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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Flouride-binding your hair to own the libs.

[SalmonGod]

Just feeling really vindicated over here right now about calling the economy The Imaginary Number Game for the last 15 years.  As Drew Carey says, the rules are made up and the score doesn't matter.  It's about status.  It's about being in the club.  This is why you and I live and die by the imaginary number game.  Yet people like Trump can, by the numbers, be more catastrophic failures in greater debt than we could ever imagine for stretches of decades, yet still continue to live richer than we could ever imagine.  Because if you're in the club, your status will always provide cushion and bounce-back from any fall.  What's it take to be in the club?  Not imaginary numbers.  It may play a part in gaining or losing membership, but the core of the status game is social, not numerical.  It's about having social connections to the club, serving the interests of the club, and, above all, convincing others performatively that you're in the club.  Being known as having status is self-fulfilling, and trumps the rules of the imaginary number game always.  This is the difference between a homeless person who goes to prison for 20 years for stealing $20, and someone like Trump who can walk around spending millions casually while being hundreds of millions in debt.  It's all a big lie.  Imposed on the majority by and for the few, who only pretend the rules exist to provide mechanism for the legitimacy and execution of the power of their status over the majority.  As soon as that's not what it's about, it doesn't exist.  As Alan Moore puts it, history's greatest magic trick.

[scriver]

It's the Vanity Faire

[Andux]

70k for that hair.

I'm assuming it's more like:

"Hair"	$3.50
Therapy (for hairdresser)	+ $19,996.50
Silence (about the true horror which lies beneath)	+ $50,000.00

[sluissa]

If I understand the way the Whitehouse works, is that a lot of the day to day running of the place does come out of the president's pocket. Now, 750k to one person for that seems extreme. But I'm not sure it would be out of character for a president to have someone on their personal payroll handling a lot of that stuff.

That said, none of this looks good for him.

[nenjin]

If I understand the way the Whitehouse works, is that a lot of the day to day running of the place does come out of the president's pocket. Now, 750k to one person for that seems extreme. But I'm not sure it would be out of character for a president to have someone on their personal payroll handling a lot of that stuff.

That said, none of this looks good for him.

Nope. The Executive Branch has a budget that is approved by Congress.

Anyways, Trump's family has been cooking the books for decades and misrepresenting everything they do to turn loses into profits. (See: The Trump family's Hotel and Rental Property management shenanigans.) It's the thing they're best at. What's bullshit is that no one has the integrity or the balls to call him on doing it with taxpayer money. I'm kinda sick to my stomach knowing that, even if he doesn't win in November, he'll still have robbed the American people of millions of dollars to enrich himself and his friends. And not even like, subtly.

[Zangi]

inb4 his base doesn't care that he is pilfering Best Murrica.

Or more accurately, just handwave it away as fake news/bold lie generated out of thin air to shake their faith in their prophet.

[Maximum Spin]

His base mostly support tax evasion. I'm pretty sure they would mostly disagree that it constitutes "pilfering America" or "doing [whatever] with taxpayer money", because they would say that money doesn't belong to the government in the first place.

[Dostoevsky]

And I guess since they're likely giving money to his campaign in the first place, they don't object to his taking of the money they paid into taxes.

(Though realistically I realize it'd work out to something like fractions of cents from the average individual taxpayer.)

[Zangi]

* Zangi listening to brother watch videos

explain away / justify whatever Trump is doing
talk about how ignorant/stupid democrats and how snowflake they are
how democrats will ruin / are ruining best murrica

[sluissa]

If I understand the way the Whitehouse works, is that a lot of the day to day running of the place does come out of the president's pocket. Now, 750k to one person for that seems extreme. But I'm not sure it would be out of character for a president to have someone on their personal payroll handling a lot of that stuff.

That said, none of this looks good for him.

Nope. The Executive Branch has a budget that is approved by Congress.

Anyways, Trump's family has been cooking the books for decades and misrepresenting everything they do to turn loses into profits. (See: The Trump family's Hotel and Rental Property management shenanigans.) It's the thing they're best at. What's bullshit is that no one has the integrity or the balls to call him on doing it with taxpayer money. I'm kinda sick to my stomach knowing that, even if he doesn't win in November, he'll still have robbed the American people of millions of dollars to enrich himself and his friends. And not even like, subtly.

That's the budget for the entirety of the government. I'm speaking of expenses within the whitehouse specifically. There are some things that the government pays for, including things like official state dinners and just about anything that involves a diplomatic visit from a foreign government. And the President does have a relatively small fund that covers for some of the non-official expenses. (Approximately $50k a year if I remember.) But a lot of stuff has to come out of someone's pocket. Be it the President himself, the party, or sometimes there's private organizations that provide for things. (Such as the recent "upgrade" and even more recent "repair" of the Rose Garden.)

[MrRoboto75]

He doesn't pay personally for his own golf sessions at his own golf course, tho.

[Maximum Spin]

He doesn't pay personally for his own golf sessions at his own golf course, tho.

Surely, he doesn't pay anything for his own golf sessions at his own golf course, because it is his own golf course, and he would be paying himself.

[Dostoevsky]

[White House budget stuff]

The White House is one of the various Titles of the Financial Services & General Government yearly appropriations bill; skip to page 129 of this pdf for the FY2020 appropriations levels. Or, for chart form, page 667 of this pdf (rotate 90 degree clockwise, too).

Looks like about $14 million for residence expenses (that includes $750k for restoration), $55 million for "salaries and expenses" (I'm assuming this is more for executive office staff and not e.g. scullery maids), and another $4.5 million for the VP's residence. And much more for official offices linked to the Executive Office like the Office of Management and Budget (the most important agency you've never heard of).

Considering that it perfectly matches the formal budget request, should be safe to go here for more details if you really want to see a breakdown of what the White House wants to spend it on. Start on page 19, I guess, though there isn't too much to see.

Anyhoo, that's a decent amount of money appropriated from taxpayer funds - a lot more than $50k - though I couldn't say if it's sufficient.

Edit: Note that the Secret Service is funded from a separate bill (though same two pdfs as above thanks to omnibuses), to the tune of about $2.4 billion. I think that the milking of government funds that Trump has been doing is mainly from their funding? Honestly not sure, though.

[sluissa]

[White House budget stuff]

[More White House budget stuff]

Okay fair, I must have been misinformed somewhere along the way. I admit I'd never looked into it that deeply until today, just had a random piece of info half remembered from probably a sketchy source. Thanks for the sources.