Impeachment Hearing not like C-SPAN

we got we got to sit down in the front
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row there were three empty seats are my
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sister and my friend and I we were all
05:00
there and we sat there for four or five
05:02
hours watching the debate and in the
05:05
vote and I’m telling you it’s not like
it is on c-span
these fan is such a you know
two-dimensional flattens everything out
very strictly framed you don’t get the
peripheral vision on c-span one of the
05:19
things I tell my crew and I if I if I’m
05:23
allowed to when I’m invited to the film
05:25
schools to talk to students I always
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tell them that you’re gonna find more
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truth in the peripheral hmm then in the
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in the spot-on because in the spot-on
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you’re getting the official story you’re
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getting me you know whatever it is they
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want you to report but what’s going on
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over here what’s going on around you if
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you have a sense of trying to pay
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attention to that you’ll find these
05:47
things that that you’ll never see in a
05:50
documentary or in a movie or on the
05:52
nightly news and so what I saw from that
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front row of the gallery last Wednesday
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was both a bit exhilarating and
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frightening exhilarating in the sense
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that you could see that on the
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Democratic side that they many of them
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had found the courage of their
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convictions had found their their soul
06:15
their guts to stand up for this even
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though the polls show it’s kind of a
06:21
50/50 in the country on impeachment a
06:23
little more in favor of it but
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nonetheless a risky proposition
06:28
especially for a number of Democrats in
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swing districts the fact that they would
06:32
take that stand in such a profound way
29:13
electoral states remember Hillary only
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lost Michigan by two votes per precinct
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that’s it and it’s not because lunch
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bucket Joe stayed home you know or voted
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for Trump it’s it’s because the the when
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they talk about the working-class Amy I
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just accessorize me crazy oh you know
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Trump won all these working-class votes
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in Michigan in Pennsylvania no what
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happened was is that the Democratic
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Party didn’t stand up in the way that
29:40
they should have for what the youth
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wanted for what people of color needed
and and the the there are 90,000 people
in Michigan almost 90,000 who went to
the polls mostly Democrats and very
large numbers of them in Detroit Flint
Pontiac Saginaw all these are all black
cities majority black they stood in line
in the cold for two to three hours to
vote they went in there and they voted
for state Rep state Senate County
Commission we don’t have dogcatcher we
have drain commissioner the person in
charge of the sewage that’s the lowest
name on the ballot
they stood there they voted for the
Democrats all down ballot and left the
top box blank 19th only lost Michigan by
10 11 thousand votes 90,000
wanted to send a message to the
Democratic Party you forgot us a long
time ago out here and we will not put up
with us anymore we’re not gonna vote for
Trump but we’re not gonna we’re not
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going to tolerate you sending us another
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Republican White Democrat if we go that
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route if we go that route it’s
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guaranteed we will lose the electoral
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college we will win when we put somebody
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on that ballot that excites the base
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women people of color young people when
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they wake up that morning they feel the
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way that many of us many of you watching
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felt the morning that you were gonna in
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2008 and you were gonna get to go and
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vote for Barack Obama and you couldn’t

Enron: Making Money in the Financial World – Stock Market, Commodity Trading Scandal (2005)

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a 2005 documentary film based on the best-selling 2003 book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, a study of one of the largest business scandals in American history. About the book:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159…
McLean and Elkind are credited as writers of the film alongside the director, Alex Gibney. The film examines the 2001 collapse of the Enron Corporation, which resulted in criminal trials for several of the company’s top executives; it also shows the involvement of the Enron traders in the California electricity crisis. The film features interviews with McLean and Elkind, as well as former Enron executives and employees, stock analysts, reporters and the former Governor of California Gray Davis.
The film won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 78th Academy Awards in 2006. The film begins with a profile of Kenneth Lay, who founded Enron in 1985. Two years after its founding, the company becomes embroiled in scandal after two traders begin betting on the oil markets, resulting in suspiciously consistent profits. Enron’s CEO, Louis Borget, is also discovered to be diverting company money to offshore accounts. After auditors uncover their schemes, Lay encourages them to “keep making us millions”. However, the traders are fired after it is revealed that they gambled away Enron’s reserves, nearly destroying the company. After these facts are brought to light, Lay denies having any knowledge of wrongdoing. Lay hires new CEO Jeffrey Skilling, a visionary who joins Enron on the condition that they utilize mark-to-model accounting, allowing the company to book potential profits on certain projects immediately after the deals are signed…whether or not those projects turn out to be successful. This gives Enron the ability to subjectively give the appearance of being a profitable company even if it isn’t. Skilling imposes his Darwinian worldview on Enron by establishing a review committee that grades employees and annually fires the bottom fifteen percent. This creates a highly competitive and brutal working environment.
Skilling hires lieutenants who enforce his directives inside Enron, known as the “guys with spikes.” They include J. Clifford Baxter, an intelligent but manic-depressive executive; and Lou Pai, the CEO of Enron Energy Services, who is notorious for using shareholder money to feed his obsessive habit of visiting strip clubs. Pai abruptly resigns from EES with $250 million, soon after selling his stock. Despite the amount of money Pai has made, the divisions he formerly ran lost $1 billion, a fact covered up by Enron. Pai uses his money to buy a large ranch in Colorado, becoming the second-largest landowner in the state.
With its success in the bull market brought on by the dot-com bubble, Enron seeks to beguile stock market analysts by meeting their projections. Executives push up their stock prices and then cash in their multi-million dollar options. Enron also mounts a PR campaign to portray itself as profitable and stable, even though its worldwide operations are performing poorly. Elsewhere, Enron attempts to use broadband technology to deliver movies on demand, and “trade weather” like a commodity; both initiatives fail. However, using mark-to-model accounting, Enron records non-existent profits for these ventures.
Enron’s successes continue as it became one of the few Internet-related companies to survive the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, and is named as the “most admired” corporation by Fortune magazine for the sixth year running. However, Jim Chanos, an Enron investor, and Bethany McLean, a Fortune reporter, question irregularities about the company’s financial statements and stock value. Skilling responds by calling McLean “unethical”, and accusing Fortune of publishing her reporting to counteract a positive BusinessWeek piece on Enron. Three Enron executives, including CFO Andrew Fastow, meet with McLean and her Fortune editor to explain the company’s finances. Fastow creates a network of shell companies designed solely to do business with Enron, for the ostensible dual purposes of sending Enron money and hiding its increasing debt. However, Fastow has a vested financial stake in these ventures, using them to defraud Enron of tens of millions of dollars. Fastow also takes advantage of the greed of Wall Street investment banks, pressuring them into investing in his shell entities and, in effect, conduct business deals with himself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smar…

Q&A: David Bossie

David Bossie, President of Citizens United, speaks about “Hillary: The Movie,” a documentary he produced that was the subject of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision. Program from Sunday, February 14, 2010.
Budget: $1.2-1.3 million
31 min: Didn’t do Willie Horton ad
40 min: $2.5 million on production and legal fees
41:20: The White House Spin Cycle that would attack anyone
42:35: George Bush condemned Bosse’s gutter politics
57:54: Would you change any of your tactics that you used in the past?   No, politics is a tough business.  .. I call this a full contact sport.  It’s the Old Godfather.. It’s not personal. It’s business.

The Secrets Donald Trump Doesn’t Want You to Know About: Business, Finance, Marketing

David Cay Boyle Johnston (born December 24, 1948) is an American investigative journalist and author, a specialist in economics and tax issues, and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting. More on the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/161…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_C…

The Making of Donald Trump is a 2016 biography of the American businessman, property developer and politician Donald Trump by the American investigative journalist David Cay Johnston. It was published by Melville House Publishing.

Johnston first met Trump as a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer in June 1988 and likened him to P. T. Barnum. He subsequently reported on Trump for almost 30 years, and wrote the book in 27 days. In an interview with The New York Times Johnston said that Trump had “…seriously damaged his brand” with his presidential campaign and would “follow him for the rest of his life”. Johnston also felt that Trump was “masterful at understanding the conventions of journalism” and “remarkably agile at doing as he chooses and getting away with it.”

The book entered the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list in fifteenth position and spent four weeks there.

The book consists of 24 chapters, with an introduction and an epilogue. The book details Trump’s family history, personal biography and an account of his business career and marriages.

David M. Shribman, writing for The Boston Globe, felt that the book was “a chronicle of mobsters and mistresses, shady construction deals and financial shenanigans, monumental projects and miserable (and possibly illegal) business practices” and that “Much of this slender volume’s contents are already part of the public record; some of it is new”. Shribman noted that the book focuses on Trump’s personal and business life rather than his political career and that “More than a dozen Republican candidates and the entire Democratic Party have made the very same argument Johnston puts forward here. It is an important critique, yet an ignored one. Trump may, and probably does, have all these flaws. He also possesses perhaps the most important, and in some quarters surely the most appealing, message in this year of fear and discontent. The book that explains that is the one worth writing, and waiting for.”

The book was reviewed by Michael Russell for the Herald Scotland who wrote that the “24 short chapters of the very readable book contain substantial detail regarding Trump’s activities since that time. They also dig into his earlier years and some of his family background. As to the truth of these claims, readers will need to make up their own minds.” Russell felt that Johnston “sometimes comes across as being almost as self-satisfied and assertive as Trump” but concluded that “Inauguration, unlike baptism, does not wash away sins nor confer wisdom. If even a 10th of David Cay Johnston’s stories are true, then Trump is morally, intellectually, culturally, economically, legally and politically unfit for office of any sort. No wonder so much of the world is shaking its head but also holding its breath.”

David J. Lynch reviewed the book for The Financial Times and wrote that “Johnston has done voters a service with this unblinking portrait. He makes a compelling case that Trump has the attributes of both “dictator” and “deceiver” and would be a disaster in the Oval Office. …Yet, ultimately this is a dispiriting read. If Johnston’s rendering of Trump is at all accurate, it is not just the New York businessman who deserves rebuke. So too does an entire American political system that has put him within reach of the White House despite his manifest flaws.” Lynch was also critical of Johnston’s prose style, feeling that “This slim 210-page volume feels a bit rushed: the transitions can be choppy and, like his subject, Johnston has a healthy regard for his own abilities. …Tip: when you are taking down one of the world’s great narcissists, go easy on self-promotion” but that it “is a minor flaw in a work that delivers so much insight”.

C-SPAN: Bill Browder Testifies about Foreign Agents Registration Act

Foreign Agents Registration Act Financier and former Russia investor William Browder testified at a hearing on the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). This law requires those representing the political interests of foreign powers to disclose their relationship. Mr. Browder told committee members that the Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who met with Donald Trump Jr. was heading Russian efforts to get sanctions under the Magnitsky Act repealed. The act blocked Russian government officials and businessmen associated with the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky from entering the U.S., froze assets in U.S. banks, and banned the use of American banking systems.

Mr. Browder was originally scheduled to appear the previous-day as the second of a two-panel hearing, but Democrats invoked the “two-hour rule,” so the second panel was re-scheduled for the following day. The first panel can be viewed by typing program identification number 431604-1 into the “Search the Video Library” search bar.

(Left off: 40:39 min)