***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[chao7]

Of course, Hillary should have warned Trump about the Russians.

 

[blastercombo]

The whole Russia thing is hilarious at this point

. No Russian interference AT ALL
. All fake talk about something else
. None of my people talked to them
. None of the people working with me now talked to them
. Only my coffee boy talked to them
. High ranking official talked to them (was coffee boy) but for Hilary
. Russia interfered but not for me
. I love Putin
. I hate Putin
. What about emails?
. Obama actually was in charge when they did interfere
. Hilary should of stopped them
. What about emails?
. Obama’s fault
. What about emails?












. What about emails?

 

[Belgium]

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/28/china-ivanka-trump-trademarks-610029
China approves 13 new Ivanka Trump trademarks in 3 months

Ivanka Trump’s brand continues to win foreign trademarks in China and the Philippines, adding to questions about conflicts of interest at the White House, The Associated Press has found.

On Sunday, China granted the first daughter’s company final approval for its 13th trademark in the past three months, trademark office records show. Over the same period, the Chinese government has granted Ivanka Trump’s company provisional approval for another eight trademarks, which can be finalized if no objections are raised during a three-month comment period.


Taken together, the trademarks could allow her brand to market a lifetime’s worth of products in China, from baby blankets to coffins, and a host of things in between, including perfume, make-up, bowls, mirrors, furniture, books, coffee, chocolate and honey. Ivanka Trump stepped back from management of her brand and placed its assets in a family-run trust, but she continues to profit from the business.

“Ivanka Trump’s refusal to divest from her business is especially troubling as the Ivanka brand continues to expand its business in foreign countries,” Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in an email Monday. “It raises significant questions about corruption, as it invites the possibility that she could be benefiting financially from her position and her father’s presidency or that she could be influenced in her policy work by countries’ treatment of her business.”

As Ivanka Trump and her father have built their global brands, largely through licensing deals, they have pursued trademarks in dozens of countries. Those global trademarks have drawn the attention of ethics lawyers because they are granted by foreign governments and can confer enormous value. Concerns about political influence have been especially sharp in China, where the courts and bureaucracy are designed to reflect the will of the ruling Communist Party.

Chinese officials have emphasized that all trademark applications are handled in accordance with the law.

More approvals are likely to come. Online records from China’s trademark office indicate that Ivanka Trump’s company last applied for trademarks — 17 of them — on March 28, 2017, the day before she took on a formal role at the White House. Those records on Monday showed at least 25 Ivanka Trump trademarks pending review, 36 active marks and eight with provisional approval.

The World Intellectual Property Organization’s global brand database also shows that her company, Ivanka Trump Marks LLC, won three trademarks in the Philippines after her father took office. Two of them that cover clothing, including lingerie and baby clothes, were filed on Feb. 8, 2017 and registered in June and November. The third, filed on March 1, 2017, covers clothing and footwear and was registered in July.

Companies register for trademarks for a variety of reasons. They can be a sign of corporate ambition, but in many countries, like China, where trademark squatting is rampant, companies also file defensively, to block copycats from grabbing legal rights to a brand’s name. Trademarks are classified by category and may include items that a company does not intend to market. Some trademark lawyers also advise clients to register trademarks for merchandise that is manufactured in China, even if it’s not sold there.

Ivanka Trump does not have a large retail presence in China, but customs records show that the bulk of her company’s U.S. imports are shipped from China.

The brand’s secretive Chinese supply chains have been the subject of some controversy. A year ago Monday, three men working for China Labor Watch, a New York-based non-profit group, were arrested while investigating labor abuses at Ivanka Trump suppliers in China. After thirty days in detention, they were released on bail, but continue to live under police surveillance.

Li Qiang, the group’s founder, said Monday that he hopes bail will be lifted soon and that the case will not go to trial.

Police in Ganzhou, the southeastern Chinese city where the men were detained, could not be reached for comment. The Chinese law firm that handles Ivanka Trump’s intellectual property in China also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

 

[frink85]

“The buck stops at the president....






...president obama. Or would be president Hillary.”
-Dotard Trump

 

[boris]

"Why didn't you warn us that we were colluding with a hostile foreign government!"

 

[chao7]

At some point, the RNC could be charged with something too.

They're still employing Michael Cohen, probably for a job he doesn't even show up to. This money is probably going to his legal defense fees. Ridiculous.

 

[IATT]

 

[hand2handking]

Black Defendants Get Longer Sentences From Republican-Appointed Judges, Study Finds

A federal prison in California. A new study finds sentencing differences between Republican-appointed judges and Democratic appointees by both race and sex.CreditMax Whittaker for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/us/politics/black-defendants-women-prison-terms-study.html

WASHINGTON — Judges appointed by Republican presidents gave longer sentences to black defendants and shorter ones to women than judges appointed by Democrats, according to a new study that analyzed data on more than half a million defendants.

“Republican-appointed judges sentence black defendants to three more months than similar nonblacks and female defendants to two fewer months than similar males compared to Democratic-appointed judges,” the study found, adding, “These differences cannot be explained by other judge characteristics and grow substantially larger when judges are granted more discretion.”

The study was conducted by two professors at Harvard Law School, Alma Cohen and Crystal S. Yang. They examined the sentencing practices of about 1,400 federal trial judges over more than 15 years, relying on information from the Federal Judicial Center, the United States Sentencing Commission and the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Douglas A. Berman, an authority on sentencing law at Ohio State University, said the study contained “amazing new empirical research.”

“It’s an extraordinarily important contribution to our statistical understanding of sentencing decision making in federal courts over the last two decades,” he said.

It has long been known that there is an overall racial sentencing gap, with judges of all political affiliations meting out longer sentences to black offenders. The new study confirmed this, finding that black defendants are sentenced to 4.8 months more than similar offenders of other races.

It was also well known, and perhaps not terribly surprising, that Republican appointees are tougher on crime over all, imposing sentences an average of 2.4 months longer than Democratic appointees.

But the study’s findings on how judges’ partisan affiliations affected the racial and gender gaps were new and startling.

“The racial gap by political affiliation is three months, approximately 65 percent of the baseline racial sentence gap,” the authors wrote. “We also find that Republican-appointed judges give female defendants two months less in prison than similar male defendants compared to Democratic-appointed judges, 17 percent of the baseline gender sentence gap.”

The two kinds of gaps appear to have slightly different explanations. “We find evidence that gender disparities by political affiliation are largely driven by violent offenses and drug offenses,” the study said. “We also find that racial disparities by political affiliation are largely driven by drug offenses.”

The authors of the study sounded a note of caution. “The precise reasons why these disparities by political affiliation exist remain unknown and we caution that our results cannot speak to whether the sentences imposed by Republican- or Democratic-appointed judges are warranted or ‘right,’” the authors wrote. “Our results, however, do suggest that Republican- and Democratic-appointed judges treat defendants differently on the basis of their race and gender given that we observe robust disparities despite the random assignment of cases to judges within the same court.”

The study is studded with fascinating tidbits. Black judges treat male and female offenders more equally than white judges do. Black judges appointed by Republicans treat black offenders more leniently than do other Republican appointees.

More experienced judges are less apt to treat black and female defendants differently. Judges in states with higher levels of racism, as measured by popular support for laws against interracial marriage, are more likely to treat black defendants more harshly than white ones.

The Trump administration has been quite successful in stocking the federal bench with its appointees, and by some estimates the share of Republican appointees on the federal district courts could rise to 50 percent in 2020, from 34 percent in early 2017.

The study said these trends were likely to widen the sentencing gaps.

“Our estimates suggest that a 10 percentage point increase in the share of Republican-appointed judges in each court would increase the racial sentencing gap by approximately 5 percent and the gender sentencing gap by roughly 2 percent,” the authors wrote. “During an average four-year term, a Republican president has the potential to alter the partisan composition of the district courts by over 15 percentage points, potentially increasing the racial and gender sentencing gap by 7.5 and 3 percent, respectively.”

There are a couple of reasons to question that prediction. The Trump administration has been more energetic in appointing appeals court judges than trial judges. And in recent years many conservatives have started to shift positions on sentencing policy. The very scope of the study, which considered sentences imposed from 1999 to 2015, could mask trends in the later years.

Supreme Court justices like to say that partisan affiliation plays no role in judicial decision making.

“There’s no such thing as a Republican judge or a Democratic judge,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, President Trump’s Supreme Court appointee, said at his confirmation hearing last year. “We just have judges in this country.”

Political scientists have disagreed, finding that Republican appointees are markedly more likely to vote in a conservative direction than Democratic ones. Senate Republicans, by refusing to hold hearings for Judge Merrick B. Garland, President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, seemed to agree.

So has Mr. Trump. “We need more Republicans in 2018 and must ALWAYS hold the Supreme Court!” he tweeted in March.

But judicial ideology is one thing. The race and gender gaps identified by the new study present a different and difficult set of questions.

Professor Berman said the study should prompt both research and reflection. “It only begins a conversation,” he said, “about what sets of factors really influence judges at sentencing in modern times.”

 

[IATT]

Black Defendants Get Longer Sentences From Republican-Appointed Judges, Study Finds

A federal prison in California. A new study finds sentencing differences between Republican-appointed judges and Democratic appointees by both race and sex.CreditMax Whittaker for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/us/politics/black-defendants-women-prison-terms-study.html

Sounds about white..

 

[boris]

http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/389631-giuliani-gets-booed-at-yankees-game

 

[IATT]

 

[gry60]

Black Defendants Get Longer Sentences From Republican-Appointed Judges, Study Finds

A federal prison in California. A new study finds sentencing differences between Republican-appointed judges and Democratic appointees by both race and sex.CreditMax Whittaker for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/us/politics/black-defendants-women-prison-terms-study.html

@Maximus Meridius

 

[nawghtyhare]

read somewhere
that had accused ICE
of separating families
and heard that the babies
were getting used for sex trafficking

 

[biggie62]

read somewhere
that had accused ICE
of separating families
and heard that the babies
were getting used for sex trafficking

Welcome to MAGA

 

[blastercombo]

read somewhere
that had accused ICE
of separating families
and heard that the babies
were getting used for sex trafficking

Babies? You mean animals right?

 

[Nike Jordan]

http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/389631-giuliani-gets-booed-at-yankees-game

More like Booliani, amirite?

 

[Nike Jordan]

Still.

 

[MalcolmNewton]

 

[Belgium]

https://apnews.com/13deae54324349dc...ler's-team-is-'meddling'-in-midterm-elections
Trump: Mueller’s team is ‘meddling’ in midterm elections

 

[IATT]

How this bish still got a show

 

[AEA18]

She must really think those ratings will keep her/the show from getting the axe

 

[Based Jesus]

How the hell do you just miss 1000s of dead people?

How this bish still got a show

You missed this gem of her calling a black woman, Valerie Jarrett, a muslim ape

Oh but she apologized

 

[Sharpshoeter13]

The "Nice!" at the end had me

You know when people have had it with his ish is whenDictionary.com had to correct him.

 

[IATT]

Party of smaller government...

 

[aepps20]

How the hell do you just miss 1000s of dead people?



You missed this gem of her calling a black woman, Valerie Jarrett, a muslim ape

Oh but she apologized

But BUT, BUUUUT THE RUST BELT.