January 6th hearings on Trump's failed insurrection.

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
Kleptopia


I checked out a copy from our local library. The first chapters put a completely different light on what Putin has been up to. He's using the international capitalist system with help from European banks that have been serving the politically powerful to stash dirty money for hundreds of years. The banks are so good at it and have been doing it for so long, they aren't even aware there is anything wrong with helping dictators launder blood from their money.

Reading the book and the red flags he lists to help recognize this kind of corruption is eye opening. There can be no doubt that Trump is up to his rectum shaped mouth in that cesspool. If RICO laws are invoked after Trump loses his tax case in NY, a whole new can of worms will reveal the extent to which Trump has been serving as money launderer for Putin and other dictators.

Excerpt from the opening paragraphs of the book review (Sept 3, 2020):

The United States is a money-laundering mecca. Our legal system, corporate lawyers, bankers, real estate agents, title companies and accountants are eager to turn dirty money into gold. Or yachts. Or sparkling new luxury condos in Manhattan and South Florida. Though the true owners of these clean assets largely hide from view, the fact that America welcomes big dirty money from abroad is no secret. The mystery, however, is why our leaders in Washington have not taken the simple steps to stop this.

In June 2019, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on “Combating Kleptocracy: Beneficial Ownership, Money Laundering, and Other Reforms.” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) laid out the problem starkly: “America too often enables global corruption” by providing leaders who loot their countries “the shelter of our rule of law for their ill-gotten gains.”
The expert witnesses agreed on the need for a critical legal reform: Congress should pass a law to require that the owners of shell companies, including those created just to make cash purchases, be disclosed. Despite bipartisan support in the House and the Senate for such a bill, it is not moving.

Even if it passed both chambers, it’s unclear whether President Trump would sign it into law.
This reminds me of the info from the "Pandora papers" that shows the tax havens will come into play with this.
 

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
This reminds me of the info from the "Pandora papers" that shows the tax havens will come into play with this.
Pandora papers play a role. I wouldn't buy the book but I'm glad it's in our library. I'm just in the beginning. The story begins in 2008. The author is foreshadowing same massive windfalls coming to kleptocrats and their bankers after the CDS market melt down. It doesn't read like a crime novel so much as a collection of short stories that tie together. Well written but still a hard slog to a person more attuned to SF-Sci Fi and fantasy genre. It's already affecting how I view the political situation of the day.
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
Two things from the little I saw of Pence's aid on the the Sunday shows.

#1. RNC's 'legitimate political discourse' reminds me of the Republican line of 'legitimate rape'.

#2. The Republican go to of saying something along the lines of 'Biden won the election, but there are 'serious' questions about the legality of what the states did with the election' hinting at shit like mail in voting. And the thing is that they are trolling a 'both sides' issue to block any real discussion of the shit that all the Republicans on the state level did to screw with the counting and ability to vote in large areas that tend to largely go Democratic. For example in the states where they forced any counting of mail in votes until after the polls closed to give Trump the ability to cry about 'his lead' on day of voters due to his pretending like the pandemic was not going on, and the idiots like the ones in Michigan who were saying that they were not going to certify the Wayne county votes, etc.

This way what the Republicans new line about why they want to snowflake about the election is legit, but their reasoning that they play to their cult that is being lied to nonstop by the right wing propaganda machine (Fox/Newsmax/OANN on TV, Hate radio, bullshit news esque websites that are just HQ bullshit, militarized trolls (foreign and domestic), print (like the Chinese cultist Epoch Times), etc) to spin the tag line of 'states were doing bad shit' into something that loses all credibility and becomes a ink blot test.
 

DIY-HP-LED

Well-Known Member
Trump Used ‘Burn Bags’ To Destroy Docs, Took Records To Mar-a-Lago

Chris Hayes: “I wonder why the Trump administration was actively moving, shredding and destroying records, including those related to the investigation into Jan. 6?”
 
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