Free Republic

I’ll see your jury tampering, and raise you 4 election interference cases.

My recollection is that the players were mandated to use a caddy provided by Augusta National Golf Club, rather than bringing their own caddy. That was subsequently changed to where players could have their own caddies. This led to the majority of caddies being white, but not exclusively white. There were still black caddies, plus Hispanics, Japanese, Korean, etc.

The scariest thing about this is that if the DEI hires are causing these failures, political considerations will prevent anything being done to correct it. People will continue to be put at risk, and eventually dying, as blood sacrifices to wokeness.

Yes and, just as likely, these incidents will be used as a justification for more AI in our lives. If their DEI hires cannot do the building and maintaining properly, they will need an AI bot looking over their shoulder to *help*.

I am absolutely amazed that anyone is amazed that this is the way real estate works. Banks ALWAYS get an appraisal on a property if it is to be used as collateral on a loan.

Have you ever applied for a mortgage? One where there was a hold-up in the process while the bank was obtaining an appraisal? It matters not a whit that you think a property is worth $X. What matters is what the appraisal says it’s worth, and how much of that value you’re intending to borrow. If the property “won’t appraise”, that means the appraised value is insufficient to meet the requirements of the lender.

In fact, in the lending business, there are things called “conforming loans”. These are loans that meet all the metrics and comparative criteria to be packaged and sold with other loans. Things like “loan-to-value” are considered, so you don’t end up with more value in a loan than a property is worth. (So if a borrower defaults, the lender gets its money back through a foreclosure sale.)

Trump didn’t defraud ANY lender. He said the properties were worth $X. But he also said, “don’t trust my numbers - do your own due-diligence”. And the banks did. They did their own appraisals, and only lent what they felt worth the risk. NO FRAUD.

"... If that’s the case, then I guess the documents submitted by Trump and were detgermined [sic] over inflated by the court didn’t mean anything. But he sure called them fraudulent. ..."

Proving again, you don't understand the difference between a property's tax value, and a property's market-value. If you can't see Trump that is being railroaded at this point, it can only be willing blindness on your part.

I'd suggest you'd be the one to move along now. You're obviously on the wrong web-site to get any agreement with your specious arguments.

So in addition to not understanding the way lenders work, insurance companies work, and real-estate values are determined, we can add tax appraisals to the list of items you're ignorant about.

The owner of a property has NO role in determining the taxable value of real estate. No document of Trump's is, or ever would be used in arriving at his property's tax value. That determination is the sole responsibility of the taxing authority, under State law. The only potential role for the property owner is in their ability to contest a valuation when a periodic revaluation is performed. If the county valued it in a range of $18-$37 million, that's on them. (but I'd also note that they don't have values in ranges - they have a specific tax-value. The 2023 value was $37 million.)

BUT, in Florida, tax values and appraisals are not estimates of true market value. In fact, the County appraiser's office includes this disclaimer on their web-site: "BUYERS TAKE NOTE: Taxes will change and often increase substantially when a property sells. The seller’s exemption benefits will GO AWAY the year after they sell and this may result in higher taxes for a buyer."

And your citation? A (bitter) partisan Democrat - Jared Moskowitz. Just 'cause a Democrat says it, doesn't make it true. That's as true for Moskowitz as it is for the NY judge and Leticia James.

I notice that your references and citations all point back to Democrats. Why is that?

Where to start with this one ... Let me try some item-by-item re-education for you, as it does seem you're not well informed on the case. (conjurs up the thought that if you don't watch the mainstream media, your uninformed; if you do, you're mis-informed)

"Trump and his company massively overvalued his assets, creating “a fantasy world” on the financial statements he gave to banks and others, Judge Arthur Engoron found in the lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general.

Why are you accepting the words of a hostile judge that found Trump guilty before the trial? The judge already had massively UNDER-estimated the value of Mar-a-Lago. His subjective opinion was that Trump's property values were overstated. Trump's companies routinely included a "brand premium" in their property valuations, which the Trump brand does carry and support. When they sold properties, they were routinely sold for MORE than they were on the books for. There is literally no proof of any over-statement of values.

"Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago club, for example, was overvalued on one financial statement by as much as 2,300%, the judge found."

Same as above. In the Mar-a-Lago example, the judge said it was worth only $18 million, while real estate experts valued it in excess of $1 billion. Vacant land in Palm Beach, running the full width from the inter-coastal to the ocean is worth more than $18 million.

"The former president also lied about the size of his Trump Tower penthouse apartment, claiming it was nearly three times its actual size and worth $327 million, according to the ruling.

Explained at trial - it was a 3-story apartment of 10,000 sq. ft. This was mistakenly taken to mean 3 10,000 sq. ft. floors, totaling 30,000 sq. ft. It was self-corrected long before the charges were brought.

The exaggerated picture of Trump’s wealth got him more favorable loan terms and lowered insurance costs, the attorney general argued.

The banks did their own due-diligence, applied their own valuations, and set lending rates accordingly. You'd have to explain further why you believe this got him more favorable loan terms. Likewise, you'd need to explain further why insurance costs would be lower on a higher valued property.

That discrepancy from a real estate developer describing his own longtime home “can only be considered fraud,” the judge wrote.

Again, why are you believing any of this rogue judge's musings?

He created false financial statements, he accepted loans on false terms that he lied to get, thus he defrauded companies out of money he would have had to pay. And that’s why the law is there."

See ALL of the above. NONE of what you say here is true.

Seems Elon Musk has good grounds for a suit against Media Matters for fraud & tortuous interference.

According to reports, Media Matters manipulated search results specifically to have questionable ads appear next to these companies’ tweets. There’s the fraud.

They did this to deprive X of revenue, by using the manufactured search results to pressure these companies to stop advertising on X. (tortuous interference)

He should sue them for enough to put them out of business and bankrupt the owners and principals.

No wait, that was Bobby Kennedy, the fat-assed turd ...

Pretty sure you meant Teddy Kennedy, the POS senator from Massachusetts.

There’s a method to the madness. They’re only doing this so everyone visiting Paris for the Olympics will smell as bad as the Parisians.

I thought it was supposed to be personal or presidential. “In 1978, Congress passed the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which states that any records created or received by the President as part of his constitutional, statutory, or ceremonial duties are the property of the United States government and will be managed by NARA at the end of the administration.” What I’m saying is that it doesn’t really matter to the indictment what the papers are. If the government said, “Give us those rocks. You were supposed to leave them here” and a judge said, “Yeah, give the government back those rocks,” then he was supposed to return them. Smith is saying he kept the rocks, lied about having the rocks, and hid the rocks. Making public that they were defense documents was just to smear the president.

The Congress can pass all the Acts it wants. None override Presidential perogatives under the US Constitution. NARA, the DOJ, or a judge saying to give them back, and Trump saying go pound sand does NOT then mean Trump was breaking a law of any sort. He had absolute authority to declassify documents, and to declare any record as a personal record. This is a MANUFACTURED crime, whose sole purpose is to taint Trump and interfere in the 2024 election.

More importantly, MAGA will not vote for Judas Pence.

Check the calendar when he spoke out - beware the Ides of March!

Mine does the exact same thing, starting within the last week. I am using the Firefox browser. The shortcut I use to come to FR is the same as always, https://www.freerepublic.com/tag/articles:latest/. I see the field initially populate with the *, then it switches to the 1, just like yours.

So that’s Nancy’s take-away?!?! An innocent young woman is brutally murdered, and a Venezuelan national in our country illegally is charged with her murder. And Nancy’s concern is whether we’re using the right descriptors for the murderer?!?!

Fact 1: the man charged is an alien, under the legal definition.

Fact 2: he entered our country illegally, and remained in our country.

Therefore, he is the textbook example of “illegal alien”. Period.

Maybe we should release him from custody in Georgia, and have this sympathetic “newcomer” go have a nice quiet dinner with Nancy & Paul. Hammers optional.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn’t Biden committing a Hatch Act violation by using Government resources in electioneering for his own campaign? (public television is largely funded by the US Government, and it certainly flows to Children’s Television Network to support the production and broadcast of Sesame Street.

Of course, this concern could be alleviated if they allowed Trump to appear with Sesame Street characters, where they all explain how unfettered illegal immigration is harmful to America, and creates great risk to our citizens.

"Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson: Today, the majority goes beyond the necessities of this case to limit how Section 3 can bar an oathbreaking insurrectionist from becoming President. Although we agree that Colorado cannot enforce Section 3, we protest the majority’s effort to use this case to define the limits of federal enforcement of that provision. Because we would decide only the issue before us, we concur only in the judgment."

Ummm ... not to get too picky, but isn't this exactly what the USSC is supposed to do? That is, they're to decide the issue before them. Period. Why then the editorializing?

I got a copy of the relevant ballot, below.

SHOULD REQUIRING PHOTO ID IN MAINE ELECTIONS BE PROHIBITED?

[ ] YES

[ ] YES

(CHOOSE ONE ANSWER ONLY)

ADS-B is only going to show crafts with active transponders. No transponder, then no tracking via ADS-B.

Looks to me that those 4 US balloons are stationed along our border with Mexico. Probably gathering real-time intel, to be passed along to the cartels so they know when and where it is safe to cross.

Let me get this straight ...

We are at 3.7% unemployment, and just added 350,000+ jobs. Yet, we are running > $1 TRILLION in annual deficit spending. If you cannot be running a surplus with these supposed economic stats, we never will.

I have an alternate theory. The deficit spending is the only thing propping up the economy. We would otherwise have negative GDP and be in a deep recession. This is as deliberate a move by the Dems as the open border policies.

The Dems will be happy to hand the keys over to Trump by the time January 2025 arrives, so they can blame the coming calamity on him.