Don's Tuesday Column

       THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   11/22/2019

Profiteering, graft in beholder’s eye

There can be legitimate objections to President Trump hosting the G-7 heads of state at his Doral luxury resort and golf course in Florida. Inarguably, it’s highly suitable—with 700 rooms across 10 buildings, nearly 90,000 square feet of meeting space, a 25,000-sf ballroom and dozens of spas—for a high profile event like the G-7.

 Disingenuous criticisms quickly fall apart: Given that Donald J. Trump has lost literally billions of dollars of income while president (cue the adage about the billionaire rejecting the presidency because he’d have to take such a pay cut), the boost, if any, to Trump’s “brand” falls pretty flat. Compared to the infinite demonization and diminished bookings since he committed his only genuine transgression—beating Hillary Clinton on an agenda, since pursued, that included “draining the swamp”—there’s been zero profit.

It could be said that Trump sought to burnish the image of Doral—and that of his other properties by extension—but, again, that would amount to just limiting his losses. I see, among the overblown near-hysterical criticism, a subtle recognition that Trump’s success has—in spite of the opposition and setbacks he describes in his books and in the public record—the potential to shine the light of the world’s attention on actual private sector wealth, contrasted to socialist hovels of poverty in Cuba or Venezuela.

The dirty secret—behind enriched despotic, socialist rulers—is that private sector wealth arises from the successful, efficient production of goods, services and resource development. It creates that marvelous, glorious result: Profit. Profits don’t result from socialist government control of “the means of production,” only misery, deprivation and rich “corrupt-ocrats” stealing from their nation.

That gets to the definition of graft and corruption (selectively applied depending on person and party): “Dishonest financial gain by public officers” (Webster’s). More generally, it’s the use of the power of position to accrue wealth for one’s self, one’s family or favored associates.

Setting aside assertions of criminality, let’s agree on some actual examples: 1) “Hillary Clinton sought to tamp down reports about her opposition to Russia sanctions that coincided with a speech her husband gave in Moscow that landed him half a million dollars.” Hillary Clinton opposed Russia sanctions in 2010 when Bill Clinton was paid to speak at (Russian bank) Renaissance Capital. (Paul Crookston, Freebeacon.com, 7/18/2017)

That paycheck, as well as the many millions paid from Russia to the Clinton Foundation, can only be seen through her powerful position as the Secretary of State. There was also that little side deal that she, and her fellow members of the committee overseeing such transactions, arranged so that much of America’s uranium could be sold to Russia.

2) Hunter Biden indisputably profited as the son of Joe Biden, which he admitted, when he (admittedly) parlayed a complete lack of resume in the field of energy production into millions of dollars over several years on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company.

The transfer of a reported $1.5 billion from China to an equity company with Hunter Biden on its board of directors, may not have yet provided income to Hunter. Such equity funds don’t pay off for investors (Hunter chipped in over $400,000) until after a defined period. Hunter’s fat return will still end up in his bank account even if he resigns for appearances.

Joe and Hunter’s protests fall apart now that we know they consulted over Hunter’s Ukraine Burisma “money-for-nothing” position (Joe: “Do you know what you’re doing?”). The Washington Post tells us that “a career State Department officer tried to warn officials in the Obama administration (in 2015) about the conflict of interest that Hunter Biden’s work created in Ukraine…” He was rebuffed; read “Breaking: Impeachment Witness Says He Tried To Warn About Ukraine Influence—With Biden” (Ed Morrissey)

I don’t see the statements and answers of staff chief Mick Mulvaney as problematic. It boiled down to repeated assertions against a hostile press that there was no, zero, zilch quid-pro-quo over funding for Ukraine leveraged to investigations of Democrats Joe and Hunter Biden. Filtering out the agenda-driven tactic of the press to ask multiple questions and interrupt before an answer is completed, it becomes obvious that Mulvaney was caught providing a “that happens all the time” right after such an insertion of a Democrat/press talking point about a possible link to the Biden investigation.

I think Mulvaney suffers from a style where he answers with a mental paragraph complete with side counter-arguments when he should slow down and deliver one, firmly held answer to one question; he should pace the interchange with refusals to accept faulty premises in press queries designed to elicit gaffes. They have done this for decades; President George Bush got caught up giving an answer to the first part of a question after the reporter slyly added a quick second question to which Bush gave a bad quote.

I saw blatant EDO (Embedded Democrat Operative) and press narrative collusion in the October 12 AP story, “Former envoy defies Trump, testifies he pushed to oust her,” (by M. Jalonick, M. Lee and A. Geller). Ms. Yovanovitch was portrayed as a put-upon warrior, wrongly losing her Ukraine ambassadorship for apparently not acceding to Trump’s improper demands. The “unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives” looks to me like a pot/kettle/black scenario.

We know that corrupt-ocrats in Ukraine were complicit in digging dirt to help derail Trump’s campaign through at least Paul Manafort’s history (problematic but still an involvement of a corrupt foreign nation). Ukrainian complicity in our election—together with the election of a new president, Zelensky, dedicated to working with America to expose corruption—prompted Yovanovitch to refuse passports for envoys to come to Washington for that purpose. She clearly was an Obama/Clinton operative, appointed by Obama in May, 2016, to further the “resistance” to Trump, once he won. Dirty deeds by corrupt people.