Tag Archives: Jon Stewart

Laws For Thee But Not For Me

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On Wednesday, The New York Post reported that Jon Stewart, after stating that “that Donald Trump’s civil real-estate case overvaluing his properties was “not victimless,”” was found to have done similar things.

When The New York Post did some investigating, this is what they found:

But it didn’t take long for internet sleuths to look into Stewart’s own property history, which shows his New York City penthouse sold for 829% more than its assessed value, records confirmed by The Post reveal.

In 2014, Stewart sold his 6,280-square-foot Tribeca duplex to financier Parag Pande for $17.5 million.

The property’s asking price at that time is not available in listing records.

But according to 2013-2014 assessor records obtained by The Post, the property had the estimated market-value at only $1.882 million.

…The actual assessor valuation was even lower, at $847,174.

Records also show that Stewart paid significantly lower property taxes, which were calculated based on that assessor valuation price — precisely what he called Trump out for doing in his Monday monologue.

Pande, who purchased the penthouse from Stewart, then resold the property at a nearly 26% loss, according to the Real Deal — at just over $13 million — in 2021.

Clean up your own backyard!

The article concludes:

Trump had valued the property, known as Seven Springs, at $261 million.

The difference between Stewart and Trump’s cases is that a judge ruled that Trump sometimes exaggerated to lenders about how big his properties were, including the square footage of his Trump Tower apartment.

Last month, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ordered Trump to pay $355 million — and temporarily banned him from doing business in the state — relying heavily on the assessed valuations of the properties to determine the ruling.

The $454 million bond to appeal the ruling marks the highest bond ever recorded in United States history against a single individual.

I guess the laws only apply to some people.

A Liberal I Can Respect

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The political debate continues. The gap between both sides widens. However, every now and then someone accidentally bridges the gap and says something that most of us can agree on.

On Thursday, Newsbusters posted a portion of an interview of Camille Paglia by Salon.

The article reports:

“Liberals think of themselves as very open-minded, but that’s simply not true!” she said. “Liberalism has sadly become a knee-jerk ideology, with people barricaded in their comfortable little cells. They think that their views are the only rational ones, and everyone else is not only evil but financed by the Koch brothers. It’s so simplistic!” Bring it, Camille!

Then, Paglia really got going. “Now let me give you a recent example of the persisting insularity of liberal thought in the media,” she said. “When the first secret Planned Parenthood video was released in mid-July, anyone who looks only at liberal media was kept totally in the dark about it, even after the second video was released.” 

“It was a huge and disturbing story,” she continued, “but there was total silence in the liberal media. That kind of censorship was shockingly unprofessional. The liberal major media were trying to bury the story by ignoring it.” 

“Now I am a former member of Planned Parenthood and a strong supporter of unconstrained reproductive rights. But I was horrified and disgusted by those videos and immediately felt there were serious breaches of medical ethics in the conduct of Planned Parenthood officials.”

“But here’s my point,” she concluded. “It is everyone’s obligation, whatever your political views, to look at both liberal and conservative news sources every single day. You need a full range of viewpoints to understand what is going on in the world. 

The videotapes about Planned Parenthood are disturbing. I attempted to bring them up in a discussion with a liberal friend on Facebook and got called a lot of things I won’t repeat. A discussion of the issue was not possible. The video tapes were false and men were trying to control women’s bodies. I don’t know if our culture has reached the point of no return, but if we haven’t, we are definitely close. Selling aborted baby body parts is evil. We should at least be able to agree on that.

 

Does Anyone In Washington Actually Take Responsiblity For Their Actions?

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The roll out of ObamaCare has been less than wonderful. The problems with the website are monumental, and very few people have actually enrolled in the exchanges.

Yesterday the Washington Times reported that that 202,586 individuals had successfully signed up for a journey to Mars and 51,000 have actually signed up for ObamaCare. So far, no one in Alaska has signed up and 712 people in Vermont have signed up.

Obviously, ObamaCare is going to fall somewhat short of its goal of signing up 500,000 individuals per month, starting with Oct. 1.

On Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold hearings to find out why ObamaCare is such a miserable failure. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has stated that she has a scheduling conflict and will not be able to testify at those hearings.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The department is also refusing to make available lower-level officials who might detail the source or sources of this debacle. Ducking an investigation with spin is one thing. Responding with a wall of silence to the invitation of a duly elected congressional body probing the use of more than half a billion taxpayer dollars is another. This Obama crowd is something else.

…Eventually Mrs. Sebelius will have to make a real accounting of this government failure to someone other than the TV comic Jon Stewart, and perhaps she can also explain why the people who can’t build a working website also deserve the power to reorganize one-sixth of the U.S. economy. For now, the Administration that styles itself as the most transparent in history won’t reveal the truth—perhaps because it is afraid of what the public will find.

ObamaCare is a nightmare. It has cost Americans full-time jobs and caused their insurance rates to increase drastically. We need to remember who supported this debacle and vote accordingly next year.

 

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