Heartstrings
Heartstrings's JournalThis is why he is desperate to get the $5.7 (formerly $5.6) billion.....
Roman Abramovich....
Mr. Abramovich, a Russian national with Israeli citizenship, is an ally of Russian president Putin, and a personal friend of Donald Trump and his son in law. Mr. Abramovich is part owner (with several other Russian billionaires) of a steel company called Evraz - located in Canada - which, coincidentally, is the only one which can manufacture the specific type of metal beams Mr. Trump wants for his wall. (There was a Chinese company which could deliver the same product, but since Mr. Trump's trade war with China, they can no longer effectively provide it to the US.)
If the wall is built, Mr. Abramovich's company - in which Russian president Putin also happens to own stock through a complicated series of shell companies - stands to make roughly one billion US dollars during the first stage of construction alone. By the time the wall is completed, with costs estimated to run to almost 30 billion dollars (not 5 billion as the Republican parrots have been squawking), Evraz will likely triple in value.
This is of interest to Mr. Abramovich and his partners no doubt, since Evraz took a signifcant stock hit in early 2016, losing roughly 60% of its value....during the months leading up to the American Presidential Election.
Mr. Abramovich also owns a legendary yacht called the Eclipse, valued at roughly half a billion dollars.
Mr. Trump has been known to enjoy vacations on the yacht. One can safely assume the yacht has beautiful staterooms, with beds.
And showers.
And likely, given Mr. Abramovich's well-reported paranoia, there are plenty of security cameras in place....
Mr. Abramovich applied for Swiss residency some time ago, but was blocked by their government because of tangible evidence that he was involved in money laundering.
This is all public record. And it was presented to the media during the 2016 Election, when the press was slavering over Mrs. Clinton's emails and calling her "Killery".
** Credit....Facebook op
Not exact link, but worthy of posting.....
https://crooksandliars.com/2018/12/guess-who-likely-profit-if-trump-gets-his
That moment when your grown son, father of my 2 grand littles, calls just to say....
"I love you, mom".....
Life is good! They pull on my heartstrings, exactly why I chose that as my "identity" here on du....
Going to Thailand next month
Seeings though we'll be so close, anyone know of any memorials in Viet Nam to pay our respects? Or the best area to visit in Nam? We'll be in Phuket and Bangkok.....thanks!
Here's what I wish the Democrats would say to trump:
Mr. IQ45 ,you can have your wall. You can get it the same way that President Obama got Obamacare; the way Lyndon Johnson got Medicare; the way Franklin Roosevelt got Social Security. In each case the president had a project he wanted enacted; so his administration crafted a bill. That bill went to Congress where committee hearings were held; amendments were proposed; studies were conducted that tested the cost, effectiveness etc. of the proposal; testimony was held in Congress; debate ensued and if the measure had enough support, a vote was taken and the measure was passed. That's how you legislate. It takes hard work, planning and the ability to actually negotiate. Your pet project doesn't get to leap frog over the pathway laid out by the Constitution and 250 years of precedent. You have chosen to skip over this entire process (even when you had majorities in both Houses) and have resorted instead to taking the American public hostage in exchange for your wall. You want a wall? Put down the gun you are holding to the head of the American people and get to work.
#nancypelosi #shutdown #wheresmitch #chuckshumer #trumpswall
Some good ole rock n roll and pretty good 🎸 too!
A conservative challenged liberals to "make a case, not based on emotion" against trump's wall...
A conservative challenged liberal Facebook friends to “make a case, not based on emotion” against Trump’s wall. Conservative buddies flooded his post with snide remarks about how this would be impossible for “deluded libs.”
“Okay, I’ll play,” I responded. And in order to avoid being accused of bias, I explained that I would use only conservative sources to prove my point. My primary source was a policy paper by the Cato Institute, a conservative, rightwing think tank, along with other conservative voices (listed at the end of the piece). Here’s why I’m against the wall, I wrote:
1. Walls don’t work. Illegal immigrants have tunneled underneath and/or erected ramps up and down walls to simply drive over them. People find a way. When East Germany erected its wall, it created a military zone, staffed by booted, machine-gun carrying guards ready to shoot to kill. Yet thousands managed to make it to West Germany anyway. More to the point, do we really want to model ourselves after communist East Germany?
2. Most illegal immigrants are “overstayers.” They come to the US legally — for vacations, business, to study, etc. — and then STAY past their visas. By 2012, overstayers accounted for 58% (THE MAJORITY!) of all unauthorized immigrants. A wall is meaningless here!
3. Walls have little impact on drugs being brought in to the US. According to the DEA, almost all drugs come in through legal points of entry, hidden in secret containers and/or among legit goods in tractor-trailers. A wall will have little to no impact on the influx of drugs into our country.
4. It’s environmentally impractical. Walls have a hard time making it through extreme weather. For example, in 2011, a flood in Arizona washed away 40 feet of STEEL fencing. Torrential rains and raging waters do serious damage. Also, conservative sources generally do not address the environmental harm that walls create, but there is plenty of documentation available that show its potential for irreparable damage to both plant and animal life.
5. A wall would forces the U.S. government to take land from private citizens in eminent domain battles. Private citizens own much of the land slated for the wall. The costs of the government snatching private land — and the legal battles that would ensue — are incalculable.
6. Border patrol agents don’t like concrete or steel walls because they block surveillance capabilities. In other words, they can’t mobilize correctly to meet challenges. So in many ways, a wall makes their job more difficult.
7. Border patrol agents say, “Walls are meaningless without agents and technology to back them up.” Are we prepared to pour countless billions annually — after the wall is built — to create a nearly 2,000 mile, militarized 24-hour surveillance border operation? Because according to patrol agents, that’s the only way a wall would work. Again, are we really, going to use East Germany, a brutal communist state, as our model here?
8. Where walls have been built, there was “no discernable impact on the influx of unauthorized aliens.” In other words, they came in elsewhere, primarily where natural barriers such as water or mountainous regions precluded a wall.
9. An unintended consequence is that a wall blocks farmworkers from EXITING when their invaluable seasonal work is done. Farmers are against the wall because it makes getting cheap seasonal labor almost impossible as few American citizens want or can even do those jobs. And if seasonal worker do get in, a wall makes it harder for them to leave! A wall traps migrant farm laborers in our country.
10. Trump’s $5 billion is a laughable drop in the bucket for what would ACTUALLY be needed. For example, according to the Cato Institute: An estimate for a border wall area that only covered 700 miles was originally 1.2 billion. How much did it REALLY cost? SEVEN BILLION. And that’s only for 700 miles. Whatever we think it’s going to cost, experience shows us we have to multiply it by more than 500%.
11. According to MIT engineers, the wall would cost $31.2 billion. Homeland Security estimates it at $22 billion. Given the pattern of spending mentioned in number 10 (plus Murphy’s Law), that means we’re really talking about pouring endless billions into something that doesn’t even work. And, of course, we taxpayers will be footing the bill, not Mexico. Given all the drawbacks, is that REALLY the best use of our taxes?
As the conservatives of the Cato Institute put it, “President Trump’s wall would be a mammoth expenditure that would have little impact on illegal immigration.” (Emphasis mine) Also it would create many “direct harms:” “the spending, the taxes, the eminent domain abuse, and the decrease in immigrant’s freedoms of movement.”
And, we must add, since conservative sources do not — that the environmental harms are likely to be severe.
In other words, the facts show that walls don’t work and they create even bigger, more expensive problems.
So what happened after I posted this conservative-sourced, fact-based list of why the wall is a bad idea?
Silence.
I waited for someone to respond, to engage with me. Where were the angry defenses or rebuttals? But when I searched for the post after a few days, I couldn’t find it.
My FB friend had deleted it. You could say, like Trump with the government, he shut me down rather than deal with the facts.
The ugly genius of Trump is his ability to manipulate deep, primal emotions — namely fear and hate. He, along with Fox News, have convinced his base that they are in “extreme danger” from immigrants and only a wall will make them “safe.”
Unfortunately, the need to “feel” safe is much stronger than the will to grapple with a complex, multi-faceted problem.
And so, here we are, paralyzed by shutdowns at every turn.
Conservative Sources Outlining the Uselessness of Trump’s Wall:
The Cato Institute: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-wall-wont-work
Former Reagan staffer and Tea-Party liaison: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/10/12/the-conservative-case-against-a-border-fence-trying-to-stop-illegal-immigration-with-a-really-big-fence-would-be-a-futile-waste-of-money
Chicago Tribune (conservative paper): https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-perspec-chapman-trump-wall-mexico-immigration-20180314-story.html
The National Review (conservative magazine): https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/04/donald-trump-border-wall-plan-ridiculous-guaranteed-failure/
Nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI) think tank: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/borders-and-walls-do-barriers-deter-unauthorized-migration
CREDIT: https://medium.com/@vickyalvearshecter/what-happened-when-a-trump-supporter-challenged-me-about-the-wall-e54e86a5edd1
Facebook post credit: Daniel James Holloway
Hey GOP!
Let's release trump's taxes and the Russian meeting transcipts and clear his good name, once and for all.....Nancy and Chuck would vote for that in a New York minute!
Clinton, Obama and Bush weigh in on the wall....😂
Even Michelle thinks this is hilarious!
"The Border and the Wall" from National Geographic....
This is from 9-2017....if it's been posted previously, it deserves posting again at this critical time.
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Member since: Sat Mar 11, 2017, 09:31 PMNumber of posts: 7,349
