Author Archives: JaimieBusey

The Trump Files: Donald’s Mega-Yacht Wasn’t Big Enough For Him

by JaimieBusey Posted on August 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Until the election, we’re bringing you “The Trump Files,” a daily dose of telling episodes, strange-but-true stories, or curious scenes from the life of GOP nominee Donald Trump.

Donald Trump’s yacht, the 282-foot-long Trump Princess, was probably the Trumpiest of all the tycoon’s toys. It was one of the largest yachts in the world when he bought it from the Sultan of Brunei in the late 1980s, featuring plenty of marble and gold decor and over-the-top amenities including a helipad, a disco, and a movie theater. Trump even had to dredge the Atlantic City channel so it could accommodate his ship.

But the yacht still wasn’t big enough.

Just a year after he bought the Trump Princess, Trump announced he was looking for an upgrade. He told Newsday in June that he planned to build a new yacht—”something in excess of 400 feet long, closer to 500 feet”—so that it could fit all the casino high-rollers who liked to come aboard.

A Dutch company reportedly had the inside track with plans for a 420-footer that Dutch journalist Peter Degraaf of De Volkskrant told Newsday was “maybe the greatest ship ever built in the world, and it’s exactly what Mr. Trump wants—the greatest and most luxurious yacht.” Trump figured he might simply name it the Trump Princess II rather than paying homage to his then-wife Ivana as a reporter suggested. “I like to keep things low-key,” he explained.

But the new and improved Princess was never built, and Trump soon had no yacht at all. After his net worth crashed under a gargantuan debt load in 1990, Trump was put on a strict monthly allowance by his creditors. He was allowed to keep the yacht, but by 1991 he was forced to sell the Trump Princess—or had it repossessed, according to some reports.

Read the rest of “The Trump Files”:

Trump Files #1: The Time Andrew Dice Clay Thanked Donald for the Hookers
Trump Files #2: When Donald Tried to Stop Charlie Sheen’s Marriage to Brooke Mueller
Trump Files #3: The Brief Life of the “Trump Chateau for the Indigent”
Trump Files #4: Donald Thinks Asbestos Fears Are a Mob Conspiracy
Trump Files #5: Donald’s Nuclear Negotiating Fantasy
Trump Files #6: Donald Wants a Powerball for Spies
Trump Files #7: Donald Gets An Allowance
Trump Files #8: The Time He Went Bananas on a Water Cooler
Trump Files #9: The Great Geico Boycott
Trump Files #10: Donald Trump, Tax-Hike Crusader
Trump Files #11: Watch Donald Trump Say He Would Have Done Better as a Black Man
Trump Files #12: Donald Can’t Multiply 17 and 6
Trump Files #13: Watch Donald Sing the “Green Acres” Theme Song in Overalls
Trump Files #14: The Time Donald Trump Pulled Over His Limo to Stop a Beating
Trump Files #15: When Donald Wanted to Help the Clintons Buy Their House
Trump Files #16: He Once Forced a Small Business to Pay Him Royalties for Using the Word “Trump”
Trump Files #17: He Dumped Wine on an “Unattractive Reporter”
Trump Files #18: Behold the Hideous Statue He Wanted to Erect In Manhattan
Trump Files #19: When Donald Was “Principal for a Day” and Confronted by a Fifth-Grader
Trump Files #20: In 2012, Trump Begged GOP Presidential Candidates to Be Civil
Trump Files #21: When Donald Couldn’t Tell the Difference Between Gorbachev and an Impersonator
Trump Files #22: His Football Team Treated Its Cheerleaders “Like Hookers”
Trump Files #23: The Trump Files: Donald Tried to Shut Down a Bike Race Named “Rump”
Trump Files #24: When Donald Called Out Pat Buchanan for Bigotry
Trump Files #25: Donald’s Most Ridiculous Appearance on Howard Stern’s Show
Trump Files #26: How Donald Tricked New York Into Giving Him His First Huge Deal
Trump Files #27: Donald Told Congress the Reagan Tax Cuts Were Terrible
Trump Files #28: When Donald Destroyed Historic Art to Build Trump Tower
Trump Files #29: Donald Wanted to Build an Insane Castle on Madison Avenue
Trump Files #30: Donald’s Near-Death Experience (That He Invented)
Trump Files #31: When Donald Struck Oil on the Upper West Side
Trump Files #32: When Donald Massacred Trees in the Trump Tower Lobby
Trump Files #33: When Donald Demanded Other People Pay for His Overpriced Quarterback
Trump Files #34: The Time Donald Sued Someone Who Made Fun of Him for $500 Million
Trump Files #35: Donald Tried to Make His Ghostwriter Pay for His Book Party
Trump Files #36: Watch Donald Shave a Man’s Head on Television
Trump Files #37: How Donald Helped Make It Harder to Get Football Tickets
Trump Files #38: Donald Was Curious About His Baby Daughter’s Breasts
Trump Files #39: When Democrats Courted Donald
Trump Files #40: Watch the Trump Vodka Ad Designed for a Russian Audience
Trump Files #41: Donald’s Cologne Smelled of Jamba Juice and Strip Clubs
Trump Files #42: Donald Sued Other People Named Trump for Using Their Own Name
Trump Files #43: Donald Thinks Asbestos Would Have Saved the Twin Towers
Trump Files #44: Why Donald Threw a Fit Over His “Trump Tree” in Central Park
Trump Files #45: Watch Trump Endorse Slim Shady for President
Trump Files #46: The Easiest 13 Cents He Ever Made
Trump Files #47: The Time Donald Burned a Widow’s Mortgage
Trump Files #48: Donald’s Recurring Sex Dreams
Trump Files #49: Trump’s Epic Insult Fight With Ed Koch
Trump Files #50: Donald Has Some Advice for Citizen Kane
Trump Files #51: Donald Once Turned Down a Million-Dollar Bet on “Trump: The Game”
Trump Files #52: When Donald Tried to Shake Down Mike Tyson for $2 Million
Trump Files #53: Donald and Melania’s Creepy, Sex-Filled Interview With Howard Stern

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The Trump Files: Donald’s Mega-Yacht Wasn’t Big Enough For Him

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Obamacare Rate Shock Probably Affects Less Than 1 Percent of the Country

by JaimieBusey Posted on March 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Like most human beings, I love it when I turn out to be right. Or even when someone provides evidence that I might be right. So naturally I’m thrilled that a pair of researchers have confirmed my horseback estimate that 1-2 million people may have suffered from canceled policies and rate shock during the introduction of Obamacare.

How did they go about it? Well, it’s really hard to use raw number crunching to figure out how many people in the individual health care market had their policies canceled. Clean data just doesn’t exist. But there’s a way to cut through this Gordian Knot: just ask people. In December 2013, the Health Reform Monitoring Survey did just that, and concluded that about 18.6 percent of those with individual health insurance reported that their policies were no longer being offered to them. The best estimate we have is that about 14 million people had individual policies last year, which means that 2.6 million people faced cancellation:

Many whose non-group policy was cancelled appear to be eligible for Marketplace subsidies or Medicaid….While our sample size of those with non-group health insurance who report that their plan was cancelled due to ACA compliance is small (N=123), we estimate that over half of this population is likely to be eligible for coverage assistance, mostly through Marketplace subsidies. Consistent with these findings, other work by Urban Institute researchers estimated that slightly more than half of adults with pre-reform nongroup coverage would be eligible for Marketplace subsidies or Medicaid.

So that means about 1.3 million people had their policies canceled and had to pay full freight for a new policy. Since the error bars on this estimate are fairly large, that comes out to somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-2 million people. In other words, less than 1 percent of the country, mostly made up of people with incomes that are higher than average.

You can decide for yourself if this is a lot or a little. My own take is that it’s pretty modest given that Obamacare probably benefits about 20-30 million people. Any big new piece of policy is going to have winners and losers, and a ratio of 20:1 or so is about as good as it gets in the real world.

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Obamacare Rate Shock Probably Affects Less Than 1 Percent of the Country

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