Tag: Trump kleptocracy

Trump Administration Rigs Market For Big Beef Packers

Trump’s Agriculture Department is turning our nation’s cattle ranchers and feedlot operators into modern-day sharecroppers as beef prices soar during the pandemic.

Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) asked the Senate Judiciary Antitrust subcommittee to hold a hearing on claims of price manipulation and collusion in the beef meatpacking industry. Fischer pointed to the spike in the index of prices for butchered beef compared with the 30 percent drop in cattle futures after Jan. 24, when the country’s first coronavirus case was reported.

“Beef production is the largest section of agriculture in Nebraska,” Fischer wrote. “We feed and market more than 4.7 million cattle each year.” Continue reading.

Trump’s New COVID-19 Czar Holds $10 Million In Vaccine Company Stock Options

Elizabeth Warren slammed the “huge conflict of interest,” and demanded Moncef Slaoui “divest immediately.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has slammed COVID-19 vaccine czar Moncef Slaoui’s “huge conflict of interest” after required federal filings revealed he holds $10 million in stock options in one of the companies working to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.

Warren demanded that Slaoui “divest immediately.”

Elizabeth Warren

✔@SenWarren

It is a huge conflict of interest for the White House’s new vaccine czar to own $10 million of stock in a company receiving government funding to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. Dr. Slaoui should divest immediately. https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/15/trump-audacious-plan-vaccine-covid19/ …

Trump unveils audacious plan to develop Covid-19 vaccine by end of 2020

Trump deputies left no ambiguity: Drug companies and the government, they said, will manufacture “hundreds of millions” of vaccine doses by the end of 2020.

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Slaoui, a former pharmaceutical executive, was named “chief scientist” on Friday for President Donald Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed,” a COVID-19 vaccine development operation. In order to take the new role, he stepped down from his position on the board of directors of biotech company Moderna Inc., which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But Slaoui still owns 155,000 Moderna stock options, totaling more than $10 million as of Friday, according to Business Insider. Continue reading.

DeVos Funnels Coronavirus Relief Funds to Favored Private and Religious Schools

New York Times logoEducation Secretary Betsy DeVos, using discretion written into the coronavirus stabilization law, is using millions of dollars to pursue long-sought policy goals that Congress has blocked.

WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is using the $2 trillion coronavirus stabilization law to throw a lifeline to education sectors she has long championed, directing millions of federal dollars intended primarily for public schools and colleges to private and religious schools.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, signed in late March, included $30 billion for education institutions turned upside down by the pandemic shutdowns, about $14 billion for higher education, $13.5 billion to elementary and secondary schools, and the rest for state governments.

Ms. DeVos has used $180 million of those dollars to encourage states to create “microgrants” that parents of elementary and secondary school students can use to pay for educational services, including private school tuition. She has directed school districts to share millions of dollars designated for low-income students with wealthy private schools. Continue reading.

Secret Service signs $179,000 contract to rent golf carts in Bedminster, N.J., this summer

Washington Post logoThe Secret Service this week signed a $179,000 contract to rent golf carts and other vehicles this summer in Bedminster, N.J., according to federal spending records — a rental that in past years was made in advance of President Trump’s visits to his golf club there.

The golf carts are being rented from a private vendor, New York-based Associates Golf Car Service, which has supplied similar equipment to the Secret Service in Bedminster every year of Trump’s presidency.

The rental deal was signed Monday, went into effect Tuesday and lasts until Oct. 31, according torecords posted online in a public database of federal spending. Continue reading.

Meadows learns to navigate Kushner’s sprawling White House influence

The new chief of staff is witnessing Trump White House truisms: Power centers vie over many decisions, and Jared Kushner is often the most powerful voice.

When the White House’s top domestic policy job came open in recent weeks, newly installed chief of staff Mark Meadows was quick to suggest a surprising name: Stephen Miller.

The proposal, described by three people familiar with the situation, would place Miller, the hard-charging force behind the administration’s immigration policies, in a better-defined role as Meadows worked to reshape the West Wing.

But Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, intervened. He suggested others he had worked with at the White House. Eventually, Derek Lyons, who is viewed as close to Kushner, became the new acting director of the Domestic Policy Council. Continue reading.

How Republicans Helped A Corporate Crony Rip Off PPP Millions

Monty Bennett was just another faceless right-wing millionaire on the long list of high-dollar donors to Donald Trump — until he suddenly surfaced in April as the nation’s biggest bagger of government cash in the emergency Paycheck Protection Program.

The PPP is the $660 billion rescue package for America’s thousands of small businesses, helping them keep people employed during today’s shutdown of the U.S. economy due to the coronavirus pandemic. Bennett was among the first in line for payroll relief, applying for $126 million and immediately getting about 55 percent of that. But wait. There’s nothing mom-and-popish about Monty’s business. Operating through a maze of tightly interwoven financial trusts and corporate subsidiaries, he runs a sprawling Dallas-based conglomerate named Ashford Inc. that owns and operates 130 hotels and luxury resorts across the country including the Marriott Beverly Hills and the Ritz-Carlton in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

How does a multibillion-dollar empire get such payments while legitimate small businesses are shut out? The old-fashioned way: by paying lobbyists and lawmakers to rig the rules so corporate thieves can raid the treasury. Bennett, a major donor to Trump and GOP Congress critters, pressured his political henchmen and hired two lobbying firms in March to punch a huge conglomerate loophole in the PPP bill. Led by Sen. Marco Rubio, Congress inserted a special-interest proviso decreeing that while a big business cannot apply for payments, each unit of the corporation can. Continue reading.

Secret Service signs contract this week to rent golf carts in town of Trump club

Washington Post logoThe Secret Service this week signed a $45,000 contract to rent a fleet of golf carts in Northern Virginia, saying it needed them quickly to protect a “dignitary” in the town of Sterling, home to one of President Trump’s golf clubs, according to federal contracting data.

The contract was signed Monday and took effect Wednesday, records show. The Secret Service paid a West Virginia-registered company, Capitol Golf Cars and Utility Vehicles, to rent 30 carts until the end of September.

The new contract, which the Secret Service described as an “emergency order,” does not mention Trump or the golf club by name. But it closely mirrors past contracts signed by the Secret Service, for agents accompanying Trump to his golf clubs in New Jersey and Florida. Continue reading.

Jared Kushner once controlled the health insurance company that has launched a coronavirus testing website

AlterNet logoOne of the major complaints about President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been the shortage of testing in the United States. Aggressive testing throughout the U.S., critics assert, should have been carried out weeks ago. But now, a new website owned by the company Oscar Health Insurance is pointing Americans in the direction of places where they can be tested for coronavirus — and according to Mother Jones’ Washington, D.C. bureau chief, David Dorn, Oscar was once co-owned by White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner.

Oscar Health Insurance, reporter Jerry Lambe notes in Law & Crime, has “held itself out” as being founded by Kushner’s brother, Joshua Kushner. In 2015, an article by journalist Andrew Khouri for the Los Angeles Times’ described Oscar as a “Silicone Valley-backed startup” that had been founded by “three young Harvard Business School graduates” in 2012: Joshua Kushner, Mario Schlosser and Kevin Nazemi. But according to Corn, Jared Kushner played a major role in the company.

Corn reports that “several years ago,” Jared Kushner “controlled a family business” that owned Oscar — which, Corn explains, “has often been described in media accounts as co-founded by Jared’s brother, Joshua. But New York State records reviewed by Mother Jones show that in 2013, the year the business was incorporated, Jared with his brother controlled the holding company that owned Oscar.” Continue reading.

Scoop: The grandees headed to Saudi Arabia’s “Davos in the Desert”

Axios logoNever mind the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi — there’s money to be made. That’s the clear message sent by the list of grandees scheduled to attend the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia later this month.

Axios has obtained a “Draft Narrative Program” for the conference, marked “Not Final — Subject to Change.” Any of the names on the program could therefore still pull out. Those names include heads of state, including Narendra Modi of India and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.

  • The Trump administration is represented by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner. Former Treasury undersecretary David Malpass, now the president of the World Bank, is also on the list, as is former White House communications chief Anthony Scaramucci.

View the complete October 23 article by Felix Salmon on the Axios website here.

Donald Trump’s Gift to Kleptocrats

Center for American Progress logoPresident Donald Trump’s attempt to enlist Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to assist him with his reelection campaign is alarming on many levels. Although the full details of the July 25, 2019, phone call between Trump and Zelensky have yet to be established, by the White House’s own account, Trump floated a deal in which Ukraine would receive U.S. support in exchange for launching an investigation in an attempt to damage his political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. Even if the story ends there, it’s clear that the president sought to use his authority as commander in chief to influence the actions of a foreign nation in a way that would have carried no national security benefit for the United States but would have had the potential to significantly benefit Trump’s political interests. Subsequent events, such as the president’s public call for Chinese authorities to investigate Joe Biden and his son, appear to confirm this understanding of Trump’s motives.1

These actions are first and foremost a gross abuse of office and an attack on the integrity of U.S. democracy. Impeachment, therefore, is an appropriate response. These actions are also a case study in how not to treat geopolitical partners: Ukraine is a troubled state on the front lines of Russian aggression that has for years struggled to break away from Moscow’s sphere of influence. By conditioning U.S. support on a specious investigation, Trump has sent a clear signal that U.S. commitment to Ukraine is grounded not in shared values or interests but rather in his personal whims and political aims. It would make sense for Zelensky to question the reliability and value of a bilateral relationship with Washington when confronted with a request to manipulate his country’s legal system in exchange for U.S. assistance. Continue reading “Donald Trump’s Gift to Kleptocrats”