Hat tip to Trump for his unassailable SCOTUS pick

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The debt thing is so weird. My DH and I are both public servants and have way more money than that and no debt exxcpet mortgage. If you don’t have the money why would you put 60k on a credit card for baseball tix? That’s just so dumb. Their HH income is $260k and they have less than 65k saved?? Something doesn’t add up.

This. It’s especially weird since by all accounts he has been gunning for this his whole life. Odd that someone who has been so careful in every other aspect would be so reckless about debt.

Im liberal but yes he seems like an overall decent pick. Someone is working overtime to get feel good stories about him coaching and carpooling into the WaPo. But why would a smart person make such stupid financial decisions. Its not like there are medical bills. Also, how can they have less than 65k in retirement at this age?

Doesn't he get pension as a federal judge? Retirement is more of a concern to those who have to rely on SS and 401k. Judges may get SS, TSP, and pension. People with pension may not need a huge TSP retirement fund.

TSP, SS, and annuity are like 3 legs to a stool. You need all 3 if you're going to maintain your lifestyle in retirement. We're two feds (GS, not SES, so less HHI than Kavanagh) in our 40's w/ 3 kids including one in FT daycare and one with SN that has led to almost $20k in direct expenses in one year. We have around $400k in retirement savings right now plus 3x 529's (with not nearly enough) and some additional savings (that have mostly been wiped out due to SN). Our only debt is our mortgage and a car loan. Kavanagh's financial state doesn't speak well of his judgement.

Adding ... what you said before was mostly true for feds hired back in the 60's, but it was gutted with FERS and gutted again a few years back with the most recent FERS. Almost everyone currently working as a federal employee is under one of the FERS retirement systems and a TSP/401k is a necessary part of their retirement. He should have another zero tacked onto the end of his $65,000 by now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The debt thing is so weird. My DH and I are both public servants and have way more money than that and no debt exxcpet mortgage. If you don’t have the money why would you put 60k on a credit card for baseball tix? That’s just so dumb. Their HH income is $260k and they have less than 65k saved?? Something doesn’t add up.

This. It’s especially weird since by all accounts he has been gunning for this his whole life. Odd that someone who has been so careful in every other aspect would be so reckless about debt.

Im liberal but yes he seems like an overall decent pick. Someone is working overtime to get feel good stories about him coaching and carpooling into the WaPo. But why would a smart person make such stupid financial decisions. Its not like there are medical bills. Also, how can they have less than 65k in retirement at this age?

The less than $65K number doesn’t include home equity or retirement - those aren’t required to be reported. It’s still a really low number for assets outside those two things for someone who was a lawyer in private practice for a number of years, including as a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, and has made a good salary both in the Bush administration and as a federal judge.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:This is fake news. There's no law that says a federal employe can't have credit card debts. The only issue I am aware is whether the employee took care of his or her just obligations. There's nothing in this thread that suggests that Kavanaugh didn't.

Mystery money. Where did the mystery money come from to pay off his debts? That’s not “fake news.” That’s a big dang deal.

Generally, the problem is if Kavanaugh didn't disclose his debt and someone, somehow discovered he lied on the disclosure form. No one's suggesting he lied. And if you can't imagine how someone could pay off a $200,000 cc debt legitimately, it's probably due to your lack of imagination, wishful thinking - or more likely your politics getting in the way of critical thinking. I can imagine many ways in which someone could pay down his or he rdebt, so this is a non-issue until someone on the left can be more specific about what Kavanaugh did that is so illegal.

And no one is saying he did anything illegal - yet. It’s just eyebrow raising, and not the judgment you want to see in a current federal judge and Supreme Court nominee, for him to have only mid-five figures in assets outside of his retirement and personal residence, and with all the past debt, and with all the debt suddenly paid off. Bad things happen when judges are broke.

Really? It's eyebrow raising for a judge to have the same sorts of finances most of the rest of us who are reasonably well off have? Most middle class wealth is in our homes and retirement accounts. Most of us do not have buckets of money sitting around in other areas. And if we ran up expenses for something, we could pay it off. We're not really "broke" and stopping starbucks or eating out or finally cutting cable and getting our friends to pay us back and our parents doing some inheritance tax planning all of that can put some money in our pockets pretty quickly.

Broke would be payday loan and selling the furniture territory. Not "got exuberant with season tickets and vacation two years ago, and unexpectedly had some house expenses, have to go back to the basics with budgeting and not be so free flowing" territory.

Get outside of your bubble and you'll find that a lot of people live like this.

You know what’s a bubble- thinking someone that someone who makes $300k annually and has a $1.2M house is how a lot of people live. Broke is broke. It doesn’t matter if you have extensive debt with s fancy house or if you borrow money to make rent. Relying on your parents inheritance tax planning to pay off charges you ran up overspending on baseball tickets is also broke. His debt didn’t get resolved by cutting out Starbucks or cutting cable. Paying off that amount of debt takes years of discipline. Speak for yourself about the same sorts of finances. Some of us have good judgement.

That is exactly how a lot of people live in this area. UMC folks who have enough money not to need to worry too much, but not so much we can do anything we want to do.

Government employees do well, and count on the retirement so aren't as likely to cut immediate expenses for extra buckets of money.

Perhaps you should meet some actually broke people. Can't pay for a car repair, have already sold their belongings that are worth anything, plan on which utility is getting cut off this month, broke.

So? None of those people are being nominated for SCOTUS.

Why do you want to add a requirement that only rich people can be considered for SCOTUS? Is it that "the good schools" are now admitting some regular people and thus are no longer the filter they used to be, so we have to be more blatant in our classism?

As someone posted above -

“The mishandling of his finances is a really big deal actually. Check out bar exam character and fitness requirements - and this is just to be admitted to the bar - we’re talking about the Supreme Court here.”

Plus, as multiple people have posted above, this amount of debt versus income and assets would be a problem getting a security clearance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am looking forward to learning more about Kavanaugh’s role in the torture related decisions by the Bush administration. He was belatedly caught misrepresenting it ( i.e. lying) after his last hearing.

How did he get caught?

Kavanaugh testified that he did not participate at all in discussions regarding the waterboarding/torture issue. Several articles were published the following year in major newspapers that focused in Cheney and torture of enemy combatants. Various people describd meetings on the topic and identified Kavanaugh as one of the participants. To be clear, the discrepancy with Kavanaugh’s testimony was not the point of the articles, or even pointed out in the articles.. Senator Durbin wrote a letter to Kavanaugh pointing out the apparent inaccuracy in his testimony, and requesting an explanation. Kavanaugh did not respond.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am looking forward to learning more about Kavanaugh’s role in the torture related decisions by the Bush administration. He was belatedly caught misrepresenting it ( i.e. lying) after his last hearing.

How did he get caught?

Kavanaugh testified that he did not participate at all in discussions regarding the waterboarding/torture issue. Several articles were published the following year in major newspapers that focused in Cheney and torture of enemy combatants. Various people describd meetings on the topic and identified Kavanaugh as one of the participants. To be clear, the discrepancy with Kavanaugh’s testimony was not the point of the articles, or even pointed out in the articles.. Senator Durbin wrote a letter to Kavanaugh pointing out the apparent inaccuracy in his testimony, and requesting an explanation. Kavanaugh did not respond.

One slight correction, the issue was detainmemt of eneemy combatants in both cases not necessarily torture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He's a Yale attorney/judge living in Chevy Chase. Presumably, most his trustfunder/white shoe lawyer "friends" have more disposable cash than him. How does he end up as the flunky charging a bunch of tickets?

It's the same in our group -- it's the nicest guy who loves baseball the most. Post season tickets + full pay for the following season + fees easily equals $30,000. Big law types too busy to make it happen. And have you ever tried to collect money from a group, even your neighbors, colleagues and friends? Total hassle. Same reason you don't volunteer to run the water club at work.

[Anonymous]

Keep in mind, financial disclosure reports are about ranges. It could be on the low end, closer to 60k than 200. Nats tickets (credit cards); an illness or roof repair for the 100-year-old house (TSP loan); it's not that unusual for your average DMV UMC familiy, especially in B/CC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He's a Yale attorney/judge living in Chevy Chase. Presumably, most his trustfunder/white shoe lawyer "friends" have more disposable cash than him. How does he end up as the flunky charging a bunch of tickets?

It's the same in our group -- it's the nicest guy who loves baseball the most. Post season tickets + full pay for the following season + fees easily equals $30,000. Big law types too busy to make it happen. And have you ever tried to collect money from a group, even your neighbors, colleagues and friends? Total hassle. Same reason you don't volunteer to run the water club at work.

He had the same debt range in 2006. That’s a lot of years to be your friends’ dummy.

[Anonymous]

Every year since 2006 he's filed a financial disclosure and he's had approximately the same level of unsecured debt on 3-4 credit cards (tens of thousands of dollars) and a TSP loan of between $15,000 - $50,000

https://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/tag/brett-m-kavanaugh/

In 2016, the level of debt on each credit card went into the $15,000 - 50,000 range. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4578103-Kavanaugh-BM-J3-DC-R-16.html

Then, all of sudden, a year later, for the first time in his whole history of filing financial disclosures, he had ZERO credit card debt in 2017.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4578093-Kavanaugh-BM-J3-DC-R-17.html

Begs 2 questions - how did he pay off all that debt? and did he pay it off because he knew he would be up for the Supreme Court in 2018?

[Anonymous]

He refinanced his house like the rest of us mid-career Chevy Chasers with debt and not a lot to show in retirement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every year since 2006 he's filed a financial disclosure and he's had approximately the same level of unsecured debt on 3-4 credit cards (tens of thousands of dollars) and a TSP loan of between $15,000 - $50,000

https://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/tag/brett-m-kavanaugh/

In 2016, the level of debt on each credit card went into the $15,000 - 50,000 range. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4578103-Kavanaugh-BM-J3-DC-R-16.html

Then, all of sudden, a year later, for the first time in his whole history of filing financial disclosures, he had ZERO credit card debt in 2017.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4578093-Kavanaugh-BM-J3-DC-R-17.html

Begs 2 questions - how did he pay off all that debt? and did he pay it off because he knew he would be up for the Supreme Court in 2018?

This is an interesting question. Was there a plan already in between Trump and Kennedy in 2017 to clean his record before the retirement announcement?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The extent to which the troll networks are fighting back against this on twitter, FB, and the WaPo comment section tells me there's more to this. Stay tuned.

Fake issue. Shows there's no real issue with this nominee.

If it’s not important than why are the Russian twitter bots engaged?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He refinanced his house like the rest of us mid-career Chevy Chasers with debt and not a lot to show in retirement.

Public records would show if this happened. It I’m having a hard time believing most lenders wouldn’t have some real concerns.

[Anonymous]

The baseball tickets story just doesn't pass the smell test.

Even less believable than John Kelly being pissy about pastries and cheese.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He refinanced his house like the rest of us mid-career Chevy Chasers with debt and not a lot to show in retirement.

Public records would show if this happened. It I’m having a hard time believing most lenders wouldn’t have some real concerns.

The original mortgage was $980K when they bought in 2006. I think someone else upthread posted that it was $835K now? That would be from public records.