Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/12/24/grand-old-pillager.html
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Another Festivus miracle!
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Mini Trump indeed. I mean, as we know from the public record of pre-prez Trump tweets, Trump also would have had a field day with a Trump presidency. A good lesson for us all that insulting Trump doesn’t necessarily mean you have a soul, just one working eye, half a brain and some opportunism.
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See, the tax bill does help out Americans!
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You can’t get rich in politics unless you’re a crook. - Harry S Truman.
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Of course, he got elected to the Senate by pandering to the racists in Tennessee, accusing Harold Ford jr. of miscegenation. Corker got away with the smear by doing it indirectly and making it look like he had “injured parties” on call to testify.
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The net worth stats Taibbi cites from Open Secrets are extremely misleading.
They get a range of his assets and a range for his liabilities from public disclosures. They are imprecise, the largest are reported as being anywhere from $5mm to $25mm. Open Secrets then takes the mid of the upper and lower bound for the assets minus their liabilities and calls that their estimated net worth.
It’s more accurate to say Corker’s net worth went from a possible range of (-$95mm to +$91mm) in '06 to (+$11mm to +$98mm) in '07. That is consistent with selling real estate assets that were worth more than he’d borrowed against them. Considering his loans were most 6-10 years old at that point, that makes sense.
E.g. If you own a $20mm rental building with a $5mm mortgage, you are worth $15mm. If you sell the rental building for $20mm and then pay off the $5mm mortage, you’d have $15mm of cash and still be worth $15mm. However Open Secrets would report the former as a $0 net worth and the latter as $15mm.
Bob Corker seems totally scummy, but Taibbi is shockingly bad at reading financial disclosures for a financial journalist. The WSJ article does a much better job: https://www.wsj.com/articles/sen-bob-corker-profits-on-quick-stock-trades-1446596135
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Welcome to boingboing, comrade!
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Hi Carol, thanks for joining BB and posting such a well researched, polished analysis in your first try.
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2018 midterms are coming TGOP.
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That guy is a real corker!
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What concerns me more is that the GOP are acting like they can’t lose.
An entire party can’t be that stupid. Which makes me wonder what they’ve got up their sleeves re: gerrymandering and disenfranchisement that have them believing this.
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I’m still wondering if we will see 2018 elections. Just wait, there will be some “patriotic” reason to suspend elections.
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I think they’re taking a page from the manual and draining whatever they can from the people in the manner of current business acquistions before escaping on their golden parachute.
They see the pitchforks being sharpened. They hear the talk about whether the guillotine should be brought back. They know the midterm elections will be disastrous. They’re just grabbing what they can before they have to flee.
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"Corker claims it’s all a misunderstanding. "
Ha, ha! A hilarious misunderstanding! No worries, then!
Of course, it’s highly likely that this info on Corker will be weaponized by Trump as a means of attacking him, ironically. Trump will go after Corker for being corrupt and enriching himself through his position, because Trump is 100% about projection.
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It’s concerning - however I think the KISS principle applies - and you are seeing the bottom feeding machine come to an end. I think this because of the number of members retiring - and the ‘free for all’ we are in now. These things make me think that the election of Trump made them see the writing was on the wall - and they had gone as far as the ‘pus the crazies to the limit’ that they could get away with - at the moment they have nothing to loose.
I’m unsure if clear - so perhaps another way to envision it would be a pump and dump scheme - that is they pumped the crazy well until they were able to take 100% complete control. Now they pushed through the most important part of the plan - and that was the estate tax honestly. They can now dump vast amounts of wealth through their families legally without taxes.
Do they think they are safe? No - frankly I am pretty sure that a majority of the party understands just what it is they did - and how damning it will be - no matter the safeguards and structures they put in place to ‘discourage’ the vote of the scary black man - they are convinced that Trump is going to generate enough pushback to get some of that ‘vast liberal non-voting’ block to realize that yes… their vote does matter for a change.
But hey - if it doesn’t happen - well if you thought we hit bottom baby…
The floor is a lie… we are only on the first downslope of where this party ends if they take the midterms.
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I’ve long wondered, is it considered insider trading if you’re a time traveler from the future? Asking for a friend.
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I think that what they’re thinking is that Moore almost won the senate race in Alabama despite being the worst possible candidate. As long as they can seem halfway sane, they think their red-state seats are safe. I am just hoping that there are enough purple seats to go around to switch the balance of power meaningfully. (Jaded aside: Even then, the democrat politicians are only slightly less corrupt than the republican politicians. But at least they pretend better. )
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