Trump drops 138 notches on Forbes list of richest Americans

Don Surber refers to the twitter account, the Hill. His post is titled "Being president already cost President Trump $1.4 billion." Except he spells "bilion."

Then the single word paragraph, "Emoluments."

What are emoluments?

Goody gumdrops I get to make a another vocabulary card. I heard this word before and deduced it means conflict of interest between government position and private business. That's my guess.

I'm wrong.

emoluments: profit, salary, or fees from office or employment; compensation for services.

Here's another word that will not do for everyday conversation. It will be mentally filed under "P" for pissy words that piss people off when you use them for sounding purposefully hoity-toity-pants where profit, salary or fees will work just fine.

So why do they keep writing it?

Because of the emoluments clause in our Constitution, I bet.

This site says the clause is also called "the foreign emoluments clause" prohibiting office holders from accepting any gift, payment, or anything like titles from foreign governments.

Britain gave Reagan the title of Sir whatever that means. It sounds like a title to me. *taunts* U-m-m-m-m, Reagan broke the foreign entitlements clause. Right there's a crime. He should go to dead presidents prison.

There's also a domestic emoluments clause.

A lot more information at the link.

Hillary Clinton violated the hell out of this foreign emoluments clause and she was utterly brazen about it. She's a living/breathing example of why it was put there in the first place, and the second place. (The clause was dropped then later restored)

Surber is not implying payment for government office, rather he's talking about Trump putting aside his business activities while president, and donating his salary as president, minor compared with shunting control of his businesses.

Here's the meat of it:

The past two Democratic presidents made out like bandits accumulating post-presidential net worths of $40 million or more, which was about $40 million more than they were worth when they entered the White House. 

Running for president not only cost President Trump $66 million in donations to his own campaign but the value of his companies shrank. 

"Trump’s net worth has dropped from $4.5 billion in 2015 to hold steady at $3.1 billion for the past two years. As a result, the president has fallen 138 spots on the latest The Forbes 400 list, which will be released Wednesday,"

More at the link about what Trump gave up and why, more about what Eric Trump says. Surber brings historic presidents good and bad into his discussion. Comments over there are quite good.

That's a lot of money.

I used to read Donald Duck comics where Uncle Scrooge jumped into a room filled with gold coins and I'd think, man, that would be really cool.

But honestly, what can be done with all those gold coins when you've already bought everything you could want? Diving into gold coins would actually hurt.

As a boy, I concluded I didn't want to live in a mansion.

Why?

Laziness.

I visualized needing to write a note and needing a pencil. 

Then walking two acres up and down steps to get the pencil.

Then being unsure the note would even be read for lack of obvious place for the note to be seen. The person I intend to read the note walks right past it because it taped to a door in mansion. 

A pencil put me off the idea of living in a large house. 

A butler could get me the pencil. 

Then I'd have that butler all up in my biz-wax all day, following me around, picking out my underwear to put on that day, trimming my nose hairs, flicking flecks off my jacket, doing that spit on a handkerchief thing to get smudges off my face, fixing my hair when it sticks up, shining my shoes. All that for a pencil. 

Anyone see a pencil around here? Come on, someone get me a pencil.