Sunday
Sep272020
The Commentariat -- Sept. 28, 2020
Your Sunday Evening News Bombshell:
** The Biggest Tax Cheat. Russ Buettner, et al., of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750. He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made. As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million. The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president." Emphasis added. (Also linked yesterday.)
~~~ Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: By way of comparison, I am a middle-middle-class taxpayer, definitely nowhere near upper-middle class. I have some tax writeoffs, too. I just checked my return for one of the years Donald Trump paid $750; I paid almost $36,000 in federal income tax. You think I don't resent carrying Donald Trump? You can bet the millions of lower- and middle-class taxpayers who paid far more than $750 (or nothing, as Trump paid in previous years) also resent carrying a fat tax cheat who lives in a grotesque gold-and-marble NYC penthouse and a Palm Beach mansion. What American voters need to get straight in their wee, bitty brains is that Donald Trump is a crime boss, and he has been shaking them down for decades. According to CNN this morning, the average U.S. taxpayer pays $12,000/year in federal income taxes.
The tax returns ... demonstrate that [Donald Trump] was far more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life. -- Russ Buettner, et al., in a series of charts & graphs that detail Trump's business career
David Leonhardt of the New York Times outlines key findings from the Times' report. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump-supporting pundits have been making the argument, more or less, that "all billionaires do it." While it is true that everyone, especially the very wealthy, take the tax breaks the Congress so kindly grants them, Leonhardt points out that the very wealthy, on average, still pay much higher taxes than does Cheeto von Cheat-o (thanks, Akhilleus!): "... most affluent people still pay a lot of federal income tax. In 2017, the average federal income rate for the highest-earning .001 percent of tax filers — that is, the most affluent 1/100,000th slice of the population — was 24.1 percent, according to the I.R.S. Over the past two decades, Mr. Trump has paid about $400 million less in combined federal income taxes than a very wealthy person who paid the average for that group each year."
We're Going to Keep on Drip-Drip-Dropping This Stuff Till the Election. Dean Baquet, Executive Editor of the New York Times: "A team of New York Times reporters has pored over this information to assemble the most comprehensive picture of the president’s finances and business dealings to date, and we will continue our reporting and publish additional articles about our findings in the weeks ahead. We are not making the records themselves public because we do not want to jeopardize our sources, who have taken enormous personal risks to help inform the public.... The records ... underscore why citizens would want to know about their president’s finances: Mr. Trump’s businesses appear to have benefited from his position, and his far-flung holdings have created potential conflicts between his own financial interests and the nation’s diplomatic interests.... The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the First Amendment allows the press to publish newsworthy information that was legally obtained by reporters even when those in power fight to keep it hidden."
Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "Trump’s story turns out to be pretty simple. After screwing everybody in sight during the ’90s, he entered 2000 in parlous shape. What saved him was The Apprentice, which earned him a boatload of money and formed the foundation of his flurry of licensing and endorsement deals over the next few years. But as revenue from the show faded, so did Trump’s finances, and since 2012 he’s been losing money every year. Long story short, Trump has lost money at pretty much everything he’s ever done. The only exception is The Apprentice and the licensing money it enabled — which probably owes more to reality show mogul Mark Burnett than to Trump himself. Trump’s ability to squander the money he inherited is breathtaking. He’s also deeply in debt, it turns out, with about $300 million in loans coming due over the next few years."
Time for a U.S. Tax Code Revision. Will Sommer & Asawin Suebsaeng of the Daily Beast: “Tucked into the paper’s report is a damning graph that examines how Trump’s tax liabilities are far greater for his ventures overseas than they are at home. 'In 2017,' the Times writes, 'the president’s $750 contribution to the operations of the U.S. government was dwarfed by the $15,598 he or his companies paid in Panama, the $145,400 in India and the $156,824 in the Philippines.'”
David Atkins of the Washington Monthly: "... despite [the] potential [of Trump's apparent tax cheating] to land the entire Trump family in penury and jail, what is far more terrifying for the country isn’t what lies in his past of tax avoidance. It’s the time bomb of debt that lies in Trump’s very near future. It’s about the mystery of who owns Trump’s outlandish debts, and the degree of secret power they may be wielding over the country. One fact stands out far above all the others in its staggering implications: Donald Trump is personally responsible for $421 million worth of loans coming due in the next few years. Not his business. Him. Personally. He has no means of repaying them. He already refinanced his few profitable properties, and sold off most of his stocks to stay afloat. He appears short on liquidity. And we still don’t know to whom he owes the money.... This fact has frightening implications for public policy and national security. Even minor debts are a frequent reason for the government to deny a security clearance, for the obvious reason that indebted and financially desperate public servants make easy marks for bribery, blackmail and potential treason." Emphasis original. ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Atkins manages to implicate former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in Trump's convoluted financial schemes. "Donald Trump’s history with Deutsche Bank has always merited special scrutiny, but never more than now. The head honchos at Deutsche would have known just how desperate Trump’s financial position was. But they lent to him anyway. Why? It certainly looks even more ominous that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s son was managing the real estate division at Deutsche that lent to Trump, and that Justice Kennedy unexpectedly retired to ensure Trump could seat his replacement."
Ivanka Trump, Fake Consultant. Andrew Prokop of Vox: "One major theme of the Times piece is that the IRS audit of Trump is extremely serious, and that he could end up owing the US government more than $100 million.... Trump’s tax returns became the white whale of his critics, with everyone from reporters to House Democrats to New York state prosecutors trying to get ahold of them. After more than four years, Buettner, Craig, and McIntire of the Times got the goods.... The specific reason Trump paid no taxes is embarrassing — it’s because his businesses lost tons of money. (At least, that’s what he claims — keep in mind that the tax return information is his representation of his businesses to the IRS.)... There’s clearly some legally questionable stuff in there. For instance, the records obtained by Buettner, Craig, and McIntire show that Trump wrote off $26 million in supposed consulting fees as a business expense between 2011 and 2018. But the reporters took the added step of uncovering where some of that money was going — and they figured out that some of those write-offs matched payments to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, as revealed on her own financial disclosure forms. Now, Ivanka was an executive vice president of the Trump Organization — not some outside consultant."
Nolan McCaskill of Politico: “... Donald Trump on Sunday dismissed as 'totally fake news' a New York Times report about how little he has paid in federal taxes. 'It’s fake news,' Trump told reporters at a news conference in the White House briefing room. 'It’s totally fake news. Made up. Fake.'... Trump on Sunday reprised his long-held argument that he can’t release his taxes because he’s under audit by the IRS, an agency he claimed treats him 'very badly.' But the president said he would be 'proud to show' his tax returns once the audit was over, and insisted that he’d paid 'a lot' of money in taxes, including New York state income taxes.... Former IRS officials, however, have ... said there‘s nothing stopping the president from releasing his taxes during an audit.” Mrs. McC: Yeah, shame on the Times & the IRS. P.S. It is not only former IRS officials who have said there is not legal impediment for Trump to release his taxes; so has Charles Rettig, Trump's very special hand-picked IRS chief (see Alberto Luperon's post, linked below).
Brooke Seipel of the Hill: "Democrats sounded off against President Trump on Sunday evening after The New York Times dropped a bombshell report detailing 20 years of his tax history, including that he avoided income taxes for 10 of those years.... Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) ask[ed] people to raise their hands if they paid more than Trump.... [Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted,] 'Donald Trump ... knows better than anyone that there’s one set of rules for the wealthy and giant corporations and another for hardworking Americans—and instead of using his power to fix it, he's taken advantage of it at every turn.'... [Bill] Pascrell, the chair of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight, said in his own statement that the Times' findings 'reveal absolutely staggering theft by Trump before and while he has been in office,' and that 'Trump must release his tax returns as is longstanding practice and is required by law to Congress instead of grandstanding and attacking the media.'"
Alberto Luperon of Law & Crime: “A former federal prosecutor says there’s enough to justify an investigation, and that the possible appointment of another special counsel 'should be in play.'... Daniel R. Alonso, a former federal prosecutor who worked in the Eastern District of New York..., [tweeted,] ' Those who are writing that tax *avoidance* (the term @nytimes uses) is not a crime are exactly right - tax *evasion* is a crime, not 'avoidance.' But there is a lot here that with a proper investigation could lead to discovery of criminality.... This article contains what federal agents and prosecutors call 'predication,' which is the bare amount you need to open a criminal investigation. But who would investigate? The President himself oversees @IRS_CI and @FBI and @TheJusticeDept.... Luckily, regulations from 20 years ago provide for what happens when such a conflict of interest exists: the Attorney General “will appoint a Special Counsel.”'... Alonso cited a case in which Albert J. Pirro Jr., the now-former husband of Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, was found guilty in a 2000 tax fraud case. 'Pirro deducted personal expenses as business, and therefore “had brazenly violated a fundamental tenet of the American tax system: that every taxpayer must pay his or her fair share, regardless of wealth or influence.” He got 29 months in prison.'” ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump, for instance, wrote off more than $70,000 for getting his hair done when filiming "The Apprentice." You do not get to write off your haircuts because you are required to look presentable on the job.
Steve M.: "The Times story suggests two possibilities: that Trump is much less wealthy (and more in debt) than he claims to be and that he pays far less in taxes than he should. Both appear to be true, but Trump's base simply can't process the first notion, so they're responding only to the second one. The responses, as seen in this Breitbart comment thread, are exactly what you'd expect: What about Soros? What about Hunter? What about other Democrats? And of course everyone should pay very little in taxes, because freedom! (Except Hunter and Soros and Democrats in Congress, presumably.)... To the right, government is liberal, and cheating the government is patriotic (unless you're a liberal). This story might make Trumpers like him even more than they already do." See also Ken W.'s comment in today's thread.
Michael Kranish of the Washington Post: “Donald Trump was facing financial disaster in 1990 when he came up with an audacious plan to exert control of his father’s estate. His creditors threatened to force him into personal bankruptcy, and his first wife, Ivana, wanted 'a billion dollars' in a divorce settlement, Donald Trump said in a deposition. So he sent an accountant and a lawyer to see his father, Fred Trump Sr., who was told he needed to immediately sign a document changing the will according to his son’s wishes, according to depositions from family members. It was a fragile moment for the senior Trump, who was 85 years old and ... would soon be diagnosed with cognitive problems, such as being unable to recall things he was told 30 minutes earlier or remember his birth date, according to his medical records, which were included in a related court case. Now, those records and other sources of information about the episode obtained by The Washington Post reveal the extent of Fred Trump Sr.’s cognitive impairment and how Donald’s effort to change his father’s will tore apart the Trump family, which continues to reverberate today.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Presidential Race, Etc.
Joe Biden responded Sunday afternoon to Donald Trump's nomination of Amy Barrett to the Supreme Court: ~~~
~~~ Jonathan Martin & Alexander Burns of the New York Times: "A clear majority of voters believes the winner of the presidential election should fill the Supreme Court seat left open by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, according to a national poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College, a sign of the political peril President Trump and Senate Republicans are courting by attempting to rush through an appointment before the end of the campaign.... [Fifty-six] percent said they preferred to have the election act as a sort of referendum on the vacancy. Only 41 percent said they wanted Mr. Trump to choose a justice before November." Mrs. McC: This poll is consistent with several others conducted last week. (Also linked yesterday.)
Mrs. McCrabbie: We have known all along, if sometimes not knowing to what extent, that Donald Trump is a crook & a con artist with no allegiance to his country of birth. Do you think the guy who worked so hard to cheat his own family and the American people won't work just as hard to cheat us in the upcoming election? ~~~
~~~ In Fact, It's Been the Plan All Along. Anita Kumar of Politico: "A year before ... Donald Trump alarmed Americans with talk of disputing elections last week, his team started building a massive legal network to do just that. Dozens of lawyers from three major law firms have been hired. Thousands of volunteer attorneys and poll watchers across the country have been recruited. Republicans are preparing pre-written legal pleadings that can be hurried to the courthouse the day after the election, as wrangling begins over close results and a crush of mail-in ballots. Attorneys from non-battleground states, including California, New York and Illinois, are being dispatched to more competitive areas and trained on local election laws. A 20-person team of lawyers oversees the strategy, which is mainly focused on the election process in the 17 key states the Trump campaign is targeting, like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. In total, it means the Republican Party will have thousands of people on hand to shape every element of voting — both on Election Day and in the days after. It’s a massive undertaking — one the RNC calls its largest election-year legal effort ever." (Also linked yesterday.)
Michael Shear & Michael Crowley of the New York Times: “President Trump sought again on Saturday night to cast doubt on the integrity of the presidential election, telling supporters that the only way Democrats can win in Pennsylvania is to 'cheat on the ballots' and raising the prospect that a disputed election could be decided by Congress. Pressing his baseless case that the election in November will be a 'disaster,' Mr. Trump said at a rally just outside a hangar at the Harrisburg airport that he would have 'an advantage' if Congress were to decide.... Shortly after announcing Judge Barrett’s nomination in a Rose Garden event on Saturday at the White House, Mr. Trump flew to the Harrisburg airport to speak to an outdoor crowd of perhaps a few thousand — far fewer than the 'tens of thousands' he claimed from onstage. It was the latest of several rallies he has held in which his supporters packed together, mostly without face masks.” (Also linked yesterday.)
John Bresnahan, et al., of Politico: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi has begun mobilizing Democrats for the possibility that neither Joe Biden nor President Donald Trump will win an outright Electoral College victory, a once-in-a-century phenomenon that would send the fate of the presidency to the House of Representatives to decide. Under that scenario, which hasn’t happened since 1876, every state’s delegation gets a single vote. Who receives that vote is determined by an internal tally of each lawmaker in the delegation. This means the presidency may not be decided by the party that controls the House itself but by the one that controls more state delegations in the chamber. And right now, Republicans control 26 delegations to Democrats’ 22, with Pennsylvania tied and Michigan a 7-6 plurality for Democrats, with a 14th seat held by independent Justin Amash. A battle inside the House could be brutal.... Trump, too, has taken notice of the obscure constitutional resolution to a deadlocked Electoral College, both in public and private."
Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post: “A third federal judge on Sunday ordered the U.S. Postal Service to halt changes that have delayed mail delivery nationwide, handing the latest judicial rebuke to unilateral service cuts that critics allege would suppress mail-in voting in November’s elections. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Washington, D.C., sided with the states of New York, Hawaii and New Jersey and the cities of New York and San Francisco. They alleged that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy disrupted operations without first submitting changes to the Postal Regulatory Commission, and told Congress he had no intention of returning removed collection boxes or high-speed sorting equipment. 'It is clearly in the public interest to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, to ensure safe alternatives to in-person voting, and to require that the USPS comply with the law,' Sullivan wrote in a 39-page opinion.”
Christopher Ingraham & Emily Guskin of the Washington Post: “Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was brought on, in part, to use his extensive private-sector experience to make the nation’s venerable mail service more efficient. But the net effect of DeJoy’s operational changes has been a slowdown in the pace of mail delivery. It may be no surprise, then, that a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll showed that Americans, by a more than 2-to-1 margin, reject the notion that the U.S. Postal Service should be 'run like a business,' to use a phrase prevalent in conservative policymaking circles. Instead, most said the USPS should be run as a 'public service,' even if doing so would cost the government money.”
Florida. “An Appalling New Low.” Washington Post Editors: “... Republicans are working feverishly to make it harder for people — or certain kinds of people — to vote. They have undertaken efforts across the country to purge voters from registration rolls, impede voting by mail and stop early voting. An appalling new low in their campaign to disenfranchise people in advance of the Nov. 3 elections has been reached with the bid by Florida Republicans — cheered on by President Trump — to investigate Mike Bloomberg for the 'crime' of trying to help people to be able to vote. Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) called on the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate efforts by the businessman, philanthropist and former New York mayor on behalf of an organization that is raising money to pay off the court debt of former felons so they can vote.... Ms. Moody cited 'potential violations of election laws.' Mr. Trump (naturally) went further: 'It’s a felony. He’s actually giving money to people. He’s paying people to vote. He’s actually saying, “Here’s money, now you go ahead and vote for only Democrats.” Right?' Nonsense. Any money raised to pay fines and fees goes to a 501(c)(4) foundation, which then goes to the county or state, not to the former felons, who have no idea who helped pay their fines and fees. No one is obligated to register to vote or support a specific candidate. That the coalition’s effort has been underway for more than a year — with some debts already paid off — seems to have escaped the notice of Ms. Moody and other Republicans.”
Austen Erblat, et al., of the Orlando Sun Sentinel: “President Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale was taken from his Fort Lauderdale home by police Sunday afternoon after his wife reported that he was armed and threatening suicide. The police, called by his wife, went to the house in the Seven Isles community, an affluent area in which houses have access to the water. They made contact, 'developed a rapport' and negotiated his exit from the house, the police said in a statement. He was taken to Broward Health Medical Center under the Baker Act, which provides for temporary involuntary commitment.”
"Notorious ACB"? No Way. Dahlia Lithwick of Slate: Ruth Bader Ginsburg's "death was painful for the millions of women who called her a role model and hero, because her work mattered to us, and to our material lives. It was made more painful because Mitch McConnell was already dancing on her grave back in May, months before she died, and because within an hour of her death, he announced that her seat was his to fill. This was an act of erasure by a man who didn’t mind that his rush to replace her violated the old fashioned idea that the country should be given just one moment to honor her legacy before going to war over what remained. And it was painful because we knew that whoever was named to her seat would be tasked with undoing her legacy.... As Donald Trump explained when he introduced her, [Amy Coney Barrett's] work to dismantle Ginsburg’s legacy in abortion, health care, discrimination, and gun rights is to be construed as pro-women simply because a woman will be doing it. Even Judge Barrett’s own remarks relied on coopting Ginsburg’s reputation and legacy, as if the fact that one’s husband is the better cook is the only hallmark of female empowerment." ~~~
~~~ Emma Brown & Jon Swaine of the Washington Post gingerly examine how Amy Coney Barrett's Roman Catholic faith could influence her Supreme Court opinions. An important point: "It is not possible to fully know from past rulings what any nominee would actually do once on the court. Appeals court judges are bound by precedent in a way that justices are not; only the latter can overturn Supreme Court precedent."
The Trumpidemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Sunday are here. (Also linked yesterday.)
Talking on Planes When Others Can Hear. Monica Alba of NBC News: "The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has grown increasingly concerned that ... Donald Trump, pushed by a new member of his coronavirus task force, is sharing incorrect information about the pandemic with the public. Dr. Robert Redfield, who leads the CDC, suggested in a conversation with a colleague Friday that Dr. Scott Atlas is arming Trump with misleading data about a range of issues, including questioning the efficacy of masks, whether young people are susceptible to the virus and the potential benefits of herd immunity. 'Everything he says is false,' Redfield said during a phone call made in public on a commercial airline and overheard by NBC News.... Redfield acknowledged after the flight from Atlanta to Washington, D.C., that he was speaking about Atlas...."
Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) isn't just super-smart; she's funny, too: ~~~
Good-ish News for TikTok Users. Rachel Lerman of the Washington Post: "TikTok received a reprieve of its ban from U.S. app stores on Sunday after a federal judge in Washington granted a preliminary injunction blocking an order from President Trump. It was the second setback for the Trump administration in its effort to curb U.S. residents’ access to popular Chinese mobile apps. Last weekend, a federal magistrate in San Francisco cited First Amendment issues in blocking a proposed ban of the WeChat app. U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols, who was appointed to the bench by Trump in 2019, was not expected to make public his full ruling until Monday. He filed his decision publicly, but his full reasoning was filed separately as a sealed document. Nichols granted the injunction for the piece of the ban that was set to go into effect Sunday night, but denied a motion to halt a second aspect of the ban that doesn’t go into effect until Nov. 12."
Who Shot John Mattingly? Roberto Ferdman, et al., of Vice (Sept. 25): "As part of Wednesday’s long-waited announcement about charges related to the March 13 police raid that killed Breonna Taylor, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron stated as fact that Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker fired a shot that hit an officer in the leg that night. But the initial ballistics report, which was conducted by Kentucky State Police and included in the investigative file provided to the attorney general’s office by the Louisville Metro Police Department, failed to prove that Walker fired the bullet that hit the officer, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly. That means it’s entirely possible that while Walker admitted to firing a bullet, it wasn’t necessarily the one that hit Mattingly, as his lawyer has already publicly insinuated. Walker was charged with attempted murder of a police officer and held in jail for two weeks on a $250,000 bond. The charges have since been dropped, although Walker may still be re-indicted." ~~~
~~~ Andrew Wolfson of the Louisville Courier Journal: “A Kentucky State Police ballistics report does not support state Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s assertion that Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot a Louisville police officer the night she was killed. Cameron told reporters Wednesday the investigation into Taylor’s March 13 death had ruled out 'friendly fire' from ex-Louisville Metro Police officer Brett Hankison as the source of the shot that went through LMPD Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly’s thigh, prompting him and officer Myles Cosgrove to return fire, killing Taylor. The KSP report says 'due to limited markings of comparative value,' the 9-mm bullet that hit and exited Mattingly was neither 'identified nor eliminated as having been fired' from Walker’s gun.”
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Reader Comments (23)
Look for tax cheat Fatty to issue a ‘zecutive ordah dismantling the IRS and another banning The NY Times. They can’t make the Great Trumpini look like a loser, a chump, and a fraud!
The droolers will not give a fig about the fact almost all of them, including the guy cleaning tables at McDonalds, pay way more in taxes than president* cheeto the cheat-o.
And if Trumpini insists, as he said, infamously (and rudely), during a debate with Hillary Clinton, that paying no taxes makes him smart, that’s only because one of two possibilities (perhaps both) obtain: he’s a crap-ass businessman, a fraud and a loser, and/or one of the great tax cheats of all time. $70,000 for taking care of that ratty wig thing? Makes the Coneheads’ (on the old SNL) seduction of $15,000 for beer and chips look like the soul of honest accounting.
And leave us not overlook the fact that Fatty, like almost all (is it all?) red states, siphons way more out of federal coffers than he contributes. In fact, in the case of the Trump non-tax-paying Crime Family, their contribution is near zero even as they spend taxpayers’ money like a crackhead trailer park family that just hit the lottery.
Junior wants a vacation abroad with his screeching banshee of a girlfriend? $25 thou for limos and five star accommodations and another 50 grand for Secret Service protection, all paid for by taxpayers. Fatty wants to entice C list celebs to tout his greatness? He puts the arm on us.
Then dumbbell Eric has the gall to whine about how much his family has given up to “serve” taxpayers. Don’t forget the last line of that famous Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man”. “To serve man...it’s a cookbook!”
Well now they can eat shit.
Bon appétit, motherfuckers.
Deduction, not seduction. My auto correct has been dipping into online bodice rippers it looks like.
Would love to hear from a single Trumpbot that the Times revelations abut their favorite tax cheat actually made a difference to him or her, but I don't think I will.
Two reasons: They are bots, not thinking human beings and..
...on the off chance that I'm wrong about the bots, I'm going off the net until Wed nite, so won't know it, which also means I will miss tomorrow's debate.
Will see what you all thought of it when I get back.
$750 federal income tax payment for a year. Our monthly healthcare tax, through the ACA, was more than double that amount.
And lest we forget, Mueller could have prevented this. Just a bit wider inquiry into the prez's finances. Thousands of the dead could still be walking around, etc. Biden must bring brass knuckles to debate.
Although there are certainly instances of tax evasion (crime) in those docs, like giving big bucks to VP Ivanka and calling it "consulting fees", the great contributor to his tax non-bill is going to be "losses exceed gains." That's not even tax evasion (not a crime), just they way wealthy people have had the tax code written to the advantage of "investors" as opposed to "wage earners."
So, it is (of course!) OK to be angry at DiJiT the tax cheat, but save some of that ire for the lobbyists who "persuaded" legislators to write code that favored their wealthy clients. DiJiT is not wrong when he observes 'twas ever thus.
The REAL thing to watch is that overhanging personal debt. If he can't role it over or discharge it, he'll be bankrupt (again). But this time it will be hard to find suckers to buy his obligations. He'll turn to his friends to co-sign and roll the debt. And who are his friends?
And he'll be doing that while fighting off real-live charges of tax-evasion (crime) and fraud (crime) starting next year.
AK: Good that you brought up that oldie but goodie utterance from the Great One during his bout with Hillary––paying no taxes made him smart. I thought of that this morning but couldn't recall exactly what he said. I'm wondering, too, why one of those reporters, when Fatty fudged about not being able to release his tax info because it was in audit, didn't say that would NOT prevent any release!
David Kay Johnson told us back in 2017 that Trump's financial dealings would reveal corruption writ large ––each time he was on the networks he repeated this statement along with the aforementioned audit excuse. He wasn't the only one but he was the most consistent in his warnings. But here we are–-weeks before an election and we finally get the skinny on the scam and it's only the beginning. This is what an opponent calls "pay dirt"–- as though we didn't have enough of it years ago, but maybe $$$$$ might wake up those who operate under the umbrella of "he was a successful businessman–-best kind to run a country!" Here's that rainy day, folks, unfurl that covering, get your head wet and face the shit storm.
P.S. Good to know Ak's A.C. is having such a jolly time dipping into online bodice rippers––as least THEY are having fun.
Michael Cohen
@MichaelCohen212
Everything I have stated about @potus @realDonaldTrump has been proven100% #TRUE! On page 94 of my #1 book #Disloyal @nytbestsellers_ , #Trump showed me a 10 million dollar #IRS “refund” check and exclaimed, “Can you believe how fucking stupid the IRS is?”...they are so stupid!”
Friends? If Fatty succeeds in stealing this election, he’ll have a very generous friend in Uncle Vlad (Russians have always been “helpful” to Trump, who in turn helped with their money laundering, most likely). But if he loses, he’ll no longer be a useful idiot. He’ll be a useless idiot (what he already is to Americans who care about more than abortion and greed). Vlad will write him off. His creditors will be at the door and he’ll do what he’s always done. Screw everyone. Will this be his fifth time reading Chapter 11? Who said he never reads. Tut tut.
@Patrick: Of course you're right that "tax avoidance" is not a crime; it's a lawful way to reduce tax liabilities, and most taxpayers take deductions. But some of Trump's claimed "avoidance" looks a lot like "evasion," and that's illegal. For instance, he appears to have offset income by claiming expenses at a personal family compound were business expenses, he double-dipped, paying Ivanka as both an employee and a "consultant," he claimed hair-styling as a business expense. (You could probably claim hair-styling as a legitimate expense if you were a paid actor who had to pay to maintain a particular hair-do to play a part in a theater production, but normal business attire [and hair-dos] are not tax-deductible.)
It's typical that someone like Parscale, armed and threatening suicide, is negotiated with and then Baker Acted to hospital. A poor Black, Latino, or white would probably be "recovering from a gunshot wound" at best or gracing a tray sporting a toe tag.
How to get across to those trump devotee evangelicals that their dear leader has no doubt paid more to keep porn stars quiet than he has to help finance the country from whence a large percentage of them are dependent, especially those red staters. Their usual comeback is "but abortion."
Just ask any of my inlaws.
From an article linked above:
“...And we still don’t know to whom he owes the money.... This fact has frightening implications for public policy and national security. Even minor debts are a frequent reason for the government to deny a security clearance, for the obvious reason that indebted and financially desperate public servants make easy marks for bribery, blackmail and potential treason."
All true except for the word “potential”. In physics, there’s potential (what could happen), and there’s kinetic (what is happening). We can dispense with “potential”. We’re in kinetic freefall. What once might have been considered hyperbole, is no longer. Donald Trump is a traitor. So is everyone in his party who supports his treason.
And wouldn’t you like to know what security checkers found out about that evil little prick Kushner that made them deny his security clearance? Fatty took care of that. Nothing comes before what he wants and needs. Not the Constitution, national security, or human life.
Oh yeah, and if that’s hairstyling, someone needs to be sued for malpractice or breach of contract or terminally terrible taste, or some damn thing. Hooo-weee. Don’t know which is worse, Fatty’s optic nerve killing comb-over, or Li’l Randy’s grisly shag carpet remnant (the one the family dog used as a pee mat). I’d throw in Trey Gowdy’s cartoon pompadour, but that goofy thing looks almost normal compared to these other schmucks.
@Akhilleus: Yeah, like the implicit or explicit deal Donald & Jared made with the Saudis. Trump actually boasted to Woodward that he had got MBS off the hook for organizing the assassination of a WashPo journalist. You think he did that because he likes MBS's personality?
Despicable as they are, those tax revelations won't change one vote among the cult followers. Frankly, I will be surprised if they sway many undecideds. Because abortion...rioters...socialism. Dems should focus on the pandemic! Coming soon to a person near you.
Key of Malice
Now and then I take out my six string, tune it down, and pull out my slide. There are few sounds as delicious as that slide flying up and down strings set to an open tuning. The difference (between standard and open tuning) doesn't seem like much, but it's huge and it calls to mind one of the great turning points in western music.
I've got an old album of the slide guitar genius Son House. In a snippet added to the record by the recording engineer/producer (I think it's the legendary American music historian Alan Lomax), asks Son what kind of tuning he's using on his guitar. Son replies "Key of minor". It sounds a bit humorous at first, and even a little unlearned, but for Son, whose preferred musical format was the blues, it was the perfect answer. Listen to his depiction of what it was like to be black and poor in the South and ending up on the county farm. Ain't nothing major key about that shit.
Which made me wonder what key confederates play in.
Back in the middle ages and up through the Renaissance, composers and musicians had a good-bad problem. The problem was intonation, or the sounding of notes. The goal was to create perfect intervals, perfect thirds and fifths and octaves. When done right it's chilling. If you've ever sung close harmony (barber shop, madrigals, anything a cappella), you know what I mean. Hitting that perfect major triad sends shivers up your spine. It's absolutely heavenly. Listen to the famous Buffalo Bills barber shop quartet sing the phrase "Ice cream" in the "Music Man". When they fill out that last note in the chord, it's like the sun just came out.
So what's the problem?
The problem is that singers (and slide guitar players) have the luxury of not caring about other keys. We're in open E or we're singing in A? Cool. Everyone's vocal cords are tuned/adjusted perfectly to that key. With the slide, you're not restricted to the notes formed by frets. You can jiggle around all kinds of micro-intervals til you hit just the right sound. But keyboard players couldn't do that. So a keyboard tuned to sound perfect thirds and fifths in one key, couldn't play in any other. Play a piece in C, it sounds fabulous. Transpose it one whole step up to D, cats start bawling, babies wail, and the landlord shows up with an eviction notice.
The solution was to tune all the notes a little bit off perfect, to temper the instrument. So you don't get that chill when you play a major triad, but now you can play in any key. You can play all sorts of stuff. It's a very democratic system. Bach was so happy with this innovation that he wrote an entire suite of short, killer pieces in all different keys that we know as the Well Tempered Clavier. The term "tempered" means the ability to accommodate a number of ideas or issues, or in this case, musical keys. This is the very heart of a democratic government. The opposite is "distemper". Remind you of anyone?
Republicans have no use for being able to accommodate any kind of song and musical form sung and played by Americans of all stripes, never mind ideas they find repulsive (like the right for all Americans to vote). They want the middle ages back. They sing and play solely in the keys of hate, greed, treason, and malice. And they want perfect hate, greed, treason, and malice. And after every encore, their distempered conductor, Maestro Fatty, flashes that mirthless, malevolent grin and, like a demented Lawrence Welk, says "Thank you, boys! Let's have another!"
He didn't teach them to sing in the key of malice, but he's writing new material all the time. And right now, he's working on his magnum opus.
Channel 4 News in England tonight has a special investigation into Drumpf's 2016 online election campaign...seems they got their hands on the campaign's Excel data profiles of some 200 million Americans, likely ripped from Facebook by Cambridge Analytica.
Who was running the digital campaign back then?? Oh yeah, suicidal drunkard Brad Parscale, who apparently just ended up in the arms of police recently. Coincidence.
Apparently the profiles of colored people (black) were all listed as "deter", meaning fuck with their brains to make them not want to vote.
Should be a good show.
The only link I have is from twitter:
https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1310584937356103686
Fatty's internet troll and data thief Brad Parscale threatens to kill himself, his wife tells police he has all kinds of guns.
Sounds like the sort of guy a stable genius would hire to run his campaign.
All the best people, part 236.
At this point, it's way past parody. This is the sort of sick milieu that surrounds this lowlife crook.
I just wanna know. What does Trump have on justice Kennedy and family?
On the hook for 421 million and no visible way to pay it off anyone here think Trump might have a flunky pick him up a few powerball tickets?
@Bobby Lee: Let's all just hope that Trump's powerball isn't a nuclear bomb he drops on some "shithole country" to boost his popularity with his fan base.