How Putin Bought the Chumph

Putin bought Trump like some used dishes at a Flea Market, and has pimped him out for Russia every since.

 

Russian state-run bank financed Toronto Trump hotel through mystery buyer: report

Trump Toronto Hotel Bought out of bankruptcy by Putin’s mob

A new report in the Wall Street Journal reveals that a Trump-branded hotel in Toronto received an urgently needed cash injection via a deal financed by a Russian state-run bank.

According to the Journal, government-owned VEB helped former Trump hotel partner Alexander Shnaider arrange an asset sale involving a share in a Ukrainian steel firm worth $850 million. Shortly after Shnaider completed the deal, he quickly began injecting cash into the Trump Toronto project, which the Journal notes was financially troubled at the time of the sale.

Although the buyer of the share hasn’t been publicly identified, two sources tell the Journal that it was “an entity acting for the Russian government.”

The Trump Organization emphasized to the Journal that it “had no involvement in any financial dealings with VEB” over the project, as it “merely licensed its brand and manages the hotel and residences.”

Nonetheless, the transaction is notable because, as the Journal notes, “VEB has long been viewed by Russian analysts as a vehicle for the Russian government to fund politically important projects.” Even more intriguing is the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin was chairman of VEB’s supervisory board at the time of Shnaider’s deal, which means he would have likely personally signed off on such a large transaction.

VEB was placed on a U.S. sanctions list to punish the Russian government for its 2014 invasion of Crimea.

 

Another Conservative Icon, Rush Limbaugh Radio Headed for the Dumpster

Oh my…Add to the death toll of conservatwit blowhards…

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity face uncertain futures with iHeartMedia

24k Gold Microphone for sale…Cheap!

Top radio station owner and programming syndicator says it might not exist in 12 months

The parent company of iHeartCommunications, which syndicates programs by conservative talk-show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, appears to be headed toward bankruptcy.

In a statement filed last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal agency charged with regulating companies that offer investments to the public, iHeartCommunications’ parent company, iHeartMedia Inc., said that it had “substantial doubt” that it would be in business by the middle of next year.

Beyond syndicating shows by Limbaugh, Hannity and other hosts like Steve Harvey and Ryan Seacrest, iHeartCommunications owns and operates more than 800 radio stations. It also sells ads on thousands of billboards across the country.

The radio industry as a whole has been fading away, not because people aren’t tuning in but rather because advertisers have been shifting their dollars to the online world where performance can be measured much more effectively, according to radio industry veteran Seth Resler: “What many people don’t realize is that the job of a radio salesperson is getting harder as more and more clients start thinking about advertising as a science and not an art,” Resler wrote. “As an industry, we simply aren’t providing them with the tools they need to compete against these new mediums.”

According to a 2016 Pew Research Center report, more than 90 percent of Americans said they have listened to radio via an online or broadcast form in a given week.

The ad challenge is made worse for iHeartCommunications since many of its stations feature a conservative talk format whose audience is literally dying off. According to industry figures, the age of a talk show listener is about 67. Further complicating things for the company has been that its top host, Limbaugh, has immersed himself in several controversies in recent years, such as the time he called a liberal activist a “slut” on the air.

Being in an expensive, dying and controversial industry isn’t good for stock prices, which is why in 2008, iHeartCommunications became a wholly owned subsidiary of iHeartMedia in a $24 billion stock buyout transaction initiated by Bain Capital, the investment firm for which past GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney labored for many years.

That buyout option saddled iHeartMedia with a huge amount of debt, almost $350 million of which is about to come due, according to MarketWatch reporter Ciara Linnane.

In December ratings agency Moody’s said that iHeartMedia had a “negative” outlook, a sign that its already junk-level bond rating might be downgraded even further.

According to Reuters, iHeartMedia is trying to kick the debt can further down the road by trying to pay off its maturing bonds by purchasing other ones while undergoing yet another corporate overhaul.

But this time, the company’s bondholders aren’t playing along. Per Reuters, a group that claims to represent more than half of the company’s lenders are refusing to cooperate with the restructuring plan, meaning that there is a very real possibility that iHeartMedia may have to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to evade its creditors.

Should such a restructuring happen, there’s a very real chance that it could allow iHeartMedia to force Limbaugh, Hannity and its other top talents to renegotiate their contracts for a lower payment amount. Of course, that’s assuming that there would be any takers on what are likely to be bonds that would be sold at fire-sale prices.

Will Rush Limbaugh need a government bailout?

 

The Chumph is Broke

Trump has been lying about his supposed wealth for a long time. A good part of that has to do with the scam surrounding the “Trump” brand, and it’s supposed value in the luxury marketplace. A good portion of his self reported $10 billion in wealth is based on wildly inflated value of the Trump name. Even his hard assets , the Golf Courses, Hotels, and Casino aren’t worth nearly as much as an uncritical eye would believe.Like anyone who is big in commercial Real Estate, Trump is heavily “leveraged”. In layman’s terms it is like owning $200,000 on a house which can only be sold today for $100,000 – betting that the Real Estate value of houses in the area will go up in 3 years enough to make a profit after paying off the debt. In the high-flying world of certain types of business, your ability to acquire debt is counted as an asset. Ergo, you are worth $1 million – because you can borrow $1 million, even though you only have $100 in the bank. The reason so many Real Estate folks go bankrupt quite simply is they cannot generate enough revenue based on their investments to cover the debt. That house you owe $200,000 on has a monthly mortgage of $2,000, and it can be rented for only $1,000 a month – meaning you have to come up with another $1,000 a month to make the mortgage from somewhere else. Buy enough of those, and don’t flip them fast enough,  and you go bankrupt.

In the real world, your net worth is the value of what you own or have in the bank, minus what you owe. Cash on hand is king. $100 in assets with $50 in debt mean you are worth $50.

In Trump’s world, if you have $50 million cash in the bank, and $100 million in debt – you can easily borrow another $100 million, and are “worth” $200 million. What you can’t do, is not have enough cash to make the payments…

Which from all indications is about where the Chumph is. Stealing $1 million a month from his campaign coffers to service the debt on his various scams by paying his own companies, strongly suggest he not only has a cash flow problem, he is at or past the point of having a negative net worth.

Despite all the huffing and puffing…It indeed looks like the boy is busted.

Now there is a huge difference between a guy like Warren Buffet, and a Chump wannabe billionaire. Warren can write a check for $1 billion, and frequently comes up with $50, $100, or even $500 million as part of his investment empire. The Chump on the other hand, seems to be struggling to have $1 million cash on hand to pay his promised charity donation to Veterans – which he apparently paid from his campaign donations.

Take that from a guy who has experience being hired to do “due diligence” in major investment deals to discover the true value of a company’s assets.

The Chumph begs for money to stay afloat

Yep, Trump’s Stone Broke

I confess even I’m surprised at what the overnight FEC filings revealed about the Trump campaign. Posting the ‘Trump is Broke‘ column yesterday made me feel at least a touch exposed since I figured he’d add (either from his own money or fundraising) at least some additional funds to the paltry $2.4 million cash on hand in his previous filing. Appears not. Now on top of that it’s revealed that he’s been using his presidential campaign to funnel millions of dollars back into his own businesses. The new filing shows the campaign had only $1.3 million in cash on hand at the beginning of this month, in comparison to $42 million on hand for the Hillary campaign.

It’s important to see those numbers in the proper perspective.

Yes, Clinton has massively more money than Trump. But that’s about the amount of money sheshould have. This isn’t to take away from the accomplishment. It’s a lot of money and it came while she was still having to spend money on the on-going primaries. But it’s in the range of what you would expect from a well-oiled team of professionals drawing on a robust fundraising apparatus. Trump’s amount of cash wouldn’t be terribly impressive for a competitive House race. His campaign is essentially broke. Which, as I noted yesterday, means Trump must be broke, too, or so cash poor as to amount to the same thing for the purposes of this campaign.

Even more revealing is the fact that Trump has been using a huge amount of campaign expenditures to cycle money back through his own businesses. According to an analysis by the AP, through the end of May Trump had plowed $6.2 million into various Trump companies, which is to say, back into his own pocket. That’s roughly 10% of his campaign spending so far, which is almost entirely from the loan (which he can still repay to himself out of future fundraising) he made to his campaign. He kept up the pace in May, spending $6.7 million on his campaign and more than a million of that to various Trump enterprises.

What’s notable about that roughly 10% of money back into his own pocket is that Trump only has businesses in so many sectors. He doesn’t appear to have a company to make red trucker hats and he doesn’t own radio and TV stations to run ads. So that 10% is basically as much as he could possibly run to own companies.

Perhaps the most revealing detail about the May filing is that Trump actually did loan his campaign additional funds – a bit over $2 million. But this shows more just how hard up Trump is. His campaign is in desperate need of funds. Like I said, $1.3 million cash on hand is stone broke for a summer presidential campaign. He clearly has no principled resistance to loaning his campaign more money. And he’s in desperate need of a few tens of millions of dollars. Put this together with having to be shamed into coughing up the $1 million contribution to a vets organization and the implication is clear: Trump is very hard pressed to come up with even a few million dollars. And this from a man purportedly worth $10 billion.

Trump’s promises of vast riches got the GOP into a bind relying on him to fund a general election on his own. But that was all a lie. He’s broke or near broke. And the GOP is now facing mid-summer with a campaign that is broke, has no fundraising apparatus, no candidate with big bucks and no field operation. He’s done the GOP worse than the most screwed over creditor he ever sharked.

 

The Death of King Coal

The end is coming fast for coal as an energy source…

The World’s Largest Private Coal Company May File For Bankruptcy

Peabody Energy, the largest private coal company in the world, may soon file for bankruptcy, citing falling global demand and “substantial doubt” about its future.

The company has been hit hard by a glut in cheap natural gas and the Obama administration’s tougher, climate change-minded government. Several major coal companies have already succumbed to the changes, including Arch Coal, the second largest supplier in America.

“These projections and certain liquidity risks raise substantial doubt about whether we will meet our obligations,” Peabody said in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission. “There exists substantial doubt whether we will be able to continue.”

Shares in the company fell more than 45 percent on Wednesday after the filing.

Coal has long been lambasted for being a fuel of the past as growing concerns about climate change have led to harsh crackdowns on future mining operations. President Barack Obama halted new coal leases on public lands earlier this year. And China, by far the largest burner of coal on the planet, has promised to tackle it’s gargantuan greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Several leading environmental groups, including 350.org, Greenpeace and WildEarth Guardians, called on Peabody to end its coal business, citing the announcement as an “opportunity to protect the climate” in a press release.

“All we’re doing is calling on the company to get on board with helping our nation and our communities transition away from coal by winding down their operations in an orderly and effective manner,” Diana Best, Greenpeace’s senior coal campaigner, said in the statement.

Peabody has laid off hundreds of employees over the past few years and announced in January it would pay $75 million into a health fund for thousands of retired coal workers from a now-defunct company it spun off in 2007.

The company had $6.3 billion in debt and a net loss of more than $2 billion at the end of 2015.

Talking about Kentucky and Coal…A little Bluegrass is in order in a song about Peabody…

This is a modern electrified version of a Bluegrass classic – “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive”. Harlan County Kentucky was featured in a television series a few years ago, and it’s theme song featured a new style blending Bluegrass, funk, and rap.

In case you need to ask, my Grandfather was a coal miner, and my Dad did a stint to get though school up in the mountains working the Pocahontas mine.

 

Rev “Mack Daddy” Church Repossed

Reverent Mack Daddy, Aka Pastor James David Manning of Atlah Worldwide Church and YouTube fame as a black conservative willing to attack President Obama…

Is going down. His Church is now up for Auction. Apparently being Hannity’s House Negro didn’t pay enough to pay the bills.

I have posted about him previously –

Rev Mack Daddy At It Again

Rev Mack Daddy is Back!

Rev Long Legged Mack Daddy’s Meltdown – “Black People are Stupid”

Now it seems Mack Daddy has picked on the wrong folks in NYC…

This Vehemently Anti-Gay Church Might Get The Ultimate Karmic Smackdown

An LGBT advocacy group hopes to secure the ATLAH World Missionary Church for its homeless clients.

A New York church notorious for posting homophobic messages on its billboard may be on the auction block. But if fundraising efforts are successful, the parish’s history of hate could be repurposed into something truly beautiful.

A New York state judge has ordered the ATLAH World Missionary Church to be sold at a public foreclosure auction, according to court records cited by DNAinfo New York. The church, which has been known to display messages like “Jesus would stone homos” and “Obama has released the homo demons on the black man” on its billboard, has reportedly amassed debts and tax liens totaling more than $1.02 million.

The Harlem church could prove to be a commodity in Manhattan’s cutthroat real estate market. But the Ali Forney Center, an advocacy group dedicated to homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) teens and young adults, hopes that an online fundraiser will help raise $200,000 to secure the property as housing for its clients.

Carl Siciliano, who is the Ali Forney Center’s founder and executive director, said in a press release that repurposing the church to house homeless LGBT youth would “truly be a triumph of love over hatred.”

“The biggest reason our youths are driven from their homes is because of homophobic and transphobic religious beliefs of their parents,” he said. “Because of this, it has been horrifying for us to have our youths exposed to Manning’s messages inciting hatred and violence against our community. It has meant the world to us that so many Harlem residents have stood up to support our young people, and are now urging us to provide urgently needed care at the site of so much hatred.”

LGBT rights activist Scott Wooledge, who is working with the Ali Forney Center to raise the funds to buy the church and has raised over $200,000 for homeless youth over the past two years, echoed those sentiments.

“We, as a community, have a golden, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to turn what was once a center of appalling hate into a home where our youth can be safe, nurtured, supported and thrive into self-sufficient adults,” he told The Huffington Post in an email. “Let’s seize the day, and turn the page on an ugly chapter in Harlem’s history.”

Stacy Parker Le Melle, founder of Harlem’s “Love Not Hate” Movement, told The Huffington Post, “When the ATLAH story broke on Thursday, immediately I heard from neighbors: Wouldn’t it be amazing if an LGBT group could acquire the property? What if it were the Ali Forney Center? We all knew that this would be poetic justice. We need to care for those kicked out of homes, often on religious-based grounds. We need to care for those most vulnerable to ATLAH’s hate speech.”

ATLAH’s pastor seemed to downplay his parish’s debts in an interview withDNAinfo New York, and vowed to cite the church’s tax exempt status in its fight against the foreclosure order, which he called a “land grab.”

“I assure you, it’s about a water bill and a tax that can’t be levied against this church,” Rev. James David Manning, who made headlines in 2014 when he argued that Starbucks flavored its coffee drinks with “sodomites’ semen,” told DNAinfo.

 

Anti-Obamacare Litigant Goes Bankrupt – Owing Medical Bills

“Ain’t nobody going to force me to get no healthcare insurance!”

Ain’t nobody going to bail your dumb ass out from going bankrupt either.

I just spent several weeks in 2 Hospitals. The bill for the first one, in which I stayed 3 days was $61,000. That is a formidable bill to have to cover out of pocket.

These dumb arsed Republicans let their racism get in the way of common sense.Indeed they want to screw the whole damn country because Obama is President.

Plaintiff challenging healthcare law went bankrupt – with unpaid medical bills

Mary Brown, a 56-year-old Florida woman who owned a small auto repair shop but had no health insurance, became the lead plaintiff challengingPresident Obama‘s healthcare law because she was passionate about the issue.

Brown “doesn’t have insurance. She doesn’t want to pay for it. And she doesn’t want the government to tell her she has to have it,” said Karen Harned, a lawyer for the National Federation of Independent Business. Brown is a plaintiff in the federation’s case, which the Supreme Court plans to hear later this month.

But court records reveal that Brown and her husband filed for bankruptcy last fall with $4,500 in unpaid medical bills. Those bills could change Brown from a symbol of proud independence into an example of exactly the problem the healthcare law was intended to address.

The central issue before the Supreme Court is whether the government can require people to buy health insurance. Under the law, those who fail to buy insurance after 2014 could face a fine of up to $700.

The business federation, along with other critics of the law, calls the insurance mandate a “threat to individual liberty” that violates the Constitution.

Obama administration lawyers argue that the requirement is justified because everyone, sooner or later, needs healthcare. Those who fail to have insurance are at high risk of running up bills they cannot pay, sticking the rest of society with the cost, they argue. Brown’s situation, they say, is a perfect example of exactly that kind of “uncompensated care that will ultimately be paid by others.”

“This is so ironic,” Jane Perkins, a health law expert in North Carolina, said of Brown’s situation. “It just shows that all Americans inevitably have a need for healthcare. Somebody has paid for her healthcare costs. And she is now among the 62% whose personal bankruptcy was attributable in part to medical bills.”…(more)

 

Conservative Radio Host – Cain Inappropriate Behavior in Iowa Recently

This one from a fellow conservative! It isn’t “liberals” who are hammering Cain – it’s his fellow conservatives.

Conservative Radio Host Steve Deace at Republican Fundraiser in Iowa

Iowa Radio Host Steve Deace Calls Herman Cain ‘Compromised In His Private Life’

A conservative Iowa radio host, who on Wednesday became the latest person to accuse Herman Cain of acting inappropriately toward women, declined to offer specifics about the presidential candidate’s behavior but suggested that Cain was “compromised in his private life.”

Steve Deace, who hosts a syndicated two-hour radio program in Iowa, said that two of his female staff members were subjected to “inappropriate and awkward” comments by Cain. But he refused to identify them or elaborate on the seriousness of the allegations.

After his show on Wednesday night, Deace held an impromptu press conference outside his Des Moines studio while his two female staff members rushed out of the building, escorted by two men who attempted to keep reporters away.

One of the women was identified to ABC News by an independent source as a victim of the behavior Deace mentioned. Both of the women repeatedly refused to comment on anything related to the controversy.

Deace, an influential conservative figure in the state, declined to say whether he had the women’s consent before going public with the allegations, but added, “As a staff we are very tight and we are very close and we share everything with one another.”…

“When a man will not lead it is almost always because he is compromised in his private life — almost always,” Deace said. “That has been my experience in general, regardless of your subculture, race, creed color, what part of the country you come from that a lot of times when you’re wondering why a man will not show moral consistency and step up and lead it’s because he’s compromised in his private life.”

 

Another Conservative Failure – Getting Tough on Crime and the Prison Industrial Complex

Thanks to conservative failure to understand the cost of the highest level of incarceration in the world, hundreds of former prisons now sit empty because they are too expensive to operate costing taxpayers billions.

Since Raygun Republicans have embraced the idea of building prisons and ever more draconian penalties. The problem is – conservatives are real big on action…

But not real big on thinking. It never occurred to them that prisons cost money. Like tax cuts, being tough on crime has been a conservative staple – betting that the average Faux News addicted not too bright Republican voter is way too stupid to figure out that just like in your household income … The government has expenses.

One of the results of the 2010 election is that giant, rotten Dodo bird has come home to roost, with Republicans now in charge of the majority of State Houses in the middle of many states going broke.

They now have to fix the mess they created.

Republican lawmakers paying for tough crime laws

When Harry Coates campaigned for the Oklahoma state Senate in 2002, he had one approach to crime: “Lock ’em up and throw away the key.”

Now, Coates is looking for that key. He and other tough-on-crime lawmakers across the country, faced with steep budget shortfalls, are searching anxiously for ways to let inmates out of prison faster and keep more offenders on the street.

Oklahoma’s preferred answer for crime has collided head-on with a budget deficit estimated at $600 million, and prison costs that have increased more than 30 percent in the last decade. For years, lawmakers have pushed each other to lengthen prison sentences and increase the number of criminals behind bars. Not now: This week, new Republican Speaker of the House Kris Steele is expected to unveil a package of proposals that would divert thousands of nonviolent lawbreakers from the prison system and ramp up paroles.

 

A Tin Cup and a Euro

Anyone remember the last few years when certain oil producing countries threatened to dump the US Dollar in favor of the Euro?

Iranian Oil Bourse Opens for Business: A Final Step Toward US Dollar Collapse & Preemptive Nuclear Strike

With the economic collapse of Greece, and likely bankruptcy of the country – quite possibly taking the Euro as a currency with it –

Greek Debt Poses a Danger to Common Currency

I wonder how many folks are left trading for oil in Euros?

I wonder which oil producer is holding those Euros? (Gold Dinars, anyone?)

The euro has lost 11 percent against the dollar this year… So far.