The Golden Couple (Ivanka and Jared)

[GrumpyGran]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Jennifer Rubin has no love for Ivanka: "Ivanka Trump might be the worst enabler of them all"

  Reveal hidden contents

CNN reports:

Ivanka Trump spoke out for the first time against embattled Alabama Senate Republican candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused of pursuing sexual relationships with teenagers when he was in his early thirties. Her father, President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has largely stayed mum on the issue.

“There’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children,” Trump told The Associated Press in an interview otherwise focused on tax reform published Wednesday.

“I’ve yet to see a valid explanation and I have no reason to doubt the victims’ accounts,” the first daughter and presidential adviser said.

Really, Ivanka? Next time a news outlet snags an interview with her, it might ask:

• Why can her father not bring himself to condemn Moore?
• Would you urge Alabama voters to cast ballots for his opponent, Doug Jones?
• Is there a “special place in hell” for a man who reportedly “entered the Miss Teen USA changing room where girls as young as 15 were in various states of undress” and bragged about such situations (“I’ll go backstage before a show, and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else”)?
• Does that spot in hell have a spot for men who discuss their teenage daughter in creepy sexualized terms?
• Would that spot in hell have room for a man who reportedly tells 14-year-olds that “in a couple of years I’ll be dating you”?

Ivanka Trump knows that young women and men allegedly accosted and abused by powerful men in Hollywood (e.g. Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., Kevin Spacey) have come forward with detailed accounts. Criminal investigations have been launched, series and movies canceled, and careers ruined. So:

• Is there also a special place in hell for powerful men who made crude sexual advances, grope women and use their status to quiet and defame their accusers?
• Should those women be believed if their stories are detailed, consistent with known facts and collectively portray a pattern of behavior?

Ivanka Trump doesn’t like being called “complicit” in her father’s policy agenda. But her great sin is helping to vouch for and normalize her father’s character. His alleged predatory behavior — just as Roy Moore’s — should have disqualified him from office. And yet she helped convince voters that he was a terrific guy, a feminist even.

When the New York Times ran a report extensively documenting his treatment of women, Ivanka Trump was there to defend him:

“Most of the time, when stories are inaccurate, they’re not discredited and I will be frustrated by that. But in this case, I think they went so far,” Ivanka said. “… This is an article that is widely being discredited. The lead person who was interviewed — for the story and that the story opens up with — was all over the news yesterday, saying that they manipulated what she was saying. So you know, I don’t find it that meaningful to comment on this particular story because I think the facts are starting to speak for themselves.”

Ivanka also rejected a former colleague’s claim that she had been groped by Donald Trump during a business meeting.

“I’m not in every interaction my father has, but he’s not a groper. It’s not who he is,” she said. “And I’ve known my father obviously my whole life and he has total respect for women. He was promoting women in development and construction at a time when it was unheard of. There was no trend towards equality in the real estate and construction industry back in the 1980s. And he was doing it because he believes ultimately in merit.”

Really.

In July 2016, she told the Sunday Times of London, “My father is a feminist. He’s a big reason I am the woman I am today.”

And in April this year in Germany, boos rained down on her when she insisted, “I’ve certainly heard the criticism from the media and that’s been perpetuated, but I know from personal experience, and I think the thousands of women who have worked with and for my father for decades are a testament to his belief and solid conviction in the potential of women. … As an adviser and as a daughter, I can speak on a very personal level knowing that he encouraged me and enabled me to thrive.”

Whether or not Ivanka Trump knows better, she has put herself forth to validate her father’s treatment of women and discredit accusers. She’s in no position now to lecture us on Moore, although if she’d like now to come clean on her father’s conduct and comment on his eternal punishment, she might recover some dignity and respect in the eyes of American women (and men, as well). Since that’s not happening, my advice to her is to make herself scarce. Her voice only reminds us of her unforgivable complicity in selling Trump to the voters.

 

Yeah, it fits. She and Daddy have nothing to lose in trashing Roy. It re-enforces her attempt at "empowering women". They see Alabama as a wasteland. Remember, few electoral votes, not many Representatives, not worth the time. If only the citizens of Alabama realized how the Elite Rich Trumps see them.

[onekidanddone]

23 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

Yeah, it fits. She and Daddy have nothing to lose in trashing Roy. It re-enforces her attempt at "empowering women". They see Alabama as a wasteland. Remember, few electoral votes, not many Representatives, not worth the time. If only the citizens of Alabama realized how the Elite Rich Trumps see them.

If they have't figured out by now, they never will.  I fear they will vote against their best interests time and time again

[GreyhoundFan]

Princess Ivanka's "lifestyle" company is at it again: "Ivanka Trump’s Company Shared Thanksgiving Advice On Twitter. It Did Not Go Over Well."  The article is on Huffington Post, with lots of twitter responses, so I'm not going to copy here, but there are two excellent responses. The first, from twitter, is "wow, even the pumpkins are white". The second, also from twitter, is an Agent Orange-themed turkey. I'll put the picture under the spoiler, in case you are prone to nightmares.

Spoiler

 

[GrumpyGran]

On 11/18/2017 at 10:49 AM, GreyhoundFan said:

Princess Ivanka's "lifestyle" company is at it again: "Ivanka Trump’s Company Shared Thanksgiving Advice On Twitter. It Did Not Go Over Well."  The article is on Huffington Post, with lots of twitter responses, so I'm not going to copy here, but there are two excellent responses. The first, from twitter, is "wow, even the pumpkins are white". The second, also from twitter, is an Agent Orange-themed turkey. I'll put the picture under the spoiler, in case you are prone to nightmares.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

That is one of the ugliest things I have ever seen! It looks like sea garbage. How is the pumpkin on a cake plate chic? I think some people at this company of hers are trying to punk her. And it's funny to think that there are people who will spend hundreds to try to replicate this for their Thanksgiving dinners. Just because it Ivanka!

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

That is one of the ugliest things I have ever seen! It looks like sea garbage. How is the pumpkin on a cake plate chic? I think some people at this company of hers are trying to punk her. And it's funny to think that there are people who will spend hundreds to try to replicate this for their Thanksgiving dinners. Just because it Ivanka!

I see that Sandra Lee has found herself a new job.

Sorry kids, but I'm a minimalist when it comes to table decor. I put food, plates, glasses, and flatware on the table at Thanksgiving. I wouldn't mind a few candles or a small floral arrangement, but my table barely holds all of the food when I have guests for holiday meals.

If you insist on having crap scattered from hell to breakfast on the table, then show up a few days early when I'm still sorting and cleaning. 

[catlady]

We don't use centerpieces either, because there are too many serving dishes on the table during the meal.  That giant clamshell full of sticks might work at the Maxwells' Thursday Night Supper, or maybe for Ivanka and her presumed serving staff.

[GrumpyGran]

You know, I wonder if there is actually a Thanksgiving meal in the picture for Ivanka and Jared. I can't see it happening. I see them at a swanky ski resort, eating dinner at a restaurant with the children they barely know.

Maybe they head over to the Kushner's so momma Kushner can feed them and Ivanka doesn't have to get her hands dirty. Maybe they go to Ivana's where she gets to speak to her grandchildren and have a huge feast served by her staff.

If they do eat at home, I imagine the centerpiece is just stacked gold bars with some loose diamonds sprinkled around. Now I'm inspired!

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, GrumpyGran said:

Ivanka doesn't have to get her hands dirty.

I have no doubt that Ivanka has a cook in addition to at least one nanny and maid.

[GrumpyGran]

12 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I have no doubt that Ivanka has a cook in addition to at least one nanny and maid.

I wonder if she's ever cooked a meal in her life. Cleaned a toilet-uh, no. Has she ever changed a diaper? Washed clothes? You know, maybe I'm weird but nobody's washing my underwear but me.

[fraurosena]

Oh, look! Princess has tiny and very dirty hands... just like her daddy.

Ivanka, the Fraudster and the Panama Hotel That Made Trump Rich

(Beware, this article is loooooong, but very informative.)

Quote

In the spring of 2007, a succession of foreigners, many from Russia, arrived at Panama City airport to be greeted by a chauffeur who whisked them off in a white Cadillac with a Donald Trump logo on the side.

The limousine belonged to a business run by a Brazilian former car salesman named Alexandre Ventura Nogueira, who was offering the visitors a chance to invest in Trump's latest project - a 70-floor tower called the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower. It was the future U.S. president's first international hotel venture, a complex including residential apartments and a casino in a waterfront building shaped like a sail.

"Mr Nogueira was an outgoing and lively young man," remembered Justine Pasek, who was crowned Miss Universe by Donald Trump in 2002 and was acting in 2007 as a spokesperson for Nogueira's company, Homes Real Estate Investment & Services. "Everybody was so impressed with Homes as they seemed to be riding the top of the real estate boom at the time," she said.

One of those Nogueira set out to impress was Ivanka, Trump's daughter. In an interview with Reuters, Nogueira said he met and spoke with Ivanka "many times" when she was handling the Trump Organization's involvement in the Panama development. "She would remember me," he said.

Ivanka was so taken with his sales skills, Nogueira said, that she helped him become a leading broker for the development and he appeared in a video with her promoting the project.                                                                                 

A Reuters investigation into the financing of the Trump Ocean Club, in conjunction with the American broadcaster NBC News, found Nogueira was responsible for between one-third and one-half of advance sales for the project. It also found he did business with a Colombian who was later convicted of money laundering and is now in detention in the United States; a Russian investor in the Trump project who was jailed in Israel in the 1990s for kidnap and threats to kill; and a Ukrainian investor who was arrested for alleged people-smuggling while working with Nogueira and later convicted by a Kiev court.

Three years after getting involved in the Trump Ocean Club, Nogueira was arrested by Panamanian authorities on charges of fraud and forgery, unrelated to the Trump project. Released on $1.4 million bail, he later fled the country.

He left behind a trail of people who claim he cheated them, including over apartments in the Trump project, resulting in at least four criminal cases that eight years later have still to be judged.

Nogueira, 43, denies the charges and told Reuters in an email: "I am no Angel but not Devil either."

Ivanka Trump declined to comment on her dealings with Nogueira. A White House spokesman referred questions to the Trump Organization. Alan Garten, the organization's chief legal officer, said: "No one at the Trump Organization, including the Trump family, has any recollection of ever meeting or speaking with this individual."

Trump put his name to the development and stood to make up to $75 million from it, according to a bond prospectus for the project. He did not exert management control over the construction and was under no direct legal obligation to conduct due diligence on other people involved.

Still, some legal experts say the episode raises questions about the steps Trump took to check the source of any income from there. Arthur Middlemiss, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan and a former head of JPMorgan's global anti-corruption program, said that since Panama was "perceived to be highly corrupt," anyone engaged in business there should conduct due diligence on others involved in their ventures. If they did not, he said, there was a potential risk in U.S. law of being liable for turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.

Jimmy Gurule, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and a former under-secretary for enforcement at the U.S. Treasury Department, agreed. He also said any businessman should avoid working with "anyone with a potential link to criminality" simply as a matter of good ethics.

Reuters could not determine what due diligence Trump carried out in relation to the Ocean Club project.

The White House referred Reuters questions about the Ocean Club development to the Trump Organization. Garten said the Trump Organization's role in the project "was at all times limited to licensing its brand and providing management services. As the company was not the owner or developer, it had no involvement in the sale of any units at the property."

He said the Trump Organization "never had any contractual relationship or significant dealings" with Nogueira.

Nine former business partners or employees of Nogueira interviewed by Reuters accused him of cheating them and his clients. Two of the nine have taken legal action against Nogueira. The cases have yet to be judged. When first approached by Reuters, Nogueira declined to answer questions. Writing on October 4, he said in an email: "Anything I would say could also damage a lot of important and powerful people. I am not sure I should do that."

Later, Nogueira agreed to meet. In a lengthy interview, he described his contacts with the Trump family and his role in the Ocean Club project. He said he only learned after the Ocean Club project was almost complete that some of his partners and investors in the Trump project were criminals, including some with what he described as connections to the "Russian mafia." He said he had not knowingly laundered any illicit money through the Trump project, although he did say he had laundered cash later in other schemes for corrupt Panamanian officials.

It was not his job to check the source of money that investors used to buy units in the Trump Ocean Club, Nogueira said. "I didn't know the money was coming from anything illegal. As long as they were doing wire transfers and not cash, I wasn't worried about the source of it."

Nogueira said that no one asked him about the source of funds. "Nobody ever asked me. The banks didn't ask. The developers didn't ask. The Trump Organization didn't ask me. Nobody asked me: 'Who are the customers? Where did the money come from?'"

It is unclear how much, if any, laundered money went into the Trump project. Global Witness, an anti-corruption watchdog, says in an independently-produced report out today, that Panama in the 2000s presented particular challenges for property developers because of its then reputation for corruption.

The ultimate sources of cash for other Trump real estate projects where Trump has licensed his name have drawn scrutiny this year. In March, a Reuters review found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses had bought $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida.

The buyers included politically-connected businessmen and people from the second and third tiers of Russian power. Responding to that story, Garten, the Trump Organization's counsel, said the scrutiny of Trump's business ties with Russia was misplaced and that the story was "overblown."

High living
                                                                                   
Donald Trump's involvement in the Ocean Club began in 2005, when local developer Roger Khafif travelled to Trump Tower in New York to pitch the idea of a Trump project in Panama. Khafif said he told the American tycoon that Trump would need only to license his name and provide hotel management. This way of doing business freed Trump from the burden of taking a stake or making a personal guarantee.

In an interview with Reuters, Khafif recalled that Trump wanted to use the Panama project as a "baby" for his daughter Ivanka, who had just joined the Trump Organization, to gain experience in the property business.

The plan was for Newland International Properties Corp, where Khafif was president and which owned the development, to finance construction with a bond underwritten by Bear Stearns, the U.S. investment bank. The bank, which collapsed in 2008, was acquired by JPMorgan, which declined to comment.

To sell the bond, the developer needed to prove it could sell the apartments. This was where Nogueira came in. The Brazilian had arrived in Panama in the mid-2000s from Spain, where he had worked as a car salesman.

He had already had a brush with the law. In September 2005, in an official notice posted on the internet, the Spanish economy ministry said it had opened proceedings to fine Nogueira for an alleged "serious violation" of the country's money-laundering laws. The proceedings were terminated about nine months later after officials could not determine Nogueira's whereabouts. The ministry declined to comment. Nogueira said it was a trivial incident, caused by him taking too much of his own cash through an airport.

Once in Panama, Nogueira became renowned for his friendships with politicians, his love of Aston Martin sports cars and expensive watches and, as one former associate recalled, for "never wearing the same shoes - no matter how expensive - for more than three months."

He said he first got involved with the Trump Ocean Club project at an early sales meeting in 2006 in Panama arranged by Khafif, whom he knew already. Ivanka Trump and other real estate brokers were there, he said. He remembered listening as a minimum price of $120,000 for condominiums was discussed.

Nogueira said he stood up and said the price was at the level charged in ordinary developments. "Here, it is Trump selling. You have to give a value to that name. Make it $220,000!"

He said Ivanka replied: "Can you sell it?"

Nogueira said he asked for a week to prove himself. And within a week he managed to collect deposits on over 100 apartments, and after that Khafif made him a leading broker, working on a 5 percent commission of gross sales, he said.

Asked about Nogueira's account of this meeting, Khafif said that "most of what he said was true." Khafif said he remembered Nogueira meeting Ivanka "a couple of times."

Nogueira said that in the months that followed he discussed promotion and sales with Ivanka in Panama, Miami and New York. He said he also joined a group that travelled with Ivanka on a private chartered jet to look at a potential site for another Trump project in Cartagena, Colombia.

While Donald Trump was not the owner of the Panama project, the Trump Organization participated in many details down to "choosing the furniture and fittings," said Nogueira. Day-to-day the project was assigned to Ivanka, he said, adding: "I spoke to her a lot of times, a lot of times." He also met Donald Jr. and Eric Trump.

Ivanka Trump did not respond to requests for comment about Nogueira. Garten, the Trump Organization's counsel, described contact between Nogueira and the Trumps as "meaningless." He said such meetings and events "may have been memorable" for Nogueira, but for Ivanka and the rest of the Trump family it would have been "just one of literally hundreds of public appearances they were asked to make that year."

Ivanka and Trump's sons appeared in public at launch events for the tower, made promotional videos for the project and managed the Trump involvement.

Nogueira said that one video was commissioned by him. Ivanka helped arrange access to Trump Tower in New York for some sequences. "In this video we made, I was talking and she was talking."

When the Spanish-language TV channel Univision, in an article published in 2011, first noted Nogueira's role in the Trump project, Eric Trump responded that Nogueira had been an unaffiliated salesman. "I looked and I've never heard the name, nor does it appear in our database. What I found out was owns a real estate agency in Panama that sells apartments in our building as a third party," he told the channel.

Asked this month about Eric Trump's statement in response to the Univision report, the Trump Organization said the company never had any ties to Nogueira or awareness of him.

Despite being a third party, Nogueira and his partners played a major part in the Trump project's success, according to interviews with former key staff at Homes, developers, investors and lawyers, and an analysis of Panama corporate records

Homes accounted for up to half of the 666 apartment sales in advance of the bond prospectus, people involved in the project told Reuters.

Eleanora Michailov, a Russian who settled in Canada, was Nogueira's international sales director. She recalled that Nogueira handled the sale of a third of the building, about 200 apartments. Another Homes sales agent, Jenny Levy, a relative by marriage to the developer, Khafif, said she alone sold 30 apartments.

"We sold half the building, baby! Homes sold half," Levy said in a phone interview. Nogueira said that he and his agents across the world sold between 350 to 400 apartment and hotel units.

Khafif, president and co-owner of the developer, Newland, said he was unsure of the exact number, but Nogueira had probably sold up to 300 units. "Everybody was lining up to work with him ... During those days he was the hottest real estate agency in town," he said.

Homes found a ready market in Russia. "Russians like to show off," said Khafif, who went on several sales trips to Moscow. "For them, Trump was the Bentley" of real estate brands.

Michailov said investors in the Ocean Club were asked to pay 10 percent up front for one of the apartments; she said the average price was about $350,000. Buyers had to pay a total of 30 percent within a year, according to the bond prospectus, and Homes organized the investment by setting up Panamanian companies for customers to enter pre-sales agreements with Khafif's company, Newland.

In 2006 and 2007, Panama corporate records show, at least 131 holding companies with various combinations of the words "Trump" and "Ocean" in their name - for example, the Trump Ocean 1806 Investment Corp - were registered in Panama for pre-sales deals, and mostly by the Homes group. In many cases the identity of the buyers was not clear. Nogueira and other Homes staff involved said Panamanian law at that time imposed no obligation to verify the identity of owners.

But listed as director of four Trump Ocean investment companies was Igor Anopolskiy, who in 2007 was Homes Real Estate's representative in Kiev.

Police records state he was arrested in March of that year for suspected people trafficking. Released a year later on bail, he was re-arrested in 2013, and in 2014 a Ukraine court handed Anopolskiy a five-year suspended jail sentence with three years probation for offenses including people smuggling and forgery, unrelated to the Trump project.

Interviewed in Kiev, Anopolskiy blamed the case on police corruption and denied committing any crime.

It was a Colombian businessman named David Murcia Guzman who triggered Nogueira's downfall. Murcia was indicted in November 2008 for money laundering, first in Colombia and then in the United States. Murcia was sentenced to nine years in prison in the United States for conspiracy to launder drug money. After serving six years, he is expected to be deported to Colombia, his attorney, Robert Abreu, said. Colombia's government said Murcia will serve a 22-year prison term upon his return for offenses including money laundering.

Murcia did not get permission from U.S. authorities to respond to Reuters' questions.

Within days of Murcia's indictment, the spotlight turned to Nogueira. Roniel Ortiz, a former lawyer for both Nogueira and Murcia, said Nogueira had offered to wash Murcia's money by buying apartments on his behalf. Murcia "could not take his money to a bank," Ortiz said, so Nogueira "offered to see how he could help."

Ortiz said he did not know how much, if any, of Murcia's money was used in the Trump project. Nogueira said Murcia gave him $1 million to invest in Panamanian property, which Nogueira used to pay the deposit on up to ten Trump apartments among other investments. Nogueira added: "He was not a bad guy. I don't believe everything in those charges was true."

In 2013 Nogueira, in conversations secretly recorded by a former business partner, said he had performed money laundering as a service, moving tens of millions of dollars mainly through contacts in Miami and the Bahamas.

 "More important than the money from real estate was being able to launder the drug money - there were much larger amounts involved," he said in the recording. "When I was in Panama I was regularly laundering money for more than a dozen companies."

The recordings were heard by Reuters and authenticated by five people who know Nogueira.

Speaking to Reuters, Nogueira said he could not recall making such claims and denied laundering cash through the Trump project or handling drugs money. He said that later, after his real estate business had collapsed in 2009, he had been involved in handling cash from corrupt officials and politicians, and was involved in corrupt schemes to sell Panamanian visas.

The Russian connection

In the story of Panama's Trump Ocean Club, a high point for many of those involved was a warm, cloudless night in early 2007.

The setting was Mar-a-Lago, Trump's private club in Florida. Spilling out of Lamborghinis and Porsches onto the welcoming carpet were the sales people, clients and potential clients whose acumen and cash would make it possible - within a month - to break ground on the project's building site in Panama City.

Entertained with drinks, music and jokes from American TV celebrity Regis Philbin, the guests got to meet and greet Trump and his children, Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka. The event was organized to celebrate a successful sales campaign - and to solicit more sales.

The Trump Organization did not comment about the party. Philbin told Reuters he couldn't recall the event because it was 10 years ago. "I used to be with him a lot," Philbin said. "I was good friends with him." Nogueira said he was at the party and there met Donald Trump for "the first and only time." He recalled: "They introduced me and said, 'That's the guy selling Panama,' and he thanked me. We just talked for two or three minutes."

Besides Nogueira, the guests included people involved with the project as investors or salesmen, some of Russian or former Soviet Union origin. Among them, in the delegation from Homes and wearing a dark suit, was Alexander Altshoul, born in Belarus. "Russians like their brand names," Altshoul told Reuters, explaining why investors were attracted to Trump. "The moment was right, they were speculating. Many people hoped to get profits."

Altshoul, who holds Canadian citizenship, was listed on the Homes company website in 2007 as a "partner" and an "owner" of the firm. He became involved in Homes after moving to Panama from Toronto and investing with family and friends in the Trump project, paying deposits on 10 apartments and one hotel unit.

Among his partners in that investment, according to Altshoul and Panamanian corporate records, was a Muscovite named Arkady Vodovosov, a relative of Altshoul. In 1998, Vodovosov was sentenced to five years in prison in Israel for kidnap and threats to kill and torture, court records state. Contacted by telephone, Vodovosov said inquiries about his involvement with the Trump project were nonsense. "We were in Panama for a very short time, and got out of there a long time ago," he said, declining to answer further questions.

Altshoul attended the Mar-a-Lago party with another Homes partner, Stanislau Kavalenka, recalled people who were there. Kavalenka was also a Canadian יmigrי from the former Soviet Union.

At different times, Altshoul and Kavalenka each faced accusations of having connections to organized crime, but the charges were dropped. In Altshoul's case, police in Toronto filed charges in April 2007, at the time he was promoting the Trump project. He was accused of involvement in a mortgage fraud scheme, unrelated to the Panama project, that involved sending funds through Latvia. The criminal case was dropped a year later.

In a statement, the Canadian government said it was "duty bound to withdraw charges where there is no reasonable prospect of conviction or if it is not in the public interest to proceed." It did not elaborate further on the case. Altshoul said the decision showed he was innocent.

In 2004, Canadian prosecutors had accused Kavalenka of pimping and kidnapping Russian prostitutes. That case was dropped in 2005 after the alleged prostitutes, who were the main witnesses, did not show up in court. Kavalenka's whereabouts are unknown. He did not respond to questions about his role in the Trump project sent to him through his family in Canada. Nogueira said Altshoul and Kavalenka had joined Homes together, first as customers and later as partners. Altshoul told him he had had some difficulties "but they were solved, and it wasn't my problem," Nogueira said.

Nogueira also said that after he read of Kavalenka's Toronto case on Google, Kavalenka told him: "I was running some girls. That's how I made money. But I was cleared."

Sold "like hot cakes"

In the months after the Mar-a-Lago party, the prospects for everyone involved in the Trump Ocean Club looked rosy. In the midst of a global property boom and a successful pitch, sales had exceeded all expectations. A bond prospectus was issued in November 2007, enabling the raising of construction funds. By the end of June that year, the prospectus declared, the project had "pre-sold approximately 64 percent of the building's condominium and commercial units," guaranteeing receipts on completion of the project of at least $278.7 million.

Trump said later, in a promotional video ahead of the 2011 opening, that the project sold "like hot cakes."

But not all the money collected in the pre-sales campaign would go on to fund the project. Nine former business partners or employees of Nogueira interviewed by Reuters alleged that, at the Ocean Club and at other developments, Nogueira either failed to pass on all the deposits he collected to the project's developers, or sometimes sold the same apartment to more than one client, with the result that, on completion of the project, some clients had no clear claim on a property.

Exactly how many apartments were double-sold is unknown. Michailov said up to 10 out of 80 apartments in the Trump tower that she had sold were also sold by Nogueira to others. Lawsuits in Panama and separate written complaints seen by Reuters record at least six instances of alleged fraud by Nogueira, in the Trump project and in other Panama construction projects. Two of the complaints seen by Reuters were in the "Panama Papers," documents from a local law firm that were leaked to the Sddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Ortiz, the former lawyer for Murcia and Nogueira, said of the Trump-branded project: "When the building was completed and people arrived to seek out their apartments, they ran into each other - two, three people who were fighting for the same apartment."

Complaints against Nogueira, including allegations of fraud in Trump Ocean Club sales, resulted in four criminal cases against him in Panama and culminated in his arrest on fraud charges in May 2009.

Nogueira said double-sales occurred because of changes in the building specifications or clerical error. He said he never deliberately sold an apartment twice. He said that not everyone lost money from their investments, and most who did lost out because of poor or unlucky investment decisions. "If you are looking to make easy money from speculation then you have to accept there is a risk," he said.

Released on bail for $1.4 million, he continued to live in Panama until 2012 when, despite a ban on leaving the country, he fled to his native country, Brazil, before moving on again. Karen Kahn, a federal prosecutor based in Sao Paulo, said Nogueira is under a federal investigation for international money laundering, an inquiry  triggered by several large bank transfers that arrived in his accounts from Panama.

Declining to disclose where he is living now, Nogueira agreed to meet Reuters and NBC News on November 13 at a neutral location, on condition it would not be revealed. Nogueira said an arrest warrant was outstanding against him in Panama. "Of course right now, I can be considered by the justice system to be fugitive. But there are two sides to everything."

It wasn't only alleged fraud that cost investors. After the global property crash of 2008, any chance of quick profit on the Trump Panama venture vanished.

By the time the Trump Ocean Club project was complete in 2011, many investors had withdrawn and lost their deposits rather than stump up the 70 percent balance. Bond holders lost, too, after Khafif's company, Newland, defaulted on payments and the bond was restructured.

There was one person who still profited: Donald Trump.

Whatever the losses investors might suffer, under Trump's licensing deal, detailed originally in the bond prospectus, the future U.S. president was guaranteed to receive payment. Court records from Newland's bankruptcy in 2013 indicate Trump agreed to reduce his fee, but that he still earned between $30 million and $50 million from lending his name to the project.

TL/DR: There are many connections to organized crime, money launderers, fraudsters, people traffickers, pimping and kidnapping, threats to kill and torture, as well as a (by now almost obligatory) boatload of shady Russians connected to the sales of apartments in a building in Panama that the TT lent his name to and that was Princess's pet project.

[GrumpyGran]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

shady Russians connected to the sales of apartments in a building in Panama that the TT lent his name to

It amazes me that these people will sell their name to anybody, no matter their methods, reputation or lack of morals, as long as they make a buck off of it.

I swear Dumpy would buy a one-way ticket to Hell if the Devil promised to rename it "Trump Towers at Warm Springs".

[Cartmann99]

6 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

I swear Dumpy would buy a one-way ticket to Hell if the Devil promised to rename it "Trump Towers at Warm Springs".

I think he'd also try to negotiate for the road to Hell to be named after him.

[fraurosena]

“Kelly Has Clipped his Wings”: Jared Kushner’s Horizons Are Collapsing within the West Wing

Quote

When Donald Trump appointed John Kelly as chief of staff in July, the four-star Marine general arrived with a mandate to bring order to a freewheeling West Wing. Gone are the days of staffers waltzing into the Oval Office to lobby the president on policy or supply him with gossip. Trump still tweets, of course, but for the most part Kelly’s cleanup has been successful, according to interviews with a half dozen Trump advisers, current and former West Wing officials, and Republicans close to the administration. The aide who has ceded the most influence in the Kelly era, these people said, is Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “Kelly has clipped his wings,” one high-level Republican in frequent contact with the White House told me.

It’s perhaps hard to remember now, but it wasn’t long ago when Trump handed Kushner a comically broad portfolio that included plans to reinvent government, reform the V.A., end the opioid epidemic, run point on China, and solve Middle East peace. But since his appointment, according to sources, Kelly has tried to shrink Kushner’s responsibilities to focus primarily on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And even that brief appears to be creating tensions between Kushner and Kelly. According to two people close to the White House, Kelly was said to be displeased with the result of Kushner’s trip to Saudi Arabia last month because it took place just days before 32-year-old Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman arrested 11 Saudi royals, including billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. The Washington Post reported that Kushner and M.B.S., as the prince is known, stayed up till nearly 4 a.m. “planning strategy,” which left Kelly to deal with the impression that the administration had advance knowledge of the purge and even helped orchestrate it, sources told me. (Asked about this, Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded, in part: “Chief Kelly and Jared had a good laugh about this inquiry as nothing in it is true.”)

Where this all leaves Kushner in Trump’s ever-changing orbit is a topic that’s being discussed by Republicans close to the White House. During Kelly’s review of West Wing operations over the summer, the chief of staff sought to downsize Kushner’s portfolio, two sources said. In the early days of the administration, sometimes with the help of a small cadre of Ivy League whiz kids who staff his Office of American Innovation, Kushner dreamed up scores of business “councils” that would advise the White House. “The councils are gone,” one West Wing official told me. With some of their purview being whittled away, “they seem lost,” the official added.

As Kushner’s Russia troubles mount—last Friday the Senate disclosed that he had not turned over e-mails about WikiLeaks, a claim his attorney, Abbe Lowell, denied—insiders are again speculating, as my colleague Emily Jane Fox reported last month, about how long Kushner and Ivanka Trump will remain in Washington. Despite Kushner’s efforts to project confidence about Robert Mueller’s probe, he expressed worry after the indictments of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates about how far the investigation could go. “Do you think they’ll get the president?” Kushner asked a friend, according to a person briefed on the conversation.

According to two Republicans who have spoken with Trump, the president has also been frustrated with Kushner’s political advice, including his encouragement to back losing Alabama G.O.P. candidate Luther Strange and to fire F.B.I. Director James Comey, which Kushner denies. (For what it’s worth, Kushner’s choice of Strange prevented Trump from the embarrassment of inadvertently supporting Roy Moore.) Trump, according to three people who’ve spoken to him, has advocated for Jared and Ivanka to return to New York in part because they are being damaged by negative press. “He keeps pressuring them to go,” one source close to Kushner told me. But as bad as the Russia investigation may be, it’s not clear a New York homecoming would be much better for Kushner, given that his family’s debt-ridden office tower at 666 Fifth Avenue could be headed for bankruptcy.

Running back to NY isn't going to help him much when Mueller comes after him. In fact, I don't think there will be anywhere safe for them to hide in the whole wide world. Ok, except maybe Russia.

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo has a lengthy article about Jared: "The shrinking profile of Jared Kushner"

Spoiler

A month ago, Jared Kushner — President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser — made a surprise trip to Riyadh to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the fellow son of a world leader who is making waves with crackdowns and modernization efforts.

Kushner, 36, flew commercial and the White House only announced the visit once he was already on the ground. There were no news releases touting the specifics of his meetings, which included two days of one-on-one and small private audiences with Salman, 32. White House officials said the trip was part of Kushner’s effort as Trump’s adviser to build regional support for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Just days after Kushner landed back in Washington, Salman launched a purge of allegedly corrupt Saudi officials also seen as rivals to the prince and his father, King Salman. Kushner had no knowledge or advance warning of the move, and the topic was not natural for the two to discuss, a White House official close to him said. “Jared’s portfolio is Israeli-Palestinian peace, and he respects what his lane is,” the official said.

The journey revealed Kushner as a figure who seems both near the center of power and increasingly marginalized at the same time. His once sprawling White House portfolio, which included walk-in privileges to the Oval Office, has been diminished to its original scope under Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and he has notably receded from public view.

His still-evolving role in the investigations of Russian election interference and possible obstruction of justice also make him a potential risk to President Trump, even as he enjoys the special status of being married to the boss’s daughter, Ivanka, and serving as one of the president’s senior confidants. Kushner’s family faces additional pressures over a troubled New York City skyscraper at 666 Fifth Ave., which he purchased in his role as head of his family’s real estate business but which he has divested from since entering the administration.

In a rare interview in his West Wing office earlier this month — a silver bowl of Halloween candy still on the table — Kushner offered his own version of the fable of the fox, who knows many things, and the hedgehog, who knows one important thing.

“During the campaign, I was more like a fox than a hedgehog. I was more of a generalist having to learn about and master a lot of skills quickly,” he said. “When I got to D.C., I came with an understanding that the problems here are so complex — and if they were easy problems, they would have been fixed before — and so I became more like the hedgehog, where it was more taking issues you care deeply about, going deep and devoting the time, energy and resources to trying to drive change.”

This portrait of Kushner comes from interviews with Kushner himself, as well as 12 senior administration officials, aides, outside advisers and confidants, some of them demanding anonymity to offer a more candid assessment. 

Allies say Kushner’s subtle shift into the background of the West Wing reflects his natural inclination to work hard and eschew the limelight, while his enemies gloat that it stems from a series of avoidable missteps that are the result of his political naivete. Following recent reports, which the White House denied, that the president privately blames Kushner for Mueller’s widening probe, Breitbart, the conservative website, snarkily dubbed him, “Mr. Perfect.”

Some aides scoff at the notion that Kushner isn’t still whispering to the president about official business. But one of Kelly’s conditions for taking the job was that everyone, including Kushner and his wife, had to go through him to reach the president, and Kelly has made clear that Kushner reports to him, aides said. 

The new hierarchy is part of Kelly’s effort to sideline Kushner, said one Republican in frequent contact with the White House, though others say the order Kelly has imposed has simply liberated Kushner to focus on his own portfolio — and eased some of the animosity his colleagues felt toward him. 

Kushner said he welcomes the change. “The order allows this place to function,” Kushner said. “My number one priority is a high functioning White House, because I believe in the president’s agenda, and I think it should get executed.” 

He still maintains the broad portfolio he took on at the beginning of the administration that made him a punchline among aides on Capitol Hill: Peace in the Middle East, as well as Canada, Mexico, and China, and overseeing the Office of American Innovation, an in-house group that focuses on tackling longer-term government challenges.

He attends meetings of his innovation group once a week, often on a Tuesday or Wednesday for an hour-long check-in and progress update. The innovation office launched with great fanfare in March, but some aides recently said they could not pinpoint exactly what it has accomplished.

Kushner and his allies reject that assessment, saying the office is focused on long-term projects. They say, for example, that the group helped the Department of Veterans Affairs launch their electronic medical records initiative in June, with Kushner expediting the process by calling Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and asking him to send over people from his department to help.

“If I ever get into a roadblock, we just elevate it to Jared,” said Chris Liddell, a senior White House official who works in the innovation office. “He’s great at saying, ‘Can’t we get so-and-so to come over?’ and we get it done on the spot.”

Kushner is one of the advisers helping on negotiations over the North American Free Trade Agreement, and he accompanied Trump on the first half of his Asia trip earlier this month.

But the main focus for Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, is working to bring peace in the Middle East — a task that has bedeviled negotiators far more experienced in the region for generations. What Kushner brings to the effort, say several senior White House officials, is personal relationships with players on all sides and a willingness to bet on long shot outcomes.

Before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Trump at the White House in September, Kushner and Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt met him at the Mandarin Oriental for a two-hour breakfast. More recently, on Halloween, Kushner suggested that he and Greenblatt visit Saeb Erekat, the lead Palestinian peace negotiator, at the apartment in Virginia where he is recuperating from a lung transplant. After briefly considering, and then nixing, wine — Erekat is Muslim — Kushner ultimately brought chocolate.

“This is very much a human conflict and a human-to-human relationship,” Greenblatt said. “When you’re able to touch somebody and talk about it, it’s a meaningful engagement. It takes a certain personality and Jared has that touch.”

Yet snags persist. A week ago, the Palestinians threatened to freeze all contact with the Trump administration after the State Department said the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington could not remain open — a decision it backtracked on Friday.

And Kushner’s friendship with Mohammed bin Salman raised questions after the crown prince’s anti-corruption campaign — which critics paint as an attempt to consolidate power, but devotees say is part of his efforts as a reformer — as well as concerns from some that Saudi Arabia now feels further emboldened within the region. 

The Mueller probe, meanwhile, is entering a new phase, with the special counsel announcing two indictments at the end of last month — including for Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort — while investigators begin to interview people close to the president’s inner circle. Kushner has turned over documents to the House and Senate committees investigating possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign, though in a letter, the Senate Judiciary Committee recently complained that Kushner had not been fully forthcoming — a charge his lawyer denies. 

So far, Mueller has filed no court documents to suggest Kushner is in legal jeopardy, but people close to the case say investigators have been looking at his meetings with Russians before and after the election, as well as his role in discussions that led to the firing of FBI director James B. Comey.

The news on Thanksgiving that former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn’s lawyers had notified Trump’s legal team that they could no longer share information about the Russia probe prompted speculation that Flynn may now be cooperating with Mueller — a potentially perilous sign for the president and his associates.

But friends say Kushner is even-keeled about the investigations. For him, they said, the most stressful moments came in May, amid news reports that he had tried to establish a secret back-channel with Russia during the transition, and that the FBI was probing his actions. He was frustrated, a White House official said, that he couldn’t respond to the allegations until he went to be interviewed by Congress.  

“Jared is an extraordinary calm person,” said H.R. McMaster, the White House national security adviser. “I have never seen him distracted.”

He huddled with his lawyers for hours in the run-up to his testimony before Congress, but is in less frequent daily contact now unless something from Mueller’s probe specifically requires his attention, one White House official said. 

Kushner’s detractors point to his role in the Russia probe as another sign of his poor political skills and continued risk to the president. A Republican close to the White House said that Kushner “has no judgment — never has and never will.”

But in some ways, Kushner appears more protected from the daily sniping that plagued the early months of Trump’s presidency. Over the summer, a trio of advisers who were rivals to Kushner were pushed out of the West Wing: Stephen K. Bannon, then the president’s chief strategist who now runs Breitbart; Reince Priebus, the chief of staff; and Sean Spicer, the press secretary. 

“He no longer is in an environment where he has an actual predator,” said one White House official, likening Kushner to Bannon’s regular prey. “That has probably helped his working environment some.” 

Kushner, with his whispery voice, has also proven one of the few people adept at absorbing Trump’s anger. He can speak to Trump in a shared language of transaction from their days in the New York real estate world. 

“I don’t try to manage him,” Kushner said. “I try to give him my honest feedback. If he asks my advice on something, sometimes I’ll give it, sometimes I’ll say, ‘Let me go call a few people,’ and then I’ll give it.” 

McMaster said Kushner sometimes acts as a translator between his father-in-law, the president, and his senior advisers. “He helped a lot of us learn faster what’s important to the president,” McMaster said. “His relationship with the president makes Jared valuable as an adviser to the president, and also as an adviser to the president’s advisers.”

When Kushner’s family first arrived in Washington, they agreed they would assess after six months whether they intended to stay. Trump himself has mused privately about the hit his daughter and son-in-law’s reputation is taking because of their White House roles and about what a great and easy life they had back in New York. Others have questioned why someone like Kushner would put himself in Mueller’s crosshairs by remaining in government. 

But when the couple reassessed in July, they reached a decision. “We’re here to stay,” Kushner said. “At the current moment, we’re charging forward.”

He added, “My wife asked me the other day if we should be looking at new houses, so that’s a good sign.”

Sigh, it looks like we will be stuck with Javanka in the west wing for the foreseeable future.

[fraurosena]

Ruh-roh...

MUELLER OPENS PROBE OF KUSHNER

Quote

Special counsel for the US Department of Justice Robert Mueller is investigating an attempt by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to block the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlement activity, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The probe is part of a larger investigation by Mueller into Kushner and his conversations with foreign leaders, including Israelis, during the two-month transition period between the November election and the time Trump took office. Under the Obama administration, the United States abstained and the only one of 14 countries on the UNSC not to approve the December 2016 measure. But the decision not to use its veto power to block the move, something it also did in 2011, was widely seen as a form of tacit approval of the resolution by the Obama administration.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Ivanka Trump to promote women in India amid questions about garment workers who make her clothes there"

Spoiler

When Ivanka Trump leads a U.S. delegation to southern India this week, the president’s daughter will use her official role as a White House adviser to promote female entre­pre­neur­ship and economic power.

But looming over her visit will be an uncomfortable question that Trump’s company has refused to answer: What are the work conditions for laborers in India who have pieced together clothes for her fashion line?

Trump has called for more support for working women around the world, but she has remained silent about the largely female garment workforce in India and other Asian countries that makes her clothing.

Her brand — which Trump no longer runs day to day but continues to own — has declined to identify the factories that produce her goods or detail how the workers are treated or paid.

The India trip will further elevate Trump as one of the administration’s biggest stars. Her advocacy for women on an international stage has become a key element of her political profile and personal image.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president’s eldest daughter “has been a champion of women’s economic empowerment not just in words but in action,” adding that she helped launch a World Bank initiative to help female entrepreneurs gain better access to capital, “which will empower women across the developing world to start their own businesses.”

In a telephone call with reporters Tuesday to preview her trip, Trump talked about “the administration’s commitment to the principle that when women are economically empowered, their communities and countries thrive.” She will give the keynote address to an entrepreneur summit that is themed “Women First, Prosperity for All.”

Trump will be greeted in the Indian tech capital of Hyderabad with trappings befitting a royal dignitary, including a gala dinner with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a restored palace.

It will be a world away from India’s garment industry, in which laborers earn about $100 a month, some amid punishing workloads, verbal abuse and sexual harassment, according to union organizers and industry experts.

“On the positive side, it’s a huge employer for women, but the systematic issue is that we don’t treat women properly, otherwise they would not be working in this kind of system,” said Anita Cheria, director of the social justice group Open Space, which works with garment workers in the southern city of Bangalore. “These industries can do much better for women.”

Trump’s trip throws a spotlight on her company and persistent questions about whether its practices match her rhetoric about improving opportunities for women in the developing world.

A Washington Post examination in July found Trump’s brand relies solely on foreign workers to produce its goods and lags behind many in the clothing industry when it comes to overseeing the treatment of workers in its supply chain.

At the time, executives told The Post that the brand had started looking into hiring a nonprofit workers’ rights group to increase oversight and help improve factory conditions. Brand president Abigail Klem said she was planning her first trip to tour facilities that make Ivanka Trump products.

“We recognize that our brand name carries a special responsibility,” she said.

But four months later, it is unclear if the company pursued any of those steps. Asked about the status of Klem’s trip or the hiring of a workers’ rights group, the company declined to comment.

Executives referred to a statement earlier this year from Klem, who said the company “is committed to only working with licensees who maintain internationally recognized labor standards across their supply chains.”

Using clothing labels and shipping records earlier this year, The Post traced Trump’s products to Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam.

But it remains a mystery which Indian factories produce Trump’s goods, including an array of Indian-made cotton blouses sold at department stores such as Lord & Taylor this spring.

The Post sought to identify the facilities by interviewing Indian garment industry officials, union organizers and workers in New Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and the state of Punjab but was unable to locate the facilities.

G-III, a large clothing distributor that makes Trump products, recently expanded into Bangalore, a major hub for the Indian garment industry, according to people who work in the industry and a G-III employee in Bangalore, who declined to discuss its operations.

A spokesman for G-III declined to identify the factories it uses in India, noting the company works with independent manufacturers in countries throughout Asia and Central and South America.

More than 20 labor and human rights groups co-signed a letter to Trump this month urging her brand to disclose the names of its supplier factories and allow independent groups to monitor its conditions, among other steps. She has not yet responded.

International human-rights and labor advocates say Trump is failing to use her platform to illuminate the conditions facing female garment workers around the world.

“If Ivanka truly wants her legacy to include protecting working women,” said Judy Gearhart, executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum, “she needs to start with the women in her supply chain.”

Earlier this year, an attorney for Trump told The Post that because of her White House role, she “has been advised that she cannot ask the government to act in an issue involving the brand in any way, constraining her ability to intervene personally.”

India’s textile industry is one of its largest employers, accounting for 15 percent of total exports and bringing in $17 billion for ready-made garments between 2016 and 2017, government data show.

Garment factories are spread across India, with a concentration around the capital city of New Delhi and the states of Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Women make up 60 percent of India’s garment sector, according to government data cited by the industry-backed Clean Clothes Campaign, though that does not count the large informal sector of women who sew from home.

The Garment Labor Union in Bangalore says women make up 85 percent of its total workforce, with unskilled and semiskilled laborers earning about $4.60 to $4.70 a day. Workers are often crammed into noisy factories without air conditioning — unbearable in India’s summer heat, when temperatures soar to 120 degrees. They churn out hundreds of shirts and jeans per day, with little time for water breaks, advocates said.

Despite the difficult working conditions, the industry overall has a good record in compliance checks for child labor, fire safety and overtime, experts said.

For her part, Ivanka Trump is increasingly playing a prominent diplomatic role in her father’s administration, frequently representing the United States among foreign dignitaries and heads of state.

In September, during a session of the United Nations General Assembly, Trump met with India’s foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj, whom she said in a tweet she has “long respected.”

She has faced mixed reception abroad. In Japan this month, she spoke to a half-empty auditorium, and she was booed by some in a Berlin audience this spring when she described her father as a “tremendous champion of supporting families.”

During her visit to India, Trump will lead the U.S. delegation to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad, a city of more than 6 million people and home to office campuses for Google, Facebook and Amazon.

The summit was launched in 2010 by the Obama administration as a way to link entrepreneurs with Muslim communities around the world. This year’s summit, co-hosted by India and the United States, is expected to host 1,500 business leaders and other attendees from 170 countries. More than 50 percent of the entrepreneurs in attendance will be women, organizers said.

Ivanka Trump will speak Tuesday at the summit’s plenary session, “Be the Change: Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership,” and will appear the following day for a session titled, “We Can Do It! Innovations in Workforce Development and Skills Training.” In her speech, Trump is expected to touch on themes such as women’s economic empowerment.

On the first day of the summit, Modi will host Trump at a gala dinner in the restored Falaknuma Palace, a luxury hotel previously owned by one of the monarchs, or nizams, who ruled Hyderabad before India’s independence.

Guests are traditionally ferried to the sprawling Italian-marble palace in a horse-drawn carriage and sprinkled with rose petals. The president’s daughter will dine with Modi and other dignitaries at a 101-seat teak table once known as the world’s longest dining table.

The city of Hyderabad has spent weeks preparing for the visit, doing an estimated $1.85 million in road repairs alone, according to municipal commissioner Harichandana Dasari.

Giant potholes have been repaired, and a bridge that Trump is scheduled to pass was painted in the colors of a rainbow. A local paper also reported that the ranks of stray dogs, ubiquitous in Indian cities, have mysteriously thinned.

Hundreds of panhandlers have been rounded up and swept out of sight, tucked in a shelter house run by a local ashram, according to local officials.

“We were told Ivanka is coming from America, and they want to round up the beggars,” said Gattu Giri, the joint secretary of the Amma Nanna Anada Ashramam, which has picked up the homeless in a $20,000 bus paid for by the State Bank of India.

Since they've jailed the homeless and panhandlers, I shudder to think of what they've done to the stray dogs.

[GreyhoundFan]

A little more about Ivanka's trip. I'm sure daddy will be happy that some of the media in India are calling it a "royal visit". Pardon me while I grab my airsick bag. "A speech, a Tillerson snub and a palace dinner — Ivanka Trump’s whirlwind India tour"

Spoiler

HYDERABAD, India — Ivanka Trump is only scheduled to be in India for two days, but her short trip — dubbed “a royal visit” by the Indian media — has been already peppered with controversies like studs on one of her made-in-China handbags.

She arrived Tuesday to headline a global entrepreneurship summit in the southern city of Hyderabad, where authorities had swept the streets clean of beggars — and some stray dogs.

She came without senior State Department officials, a departure from years past when high-level U.S. envoys joined the conference. The snub by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was reportedly over his reluctance to bolster her global image with a high-powered team.

She headlined an event focused on uplifting and supporting women entrepreneurs, but there was no mention of her apparel company’s use of low-wage workers in India and other countries to stitch her clothes.

But at Tuesday’s event, entrepreneurs and business leaders praised Ivanka Trump, describing her as an elegant and professional working mother who built her own business and has been a strong advocate for women while adviser to her father in the White House.

“She is a very fierce and independent woman. That’s what I admire about her,” said Renuka Diwan, the co-founder of an agriculture start-up in Pune. “She’s successful in her own right. Nobody has to introduce her as Donald Trump’s daughter. She has made a name for herself.”

Trump shared the dais at the U.S.-sponsored Global Entrepreneurship Summit with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and business leaders, giving a keynote speech that touched on her familiar themes of women’s empowerment and supporting entrepreneurship.

She touted the administration’s work reducing “job-crushing regulations” that hurt small business owners, its proposal for paid family leave and her efforts to lobby to pass tax cuts.

“We must ensure that women entrepreneurs have access to capital, access to networks and mentors and access to equitable laws,” she said, noting that if India closed its labor force gender gap by a half, the economy could grow by $150 billion in three years.

Ivanka Trump’s apparel company, that she still controls, exclusively relies on foreign factories in places like Bangladesh, Indonesia, China and India, where mostly female workers are paid a few dollars a day for long hours, industry experts have said. Earlier this year, The Washington Post found that Trump’s apparel company lags behind many others in the industry in the way it monitors treatment of its mostly female workers.

Entrepreneurs from more than 100 countries attended the event in Hyderabad, nicknamed “Cyberabad” because it’s home to such tech companies as Microsoft, Facebook and Google. On Wednesday, Trump is to appear on a panel titled “We Can Do It! Innovations in Workforce Development and Skills Training.”

President Trump had announced his daughter would be leading the U.S. delegation to the event after a White House meeting with Modi in June.

Her visit is seen here as an opportunity for India to cement ties with the Trump administration. On Tuesday, Ivanka Trump met for the second time with India’s minister of external affairs, Sushma Swaraj, and she will be the guest of honor at a glitzy dinner Modi is hosting Tuesday at a hilltop marble palace that once belonged to a Nizam, the monarchs who ruled Hyderabad before India’s independence from Britain.

In India, a country of 1.3 billion people, empowering women is particularly challenging, analysts say. The rate of women joining the workforce has dropped, particularly in rural areas, even as incomes have grown. Female entrepreneurs face specific challenges: Only about 14 percent of businesses are headed by women, a third in the agricultural sector.

Female business owners have difficulty accessing capital and being taken seriously in a business culture that is male-driven, entrepreneurs say.

“There are many challenges,” said Thejaswi S., a Bangalore-based entrepreneur creating a line of affordably priced nutrition bars and who uses only his second initial. “They say, ‘You are female, this is the age you are supposed to get married, not get into business, you are too young to head a company.’ This is what people say, even in my own family.”

Women make up less than 25 percent of the enrollment in higher education, notes Vijayaraghavan M. Chariar, a professor of rural development and technology at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi.

“There are a few success stories but there are very serious issues of patriarchy and gender stereotyping that are preventing a lot more creative women from joining the ranks of entrepreneurs,” Chariar said.

Ivanka Trump, he went on “is a nice Barbie doll. Everybody wants to have a picture taken with her. But there are much more substantial women who are entrepreneurs we ought to be celebrating.”

Trump launched her branded empire in 2007 with a line of high-end jewelry and gradually expanded toward a line of more affordable clothing, bags and shoes that garnered $100 million in retail revenue last year, according to Forbes.

I love the Barbie doll reference.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[onekidanddone]

15 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

This little boy has the short term memory of half a flea. Sadly, so does Trump's base.

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, onekidanddone said:

This little boy has the short term memory of half a flea. Sadly, so does Trump's base.

Oh, he has plenty of memory. And the ethics of his father and father-in-law. No one  has ever called him on his lies. Not until now. He still thinks that his FIL will get him out of this.

[AnywhereButHere]

19 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

Oh, he has plenty of memory. And the ethics of his father and father-in-law. No one  has ever called him on his lies. Not until now. He still thinks that his FIL will get him out of this.

Poor, deluded Jared. His FIL will throw him so far under the bus, he'll be a pancake with tire treads.

 

[JordynDarby5]

On 11/29/2017 at 2:12 PM, AnywhereButHere said:

Poor, deluded Jared. His FIL will throw him so far under the bus, he'll be a pancake with tire treads.

 

Anyone else have Dark Helmet's voice from Spaceballs saying the second line? When he's pretending to be Vespa's father to lure her out of Yogurt's place. Completely with the "Fool you". Or was that the intent?

[GrumpyGran]

8 hours ago, JordynDarby5 said:

Anyone else have Dark Helmet's voice from Spaceballs saying the second line? When he's pretending to be Vespa's father to lure her out of Yogurt's place. Completely with the "Fool you". Or was that the intent?

Now I have to go watch it! Find it and watch it, that one may be hard to dig up.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump supporters were reminded that Ivanka once denounced Roy Moore: ‘A special place in hell’"

Spoiler

A digital billboard was roaming around Pensacola, Fla., as President Trump held a rally there and urged residents in nearby Alabama to vote for embattled Republican candidate Roy Moore in the Senate race.

The billboard, displayed on the side of a moving truck Friday, reminded people of what Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and a White House adviser, had previously said about Moore amid accusations of sexual misconduct involving teenage girls.

“There’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children. I’ve yet to see a valid explanation and I have no reason to doubt the victims’ accounts,” Ivanka Trump told the Associated Press last month.

The billboard appears to be the work of the liberal group American Bridge, which featured the comments in big, bold letters next to Ivanka Trump’s image. The group seemed to double down on the trolling by blasting the comments over a loud speaker outside the rally.

Ivanka Trump’s words contradicted her father’s unwavering support of Moore. The president defended Moore last month, saying the former Alabama chief justice “totally denies” the allegations against him and telling reporters at the White House that “you have to listen to him, also.”

At his rally Friday, just four days before the Alabama special election, Trump’s endorsement of Moore was even more unequivocal.

“We want people that are going to protect your gun rights, great trade deals instead of the horrible deals. And we want jobs, jobs, jobs. So get out and vote for Roy Moore. Do it. Do it. Do it,” he told supporters.

Trump also singled out one of Moore’s accusers, Beverly Young Nelson, who had admitted earlier Friday that she added notes — a location, a date and the initials “D.A.” — to what she said was Moore’s inscription to her in her yearbook. Nelson said she stands by her claim that Moore sexually assaulted her when she was a 16-year-old waitress in Gadsden, Ala.

“So did you see what happened today?” Trump asked supporters. “You know the yearbook? Did you see that? There was a little mistake made. She started writing things in the yearbook. Oh, what are we going to do?”

Trump also mentioned Nelson’s attorney, Gloria Allred: “Anytime you see her, you know something’s going wrong.”

The Washington Post first reported on the decades-old allegations against Moore in early November. Five women have told The Post that Moore pursued them when they were teenagers and he was an assistant district attorney in his 30s. Nelson, who came forward with her attorney, was not among those women.

Moore, who has denied engaging in sexual misconduct, had told Fox News’s Sean Hannity that he may have dated teenage girls when he was in his 30s, though he said he could not recall.

Ivanka Trump’s condemnation of Moore isn’t the only time the first daughter broke with her father on divisive issues.

While her father shied away from immediately condemning white supremacists and neo-Nazis after deadly violence erupted in Charlottesville last summer, Ivanka Trump didn’t.

“There should be no place in society for racism, white supremacy and neo-Nazis. We must all come together as Americans — and be one country UNITED,” she tweeted.

The first daughter’s stance on Syrian refugees also contradicts her father’s policy. She told NBC News in April that “a global humanitarian crisis is happening,” and opening the country’s borders to Syrian refugees “has to be part of the discussion.”

The latest version of the president’s travel ban bars people from Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Somalia, North Korea and Venezuela from entering the country.

Although she has departed from her father on some issues, Ivanka Trump has been accused of being complicit in her father’s policy agenda. After her comments on Moore, The Post’s Jennifer Rubin pointed out that many others, her father included, have been accused of sexual misconduct.

 

[JMarie]

I guess Ivanka didn't get the "Merry Christmas" memo

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/12/12/ivanka-trumps-happy-holidays-post-reveals-a-growing-divide-in-the-white-house/23305049/

Quote

As Donald Trump campaigned for president, one of his promises to was to end the "War on Christmas." 

"You go to stores, you don’t see the word Christmas," Trump said last year, the Washington Post reported. "It says 'happy holidays' all over. I say, 'Where’s Christmas?' I tell my wife, 'Don’t go to those stores.' ... I want to see Christmas."

Since becoming president, Trump has doubled down on his pro-Christmas message, recently filling a rally in Pensacola, Florida with "Merry Christmas" signs. On Tuesday morning, Trump changed his Twitter background to an image of people at the rally holding up letters to spell "CHRISTMAS." 

However, hours before, Ivanka Trump raised eyebrows when she shared her own festive greetings on Twitter, tweeting "Happy Holidays" on Monday evening.