monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

When Sean Hannity was named in court this week as a client of Donald Trump’s embattled legal fixer Michael Cohen, the Fox News host insisted their discussions had been limited to the subject of buying property.

“I’ve said many times on my radio show: I hate the stock market, I prefer real estate. Michael knows real estate,” Hannity said on television, a few hours after the dramatic hearing in Manhattan, where Cohen is under criminal investigation.

Hannity’s chosen investment strategy is confirmed by thousands of pages of public records reviewed by the Guardian, which detail a real estate portfolio of remarkable scale that has not previously been reported.

The records link Hannity to a group of shell companies that spent at least $90m on more than 870 homes in seven states over the past decade. The properties range from luxurious mansions to rentals for low-income families. Hannity is the hidden owner behind some of the shell companies and his attorney did not dispute that he owns all of them.

Dozens of the properties were bought at a discount in 2013, after banks foreclosed on their previous owners for defaulting on mortgages. Before and after then, Hannity sharply criticised Barack Obama for the US foreclosure rate. In January 2016, Hannity said there were “millions more Americans suffering under this president” partly because of foreclosures.

Hannity, 56, also amassed part of his property collection with support from the US Department for Housing and Urban Development (Hud), a fact he did not disclose when praising Ben Carson, the Hud secretary, on his television show last year.

Christopher Reeve, Hannity’s real estate attorney, said in an email he would “struggle to find any relevance” in Hannity’s property holdings, which he said were highly confidential.

“I doubt you would find it very surprising that most people prefer to keep their legal and personal financial issues private,” said Reeve. “Mr Hannity is no different.”

Spokespeople for Hud and Fox News declined to comment on the record.
The real estate holdings linked to Hannity are spread across more than 20 shell companies formed in Georgia. Each of the companies uses a variant of the same name, which combines the initials of Hannity’s children. Public records show the companies have bought up dozens of properties in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Vermont.

Among the most valuable are two large apartment complexes in Georgia that Hannity bought in 2014 for $22.7m. The developments are in the cities of Perry and Brunswick, which have higher poverty rates and lower median incomes than the US averages. One- and two-bedroom units in Hannity‍‍‍’s apartment complexes are available to rent for $735 to $1,065 per month, according to brochures.

The Georgia purchases were funded with mortgages for $17.9m that Hannity obtained with help from Hud, which insured the loans under a program created as part of the National Housing Act. The loans, first guaranteed under the Obama administration, were recently increased by $5m with renewed support from Carson’s department.

Following up on Sean Hannity’s claim that he discussed real estate questions with Michael Cohen, The Guardian uncovered that Hannity presides over a real estate empire valued at at least $100 million. This is not surprising. Hannity reportedly makes $36 million a year. He says he invests most of his money in real estate. If he’s making that much and investing in real estate, it would be surprising if his portfolio were any smaller.

Americans overwhelmingly believe teachers don’t make enough money, and half say they’d support paying higher taxes to give educators a raise.

The findings of the new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research come amid recent teacher strikes and other protests over low pay, tough classroom conditions and the amount of money allocated to public schools in several Republican-led states.

The list of scandals surrounding EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is unnervingly long. The Oklahoma Republican, tasked by Donald Trump to lead the environmental agency Pruitt has fought to undermine for years, is facing allegations of brazen corruption, misusing public funds, and abusing the powers of his office.
Even in a cabinet filled with ugly controversies and ethical messes, Pruitt stands out as arguably the most scandal plagued of the bunch.

What’s less appreciated is Pruitt’s lengthy pattern of dubious behavior. The New York Times reported over the weekend, for example, on Pruitt’s record as a state senator 15 years ago, and how familiar his conduct seems. Of particular interest, note what happened after he attended a gathering “at the Oklahoma City home of an influential telecommunications lobbyist who was nearing retirement and about to move away.”

Quote:

The lobbyist said that after the 2003 gathering, Mr. Pruitt – who had a modest legal practice and a state salary of $38,400 – reached out to her. He wanted to buy her showplace home as a second residence for when he was in the state capital. […]

Soon Mr. Pruitt was staying there, and so was at least one other lawmaker, according to interviews. Mr. Pruitt even bought Ms. Lindsey’s dining room set, art and antique rugs, she said.

A review of real estate and other public records shows that Mr. Pruitt was not the sole owner: The property was held by a shell company registered to a business partner and law school friend, Kenneth Wagner.

After Wagner created the shell company that helped put Pruitt in a showcase home, the mortgage was arranged by Albert Kelly, another Pruitt ally, who was later “barred from working in the finance industry because of a banking violation.”

Wagner is now a top official at Pruitt’s EPA – and so is Kelly.

Wait, it gets worse...

The Left's Moral Relativism

Moral relativism, prominently on display in current events, is an anathema to the transcendent, objective moral standards necessary to distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad.

A variety of evangelical leaders have already made the case publicly that they're comfortable with a marriage of convenience with the president: so long as he keeps delivering on the religious right's priorities, the argument goes, the religious right will embrace moral relativism and look the other way on Trump's personal failings.

To get the the truth,

There are many, many such examples (just enter "moral relativism and the left" or some such in google).

America's taxpayer-funded schools have become the promoters of these unhealthy behaviors, while replacing traditional education
Attn Parents: Democrats Have Replaced Educational Curricula With Perversion

California lawmakers are not only bulldozing classic liberal education, they are legislating more LGBT lifestyle and pornographic perversion in education curricula. At the same time, they are also trying to outlaw homeschooling, removing all doubt that the left is indoctrinating your kids, and using them as revolting sociological experiments.

Friday April 27 is the annual GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) pro-homosexual “Day of Silence,” celebrated on K-12 public school campuses across the country. I remember my introduction to this agenda when my son’s high school celebrated it without first notifying parents, and then feigned surprise when so many parents opposed it. My son’s English teacher introduced his students to a bizarre homosexual agenda and attempted to normalize this unsafe behavior by bringing two lesbians into the classroom to discuss their lifestyle—to 16 and17 year old kids—in a high school class.

Schumer Too Busy to Meet With Pro-Israel Group About Rising Anti-Semitism on Campus

Senator Chuck Schumer's office said the Democratic minority leader is too busy to meet with pro-Israel activists who support the nomination of Ken Marcus to lead the Department of Education's office of civil rights.

Emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon reveal that much like Democratic senators who have stonewalled Marcus's nomination, Schumer's office has delayed meeting with members of the grassroots organization Stop BDS on Campus.

Marcus's nomination to be assistant secretary for civil rights has lingered in the Senate for six months. Marcus is the founder and president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing civil rights of the Jewish people.

Marcus's nomination has been stonewalled amid reports that anti-Semitism has risen by 94 percent in U.S. schools. Last week, 51 student groups at New York University pledged to boycott Israel.

Nothing suggest he manages it good either.

If you had read the piece, you could see it isn't so cut and dried. He profited off foreclosures while trashing Obama about all the foreclosures.

Moreover, getting loans in the area he invested in, his loans are guaranteed under government housing and he made out pretty good under Ben Carson while praising him on TV.

The trouble with posting links to NY Times articles at the end of the month is that nobody on the board has any free articles left.

Flight Records Illuminate Mystery of Trump's Moscow Nights

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump twice gave James Comey an alibi for why a salacious report about the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow couldn’t be true: He never even spent the night in Russia during that trip, Trump told the former FBI director, according to Comey’s memos about the conversations.

Yet the broad timeline of Trump’s stay, stretching from Friday, Nov. 8, 2013, through the following Sunday morning, has been widely reported. And it’s substantiated by social media posts that show he slept in Moscow the night before the Miss Universe contest.

Now, flight records obtained by Bloomberg provide to-the-minute details, from wheels down to departure. Combined with existing accounts and Trump’s own social-media posts, they capture a mere 45 hours and 43 minutes that, nearly five years later, loom large in the controversy engulfing the White House and at the heart of the Comey memos, which the Justice Department turned over last week to Congress.

Neither the White House nor Trump Organization immediately responded to requests for comment.

The first denial came over dinner at the White House in late January 2017. “He said he arrived in the morning, did events, then showered and dressed for the pageant at the hotel," and then left for the event, Comey wrote.“Afterwards, he returned only to get his things because they departed for New York by plane that same night."

On the second occasion in February 2017, Trump “explained, as he did at our dinner, that he hadn’t stayed overnight in Russia during the Miss Universe trip," Comey wrote.