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| Before and After |
That is some guy, that Jared Kushner. As you may know, he is the son-in-law of Donald Trump and CEO of Kushner Corporation, a commercial real estate firm. He is a favorite of our President. DT admires Jared for doing things the way he would do them. Jared's the son he never had (hello, Uday and Qusay). Kushner's the guy who gets to bonk the daughter he'd be bonking, if he weren't her father. In fact, Kushner is so well liked and respected that he's been given a number of jobs in Trump's Administration. They include:
-- Senior Advisor to the President, in charge of having Trump walk back statements like his Two-China comment. There have not been nearly enough walk-backs... He also gets the Presidential Daily Brief, the highest level of Intelligence analysis of key national security issues. These are usually reserved for the President, but he can't be bothered with them.
-- Head of the Office of American Innovation, a newly announced entity. He and a number of Big Wig Biz People will be applying business principles to reform, streamline and possibly privatize portions of the Federal Government. In addition to overhauling the Federal bureaucracy, he will be reforming the VA, leading the fight against Opioid Addiction, and preparing for DT's 1 Trillion Dollar Infrastructure Plan. "The government should be run like a great American company. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens," he said.
-- Shadow Diplomat. JK is "the primary point of contact for presidents, ministers and ambassadors from over two dozen countries." He is the lead advisor for all things Canada and Mexico. He is the primary player in preparing and managing Thursday's China Summit. Someone should not tell Rex Tillerson, our sleepy and compartmented Secretary of State, about any of this...
-- Mideast Peace Deal Broker. Maybe the 28% budget cut at the State Department will save Rex T. from doing all the things that Jared is doing. "I think he'd be very good at it," said Trump about JK's role as Peace Broker, "I mean, he knows the people, knows the players. He's such a good kid and he'll make a deal with Israel that no one else can." What could go wrong?
-- Point Person for Iraq/ISIS plan. It turns out that Trump never had a plan to defeat ISIS, after all. So he told the Pentagon that Jared should fly to Baghdad with some military brass and figure out one. He gets back tonight in time for Thursday's China Summit.
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| He is also responsible for resolving the Unified Field Theory |
Other less-publicized positions in the administration include working with Major League Baseball to expand the Infield Fly Rule and replace home plate umpires with strike-zone recognition software in on-field computers.
And Kushner is also charged with finding the sacred and secret Egg Salad Recipe, as depicted in the 'switch original dialogue with funnier ones' 1964 comedy classic, "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" Why a recipe, you say? The land of Raspur depends on it!
So Jared Kushner must be a very busy man. But he also must be a very capable one, too! After all, Jared got into Harvard after his father gave it 2.5 million reasons to accept him. And when he got out of school, he took over the reins from his father (who was in prison for Fraud) and expanded his real estate business from Jersey suburban garden apartments to Manhattan office towers.
In 2007, he bought a big office building at 666 5th Ave. for $1.8 Billion, the most expensive ever in NYC! But things went south and it's now "underwater" in equity and not enough revenue from leases to cover things. He sold off a bunch of it, but still there are problems. He tried to cut a deal with a Chinese bank with close ties to the China government, but when word got out, that bank pulled out.
But he's a man with vision. He wants to demolish the current building and erect a new one. Here it is:
Much snickering has been made in Manhattan regarding this proposal. Is it a Plunger? A Toilet Brush? A Dildo? A Huge Trumpian Middle Finger? The total expense will be over $7 Billion before it's done. Good luck, Jared, in finding investors.
In addition to this bit of rough patch, other Kushner investments haven't fared well. The New York Observer was bought and then went under after a series of cutbacks. Here is the former Editor-in-Chief's take on Kushner as a boss:
When word hit that JK would be taking on so much responsibilities, Washington's cognoscenti went a bit haywire:
"The U.S. government is a business. It is an NPO - a non-profit organization - the largest and most complicated one in the world. It can't even be compared to other NPOs, let alone to single for-profit companies.
It takes years of study and effort just to become a mediocre working (as opposed to just campaigning) politician at the national level. I would applaud a zero-experience outsider if they were genuinely compassionate and reality-based, but even then I wouldn't bet much on their chances to get anything done.
Like Trump, all Kushner is going to be able to reliably do is destroy stuff. That takes no particular expertise."
And this:
There's literally nothing worth admiring about these people -- they're simply fortunate, well-connected, loud and rich. They're not smart, hard-working, generous, or even successful. Their entire lives, rich jerks like Kushner have received far more than they deserve, by any measure as this article nicely illustrates. Why do so many people who DO work hard still look up to these lazy, coddled trust fund babies? Do they think they could be one some day? Do they not realize inheritances and capital gains are literally "unearned income?" I thought these rural conservatives actually believed in moving up in the world through self-determination and an honest day's work? Why do they seem to want to permit winners of the womb lottery to be exempt from all that?
But the best line comes from the American classic, "The Great Gatsby":
"I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made...."
Tom and Daisy. Jared and Ivanka. Donald and Melania. F. Scott Fitzgerald described the Rich to Ernest Hemingway as "being very different from you and I." To which Hemingway responded, "Yes, they have more money." Man-Children playing with expensive toys are one thing when it's in the private sector. Now we will see what happens when those with no experience and dubious expertise decide on how we should be governed.
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