The Rest Of The Story: Monday. July 9th, 2018

We all live in this fire-hose of crisis news stories. There is so much news that seems life-or-death, so many distracting Presidential tweets and social media outrage that it's very easy to miss the smaller stories that we really should also be paying attention to each day.

This Monday-Friday feature is a way to cut through all the conventional wisdom, political strategists and random Facebook posts and provide a daily rundown of political and cultural news that you should know. While we post the story about 6:00 a.m. ET each day, the post will be updated throughout the day as needed.

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Trump's Super Power Is Apparently Minor Corruption

A Palm Beach Post review of the Trump Foundation’s tax records found a pattern — donations, typically $25,000 — to eight charities after they relocated their events to Maralago:

Take the Salvation Army’s decision to leave the Breakers in 2009 after 37 years. After several years at other venues, it returned to the Breakers in 2012, then to Mar-a-Lago in 2014 — the same year the Trump Foundation made a $25,000 donation to the group.

Trump and taxes:  Mar-a-Lago’s charitable donation deal veiled from IRS scrutiny

Trump was subsequently named the holiday cheer ambassador for the Salvation Army’s Dec. 12, 2014, event. Guests were treated to ice skaters on a “frozen pond” and falling snow at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump gave a brief speech, then handed over a check for $25,000. After that, the foundation made no more contributions to the local group, according to Trump Foundation tax returns.





But Wait, There's More

Buzzfeed is reporting that some Mar-a-Lago members -- i.e. paying customers at the private resort Trump still profits from in office -- appear to have been invited to receive private tours of Air Force One weeks after Trump became President

At least 14 people were scheduled to take those two tours. Although the names of the individuals are redacted, partially unredacted email addresses show eight of those people were affiliated with Arrigo Automotive Group, a family-owned car dealership in the West Palm Beach area.

The leadership of the company — Joe Arrigo and his sons, Jim and John Arrigo, and their wives — have been members of both Mar-a-Lago and Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. Membership records from 2007 obtained by BuzzFeed News list the family as members of both the clubs and specify that Jim Arrigo had been a member of the Trump International Golf Club since 1999, the year it opened.





The Challenges Of Surviving The Apocalypse As A Rich Person

Douglas Rushkoff writes on Medium that for many super rich, "the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape." It's about how to use your wealth to protect yourself, and to hell with the rest of the world.

The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed in time.

That’s when it hit me: At least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the aging process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.