Nepotism, Cronyism & Corruption

From today’s Wall Street Journal:
Donald Trump Son-in-Law Could Face His Own Conflict-of-Interest Questions
Even as an unpaid adviser, Jared Kushner’s financing arrangements for his real-estate firm could draw scrutiny

The real-estate company controlled by Jared Kushner, President-elect Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has hundreds of millions of dollars in loans outstanding from domestic and foreign financial institutions, markets condominiums to wealthy U.S. and foreign buyers and has obtained development financing through a controversial U.S. program that sells green cards.
Those and other business activities could raise conflict-of-interest issues if Mr. Kushner is named to a staff position in the Trump administration. Executive branch employees are prohibited from participating in any matter in which there is “a close causal link” between that matter and a “real possibility” of a financial gain or loss, according to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.

This dovetails with an alarm bell that went off for me when I was reading the Journal yesterday:
Donald Trump’s Spending Push Rankles Fiscal Conservatives
Republicans hope to avert ballooning deficits that may result from president-elect’s low-tax, big-ticket agenda

Mr. Trump’s advisers have floated different ideas, including an infrastructure bank or a plan to use tax credits to spur up to $1 trillion in spending by private developers.

I wonder if one of the advisers who thinks a bank dedicated to development projects might be the guy with the huge development business dependent on outside financing? If Jared learned his methods from the father who gave him his start in business (and bought his way into Harvard??), mere cronyism will be the least of the problems with this guy. Don’t know what I’m talking about? That’s because the story of Kushner père was buried not only by the mainstream media, but also by all the Republican primary rivals who knew about the tangled history of Kushner, Trump, Clinton & Christie.
Here was my blogpost shouting into the wind from Spring of this year:
Trump’s First MegaDonor Was Senator Hillary’s Biggest Contributor
Charles Kushner, the father of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared, was sent to jail by Chris Christie for paying a prostitute to seduce his own brother-in-law so his sister wouldn’t testify against him for embezzling money from the family business for use in influence-peddling campaign contributions.
You can’t make this stuff up! But wait–it gets better: the seduction worked but the blackmail didn’t! Even the prostitute testified!! As Nelson would say, “Ha Ha!”
Googling for a picture of Jared to use, I came upon this tidbit from 2012…if it’s to be believed, looks like media cover is old hat for this crew…

New York Post Kills Scoop on Kushner Connection to Manhattan Madam

Young Jared and Rupert Murdoch [the owner of the Post] are quite close. Kushner made it known to the Post that he didn’t think an old business meeting that didn’t go anywhere was a story. We’re sure that if he rang his pal and asked him to keep his father’s name out this whole Gristina mess, Rupert would have obliged. MacIntosh, we hear, was furious at having her story spiked.

Fox spiking–even completely distorting–stories for friends is not unprecedented…ever hear of Jane Akre?