The good:
Like a game of Monopoly, Donald Trump may be
forced to sell off his iconic properties under a New York judge's ruling
that he committed fraud for years while building his real estate
empire.
In a civil trial starting Monday, Trump's lawyers will return to court to begin a trial to determine how much he and his companies will be penalized for the fraud. New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking $250 million in damages. Potential witnesses include Trump, his children and former business associates.
At
stake? Whether the former president will have to shutter or break up
his namesake Trump Organization and sell off those famous properties −
and whether he will have to pay millions.
Trump's lawyers vowed to appeal the ruling. Trump called the decision "ridiculous and untrue."
New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron on Tuesday canceled Trump's business certificates by
ruling he committed fraud for years through "pure sophistry," a
"fantasy world" of real-estate valuations that "can only be considered
fraud."
In fact, Engoron quoted a Marx Brothers
movie to ridicule Trump's explanations for altering objective data such
as the size of an apartment − an unusual approach for a judge to take.
“Well, who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Engoron quoted Chico Marx from the movie "Duck Soup."
Engoron
ruled that Trump valued his Mar-a-Lago resort at 20 times the tax
assessment, that apartments at Trump Park Avenue gained millions of
dollars on his corporate balance sheet beyond their appraised values,
and that Trump falsely nearly tripled the square-footage of his own
Trump Tower penthouse apartment to increase its value by calling the
measurement "a subjective process."... (our emphasis)
Today, starts the process of divesting the Malignant Loser of what matters to him most: his wealth and image as a "billionaire." Let the fun begin!
The bad:
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
should be seen as a wild success. Over its 12 years of existence, it’s
been responsible for returning more than $17 billion to Americans
separated from their money by financial sector shenanigans.
Instead
of being able to celebrate that achievement, the agency is in a fight
for its life — and if it loses, we’ll all be poorer for it.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear a case
filed by a trade group of payday-loan lenders against the CFPB. Last
year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit — considered by many
the most right-wing court in the country — agreed with the plaintiffs’
argument that the funding mechanism for the agency is unconstitutional.
In
the worst-case scenario, this could lead to not just an end to
payday-loan regulations, the continued halting of CFPB cases across the
country, or to the CFPB needing to find a new funding source. It could
lead also to much of the agency’s past work being declared invalid. This
is not simply a fear being felt by progressives. It’s in a brief submitted to the court
jointly by the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Association
of Home Builders and the National Association of Realtors, hardly
anyone’s idea of the usual lefty suspects. While studiously not taking a
side on the question of the bureau’s constitutionality, the groups
point out that almost all residential real estate transactions are
governed by CFPB rules, and that with a broad ruling, further court
challenges might mean “the housing market could descend into chaos.”...
Will the corrupted Republican Supreme Court decide this one in favor of payday sharks or consumers? The suspense is killing us.
The ugly:
Every year, hordes of tourists descend upon Paris with a shortlist of
concerns: pickpockets, steep hotel prices, how to get skip-the-line
tickets and the most polite way to decline a stranger’s offer of a
friendship bracelet outside the Sacré-Coeur.
But as the French capital prepares to welcome millions of visitors for the 2024 Summer Olympics, a different issue has caught the eye of government officials: bedbugs. Lots of them.
Apparent footage of the insects has gone viral on social media platforms such as TikTok, prompting some users to post videos of themselves standing on the metro instead of taking an open seat or warning about infestations
in their Airbnbs. Social media posts appeared to show bedbugs on the
metro and in public buses. One showed bedbug bites all over a person’s
body, purportedly after visiting a movie theater.
Paris’s
deputy mayor, Emmanuel Grégoire, wrote a letter last week to Prime
Minister Élisabeth Borne calling for solutions to the bedbug problem,
local media reported. “The state urgently needs to put an action plan in
place against this scourge as France is preparing to welcome the
Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024,” Grégoire wrote, according to
French TV news outlet TF1 Info.
The
deputy mayor also attempted to reassure the public on social media, but
he still made his warning clear: “No one is safe” from an infestation,
he said...
