Uh, this actually seems like the correct thing to do from an ethical standpoint? If you receive a large cash payment from someone, but you never find out who it is, then it’s impossible for it to be a bribe. There’s no need to monitor whether they are gaining access to government, because it’s impossible for them to do so if their identity is unknown.
Assuming the identity is actually unknown.
This part. The art world is pretty shady and lots of questionable stuff happens -this is the same bunch that got deep into NFTs.
At some point the art will be displayed and it will be known, at least to some people, who owns it.
Right. An actual blind trust is best, but if lots of people know who bought the art, that should be enough.
What Shaub suspects is that only two people will know who bought it -Hunter Biden and whatever asshole wants an audience with the son of the President of the United States.
According to the article they are making sure Hunter won’t know.
…will be kept confidential from even the artist himself…
I hope the buyer is honest, then. If they’re the sort of person who married bitcoins and baseball cards, they aren’t concerned about keeping things above board and will gladly introduce themselves to Hunter Biden.
I think the thing you really want to be concerned about than bribery is money laundering. The link between the expensive art world and the money laundering world is strong.
Sorry, NFTs are more on my mind because this forum has so much ire for them. “Money Laundering” was a subset of “questionable things”, which is an understatement.
I think the President’s family should avoid the whiff of impropriety (a hopeless venture considering the Trumps all walk free). Are we merely arguing over the probability of a bad thing happening, or do you think the art sale as it is described is all above board?
The fact that they are even concerned about the appearance of impropriety leads me to believe they are acting in good faith to sell the art following best ethical practices.
People who don’t give a shit about ethics tend to not give a shit about appearances. They just openly and brazenly crime without giving a damn. See: previous president and co.
There is nothing to be concerned about with regards to the Hunter Biden art thing. Apparently he is actually just an incredible artist.
Well, it’s not to my taste, and I’m reluctant to associate dollar value with quality, but yeah, pretty much, nothing to really worry about.
People who don’t know much about the art sales world are freaking out because donors have the option of staying anonymous - but that’s entirely normal if not standard practice for Art Auctions of that expected dollar value, because they don’t want to be held responsible for publishing lists of people who have just acquired extremely valuable, but also easy to steal bits of property. Art is a major target for theft because it’s often very expensive, holds it’s value extremely well, is usually easy to move from place to place or to conceal, which also makes it easy to steal.
I would totally hang a print of this on my wall if it remotely fit with the other art in my home. It doesn’t though, so would probably overpower it.
I finally read the Washington Post article about this art auction, and I’m totally not surprised at the approach. There’s so much pearl clutching about how this might lead to accusations about possible access to the President, and then uses the Trump family’s massive corruption and nepotism as an illustration of similar incidents in the past, along with a President being angry at a bad review of their daughter’s singing.
These are not the same! How are these put side by side like this? One is an actual story about actual corruption that is currently ongoing, and one is a story about how the next President is doing all he can to avoid the possibility of corruption. It makes no sense to me, but again, I’m totally not surprised.
Now let’s see if we can unseat (and possibly arrest) Kavanaugh.
The only way to remove a Supreme Court Justice is to impeach them the same way you would a president.
As we’ve seen with Trump, the political system is so broken that it’s impossible to impeach and convict these days, whether a president or a Justice. Unless something drastic changes, you will never get 60 votes to convict a Supreme Court Justice.
The Republican attempt at a power grab in California has failed.
EDIT: Also this is happening.
