Summations Only

I'm sorry, huh? What is there problem with it?It would negatively influence their ability to give advice to clients who cannot pay for their advice? Or cannot pay for the recommendation of the advice?

The regulation requires that agents make potential remuneration to themselves a secondary rather than primary consideration. Their client's best interests should be kept first and foremost. It's intended to prevent the abuses that occur when agents sell investment vehicles that make them a lot of money without regard to their client's financial well being. Look up boiler room.If that still doesn't make sense then maybe I'm not explaining it well enough. It was just in the news over the past few days so there should be little difficultly looking up news articles that explain it better than I can. Try this one: Labor Department may seek delay of fiduciary rule: report--Percy

It seems that even the Secretary of State cannot select who he wants as a Deputy at the Department.

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Mr. Trump overruled his newly minted secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, and rejected the secretary’s choice for his deputy at the department, two people briefed on the decision said Friday.

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The deputy’s job was denied for Elliott Abrams, a conservative who had served under President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush, deals a blow to Mr. Tillerson in his first week on the job. The rejection of Mr. Abrams leaves Mr. Tillerson without a sherpa to help guide the first-time government official around the State Department headquarters.

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From today's NY Times.

Who remembers Spy vs Spy?Down here we have already been living with a stupid border wall for some time. We even have this moat that has to be crossed called the Rio Grande River before you get to the wall. But the illegal aliens have high tech devices that allow them to teleport across the barriers. They have inner tubes and even these things called ladders made from stuff called wood. The wall is twenty feet high but they have twenty-two foot ladders.Oh, and the technology here on our side that the good folk at ICE and Customs and Border Patrol use is mostly twenty years old and older. Oh, and staffing is down. Oh and most of the border roads are not paved. Oh and the budget to clear the border undergrowth was cut and so it's not being done. Oh, and the planned weir project that would deepen and widen the river storing additional water and making access more difficult that been planned for several decades has never been funded.So Trump wants to build a bigger wall. Sales of 2x4s in Mexico may go up.It's so silly. Border Patrol Agents find 2x4 ladders lying right next to the wall, but they need to then drive miles and miles to get to a point where they can get to the other side of the fence to then often walk miles and miles back to the point where they found the ladder so they can break it up and shove the pieces parts through to our side to be destroyed. Oh, then they get to walk miles and miles back to the crossing to get their cars and drive miles and miles back to their patrol area.And the aliens buy another $10.00 bunch of lumber.AbE: On this side of the border a 2x4x12 is $5.00 so to be honest the 22 foot ladder would probably cost $25.00 at US prices.Edited by jar, : appalin spallin the ----> theyEdited by jar, : see AbE

Actually, it is not Obama's political influence that draws large speaking fees, it is instead his prestige, charisma, etc. Ex-presidents generally don't have much political power.

It appears that General Michael Flynn may have lied to the media and to Vice President Pence when he claimed not to have discussed removing sanction with Russia during his phone calls to Russia prior to Trump taking office.

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As CNN reported last month, US counterintelligence agents monitoring Kislyak discovered that Flynn had been in contact with the ambassador. But Trump's people strongly rejected suggestions that Flynn promised Russia that Trump would lift the sanctions then-President Obama was about to impose after US intelligence concluded that Russia interfered in the US election. If Flynn had such discussions, that could amount to a violation of the Logan Act against interference in foreign diplomacy by non-government officials, although prosecutions over violations of that act have never happened.

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Flynn and others claimed the phone calls dealt only with arrangements for a call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Last month Pence went on CBS's Face the Nation and repeated that story

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It turns out that those phone calls were monitored and transcribed. Federal officials are saying that Flynn did discuss lifting the sanctions during those calls. Pence will surely want to back off from his previous statements, but who else will want distance between themselves and Flynn?These kinds of questions are going to make it very difficult for Trump to push the idea of normalizing relations with Russia. Will Trump throw the general under the bus?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Speaking fees for politicians, ex or not, are part of the whole milieu of effects of the value of political influence. Speaking fees for ex-presidents, which would be Clinton, W Bush and Obama (I assume the elder Bush's health keeps him off the speaking circuit), are in the $100,000 range.--Percy

Or some technician will set up a system with drones to lift people over the wall (for a price) and return empty to Mexico ...And then there are the tunnels.It's all for show, so we can expect "TRUMP" in gold letters on it.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : No reason given.

My advisor gets a fixed percentage of my return. If my return is negative his take is negative.Enjoy

Since this is an issue that goes beyond just the Trump Presidency I started a separate thread in Coffee House on the subject.

Whatever you want to call it, you have yet to indicate why such a situation is unfortunate. You don't think that politics, even after the time in office ends, should lead to financial fortune, but you cannot say why.Again, why should anyone, other than the folks who pay them, care what Obama's speaking fees are?

You're focused on the symptoms while I'm focused on the disease. If political influence were not so valuable then we wouldn't have symptoms like the high value of lobbying/lobbyists and of methods of establishing political connections. It isn't that I'm not concerned about high speaking fees for politicians because of course I am, but they're a symptom, not a cause. We need change that makes the saying "The best government money can buy" less true.--Percy

Spicer claims everyone should know he meant Orlando when he kept claiming terrorist attacks in Atlanta but why should anyone think that. There was a terrorist attack during the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta, committed by Eric Rudolph, a good Christian boy who was opposed to abortions and the gay agenda. It happened during the Olympics and perhaps is another one of Trumps terrorist attacks the news media kept secret. After all, a Turkish cameraman with a Muslim sounding name died after running from the scene.And on the voter fraud front a Republican Green Card holder in Texas was convicted of voting in US elections in 2012 and 2014 which explains why Trump did not get the majority vote in 2016.

Robert Reich posted on his facebook page: As we enter the 4th bizarre week of Trump’s presidency, we are faced with lies aren’t just embellishments of fact. They the opposites of truth.

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Just 3 examples from last week:

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--- Trump insists that Judge Neil Gorsuch, his nominee for the Supreme Court, did not describe Trump’s attacks on a federal judges as disheartening and demoralizing (even though it was corroborated by three witnesses).

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--- Trump declares that the murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 45 to 47 years, when, despite some recent troubling spikes in certain cities, it’s nationally near a low not seen since the late 1960s.

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--- Trump tells a group of senators that he lost New Hampshire last November because thousands of Massachusetts residents were bused to the neighboring state to cast ballots against him, when there’s not one iota of evidence for that ever happening.

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It seems that the defining character of the Trump administration is lies on top of lies. The Whitehouse senior policy adviser Stephen Miller doubled down on these and other lies on network Sunday news programs this morning.

Yes, I saw Stephen Miller interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News. He mostly didn't answer the questions, just spoke to his own talking points. When asked about the court suspending enforcement of Trump's refugee ban because of a constitutional challenge he went off on a tirade, claiming the court was trying to usurp the president's authority to act on immigration issues when the nation's security is at stake, as if that were ever an issue the state of Washington raised in its suit.--Percy