Category: Newsletter

  • The Big Cheat by David Cay Johnston

    The Big Cheat by David Cay Johnston
    The Big Cheat by David Cay Johnston – Available from Amazon.com

    Available from Amazon.com

    Pulitzer Prize­–winning reporter and dean of Trumpologists David Cay Johnston reveals years of eye-popping financial misdeeds by Donald Trump and his family.

    While the world watched Donald Trump’s presidency in horror or delight, few noticed that his lifelong grifting quietly continued. Less than forty minutes after taking the oath of office, Trump began turning the White House into a money machine for himself, his family, and his courtiers.

    More than $1.7 billion flowed into Donald Trump’s bank accounts during his four years as president. Foreign governments rented out whole floors of his hotel five blocks from the White House while lobbyists conducted business in the hotel’s restaurants. Payday lenders and other trade groups moved their annual conventions to Trump golf resorts. And individual favor seekers joined his private Mar-a-Lago club with its $200,000 admission fee in hopes of getting a few minutes with the President. Despite earning more than $1 million every day he was in office, Trump left the White House as he arrived—hard up for cash. More than $400 million in debt comes due by 2024, and Trump still lacks the resources to pay it back.

    The Big Cheat takes you on a guided tour of how money flowed in and out of Trump’s hundreds of enterprises, showing in simple terms how his family and courtiers used his presidency to enrich themselves, even putting national security at risk. Johnston details the four most recent years of the corruption that has defined the Trump family since 1885 and reveals the costs of Trump’s extravagant lifestyle for American taxpayers.

  • National Democratic Training Committee

    National Democratic Training Committee
    National Democratic Training Committee

    Emerging or established. Calm or contentious. Any race, anywhere: We want to help. Our team believes passionately that, by empowering Democrats to get involved in local politics, we can help shape the future of progressive politics. This team of focused, knowledgeable individuals work together to achieve our three goals: to improve the performance of every Democrat up and down the ticket, elect more Democrats to offices, and create a deep bench of qualified public servants ready to run for higher office.

    References:

  • Democratic Strategy Institute

    Democratic Strategy Institute
    Democratic Strategy Institute

    The Democratic Strategy Institute, a project of the National Democratic Training Committee, is dedicated to gathering, analyzing, and sharing the best practices, strategies, and cutting edge tactics in Democratic politics across the country.

    Focused on long-term Democratic success, the DSI PAC seeks to share the best practices campaigns, staff, and local leaders need to win elections at every level through online resources, trainings, and more.

    The Democratic Strategy Institute is funded by grassroots supporters across the country and is committed to providing its services free of charge to the Democratic community.

  • The Almost Learning Process

    Art Fettig’s Monday Morning Memo – December 7, 2009

    In This Issue

    o The Almost Learning Process
    o Say Something Good
    o Points To Ponder
    o A Little Humor
    o Quote of the Week

    The Almost Learning Process

    Think
    Penetrating my Brain … right now my brain is still awaiting penetration.

    I’ve never been a fast learner but lately I have the feeling that my capacity to learn some things has come to a screeching halt. It has. I am making a valiant effort to learn to talk Southern and for this old Yankee it sometimes seems too much. I feel like Elizabeth Dolittle in My Fair Lady. walking around the room saying “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.” Again and again and again. Aye do! And just learning Southern isn’t enough because Andy Griffith had his own unique brand of Southern. Still, it is kind of exciting making a determined effort to accomplish a new challenge. Each morning as I approach yet another practice session I find that my mind is blank and it is like I am starting all over again. I’m certain that many of you who have worked in training have trained people with heads so thick that you felt you would never penetrate their thinking system, and yet, when you persist you might soon find them at the head of the class. Well, right now my brain is still awaiting penetration.

    Say Something Good

    I had the honor of speaking at Pearl Harbor for the U.S. Navy some years back and I visited the cemetery and was once again reminded of the horrors of war. We have had and we currently have some mighty fine people in our military. May God bless America and keep our troops out of harms way.

    Points To Ponder

    It is never too late to be what you might have been. George Eliot

    A Little Humor

    Almost Andy Sez… we had a bad accident downtown last week. They had a crew resurfacing the road and one of the onlookers, Sarah May, leaned in too close and fell and she was run over by the steam roller. She’s in Duke Hospital and can have visitors in rooms 203, 204 and 205…

    Quote of the Week

    Children, you must remember something. A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive. – Pearl Bailey,

  • Art Fettig’s The Dancin’ Rag

    Dance

    About 25 years ago when I was just 65 I took a tap dance class from that same teacher who had taught my daughter, Nancy, many years before. Our classes were at the Senior Center there in Battle Creek, Michigan. There were about 20 women in the class and as I recall I was the only man. I remember it as my weekly hour of total humiliation. I just couldn’t keep up with the ladies. I dropped out of the class, bought a 4’x4′ plywood board and began dancing a simple shuffle step I came up with. Greg Brayton and I recorded a song we called The Dancin’ Rag. It started out slow and got faster and faster. And then I went back and danced on my board at Greg’s recording studio and we taped it. The Dancin’ Rag is attached.

    At speeches I would close my talk with a story about the fact that no one is too old to learn new skills and I would illustrate my point by closing my presentation with my dance.You might find me dancing for the United States Air Force on Youtube.com Art Fettig.

    Well, the other day I was looking at some DVD’s we had recently converted from a big box of VHS’s I’d brought with me twenty years ago in my move here to Hillsborough from Battle Creek.

    In that box I found a video tape of a presentation I made for Alabama Power Company years ago and I closed that presentation doing my first ever Dancin’ Rag in public.

    Well that stirred me up. Maybe it is the months of isolation most of us have endured lately. Somehow I went straight to Amazon.com and typed in Men’s tap shoes, size 13. To my amazement up popped a wide selection of offers. Reasonable offers and they all claimed to have size 13. I’d been searching for years for such shoes. My wife reluctantly helped me order the shoes online and they arrived today, sure enough, black lightweight tap shoes and they fit me perfectly. I found the song on our Mixed Bag CD. I played it and some good old memories came back to me. I put my new shoes on. I sat in my chair at my computer shuffling my tired old feet. A few toes felt a little bit numb. There is a little arthritis in the ankle joints. Both knees were replaced over twenty years ago and they had 12 year guarantees. Then there is my lower and upper back and my neck. You know, the usual 90 year old stuff. The worn out parts. Still, there is that spark still burning in my imagination, still burning bright. I dug out that 4’x4′ practice board, and there is my big mirror on the wall and if you happen to drive by our home in the woods and hear a rag song blasting out from my music room upstairs I might just be standing in front of the mirror on that practice board dancing the whole one minute and fifty-six seconds of our song The Dancin’ Rag. You can hear it right now by clicking on The Dancing Rag MP3 below. Good luck.