(12-16-2018 01:47 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(12-16-2018 01:33 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  

(12-16-2018 01:13 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(12-16-2018 01:01 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Can someone explain to me why it was perfectly okay for multiple congress critters to pay off multiple sex partners with taxpayers' money, but it is somehow a felony for Donald Trump to pay off two women with his own money?

Nice strawman you got there...

I think many people do not like the current practice of using tax payer money to fund sexual harassment settlements. It's a rather shocking fact, and it's good that it was exposed back in 2017.

Last I saw, both parts of Congress have passed legislation to end the practice, but the bills haven't been reconciled. I've got no idea how that's the case, as one would imagine that this would be a great, bipartisan piece of legislation.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/congress-s...sment-bill

And the issue for Trump isn't who he paid and what for, it's that the payments were not disclosed and exceed campaign contribution amounts. As Tanq has argued, they weren't campaign contributions, but I'm not really interested in continuing down that rabbit hole...

So let's get this straight:

Third party (i.e. a party that is not the individual) pays off congressional allegations of sexual harassment -- shouldn't be a campaign contribution and should be unreportable;

Third party pays off McDougal with third party being compensated by Trump --- third party is obviously making a reportable campaign contribution, as is supposedly Trump;

Trump individually pays of Stormy -- an obvious Trump reportable contribution.

Does this sum up your point of view, lad?

But somehow the first one is a 'strawman' and should not be considered. Got it.

Jeezus krist, if we could somehow store the energy in all these micro-contortions not only would we seal the demise of OPEC, we could patent a friggin perpetual energy source.....

I think the 'transparency' argument for campaign contributions just got a bit muddier with the 'strawman' argument there. Please do tell lad, which cutouts and how many cutouts delineate that bright magic line in your worldview?

By the way lad, the idea of applying the 'campaign contribution' to the Congressional slush fund is not mine, but I dont want the fing citation police to get mad.

The strawman argument was that there wasn't concern over the practice of Congress using a slush fund to settle sexual harassment claims. There was outrage about that and work was being done to fix it (turns out a few days ago an agreement was finally reached: https://www.npr.org/2018/12/12/676209258...tlements).

So to be crystal clear - people felt that it was NOT OK for Congress to use tax-payer slush funds to handle sexual harassment settlements, unlike what Owl#s tried to suggest.

But you ignore the implications of the third party transaction completely, dont you?

All you say is 'it ended', yet you dont even address whether the structure of the financial transaction is or should be violative of the obvious relations, both in subject matter and in financial transaction structure, to the 'proper campaign expense' that you have your knickers up over Trump.

So no, it isnt a strawman, neither in the structure, nor in the subject matter, in the fing slightest according your view on the Trump transactions, is it? All you can say is 'Congress ended it. Case closed. Move on'. Lol.