Trump 45

[GreyhoundFan]

I realize this is the Borowitz report, so it's satire, but it would explain some things...

 

[47of74]

Fuck Head did an own goal 

Quote

The Lincoln Project was formed late last year by some of the most prominent "Never Trumpers" in the country: George Conway, the husband of senior Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway, as well as Republican consultants John Weaver, Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson.

On Monday, the Lincoln Project released an ad entitled "Mourning in America" -- playing off the famed "Morning in America" ad by President Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Its message is dark, foreboding and harsh. And it's very likely that almost no one would have even seen that message had it not been for Donald Trump. 

Just after midnight Monday -- 12:46 a.m. ET Tuesday morning, to be precise -- Trump took to Twitter to rant about the ad and the group.

He does only the best own goals 

[47of74]

Twitter wants users to control their potty mouths...

Quote

Twitter Inc. will ask users to watch their language as part of a new test to clean up parts of its service.

When someone replies to another user’s post, Twitter may prompt them to reconsider their response if it includes slurs, epithets or swear words, a company spokesperson said.

“When things get heated, you may say things you don’t mean,” the company said in a tweet Tuesday. This new prompt, “gives you the option to revise your reply before it’s published.” The test, which for now is only available on iOS devices, won’t include an edit feature -- once a reply is sent, it won’t be able to be changed, the spokesperson confirmed. Users can still send their original reply even after a prompt to revise it.

Well FUCK that Twitter.  Agolf Twitler and his groupies are leading us off a fucking cliff and you want to engage in tone policing.  Go to Hell twitter.  I'll use any swear words I goddamn well please when talking about Sickfuck von Bodybags.

[Drala]

The first time I read John Gartner's analysis of Trump's democidal sadism, I thought it was a bit of a stretch.   I'm not well versed in forensic psychology, so I gave Gartner's thesis a second reading and became more open to the idea of democide.  Then I found this Salon interview where Gartner explains his analysis of Trump's murderous pathology in a manner I could easily follow.  Scary stuff, and a fascinating read in the context of Trump's handling of the pandemic.

https://www.salon.com/2020/04/25/psychologist-john-gartner-trump-is-a-sexual-sadist-who-is-actively-engaging-in-sabotage/

[GreyhoundFan]

Lest we be fooled into thinking Twitler is actually thinking about all the dying Americans or the millions out of work, he started with his wall nonsense again. "Trump order to paint border wall black could drive up cost $500 million or more"

Spoiler

President Trump is once more pushing to have his border wall painted black, a design change that is projected to add at least $500 million in costs, according to government contracting estimates obtained by The Washington Post.

The president’s determination to have the steel bollards coated in black has fluctuated during the past several years, and military commanders and border officials believed as recently as last fall that they had finally talked him out of it. They consider the black paint unnecessary, costly and a significant long-term maintenance burden, and they left it out of the original U.S. Customs and Border Protection design specifications.

Trump has not let go of the idea, insisting that the dark color will enhance its forbidding appearance and leave the steel too hot to touch during summer months. During a border wall meeting at the White House last month amid the coronavirus pandemic, the president told senior adviser Jared Kushner and aides to move forward with the paint job and to seek out cost estimates, according to four administration officials with knowledge of the meeting.

“POTUS has changed his mind and now wants the fence painted. We are modifying contracts to add,” said one official involved in the construction effort who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of being fired.

Trump, during that meeting, directed aides to seek input from North Dakota-based Fisher Sand and Gravel, a company the president favors. Fisher has a $400 million contract to build a section of new barrier in Arizona, an award that is under review by the Department of Defense inspector general.

The Post obtained a copy of painting estimates that federal contracting officials produced, and it shows costs ranging from $500 million for two coats of acrylic paint to more than $3 billion for a premium “powder coating” on the structure’s 30-foot steel bollards, the high end of the options the officials have identified.

The White House has not yet chosen a grade of paint, but Trump has insisted for years that the barrier should be black to discourage climbers. He has favored a shade known as “flat black” or “matte black” because of its heat-absorbent properties.

The president has promoted the border wall in tweets as well as in private conversations in recent weeks, aides say, amid criticism of the administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. He has also touted the structure — along with his efforts to block immigration — as a defense against the virus and a benefit to public health.

Trump has made the border wall a pillar of his reelection pitch, promising to finish 500 miles by early next year, a goal that will require crews to nearly double their pace in coming months. Crews have completed about 175 miles of new barriers so far, according to the latest CBP data.

The White House declined to comment. A White House official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters said Trump thinks the black paint would make the structure more difficult to climb and less likely to rust. CBP did not respond to requests for comment on Trump’s decision to have the wall painted.

The steel used for the project is designed to be weather resistant, with a 30-year service life, despite exposure to intense solar radiation and extreme temperature changes. Painting the bollards would add significant costs to what already is one of the most expensive federal infrastructure projects in U.S. history.

The White House has obtained about $15 billion for the project so far, two-thirds of which has been diverted from Defense Department construction funds and counternarcotics programs. CBP projections indicate the money will pay for approximately 731 miles of new barriers, but those estimates did not take into account the president’s painting plans.

Officials working on the project said the paint job risks slowing the pace of construction, because crews will need to return to already-completed sections of the barrier, which quickly oxidizes into an orange hue with exposure to the elements.

Engineers also note that painting sections that are already set in concrete and weathered will be significantly more expensive than painting the bollards in advance of setting them in place.

“Painting it before it’s installed would be cheaper,” said Ed Zarenski, a retired construction cost estimator in Massachusetts who worked on large public works projects. “Otherwise you’ll have to run a bucket truck on both sides of the barrier.”

One official with knowledge of the plans said it wasn’t clear how the painting crews would operate on the Mexico side of the barrier, where only a narrow strip of land separates the two countries. Painters would potentially need to apply the black coating using a specialized boom long enough to extend up and over the barrier from the U.S. side.

The Trump administration had a section of new barrier in California painted black last year, at a cost of about $1 million per mile, but U.S. troops provided the labor for that effort, reducing costs.

The private contractors are projected to charge about $1.2 million per mile to apply two coats of acrylic paint, estimates show. That is by far Trump’s cheapest option, but documents note that repairs to the structure will be impossible to color-match with the acrylic paint, making welds and other patches obvious and unsightly.

Scarring is certainly a factor in high-traffic border regions. The Post reported last month that smuggling crews in the San Diego area sawed into the new bollard fencing 18 times during a one-month span last year.

Other midrange paint options include a military-grade epoxy coating and sealant used for dams, canals and other hydraulic infrastructure projects, known as System 21, the documents show. It is highly resistant to abrasion and rust and is amenable to welding, but the cost would be at least $4.5 million per mile.

Even more expensive would be a black powder coating, a process commonly used to paint cars and appliances because of its sleek appearance. It would cost $6.8 million per mile to apply, according to the government estimates.

Trump told military commanders and border officials to research different painting options and to consult with Fisher in particular.

Last year, after Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) heavily promoted Fisher to the president as a cheaper option for building the border wall, Trump urged aides to give the firm a building contract. The North Dakota company and its owner have donated to Cramer and the president, and the company sued the government when its border wall bids were not accepted.

The U.S. Army Corps awarded the company a contract worth up to $400 million in December to complete 31 miles of new barriers along a National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona. After lawmakers raised concerns about White House interference in the contracting process, the Pentagon’s inspector general said it would audit the Fisher deal.

One administration official working on the project said Trump’s mention of Fisher in a recent meeting about the wall project did not amount to an attempt to influence the painting contract, and instead reflected his opinion of the company and its CEO, Tommy Fisher, whom the president sees as an innovative thinker and loyal supporter. Attorneys for Fisher did not respond to requests for comment.

During the same White House meeting, Kushner expressed frustration at the pace of land acquisition in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, where the Trump administration is preparing to seize hundreds of parcels of private land from owners who have refused to sell.

Trump’s son-in-law, who is also at the center of the administration’s pandemic response, has been placed in charge of overseeing construction. He expressed frustration at this role during the meeting, telling others the wall was not his favorite project but that he is the only one who can get it done.

A White House official said Kushner was only reiterating that the wall’s progress had been much slower — and had produced less coverage than Trump wanted — before Kushner took over the effort. The White House declined to discuss Kushner’s statement.

Three officials with knowledge of the meeting said Kushner complained that the current firms contracted to assist with land acquisition were not moving quickly enough, and he urged military commanders and border officials to work with larger firms capable of performing a broader array of services, such as survey, title work, appraisals, condemnation packages and design.

The administration plans to build about 150 miles of new barriers along the banks of the lower Rio Grande, where nearly all of the land is in private hands.

Raini Brunson, a spokesperson for the Army Corps of Engineers, confirmed this week the agency has requested information from additional real estate firms.

“In response to new requirements and changing market conditions, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regularly seeks input from industry to inform future acquisition strategies,” she said.

As the White House border wall meeting wound down, Trump was shown pictures and charts of the wall, and was pleased to hear that crews remain on track to complete nearly 500 miles by November.

About 75 new linear miles have been added since the beginning of the year, so contractors would need to more than double the pace of construction in the coming months to fulfill that goal.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

In addition to his obsessive crap with the border wall, he's still trying to take away our insurance: "Trump vows complete end of Obamacare law despite pandemic"

Quote

President Trump said Wednesday he will continue trying to toss out all of the Affordable Care Act, even as some in his administration, including Attorney General William P. Barr, have privately argued parts of the law should be preserved amid a pandemic.

“We want to terminate health care under Obamacare,” Trump told reporters Wednesday, the last day for his administration to change its position in a Supreme Court case challenging the law. “Obamacare, we run it really well. . . . But running it great, it’s still lousy health care.”

While the president has said he will preserve some of the Affordable Care Act’s most popular provisions, including guaranteed coverage for preexisting medical conditions, he has not offered a plan to do so, and his administration’s legal position seeks to end all parts of the law, including those provisions.

Democrats, who view the fight over the Affordable Care Act as a winning election issue for them, denounced the president’s decision.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement that “the President’s insistence on doubling down on his senseless and cruel argument in court to destroy the ACA and every last one of its benefits and protections is unconscionable, particularly in the middle of a pandemic.”

Trump’s declaration caps months of debate within his administration about the best course of action, in which the stakes have only become greater now that the nation’s health-care system is struggling to deal with the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed more than 70,000 Americans.

On Monday, Barr attended a meeting of senior officials in which he argued the administration should temper its opposition to Obamacare, leaving some parts of the law intact, according to people familiar with the discussion, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the conversation was private.

The case before the court was brought by a group of Republican states, and as part of that case, the Trump administration is seeking to invalidate the entire Affordable Care Act, which passed in 2010 and became one of President Barack Obama’s most significant legislative victories.

Barr and others in the administration have argued that killing Obamacare completely could be politically damaging to Republicans in an election year, particularly when there is a national health crisis. In two previous case, the Supreme Court upheld the law, but if the high court were to strike it down, millions of people could find themselves without affordable health care.

The high court plans to hear arguments in the case later this year, and a decision may not come until 2021, well after the November election.

The latest ACA suit was organized by Republican attorneys general in Texas and other states. When the Trump administration declined to defend the law, a coalition of Democratic-led states entered.

The case began after the Republican-led Congress in 2017, unable to secure the votes to abolish the law, reduced to zero the penalty for a person not buying health insurance. Lawyers for the state of Texas argued that in doing so, Congress had removed the essential tax element that the Supreme Court had previously ruled made the program constitutional.

A district judge in Texas agreed and said the entire law must fall. Eventually the Trump administration agreed with that assessment.

 

[AmericanRose]

In Trump World, any opposition to Trump - even a mere difference in opinion - is seen as being 'against' him. That right there just screams cult to me.

His supporters hear he wants to end the ACA, and they assume he'll have a plan - he just hasn't announced it yet, because then the MSM will shit all over it. And of course, it will be better than Obama's, because it's Trump. I've also been informed that insurance before the ACA was better, though I remember hearing complaints about rising costs, no coverage for pre-existing conditions, and lifetime limits 10 years ago.

[GreyhoundFan]

I read this with interest. I hope it bites him in his ample ass: "Trump made Florida his official residence. He may have also made a legal mess."

Spoiler

For nearly a quarter-century, President Trump has envisioned boats docking at Mar-a-Lago, his swanky club set on 17 acres of prime real estate in Palm Beach, Fla., that rambles across manicured grounds between the beach and the placid waters of the Lake Worth Lagoon and the Intracoastal Waterway.

Trump’s quest has, predictably, irked his wealthy neighbors, sparking one of those pesky territorial squabbles that occupy town halls and zoning boards in tony neighborhoods across the country. But the attempt by Trump and his legal team to squeeze through approval of his dock while the nation’s attention is trained on the coronavirus pandemic is now surfacing a potentially nettlesome problem for the president.

Digging into the catacombs of local records to build an argument against the dock, a small group of loosely aligned preservationists, disgruntled neighbors and attorneys have unearthed documents that they assert call into question the legality of Trump’s much-publicized decision late last year to change his official domicile from Manhattan to Mar-a-Lago and to register to vote in Florida using the club’s address. According to those documents, and additional materials obtained by The Washington Post, Trump agreed in writing years ago to change the use of the Mar-a-Lago property from a single-family residence to a private club owned by a corporation he controls.

The distinction is significant. The property is taxed as a private club — not as a residence, according to Palm Beach County property appraiser records. Trump’s own attorney assured local officials in Palm Beach before they voted to approve the club in 1993 that he would not live there. Mar-a-Lago’s website says only that Trump maintains “private quarters” at the club.

“It’s one or the other — it’s a club or it’s your home,” Reginald Stambaugh, an attorney who represents a neighbor opposed to Trump’s dock plan, said in a recent interview. “You can’t have it both ways.”

If Stambaugh and his client have their way and persuade Palm Beach to stand firm on its long-standing agreement, Trump will be forced to make a choice, he said: Stop operating Mar-a-Lago as a club and make it a single-family home again or change his official domicile to someplace else.

White House and Mar-a-Lago officials did not respond to interview requests.

The making of a private club

The saga traces back to another era in the president’s life, long before he occupied the White House. In the mid-1980s, a time when Trump was being celebrated as a business savant, he said he scooped up Mar-a-Lago at a bargain-basement price. The storied Mediterranean-style mansion was built in the 1920s by the cereal-fortune heiress Marjorie Meriweather Post and her then-husband, the legendary financial mogul E.F. Hutton.

When Post died in the early 1970s, she left the estate to the U.S. government, envisioning it as a winter retreat for high-ranking officials. It was named a National Historic Landmark. But her plan to make it a government redoubt was never put into effect. As the cost of maintaining the property soared, the government gave it back to Post’s foundation.

Enter Donald Trump.

It seemed like a dream pairing for the businessman: a grand property now owned by one of America’s most aggressively self-promoting dealmakers. After buying the estate, Trump set about restoring the property. He hosted grand galas.

The halcyon days were short-lived. By the early 1990s, Trump’s business empire was in peril. His foray into the Atlantic City, N.J., gambling scene was a mess. In 1991 and 1992, four of his ventures filed for bankruptcy protection: Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, the Trump Castle Hotel and Casino, and the Plaza Hotel in New York.

He began grumbling about the cost of maintaining the mansion and grounds of Mar-a-Lago, saying he was spending $3 million a year in upkeep. Ever the master of spin, Trump claimed he could afford the upkeep but quipped to the Miami Herald that “I just feel foolish doing it. You know, for $3 million you can buy the nicest house in Miami.”

Trump hit upon a solution to his ownership of a money pit that was true to his developer’s heart: Carve up the Mar-a-Lago property into pieces and sell as many as 10 luxury homes. But the notion of tampering with the landmark property angered preservationists and the moneyed denizens of Palm Beach.

The town council shot down his plan.

Trump, drawing from his well-worn smash-mouth playbook, sued the town. At the same time, he and his attorney were birthing yet another clever plan: He’d convert his personal residence into a private club. The town’s leaders were wary but slowly started warming to the idea as a way of preserving the historic mansion.

During lengthy talks with the council, Trump’s attorney, Paul Rampell, addressed a question on a lot of minds in those days: Would Trump live at the club?

“The answer is no,” Rampell said, according to a summary transcript of a 1993 council meeting, “except that he will be a member of the Club and would be entitled to use its guest rooms.”

In August 1993, Trump got his club, signing an extraordinarily detailed document called a “use agreement” that governs to this day how Mar-a-Lago can be used. The document makes clear that Mar-a-Lago would no longer be a single-family residence and was now a private club.

Trump agreed to convey the title of the property from his personal possession to a corporate entity he controlled named Mar-a-Lago Club, Inc. He promised he wouldn’t put up condominiums or co-op units. He also took care of a worrisome issue for some council members: the question of what would happen if the club failed. In that event, Trump agreed in writing to the same provision his attorney had promised: “The use of the Land shall revert to a single family residence.”

The deal he struck made it clear that no one could live permanently at the property. It stated that the guest suites could be used only by members for a maximum of three times a year for no longer than seven days at a time, and that those seven-day stays couldn’t be strung together consecutively.

Trump also made a promise that has come back to create problems for him in the fourth year of his presidency: He said he wouldn’t put up a dock.

But just because he’d made that pledge about the dock didn’t mean he planned to keep it.

In 1996, he told New York magazine: “Now at some point we are looking at building a marina out at the Intercoastal,” misidentifying the Intracoastal Waterway, the lengthy patchwork of navigation channels, natural bays and inlets that stretches across large swaths of the East Coast.

Aware that this plan would not be greeted with applause, Trump told the magazine reporter, “You are the first to know this because the world is going to crack when they read this.”

The dock request

Trump had his deal and his club, but he wasn’t satisfied.

He unsuccessfully sued the town in 1996, attempting to lift many of the restrictions he’d agreed to three years earlier. He wanted out of the limits on the guest suites, for instance, and he also wanted to drop a requirement that half the members of the club be Palm Beach residents or business owners.

With Trump always asking for more, his relationship with the town frayed.

At one point, Mayor Paul Ilyinsky told one of Trump’s attorneys who was working with Rampell — James Green — that “to listen to this trash coming from you and Mr. Rampell, frankly, is going to make me throw up,” according to a transcript included in Trump’s lawsuit.

When Green called his bluff, the mayor responded, “I may do so on you.”

Jack McDonald, a former Palm Beach mayor and councilman who was a charter member of Mar-a-Lago, said in an interview that the town was ever wary of taking on Trump because he is litigious. McDonald had figured Trump was living part of the year at the resort, but said “it’s one of those things that’s been able to slide by” because no one was willing to make a public fuss about it.

As for the provision about club members not using guest rooms more than three times a year, McDonald said, “if that’s what the agreement says, he’s violating the agreement.”

More than two decades after cutting his deal for the club, Trump still wants his dock. He asked for it in 2018, saying that it was necessary “for safety and security reasons to protect the President of the United States and his family.” His attorneys went on to say that the request had been endorsed by the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.

That last part grabbed the attention of attorneys for Mar-a-Lago’s neighbors, who feared the appearance of rowdy booze cruises, loud boats and damage to precious underwater coquina rocks that they believe would be destroyed by dredging to deepen the channel and allow boats to pull up to the dock. The Palm Beach sheriff had weighed in to back the dock plan, citing similar security concerns. But the attorneys had seen nothing from either the Secret Service or the Coast Guard. A person familiar with the submission said the Secret Service and Coast Guard provided only oral endorsements. The Secret Service and Coast Guard declined to comment.

Stambaugh and others managed to stall the dock plan when it came up on the council’s agenda in February 2019. Among those who weighed in against the proposal — and has been fighting behind the scenes and helping develop legal tactics ever since — was Glenn Zeitz, a pugnacious Philadelphia-area attorney who owns a home in Palm Beach and had defeated Trump in the mid-1990s in an eminent domain lawsuit related to one of Trump’s Atlantic City casinos.

The dock request, not unlike others of its type, trudged slowly through the system in Palm Beach, a town with a population of just over 8,000. In the meantime, Trump made a surprise move. In early October, the New York Times reported that he changed his official domicile to Palm Beach, Fla. Trump quickly confirmed that he’d done so via Twitter.

The address he listed was 1100 S. Ocean Blvd.— Mar-a-Lago.

Reading about the switch, Jane Day — a respected preservationist in South Florida — screamed in frustration.

“That made me crazy!” she said in a recent interview.

Day knows practically every inch of Mar-a-Lago from more than a decade serving as Palm Beach’s preservation consultant. She’d developed a deep affection for the place. She’d climbed on ladders to show Trump the intricacies of 16th-century tapestries that were included in the sale when he bought Mar-a-Lago. She was there when Marla Maples, then Trump’s wife, brought home their baby, Tiffany, Day recalled.

And Day knew that Trump had promised not to live at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump’s switch to Florida also tossed a quirky legal puzzle into the mix. Trump — who has traveled to Mar-a-Lago repeatedly as president and has referred to the club as his Winter White House — has said that he voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary last month. Florida law requires voters to register using their “legal residence” addresses under penalty of perjury.

What would happen to his voting status, some of his adversaries in the dock fight have begun to wonder, if Palm Beach declares that he doesn’t have the legal right to use Mar-a-Lago as his official domicile?

Zeitz called Trump’s possible violation of his agreement with Palm Beach “a substantial and serious potential legal impediment” to the president using Mar-a-Lago as his voter-registration address and official domicile.

In Florida, a state with a long, florid history of voting controversies, a person needs to cross multiple hurdles to legally register at a particular address, according to Ronald Meyer, a Florida lawyer and election law expert, who spoke about the law in general rather than the specifics of Trump’s situation.

First, voters have to state an intention to reside somewhere, Meyer said. But that’s not enough. They also have to demonstrate that the address they’re using for their voter registration is legitimate by taking concrete steps such as buying or renting the home at that address, registering a vehicle there, using the address to apply for a driver’s license or for tax purposes.

“There is no litmus test; but there must be some confluence of the subjective intention to declare a residence with objective factors which demonstrate actual residency,” Meyer said.

While Day stewed about Trump’s moves, a local attorney was starting to craft a strategy to block Trump. Stambaugh is a 5th-generation Palm Beach native whose grandfather Gleason N. Stambaugh Sr. was the chairman of the Florida Inland Navigation District. He hoped to resolve the matter politely, without litigation.

News of the internecine battle of the elite in Palm Beach was soon overtaken by the coronavirus pandemic. A thousand miles to the north, Trump took to television on March 15 and encouraged people around the country to stay at home to help limit the spread of the virus. Businesses and government offices shut down or shifted to sometimes balky remote operations.

Four days after Trump’s stay-at-home announcement — with little fanfare — the president’s attorneys sent another dock plan to the town of Palm Beach, with the idea of it being heard by the town’s Landmarks Commission, which oversees historic properties and makes recommendations to the town council, on April 22. At that time, U.S. coronavirus cases had topped 830,000 and deaths surpassed 47,000. (The request was signed by Trump’s son, Eric, on behalf of Mar-a-Lago Inc. On the president’s financial disclosure forms, Donald Trump’s revocable trust is listed as the owner of Mar-a-Lago Inc.)

Stambaugh was furious.

“It’s unconscionable that Donald Trump and his club Mar-a-Lago would expect to have a proper public hearing during the coronavirus crisis,” Stambaugh said in an interview. “It’s obvious that Mar-a-Lago is attempting to subvert the political participation process.”

Trump’s Palm Beach attorney, Harvey Oyer III, declined to comment.

Amid the pandemic, the town’s historic properties oversight board delayed hearing the dock request until late May.

When they eventually get to it, the town’s leaders may encounter a new wrinkle. Trump, who’d previously argued that the dock was necessary for security reasons and made no mention of using the club as his home, has now pivoted to asserting that Mar-a-Lago is his “personal residence.”

“The request is simply to add an accessory structure, a dock for private family use only,” the application.

That claim, Stambaugh argues, simply doesn’t match up with the agreements Trump has signed and the promises he’s made that Mar-a-Lago would be a club rather than his home.

And so, the Town of Palm Beach, Trump’s frequent foil, won’t just be faced with a decision about a dock. It’ll also be pressed to answer an existential question about Mar-a-Lago.

Just what is it?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Cartmann99]

On 5/6/2020 at 7:43 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

Lest we be fooled into thinking Twitler is actually thinking about all the dying Americans or the millions out of work, he started with his wall nonsense again. "Trump order to paint border wall black could drive up cost $500 million or more"

  Hide contents

President Trump is once more pushing to have his border wall painted black, a design change that is projected to add at least $500 million in costs, according to government contracting estimates obtained by The Washington Post.

The president’s determination to have the steel bollards coated in black has fluctuated during the past several years, and military commanders and border officials believed as recently as last fall that they had finally talked him out of it. They consider the black paint unnecessary, costly and a significant long-term maintenance burden, and they left it out of the original U.S. Customs and Border Protection design specifications.

Trump has not let go of the idea, insisting that the dark color will enhance its forbidding appearance and leave the steel too hot to touch during summer months. During a border wall meeting at the White House last month amid the coronavirus pandemic, the president told senior adviser Jared Kushner and aides to move forward with the paint job and to seek out cost estimates, according to four administration officials with knowledge of the meeting.

“POTUS has changed his mind and now wants the fence painted. We are modifying contracts to add,” said one official involved in the construction effort who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of being fired.

Trump, during that meeting, directed aides to seek input from North Dakota-based Fisher Sand and Gravel, a company the president favors. Fisher has a $400 million contract to build a section of new barrier in Arizona, an award that is under review by the Department of Defense inspector general.

The Post obtained a copy of painting estimates that federal contracting officials produced, and it shows costs ranging from $500 million for two coats of acrylic paint to more than $3 billion for a premium “powder coating” on the structure’s 30-foot steel bollards, the high end of the options the officials have identified.

The White House has not yet chosen a grade of paint, but Trump has insisted for years that the barrier should be black to discourage climbers. He has favored a shade known as “flat black” or “matte black” because of its heat-absorbent properties.

The president has promoted the border wall in tweets as well as in private conversations in recent weeks, aides say, amid criticism of the administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. He has also touted the structure — along with his efforts to block immigration — as a defense against the virus and a benefit to public health.

Trump has made the border wall a pillar of his reelection pitch, promising to finish 500 miles by early next year, a goal that will require crews to nearly double their pace in coming months. Crews have completed about 175 miles of new barriers so far, according to the latest CBP data.

The White House declined to comment. A White House official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters said Trump thinks the black paint would make the structure more difficult to climb and less likely to rust. CBP did not respond to requests for comment on Trump’s decision to have the wall painted.

The steel used for the project is designed to be weather resistant, with a 30-year service life, despite exposure to intense solar radiation and extreme temperature changes. Painting the bollards would add significant costs to what already is one of the most expensive federal infrastructure projects in U.S. history.

The White House has obtained about $15 billion for the project so far, two-thirds of which has been diverted from Defense Department construction funds and counternarcotics programs. CBP projections indicate the money will pay for approximately 731 miles of new barriers, but those estimates did not take into account the president’s painting plans.

Officials working on the project said the paint job risks slowing the pace of construction, because crews will need to return to already-completed sections of the barrier, which quickly oxidizes into an orange hue with exposure to the elements.

Engineers also note that painting sections that are already set in concrete and weathered will be significantly more expensive than painting the bollards in advance of setting them in place.

“Painting it before it’s installed would be cheaper,” said Ed Zarenski, a retired construction cost estimator in Massachusetts who worked on large public works projects. “Otherwise you’ll have to run a bucket truck on both sides of the barrier.”

One official with knowledge of the plans said it wasn’t clear how the painting crews would operate on the Mexico side of the barrier, where only a narrow strip of land separates the two countries. Painters would potentially need to apply the black coating using a specialized boom long enough to extend up and over the barrier from the U.S. side.

The Trump administration had a section of new barrier in California painted black last year, at a cost of about $1 million per mile, but U.S. troops provided the labor for that effort, reducing costs.

The private contractors are projected to charge about $1.2 million per mile to apply two coats of acrylic paint, estimates show. That is by far Trump’s cheapest option, but documents note that repairs to the structure will be impossible to color-match with the acrylic paint, making welds and other patches obvious and unsightly.

Scarring is certainly a factor in high-traffic border regions. The Post reported last month that smuggling crews in the San Diego area sawed into the new bollard fencing 18 times during a one-month span last year.

Other midrange paint options include a military-grade epoxy coating and sealant used for dams, canals and other hydraulic infrastructure projects, known as System 21, the documents show. It is highly resistant to abrasion and rust and is amenable to welding, but the cost would be at least $4.5 million per mile.

Even more expensive would be a black powder coating, a process commonly used to paint cars and appliances because of its sleek appearance. It would cost $6.8 million per mile to apply, according to the government estimates.

Trump told military commanders and border officials to research different painting options and to consult with Fisher in particular.

Last year, after Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) heavily promoted Fisher to the president as a cheaper option for building the border wall, Trump urged aides to give the firm a building contract. The North Dakota company and its owner have donated to Cramer and the president, and the company sued the government when its border wall bids were not accepted.

The U.S. Army Corps awarded the company a contract worth up to $400 million in December to complete 31 miles of new barriers along a National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona. After lawmakers raised concerns about White House interference in the contracting process, the Pentagon’s inspector general said it would audit the Fisher deal.

One administration official working on the project said Trump’s mention of Fisher in a recent meeting about the wall project did not amount to an attempt to influence the painting contract, and instead reflected his opinion of the company and its CEO, Tommy Fisher, whom the president sees as an innovative thinker and loyal supporter. Attorneys for Fisher did not respond to requests for comment.

During the same White House meeting, Kushner expressed frustration at the pace of land acquisition in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, where the Trump administration is preparing to seize hundreds of parcels of private land from owners who have refused to sell.

Trump’s son-in-law, who is also at the center of the administration’s pandemic response, has been placed in charge of overseeing construction. He expressed frustration at this role during the meeting, telling others the wall was not his favorite project but that he is the only one who can get it done.

A White House official said Kushner was only reiterating that the wall’s progress had been much slower — and had produced less coverage than Trump wanted — before Kushner took over the effort. The White House declined to discuss Kushner’s statement.

Three officials with knowledge of the meeting said Kushner complained that the current firms contracted to assist with land acquisition were not moving quickly enough, and he urged military commanders and border officials to work with larger firms capable of performing a broader array of services, such as survey, title work, appraisals, condemnation packages and design.

The administration plans to build about 150 miles of new barriers along the banks of the lower Rio Grande, where nearly all of the land is in private hands.

Raini Brunson, a spokesperson for the Army Corps of Engineers, confirmed this week the agency has requested information from additional real estate firms.

“In response to new requirements and changing market conditions, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regularly seeks input from industry to inform future acquisition strategies,” she said.

As the White House border wall meeting wound down, Trump was shown pictures and charts of the wall, and was pleased to hear that crews remain on track to complete nearly 500 miles by November.

About 75 new linear miles have been added since the beginning of the year, so contractors would need to more than double the pace of construction in the coming months to fulfill that goal.

 

The wall's going to end up with anti-Trump graffiti on it, so taxpayers will be regularly paying to have that covered up.  ?

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm guessing this is the cause of one of his recent twitter meltdowns: "Under fire, President Trump drops his Mar-a-Lago dock plan — for now"

Spoiler

President Trump has temporarily withdrawn a controversial dock proposal at his Palm Beach resort that had raised larger questions about the legality of the change of his official residency from New York to Florida.

The decision, which was disclosed in a letter sent to the Palm Beach mayor and town council on Monday, comes three days after The Washington Post published a story that outlined assertions by local attorneys who argue that agreements Trump entered into with the town prevent him from living at the resort, and may have precluded him from legally registering to vote in Florida. (Trump has said he voted by mail in Florida’s Republican presidential primary this year.)

Trump had come under scathing criticism from his Palm Beach neighbors and their attorneys who accused him and his legal team of attempting to jam through the dock request at the Mar-a-Lago resort while the nation’s attention is focused on the coronavirus pandemic and the town’s council is only able to hold meetings electronically. In the letter withdrawing the proposal, Trump’s Palm Beach attorney, Harvey Oyer III, cited “the extraordinary circumstances that we find ourselves in” as a reason for the decision. But he makes no specific mention of coronavirus. The proposal had been scheduled to be heard on Wednesday by the Palm Beach Town Council.

Oyer added, however, that the president would revisit the proposal when the council resumes regular meetings in Palm Beach, a city of 8,000 known for its heavily attended civic meetings. The letter gave no timetable.

Glenn Zeitz, a Trump critic who owns a winter home in Palm Beach, said Tuesday in an interview that he interpreted the vague wording of the letter as an attempt to not directly link a decision to pull back the proposal to the ongoing pandemic because that rationale might conflict with Trump’s stated desire to reopen the economy and for businesses to begin resuming normal activities.

“The proposal was noticed during the crisis and it was going down the train track, and it got derailed by the facts and the law,” Zeitz said. “It’s a lawyer practicing semantic surgery. I have to believe that the letter is written so as to not have to put in a letter that the coronavirus is the reason.”

Reginald Stambaugh, an attorney who represents one of Mar-a-Lago’s neighbors, said he is hopeful that the president will now permanently drop the dock proposal.

“One prevalent issue remains lingering, whether President Trump still considers Mar-a-Lago Club his residence,” Stambaugh said Tuesday. “He still can’t have it both ways. It’s either a club or a residence — not both. Florida’s voting laws apply to citizen Trump. If he resides there, he will have to close the club.”

Oyer did not respond to a request for comment.

The battle over the dock proposal stretches back to 2018, and appeared, at the time, to be a mundane local matter focused on complaints about the possibility of disruptive party boats and potential environmental damage. But it was given a jolt of national significance late last year when Trump made headlines by changing his domicile from New York to Florida using the Mar-a-Lago address.

Attorneys and historical preservationists in South Florida immediately began digging into town records, unearthing an agreement that Trump made in 1993 to convert Mar-a-Lago from a single-family residence to a private club owned by a corporation Trump controls. The agreement includes a provision that bans members from using the club’s guest rooms for longer than seven days at a time three times a year. Trump’s attorney at the time, Paul Rampell, assured council members that he would not live at the club.

The agreement also banned construction of a dock, but Trump was asking for that condition to be waived. Trump’s attorney originally argued that the dock was necessary for the president’s protection. That claim was included in an application that made no mention of Mar-a-Lago being the president’s home. In a later application, the rationale was changed, with Trump asserting that the club is his “personal residence.”

“The request is simply to add an accessory structure,” his attorney wrote. “A dock for private family use only.”

 

[Audrey2]

13 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The decision, which was disclosed in a letter sent to the Palm Beach mayor and town council on Monday, comes three days after The Washington Post published a story that outlined assertions by local attorneys who argue that agreements Trump entered into with the town prevent him from living at the resort, and may have precluded him from legally registering to vote in Florida. (Trump has said he voted by mail in Florida’s Republican presidential primary this year.)

Oh please let this be true! Wouldn't this be the voter fraud the Republicans are always talking about? As I recall, there was a woman in Texas who voted before her parole was over, and I believe she got 5  years in jail?

Trump, may your jumpsuit match your face!

[GreyhoundFan]

10 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

Oh please let this be true! Wouldn't this be the voter fraud the Republicans are always talking about? As I recall, there was a woman in Texas who voted before her parole was over, and I believe she got 5  years in jail?

Trump, may your jumpsuit match your face!

For Repugs, only minorities, women, or  Dems commit voter fraud. If a white male R does it, there's no fraud.

Edited May 14, 2020 by GreyhoundFan

[GreyhoundFan]

I bet this will cause another melt down: "Court revives lawsuit targeting President Trump’s business dealings at D.C. hotel"

Spoiler

A federal appeals court on Thursday revived a lawsuit seeking to block President Trump’s hotel in downtown Washington from accepting payments from foreign and state governments.

In a divided decision tinged with allegations of partisanship, the court refused to dismiss the novel lawsuit that accuses the president of illegally profiting from foreign and state government patrons at his D.C. hotel. The case, brought by the top lawyers for Maryland and the District of Columbia, is one of a set of lawsuits alleging that the president’s private business transactions violate the Constitution’s anti-corruption emoluments ban.

“We recognize that the President is no ordinary petitioner, and we accord him great deference as the head of the Executive branch,” Judge Diana Motz wrote for a majority of nine judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.

But, she said, Trump has not met the high bar for the court to intervene midstream and “grant the extraordinary relief the President seeks.”

The majority found a genuine dispute over the definition of an “emolument,” writing: “We can hardly conclude that the President’s preferred definition of this obscure word is clearly and indisputably the correct one.” The court also said subpoenas aimed at the president’s business would not interfere with Trump’s official White House duties.

“The President has not explained, nor do we see, how requests pertaining to spending at a private restaurant and hotel threaten any Executive Branch prerogative,” Motz wrote in the 21-page opinion.

The 9-to-6 ruling revealed deep divisions on the Richmond-based court, which reviews appeals from Maryland. The dissenting judges, whose opinions ran more than three times as long as the majority’s, portrayed their colleagues on the other side as “partisan warriors.” That prompted a separate response from some in the majority who characterized the dissenting opinions as a “disappointing display of judicial immodesty.”

Writing for the dissent, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III said the majority had overstepped the judiciary’s role and warned the court against becoming “part of the political scrum.”

“The majority is using a wholly novel and nakedly political cause of action to pave the path for a litigative assault upon this and future Presidents and for an ascendant judicial supervisory role over Presidential action,” Wilkinson wrote.

“It opens the door to litigation as a tool of harassment of a coordinate branch” and will mean that “litigants can virtually haul the Presidency into court at their pleasure.”

The six dissenting judges were nominated by Republican presidents, including three picked by Trump. The judges in the majority were all nominated by Democratic presidents.

The ruling from the full 4th Circuit is at odds with a March decision in a separate, similar case that barred individual members of Congress from suing the president over his private business.

The split rulings suggest that the Supreme Court will have the final word in the cases involving the rarely tested emoluments provisions intended to prevent foreign and state officials from exerting undue influence on U.S. leaders, including the president.

The Justice Department and Trump Organization did not immediately respond Thursday to requests for comment.

A full complement of 15 judges at the 4th Circuit took a second look in December at the lawsuit from Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine. An initial three-judge panel of the same court had tossed the lawsuit and said the attorneys general did not have legal grounds, or standing, to sue. But the full court agreed to rehear the case and to decide whether to take the unusual step of dismissing it midstream as the president’s lawyers requested.

In an interview Thursday, Frosh said the court’s decision was “a strong ruling against the president.”

“It clearly held that he is not above the law, that like every other citizen he is subject to the Constitution and the laws of the United States,” he said.

Unlike past presidents, Trump has retained ownership of his private business and can benefit from it financially. His sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump run the company.

The emoluments case centers on the president’s hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in Northwest Washington, where foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, have booked rooms and events since Trump entered the White House.

Trump’s Justice Department lawyers say the president is not violating the emoluments clauses because the language bars only payments in exchange for official action or as part of an employment relationship.

Frosh said the case against the president has only gotten stronger with examples of Trump allegedly using the federal government to enrich himself. Executives at Trump’s company have discussed with federal officials the possibility of reduced or delayed rent payments, and more information has also emerged about Secret Service expenditures at the property.

The appeals court was reviewing a decision from a District Court judge in Maryland who interpreted the emoluments provisions to ban U.S. officials from accepting any profit, gain or advantage from foreign officials. The judge signed off on more than a dozen subpoenas for Trump’s closely held financial records to determine which foreign and state governments have paid the Trump Organization and how much.

But the subpoenas have been on hold pending the outcome of the president’s appeal.

Racine told reporters Thursday that the 38 subpoenas they had issued — to the Trump Organization, the GSA, hotel competitors and other third parties — could soon become active so long as the Supreme Court did not issue a stay. He said the case was not meant to harass the president or obtain his tax returns but to force him to abide by the law.

“This is not about President Trump’s tax records,” Racine said.

The covid-19 pandemic has forced the hotel to nearly close down completely and has also put the property back in the news for potential conflicts of interest.

The hotel continues to operate, but at a small fraction of the occupancy it enjoyed before the pandemic forced economic shutdowns. The drop in business prompted the Trump Organization to inquire with its government landlord, the General Services Administration, and its lender, Deutsche Bank, about how to proceed, given the hotel’s lack of revenue.

Eric Trump, who is running the company while his father is in the White House, said the discussions were only preliminary and that he was not seeking any special treatment. But the discussions prompted a number of congressional Democrats to ask the GSA whether the company was being considered for relief from its rent payments. GSA spokesmen have not responded to requests for comment. Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

In late March, the Trump Organization put on hold the proposed sale of its D.C. hotel lease because of the effect of the coronavirus shutdowns on the real estate industry.

Frosh and Racine have said a sale to an entity other than a state or foreign government would be the end of their case.

In the separate case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Democratic members of Congress led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) have decided not seek rehearing by a full complement of judges. The lawmakers have until July to decide whether to ask the Supreme Court to review the three-judge panel decision, which blocked individual members of Congress from trying to enforce the foreign emoluments clause.

 

[fraurosena]

On 5/8/2020 at 2:59 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

I read this with interest. I hope it bites him in his ample ass: "Trump made Florida his official residence. He may have also made a legal mess."

  Hide contents

For nearly a quarter-century, President Trump has envisioned boats docking at Mar-a-Lago, his swanky club set on 17 acres of prime real estate in Palm Beach, Fla., that rambles across manicured grounds between the beach and the placid waters of the Lake Worth Lagoon and the Intracoastal Waterway.

Trump’s quest has, predictably, irked his wealthy neighbors, sparking one of those pesky territorial squabbles that occupy town halls and zoning boards in tony neighborhoods across the country. But the attempt by Trump and his legal team to squeeze through approval of his dock while the nation’s attention is trained on the coronavirus pandemic is now surfacing a potentially nettlesome problem for the president.

Digging into the catacombs of local records to build an argument against the dock, a small group of loosely aligned preservationists, disgruntled neighbors and attorneys have unearthed documents that they assert call into question the legality of Trump’s much-publicized decision late last year to change his official domicile from Manhattan to Mar-a-Lago and to register to vote in Florida using the club’s address. According to those documents, and additional materials obtained by The Washington Post, Trump agreed in writing years ago to change the use of the Mar-a-Lago property from a single-family residence to a private club owned by a corporation he controls.

The distinction is significant. The property is taxed as a private club — not as a residence, according to Palm Beach County property appraiser records. Trump’s own attorney assured local officials in Palm Beach before they voted to approve the club in 1993 that he would not live there. Mar-a-Lago’s website says only that Trump maintains “private quarters” at the club.

“It’s one or the other — it’s a club or it’s your home,” Reginald Stambaugh, an attorney who represents a neighbor opposed to Trump’s dock plan, said in a recent interview. “You can’t have it both ways.”

If Stambaugh and his client have their way and persuade Palm Beach to stand firm on its long-standing agreement, Trump will be forced to make a choice, he said: Stop operating Mar-a-Lago as a club and make it a single-family home again or change his official domicile to someplace else.

White House and Mar-a-Lago officials did not respond to interview requests.

The making of a private club

The saga traces back to another era in the president’s life, long before he occupied the White House. In the mid-1980s, a time when Trump was being celebrated as a business savant, he said he scooped up Mar-a-Lago at a bargain-basement price. The storied Mediterranean-style mansion was built in the 1920s by the cereal-fortune heiress Marjorie Meriweather Post and her then-husband, the legendary financial mogul E.F. Hutton.

When Post died in the early 1970s, she left the estate to the U.S. government, envisioning it as a winter retreat for high-ranking officials. It was named a National Historic Landmark. But her plan to make it a government redoubt was never put into effect. As the cost of maintaining the property soared, the government gave it back to Post’s foundation.

Enter Donald Trump.

It seemed like a dream pairing for the businessman: a grand property now owned by one of America’s most aggressively self-promoting dealmakers. After buying the estate, Trump set about restoring the property. He hosted grand galas.

The halcyon days were short-lived. By the early 1990s, Trump’s business empire was in peril. His foray into the Atlantic City, N.J., gambling scene was a mess. In 1991 and 1992, four of his ventures filed for bankruptcy protection: Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, the Trump Castle Hotel and Casino, and the Plaza Hotel in New York.

He began grumbling about the cost of maintaining the mansion and grounds of Mar-a-Lago, saying he was spending $3 million a year in upkeep. Ever the master of spin, Trump claimed he could afford the upkeep but quipped to the Miami Herald that “I just feel foolish doing it. You know, for $3 million you can buy the nicest house in Miami.”

Trump hit upon a solution to his ownership of a money pit that was true to his developer’s heart: Carve up the Mar-a-Lago property into pieces and sell as many as 10 luxury homes. But the notion of tampering with the landmark property angered preservationists and the moneyed denizens of Palm Beach.

The town council shot down his plan.

Trump, drawing from his well-worn smash-mouth playbook, sued the town. At the same time, he and his attorney were birthing yet another clever plan: He’d convert his personal residence into a private club. The town’s leaders were wary but slowly started warming to the idea as a way of preserving the historic mansion.

During lengthy talks with the council, Trump’s attorney, Paul Rampell, addressed a question on a lot of minds in those days: Would Trump live at the club?

“The answer is no,” Rampell said, according to a summary transcript of a 1993 council meeting, “except that he will be a member of the Club and would be entitled to use its guest rooms.”

In August 1993, Trump got his club, signing an extraordinarily detailed document called a “use agreement” that governs to this day how Mar-a-Lago can be used. The document makes clear that Mar-a-Lago would no longer be a single-family residence and was now a private club.

Trump agreed to convey the title of the property from his personal possession to a corporate entity he controlled named Mar-a-Lago Club, Inc. He promised he wouldn’t put up condominiums or co-op units. He also took care of a worrisome issue for some council members: the question of what would happen if the club failed. In that event, Trump agreed in writing to the same provision his attorney had promised: “The use of the Land shall revert to a single family residence.”

The deal he struck made it clear that no one could live permanently at the property. It stated that the guest suites could be used only by members for a maximum of three times a year for no longer than seven days at a time, and that those seven-day stays couldn’t be strung together consecutively.

Trump also made a promise that has come back to create problems for him in the fourth year of his presidency: He said he wouldn’t put up a dock.

But just because he’d made that pledge about the dock didn’t mean he planned to keep it.

In 1996, he told New York magazine: “Now at some point we are looking at building a marina out at the Intercoastal,” misidentifying the Intracoastal Waterway, the lengthy patchwork of navigation channels, natural bays and inlets that stretches across large swaths of the East Coast.

Aware that this plan would not be greeted with applause, Trump told the magazine reporter, “You are the first to know this because the world is going to crack when they read this.”

The dock request

Trump had his deal and his club, but he wasn’t satisfied.

He unsuccessfully sued the town in 1996, attempting to lift many of the restrictions he’d agreed to three years earlier. He wanted out of the limits on the guest suites, for instance, and he also wanted to drop a requirement that half the members of the club be Palm Beach residents or business owners.

With Trump always asking for more, his relationship with the town frayed.

At one point, Mayor Paul Ilyinsky told one of Trump’s attorneys who was working with Rampell — James Green — that “to listen to this trash coming from you and Mr. Rampell, frankly, is going to make me throw up,” according to a transcript included in Trump’s lawsuit.

When Green called his bluff, the mayor responded, “I may do so on you.”

Jack McDonald, a former Palm Beach mayor and councilman who was a charter member of Mar-a-Lago, said in an interview that the town was ever wary of taking on Trump because he is litigious. McDonald had figured Trump was living part of the year at the resort, but said “it’s one of those things that’s been able to slide by” because no one was willing to make a public fuss about it.

As for the provision about club members not using guest rooms more than three times a year, McDonald said, “if that’s what the agreement says, he’s violating the agreement.”

More than two decades after cutting his deal for the club, Trump still wants his dock. He asked for it in 2018, saying that it was necessary “for safety and security reasons to protect the President of the United States and his family.” His attorneys went on to say that the request had been endorsed by the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.

That last part grabbed the attention of attorneys for Mar-a-Lago’s neighbors, who feared the appearance of rowdy booze cruises, loud boats and damage to precious underwater coquina rocks that they believe would be destroyed by dredging to deepen the channel and allow boats to pull up to the dock. The Palm Beach sheriff had weighed in to back the dock plan, citing similar security concerns. But the attorneys had seen nothing from either the Secret Service or the Coast Guard. A person familiar with the submission said the Secret Service and Coast Guard provided only oral endorsements. The Secret Service and Coast Guard declined to comment.

Stambaugh and others managed to stall the dock plan when it came up on the council’s agenda in February 2019. Among those who weighed in against the proposal — and has been fighting behind the scenes and helping develop legal tactics ever since — was Glenn Zeitz, a pugnacious Philadelphia-area attorney who owns a home in Palm Beach and had defeated Trump in the mid-1990s in an eminent domain lawsuit related to one of Trump’s Atlantic City casinos.

The dock request, not unlike others of its type, trudged slowly through the system in Palm Beach, a town with a population of just over 8,000. In the meantime, Trump made a surprise move. In early October, the New York Times reported that he changed his official domicile to Palm Beach, Fla. Trump quickly confirmed that he’d done so via Twitter.

The address he listed was 1100 S. Ocean Blvd.— Mar-a-Lago.

Reading about the switch, Jane Day — a respected preservationist in South Florida — screamed in frustration.

“That made me crazy!” she said in a recent interview.

Day knows practically every inch of Mar-a-Lago from more than a decade serving as Palm Beach’s preservation consultant. She’d developed a deep affection for the place. She’d climbed on ladders to show Trump the intricacies of 16th-century tapestries that were included in the sale when he bought Mar-a-Lago. She was there when Marla Maples, then Trump’s wife, brought home their baby, Tiffany, Day recalled.

And Day knew that Trump had promised not to live at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump’s switch to Florida also tossed a quirky legal puzzle into the mix. Trump — who has traveled to Mar-a-Lago repeatedly as president and has referred to the club as his Winter White House — has said that he voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary last month. Florida law requires voters to register using their “legal residence” addresses under penalty of perjury.

What would happen to his voting status, some of his adversaries in the dock fight have begun to wonder, if Palm Beach declares that he doesn’t have the legal right to use Mar-a-Lago as his official domicile?

Zeitz called Trump’s possible violation of his agreement with Palm Beach “a substantial and serious potential legal impediment” to the president using Mar-a-Lago as his voter-registration address and official domicile.

In Florida, a state with a long, florid history of voting controversies, a person needs to cross multiple hurdles to legally register at a particular address, according to Ronald Meyer, a Florida lawyer and election law expert, who spoke about the law in general rather than the specifics of Trump’s situation.

First, voters have to state an intention to reside somewhere, Meyer said. But that’s not enough. They also have to demonstrate that the address they’re using for their voter registration is legitimate by taking concrete steps such as buying or renting the home at that address, registering a vehicle there, using the address to apply for a driver’s license or for tax purposes.

“There is no litmus test; but there must be some confluence of the subjective intention to declare a residence with objective factors which demonstrate actual residency,” Meyer said.

While Day stewed about Trump’s moves, a local attorney was starting to craft a strategy to block Trump. Stambaugh is a 5th-generation Palm Beach native whose grandfather Gleason N. Stambaugh Sr. was the chairman of the Florida Inland Navigation District. He hoped to resolve the matter politely, without litigation.

News of the internecine battle of the elite in Palm Beach was soon overtaken by the coronavirus pandemic. A thousand miles to the north, Trump took to television on March 15 and encouraged people around the country to stay at home to help limit the spread of the virus. Businesses and government offices shut down or shifted to sometimes balky remote operations.

Four days after Trump’s stay-at-home announcement — with little fanfare — the president’s attorneys sent another dock plan to the town of Palm Beach, with the idea of it being heard by the town’s Landmarks Commission, which oversees historic properties and makes recommendations to the town council, on April 22. At that time, U.S. coronavirus cases had topped 830,000 and deaths surpassed 47,000. (The request was signed by Trump’s son, Eric, on behalf of Mar-a-Lago Inc. On the president’s financial disclosure forms, Donald Trump’s revocable trust is listed as the owner of Mar-a-Lago Inc.)

Stambaugh was furious.

“It’s unconscionable that Donald Trump and his club Mar-a-Lago would expect to have a proper public hearing during the coronavirus crisis,” Stambaugh said in an interview. “It’s obvious that Mar-a-Lago is attempting to subvert the political participation process.”

Trump’s Palm Beach attorney, Harvey Oyer III, declined to comment.

Amid the pandemic, the town’s historic properties oversight board delayed hearing the dock request until late May.

When they eventually get to it, the town’s leaders may encounter a new wrinkle. Trump, who’d previously argued that the dock was necessary for security reasons and made no mention of using the club as his home, has now pivoted to asserting that Mar-a-Lago is his “personal residence.”

“The request is simply to add an accessory structure, a dock for private family use only,” the application.

That claim, Stambaugh argues, simply doesn’t match up with the agreements Trump has signed and the promises he’s made that Mar-a-Lago would be a club rather than his home.

And so, the Town of Palm Beach, Trump’s frequent foil, won’t just be faced with a decision about a dock. It’ll also be pressed to answer an existential question about Mar-a-Lago.

Just what is it?

 

Forgive my ignorance, but... considering his role, isn't Trump's official residence the White House? 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

6 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Forgive my ignorance, but... considering his role, isn't Trump's official residence the White House? 

I don't think so.  I think it's like the military - no matter where your stationed you have an official state of residence (usually where you were living before joining.)

I mean it's his residence right now, but it's by definition temporary.

[GreyhoundFan]

Mar-a-Loco is his official residence, which is proving to be an issue because it is not zoned as a residence. And the Secret Service is required to have a permanent team stationed at the president's official residence, no matter where he (or she) actually spends time. That was a major fiasco when Dumpy Tower in NYC was his official residence, because it caused huge traffic issues in an extremely crowded and busy part of the city.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Super duper missile"? That sounds like something a five year old would say.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

That cheesy grin on his face is making me extra annoyed:

 

[AmericanRose]

BREAKING NEWS: Rasputina foretold Obama/Trump in 2004!

I suddenly felt the urge to listen to 'Frustration Plantation' after... man, 10 years? I WAS SHOOK.
But I think this does sum Trump up pretty well.

Spoiler

 

Oh, it's scrambled eggs what he says.
He accuses me of treachery.
Got the nine lies, got the wide eyes,
Got a failing grade in Chemistry.
If you count back to the balcony [escalator!]
When all we saw was the mystery. [WTF Republicans?]
Of a blonde haired boy brought his mother joy,
With his pedigree and family tree.

Oh, lay it all out on a wicker couch,
That you wove in a loony bin.
Cut it out, it's a second round bout.
Not the way of a gentleman.
Give it up, get a job,
Take a pill and leave me be.
He's got a synapse lapse he don't think he has,
But it's been proven empirically

If they take something precious from me,
I'm gonna take something precious from them.
Oh now he's losing his constituency.
We thought, "Oh, this could never happen again."
If I take something precious from him,
He try to take something precious from me.
There's a battle in his head that he cannot win.
There's a man he could never be.
Oh no. Way to go.
He's the mayor.

Oh, I'm quite tired of this lunatic.
Why must we suffer because the mayor is sick?
He say: "All abandon from this sinking ship".
Then he's off on another trip.
He don't care about environment.
He has made this a shitty place.
My interest rate shrinks at a rapid pace
Compounded daily on my worried face.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s company has received at least $970,000 from U.S. taxpayers for room rentals"

Spoiler

The U.S. government has paid at least $970,000 to President Trump’s company since Trump took office — including payments for more than 1,600 nightly room rentals at Trump’s hotels and clubs, according to federal records obtained by The Washington Post.

Since March, The Post has catalogued an additional $340,000 in such payments. They were almost all related to trips taken by Trump, his family and his top officials. The government is not known to have paid for the rooms for Trump and his family members at his properties but it has paid for staffers and Secret Service agents to accompany the president.

The payments create an unprecedented business relationship between the president’s private company and his government — which began in the first month of Trump’s presidency, and continued into this year, records show.

The records show that taxpayers have now paid for the equivalent of more than four years’ worth of nightly rentals at Trump properties, including 950 nights at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., and 530 nights at the president’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, according to a Post analysis.

Trump still owns his business, though he says he has given day-to-day control to his eldest sons. Last year, Eric Trump said that when government officials visit Trump properties with the president, they are charged “like 50 bucks.”

But in the 1,600 room rentals examined by The Post, there were no examples of a rate that low.

Instead, the lowest room rate was $141.66 per night, for each of the rooms in a four-room cottage in Bedminster. The highest rate was $650 per night for rooms at Mar-a-Lago.

The Post asked the Trump Organization to provide an example where it had charged the government a rate low enough to match Eric Trump’s claim.

The company did not respond.

Trump has visited his own properties 250 times since taking office — though not since March 8, as the covid-19 pandemic shuttered many Trump properties and consumed his presidency. Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump administration has provided a full accounting of how much taxpayer money has been paid to Trump’s companies since Inauguration Day 2017.

The Post has attempted to compile its own accounting, using hundreds of pages of federal spending documents obtained from public-records requests. In recent weeks, The Post added new data on spending by the Defense and State departments, and newly released data on spending by the Secret Service in 2019 and 2020.

The data is still incomplete. But it makes clear that Trump has received an unprecedented amount of payments from his own government.

“It’s not just that there’s a huge amount of money being spent: we have no idea how much the actual figure is,” because the records are released slowly and piecemeal, said Jordan Libowitz, of the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “We don’t know what’s happening . . . only that the taxpayers are footing the bill for it.”

Before Trump, the only recent president or vice president to charge rent to his own Secret Service protectors was former vice president Joe Biden, according to records and interviews with the staff of former presidents and vice presidents.

Biden, now Trump’s presumptive Democratic opponent in the 2020 election, charged rent for a cottage near his home in Delaware. The rent, which was listed in public spending records at the time, totaled $171,600 over six years.

Trump’s company exceeded that total on March 17, 2017, records obtained by The Post show. He had been in office for less than two months.

As president, Trump is exempt from conflict-of-interest rules that prohibit other federal employees from steering government business to their private companies.

The Constitution bars presidents from taking additional payments from the federal government, beyond his salary. But Trump’s lawyers have argued that this was not intended to prohibit business transactions, like hotel room rentals. Legal challenges from Trump’s critics are moving slowly through the courts.

In the meantime, records show there have been hundreds of transactions where Trump is, in essence, both the buyer and seller. His company sends the bills. His government pays them, with little disclosure to the public at the time.

“This is the perfect transaction” for someone who wanted to exploit it, said Don Fox, who was acting head of the Office of Government Ethics from 2011 to 2013. “You get to not only set the price: you get to ensure that the buyer pays that price, no matter what it is.”

Trump’s company has downplayed concerns about these payments by saying it only charges the government “at cost.”

“If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free — meaning, like, cost for housekeeping,” Eric Trump said in a Yahoo Finance interview last year. The rate, he estimated, was about $50 a night.

To see if Trump’s company was living up to that professed standard, The Post tallied all the available records that showed Trump’s company charging Trump’s government for room rentals.

That search turned up more than 1,600 nightly room rentals. They began in the first month of Trump’s term.

In February 2017, for instance, Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for a weekend at Mar-a-Lago. That weekend, at least three different federal agencies paid for hotel rooms inside Trump’s club:

●The Secret Service paid for three rooms for two nights each, records show. Trump’s club charged them $650 per night, according to two people who saw unredacted versions of the receipts. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the matter.

●The State Department paid for six rooms for two nights each. Trump’s club charged them $520 for some, and $546 for others, the records show. On the receipts, Mar-a-Lago labeled $546 as the “rack rate,” an industry term for the normal rate offered to guests, without discounts.

Later, the club gave the State Department partial refunds for some of its purchases, to reduce the rate to $396.15 per night. But it’s unclear from the records if these payments for the Abe visit were affected. The State Department did not answer questions submitted by The Post.

●The Defense Department also paid $1,469 for rooms at the club that weekend. But it’s unclear how many they rented, or what rate they paid. A Pentagon spokesperson said no more details could be located.

In all, the government paid Trump’s company $11,000 for hotel rooms that weekend. None of the rates, however, appeared to match Eric Trump’s description.

In the years that followed, the lowest rate for any rental on record was for the rooms in Trump’s Bedminster cottage: $141.66. But that was not for a standard hotel room that needed to be cleaned very day.

Instead, the Secret Service paid to rent the whole cottage — three bedrooms and a living room — to store equipment and provide sleeping space for agents. Because the equipment was difficult to move, the Secret Service paid by the month, even on days when Trump wasn’t there.

The cottage itself didn’t actually require much housekeeping, said Victorina Morales, who worked as a Bedminster housekeeper at the time. The agents were private and only had her clean it one to three times a week. “They took out their own trash,” she said.

The highest rate that The Post found was the $650 charged to the Secret Service at Mar-a-Lago in early 2017.

Other room rates fell in between. In Washington, where Secret Service agents rented a room for 137 nights to guard Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin while he lived in the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, the rate was $242 per night.

In the most recent records obtained by The Post — showing payments from the Secret Service to Mar-a-Lago in 2019 and early 2020 — the club appeared to be charging $396.15 per night.

During Trump’s most recent holiday vacation, for instance, the Secret Service was charged $32,484.30 — exactly enough for 82 room nights at that rate.

Hotel industry experts have said that all these figures far exceed the typical operating cost of hotel rooms — the sum of expenses for housekeeping and toiletries. That figure, experts have said, typically falls between $50 and $80 per night at luxury hotels.

“I wouldn’t expect it to be north of $100,” said Chris Anderson, a professor at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration.

The Trump Organization has not responded to questions about how it calculated the rates it charged to the government.

In several other cases, the government released documents showing what it had paid to Trump properties — but redacted the rates it was charged per night. When Eric Trump visited the Trump Turnberry course in July 2017, for instance, Trump’s club charged the Secret Service $6,802.33 for hotel rooms.

Documents released by the Secret Service redact the rate that was charged per room. The redaction was marked with a code indicating that the information “could disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I can't wait to have a president who doesn't cost us so much money: "Secret Service signs $179,000 contract to rent golf carts in Bedminster, N.J., this summer"

Spoiler

The 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 to records posted online in a public database of federal spending.

The contract does not say whether Trump plans to visit the Bedminster club soon. The Secret Service also protects his family, and Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her family have already visited the club this year, despite stay-at-home orders in Washington and New Jersey, as the New York Times reported.

The Secret Service and the golf-cart company both declined to comment. The White House, the Trump Organization and the general manager of the Bedminster club did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

Trump has visited his properties 250 times as president, including 22 visits to Bedminster, according to a tally by The Washington Post. But he has not been to any of them since March 8 — the longest absence of his term — as the coronavirus pandemic has shut down travel and consumed his presidency.

If Trump returned to the Bedminster club today, he would find it largely shut down because of coronavirus measures imposed by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D). The club had to close entirely for 46 days, then reopened only its golf courses on May 2 after Murphy allowed outdoor activities to resume.

Even after the golf courses reopened, the club warned its members against socializing.

“Under no circumstances will any type of congregating or gathering be allowed in parking lots or on the golf course,” the club cautioned members in an email, according to a copy obtained by The Post.

When he visits, Trump stays in a detached cottage on the club’s grounds, and Murphy’s order does not seem to prohibit him from visiting there. A spokesman for the governor declined to comment.

In the past, Trump has frequently left the cottage to visit the main clubhouse, socializing with members in the restaurant and dropping in on weddings in the ballroom. Those buildings are now closed.

In previous years the Secret Service has rented space from Trump’s company, paying $17,000 per month for a four-room cottage at the Bedminster club near Trump’s own.

Those payments are among more than $970,000 that the U.S. government has paid to Trump’s company since he took office, often to rent space for the aides and Secret Service agents that accompany the president.

It was unclear whether those rental payments to Trump’s company will continue this year. They are not listed in public databases, as the golf-cart rentals are.

The contract between the Secret Service and Associates Golf Car was spotted by American Bridge 21st Century, a super PAC that supports Democrats. Earlier this year, the same group identified a similar Secret Service contract, to rent golf carts to be used in the town that is home to Trump’s Northern Virginia golf club.

Trump has not visited that club in Sterling since the contract was signed in late March.

In Bedminster, this year’s contract between the Secret Service and Associates Golf Car is more than in past years. The Secret Service paid the company $118,000 in 2018 and $95,000 in 2019, according to federal records posted online.

Records in the federal spending database do not indicate why this year’s charge is higher.

 

[Dandruff]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

That cheesy grin on his face is making me extra annoyed:

 

Where do you go when you're a total failure on Earth?

[fraurosena]

4 hours ago, Dandruff said:

Where do you go when you're a total failure on Earth?

I’ll gladly put him in a super duper rocket and send him off on a one way trip into to the vacuum of space.

[Becky]

16 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Super duper missile"? That sounds like something a five year old would say.

 

He has all the best words. ?