inauguration — a span of 73 days — or $1,232,876 each and every day after the election. Problem is, banks are required by law to report the withdrawal of more than $10,000 in cash to the IRS. That means you would have to have a minimum of 124 dummy accounts, and then you’d have to go back to each account to withdraw $9,999.99, every day for 73 days. (And likely hire 124 super trustworthy people to secure all that money and not go zipping off to Cabo with it.)
And nobody is gonna notice all that activity? Dude.
So yeah, that’s the logistics. It’s just about impossible to pay for all those protesters in such a short amount of time without the federal government or even Fox News noticing. And besides, with a million people on the bankroll, you would think some idiot somewhere would’ve put a picture of his protest payment on Instagram.
Now, let’s talk about return on the investment. You spent $90 million to augment protests that are already super-protesty. (Or spent $269.6 million to fund them all, but that’s some comic-book mastermind stuff right there, tripling all the logistical requirements outlined above.) So what do you get for your investment?
Well, you get a lot of protests. And yes, maybe that translates into a shift in public opinion. However, with midterm elections still 21 months off, there’s plenty of time for the Trumpist/Bannonist folks to swing things back in the other direction. One tweet from Trump gets him loads of news coverage and costs nothing. Your $90 million for two-plus weeks of protest is kind of weak sauce in comparison.
But what if you took that $90 million and invested it in, you know, actual politics? Democrats need just 24 House seats and three Senate seats to completely flip Congress. That’s 27 elections! And check this out: The average Senate campaign cost $10 million in 2012, and the average House race was $1.7 million.
So you could invest $90 million in two weeks of protests. OR, you could support three Senate races at $15 million a pop and give another $1.875 million to 24 House races, more than matching the 2012 budgets of each race and overwhelming the competition. And nobody would really pay much attention, given the proliferation of super PACs and other electioneering nonsense.
If you had $90 million to spend on politics, which would you choose?
Look, we get that the whole “paid protester” thing is stupid as hell, but sometimes it feels good to outline just how amazingly stupid some of these conspiracy theories really are. I know I feel better. Thanks for reading.
The following article by Bert Spector was posted on theconversation.com website:
Photo: Getty Images
Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump made much of his business experience, claiming he’s been “creating jobs and rebuilding neighborhoods my entire adult life.”
It’s easy to understand the appeal of a president as CEO. The U.S. president is indisputably the chief executive of a massive, complex, global structure known as the federal government. And if the performance of our national economy is vital to the well-being of us all, why not believe that Trump’s experience running a large company equips him to effectively manage a nation?
So why the seeming contradiction between his businessman credentials and chaotic governing style?
Well for one thing, Trump wasn’t a genuine CEO. That is, he didn’t run a major public corporation with shareholders and a board of directors that could hold him to account. Instead, he was the head of a family-owned, private web of enterprises. Regardless of the title he gave himself, the position arguably ill-equipped him for the demands of the presidency.
Public accountability
Several years ago, I explored the distinction between public and private companies in detail when the American Bar Association invited me to write about what young corporate lawyers needed to understand about how business works. Based on that research, I want to point to an important set of distinctions between public corporations and private businesses, and what it all means for President Trump.
Public corporations are companies that offer their stock to pretty much anyone via organized exchanges or by some over-the-counter mechanism. In order to protect investors, the government created the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which imposes an obligation of transparency on public corporations that does not apply to private businesses like the Trump Organization.
The SEC, for example, requires the CEO of public corporations to make full and public disclosures of their financial position. Annual 10-K reports, quarterly 10-Q’s and occasional special 8-K’s require disclosure of operating expenses, significant partnerships, liabilities, strategies, risks and plans.
Additionally, an independent firm overseen by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board conducts an audit of these financial statements to ensure thoroughness and accuracy.
Finally, the CEO, along with the chief financial officer, is criminally liable for falsification or manipulation of the company’s reports. Remember the 2001 Enron scandal? CEO Jeffrey Skilling was convicted of conspiracy, fraud and insider trading and initially sentenced to 24 years in prison.
Internal governance
Then there is the matter of internal governance.
The CEO of a public company is subject to an array of constraints and a varying but always substantial degree of oversight. There are boards of directors, of course, that review all major strategic decisions, among other duties. And there are separate committees that assess CEO performance and determine compensation, composed entirely of independent or outside directors without any ongoing involvement in running the business.
Whole categories of CEO decisions, including mergers and acquisitions, changes in the corporation’s charter and executive compensation packages, are subject to the opinion of shareholders and directors.
In addition, the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act requires – for now – regular nonbinding shareholder votes on the compensation packages of top executives.
And then there’s this critical fact: well-governed firms tend to outperform poorly governed ones, often dramatically. And that’s because of factors like a strong board of directors, more transparency, a responsiveness to shareholders, thorough and independent audits and so forth.
Trump’s business
None of the obligations listed above applied to Trump, who was owner, chairman and president of the Trump Organization, a family-owned limited liability company (LLC) that has owned and run hundreds of businesses involving real estate, hotels, golf courses, private jet rentals, beauty pageants and even bottled water.
LLCs are specifically designed to offer owners tax advantages, maximum flexibility and financial and legal protections without either the benefits (such as access to equity capital markets) or the many obligations of a public corporation.
For example, as I noted above, a corporate CEO is required by law to allow scrutiny of the financial consequences of his or her decisions by others. As such, CEOs know the value of having a strong executive team able to serve as a sounding board and participate in key strategic decisions.
Trump, by contrast, as the head of a family business was accountable to no one and reportedly ran his company that way. His executive team comprised his children and people who are loyal to him, and his decision-making authority was unconstrained by any internal governance mechanisms. Decisions concerning what businesses to start or exit, how much money to borrow and at what interest rates, how to market products and services, and how – or even whether – to pay suppliers or treat customers were made centrally and not subject to review.
Clearly, this poorly equips Trump to be president and accountable to lawmakers, the courts and ultimately the voters.
Another important aspect of the public corporation is the notion of transparency and the degree to which it enables accountability.
A lack of transparency and reluctance to engage in open disclosure characterized the formulation of Trump’s immigration ban that was quickly overturned in federal court. That same tendency toward secrecy was manifest throughout the campaign, such as when he refused to disclose much about his health (besides this cursory “note”) or release any of his tax returns.
While there’s no law that requires a candidate to divulge either health or tax status, that lack of transparency kept potentially vital information from U.S. voters. And Trump’s continuing lack of transparency as president has kept experts and advisers in the dark, leading to precisely the confusion, mixed messages and dysfunction that have characterized these early weeks. And, of course, this can quickly lead to a continuing erosion of public trust.
Trump, it should be noted, made one stab at a public company: Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts. That was an unmitigated disaster, leading to five separate declarations of bankruptcy before finally going under, all this while other casino companies thrived. Public investors ignored all the signs in favor of the showmanship and glitz of the Trump brand and, as a result, lost millions of dollars. Trump allotted himself a huge salary and bonuses, corporate perks and special merchandising deals.
What is especially telling about this experience is that, rather than speaking on behalf of fiduciary responsibilities for the best interests of the corporation, Trump noted, “I make great deals for myself.”
Multiplicity of voices
There is no need to be overly naive here.
Some CEOs also operate in a highly centralized manner, expecting obedience rather than participation from direct reports. All business executives expect a shared commitment from their employees to their corporate goals and value dependability, cooperation and loyalty from subordinates.
But the involvement of a multiplicity of voices with diverse perspectives and different backgrounds and fields of expertise improves the quality of resulting decisions. Impulsive decision-making by an individual or small, cloistered group of followers can and often will lead to disastrous results.
What lies ahead
Virtually every U.S. president, ranging from the great to the inconsequential and even the disastrous, have emerged from one of two groups: career politicians or generals. So why not a CEO president?
Without question, a background in politics does not guarantee an effective presidency. Abraham Lincoln, the consensus choice among historians for the best president ever, was a career politician, but so was his disastrous successor, Andrew Johnson.
Likewise, we can think of many traits of an effective corporate CEO that could serve a president well: transparency and accountability, responsiveness to internal governance and commitment to the interest of the overall corporation over and above self-enrichment.
Sadly, that is not Trump’s background. His experience overseeing an interconnected tangle of LLCs and his one disastrous term as CEO of a public corporation suggest a poor background to be chief executive of the United States. As such, “nobody knows who’s in charge” may be the mantra for years to come.
The following article by David Nakamura was posted on the Washington Post website February 18, 2o17:
Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly has signed sweeping new guidelines that empower federal authorities to more aggressively detain and deport illegal immigrants inside the United States and at the border.
The following article by Lisa Mascaro of the Tribune Washington Bureau was posted on the National Memo website February 18, 2017:
The relationship between President Donald Trump and GOP leaders in Congress started as a marriage of convenience, thrown together by necessity and sustained on the promise of pushing a Republican agenda into law.
Until recently, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tolerated Trump’s turbulent debut because they agreed with the direction the White House was heading — or were confident they could nudge it in the desired one. Continue reading “In Congress, Republicans Are Starting To Fret”
The following article by Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times was posted February 18, 2017:
Photo: Vanity Fair
On any given weekend, you might catch President Trump’s son-in-law and top Mideast dealmaker, Jared Kushner, by the beachside soft-serve ice cream machine, or his reclusive chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, on the dining patio.
If you are lucky, the president himself could stop by your table for a quick chat. But you will have to pay $200,000 for the privilege — and the few available spots are going fast.
The following article was posted on the TrumpAccountable.org website February 19, 2017:
John McCain spoke with NBC’s Chuck Todd on Meet The Press about the importance of a free press in response to a tweet by the president that called out the press as “the enemy of the American people.” While he was careful not to call Donald Trump a dictator, McCain bluntly said that history shows that one of the first things that dictators do when taking power is to marginalize or suppress the free press. Continue reading “McCain: We Need a Free Press”
The following article by Sarah Okeson was posted on the DCReporting.org website February 19, 2017:
Proposal Makes It Harder and More Expensive to Get Coverage
The Trump administration is moving to make it harder for you to get health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. The net effect of the proposals would be significantly greater regulatory and paperwork burdens for both consumers and health insurance exchanges, the opposite of Trump’s promise during the campaign and since taking office.
