Have You Noticed Trump Is A Fraud As A Businessman Too?

Early Thursday morning Trump was tweeting. "Crooked Hillary Clinton will be a disaster on jobs, the economy, trade, healthcare, the military, guns and just about all else. Obama plus!" Something tells me he's just stoking the lizard-brains of the Trumpist base, not seriously thinking he can win over any new converts to his cause. Just hours before, Adam Davidson, writing for the NY Times' "On Money," warned low-info voters who think they know who Trump is based on his reality TV show and his carefully crafted glitzy appearances, that the man is a con. Behind the Gold Curtain of Donald Trump’s Résumé confirms what observant people have already comcluded: TRump is mostly braggadocio and bluster. His wealth and business acumen have been challenged by knowledgeable sources for many years. Davidson wants to know whether the Trumpster can consolidate the support of business people behind him. "During the last election cycle," he wrote, "Mitt Romney’s business background was a major reason he became the candidate of choice for corporate America; he received huge donations from nearly every major bank, many business-advocacy groups and countless chief executives. But at least so far, such eminences have failed to rally around Trump. The only large corporate donor named in his federal election filings is Aon, the insurance giant; when I called its public-relations office, a seemingly exasperated spokeswoman wanted to make very clear that one employee had given that money and that it did not reflect the views of the company."

Earlier this month, The Times reported that Brian Krzanich, the chief executive of Intel, had planned a fund-raiser for Trump, but the event was mysteriously canceled. Aside from a handful of real-estate developers and investors who have done business with Trump, vocal support from the nation’s corporate elite has been up until now an unusual occurrence. (One rare exception is Peter Thiel, the PayPal billionaire and Gawker persecutor, who backs Trump and has signed on as one of his delegates from California.) I’ve also found next to no support for Trump among economists and business-school professors, a group that included a large contingent of Romney supporters in 2012. Among academic economists, I could find only one: Peter Navarro of the University of California, Irvine, a longtime critic of Chinese trade practices who says he is drawn to Trump’s aggressive stance on trade negotiations.

I asked Trump’s campaign for a list of prominent businesspeople and chief executives who have endorsed him. I was emailed a quote from Trump. “I have too many to mention,” it read. “I get along with everybody.” After further prodding, a campaign spokeswoman provided a list of 10 names, including the chief executives of Nascar and Marvel, as well as several other businesspeople, like Rupert Murdoch and Jack Welch, who opposed Trump for most of the campaign but have recently (and not especially enthusiastically) made statements about party unity.

When I talked to some of the few businesspeople who do support Trump, the common refrain was the one I heard from Andrew Beal: that the specifics of his plans were beside the point, because Trump’s proven instincts as a businessman were all that mattered. Phil Ruffin, a Las Vegas billionaire, said: “I can’t tell you his policies. You’re asking me questions I can’t answer. I don’t think he’s fully developed all the policies he has to develop. The details of which will probably come later.” Stephen Stepanek-- a New Hampshire state representative and a founder of a company called Hampshire Paper-- told me much the same thing. “One of his strengths, as far as I see it: Donald Trump has the unique ability to look at a problem, identify that problem and surround himself with the best possible minds and solve that problem,” he said.

Does he? By many accounts, Mitt Romney did. Romney was an undeniable superstar in the field of private equity, and former business associates praised him as someone who could see a business problem more clearly than others and create powerful, profitable solutions. The professional biography of Trump, by contrast-- though the man is clearly exceptional at something-- hardly inspires such confidence.

Trump’s primary claim to fame is as a Manhattan real-estate developer. He inherited this profession (and his economic worldview) from his father. But it’s worth stressing that within the world of Manhattan real estate, Trump is a relatively minor player. Yes, there are about a dozen buildings in New York City that bear his name, but nearly all are branding relationships, not actual ownership. He sits so far down the pecking order of Manhattan real estate that Adam Pincus, head of research at the industry publication The Real Deal, doesn’t recall ever including Trump or his companies in their major rankings of developers, owners or property managers. Likewise, Trump’s importance in the industry of casinos and luxury resorts is far below what his public reputation might suggest. After multiple bankruptcies, Trump no longer owns any casinos; he owns only nine hotels, with three more said to be “coming soon.”

Through Trump Productions, he has enjoyed remarkable success with his TV show The Apprentice. But of course, that series does not fundamentally belong to him: It was created by Mark Burnett, who cast Trump in the lead. And while Trump’s television franchise at least enjoyed one successful idea before petering out, most of his brand-specific businesses have simply failed outright. The frenetic, panicky way in which he thrusts his name on different products pell-mell-- steaks and ties and wine and bottled water and suits and fragrance-- has engendered what any corporate branding expert would call “brand confusion.” (What are you communicating when you wear a Trump-branded suit-- $143 on Amazon-- to a job interview? That you are brash and ambitious? Cocky on the cheap? Or that you don’t know much about suits?)

His scattershot approach to branding might also hint at cash-flow issues. As a certified billionaire, Mark Cuban recently said in a radio interview: “When you’re putting your name on steaks, you’re putting your name on water, you’re putting your name on playing cards, you’re putting your name on all this nonsense, right, you’re not going to make big bucks, no matter what.” He recalls asking Trump: “What the hell are you doing? Are you that desperate for money?” Based on his read of Trump’s election filings, which showed only $165 million in liquid assets, Cuban harbors doubts about whether Trump is even a billionaire as he claims.

Recent revelations about Trump University, the failed for-profit college that Trump founded in 2005, have centered around the savagely cynical manner in which sales reps separated students from their money, with an array of high-pressure tactics that included encouraging financially challenged prospects to open up new credit-card accounts in order to pay. But the more striking question is Cuban’s: why a man with as much money as Trump claims to have, presiding over as many successful ventures as Trump claims to own, would stoop to start up a boiler-room business like Trump University, squeezing out revenues from would-be students a few thousand dollars at a time. The fact that he did-- even if that decision doesn’t point, as Cuban suggests, to an outright desperation for cash-- speaks volumes about Trump’s utter inability to calibrate risk and reward.

When you try to weigh Trump’s record as a businessman, you quickly find that there’s nothing of substance. Think of the characteristics you might find noteworthy in a business leader: A vision of the future? A single-minded focus on excellence? Discrimination and judgment? He’s no visionary, no Steve Jobs who forges new things. Trump’s accomplishments have come from replicating the products and services of others. He seems to lack any instinct for righting a sinking ship. Despite the declarations of his backers that he’ll “get the best people,” his organizations have hardly been magnets for talent-- as evidenced by the fact that his leadership teams so often consist of people whose last names are Trump or whose sole accomplishment is having worked for him.

Despite all this, Trump receives extremely high marks among voters for how he would supposedly handle the economy: A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll in May found he outpolled Clinton by 11 points on the issue. The biggest mystery is why so many voters-- apparently including, at least for now, some who plan to vote for Hillary Clinton-- seem to have fallen for his act. Perhaps it’s simply the fact that in the absence of real information about Trump the businessman, Americans have spent years watching him play the part. His true calling seems to be acting like a successful businessman-- a performance made all the more impressive by its distance from reality.

Nothing seems to shake the faith in the Trumpist base (i.e., life's losers) in their man. In fact, now that Speaker Paul Ryan noted publicly that Trump's gratuitous attack on an Indiana-born federal judge as a biased Mexican is "the textbook definition of a racist comment," Ryan has come under attack again by Trumpists, who admire Trump's racism and xenophobia-- even if they claim not to recognize his self-destructive and often unhinged racist and xenophobic attacks for what they are. As for his crookedness, how many Trumpists will read today's NY Times piece about how Trump turned his bankruptcies into personal bonanzas that forced others-- taxpayers included-- to pay while he enriched himself?

On the presidential campaign trail, Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, often boasts of his success in Atlantic City, of how he outwitted the Wall Street firms that financed his casinos and rode the value of his name to riches. A central argument of his candidacy is that he would bring the same business prowess to the Oval Office, doing for America what he did for his companies.

“Atlantic City fueled a lot of growth for me,” Mr. Trump said in an interview in May, summing up his 25-year history here. “The money I took out of there was incredible.”

His audacious personality and opulent properties brought attention-- and countless players-- to Atlantic City as it sought to overtake Las Vegas as the country’s gambling capital. But a close examination of regulatory reviews, court records and security filings by the New York Times leaves little doubt that Mr. Trump’s casino business was a protracted failure. Though he now says his casinos were overtaken by the same tidal wave that eventually slammed this seaside city’s gambling industry, in reality he was failing in Atlantic City long before Atlantic City itself was failing.

But even as his companies did poorly, Mr. Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen.

In three interviews with The Times since late April, Mr. Trump acknowledged in general terms that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He did not recall details about some issues, but did not question The Times’s findings. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.

...“People underestimated Donald Trump’s ability to pillage the company,” said Sebastian Pignatello, a private investor who at one time held stock in the Trump casinos worth more than $500,000. “He drove these companies into bankruptcy by his mismanagement, the debt and his pillaging.”

Will Stories of Mob Ties and Crooked Deals Sink Donald Trump?

Does Donald Trump have an Achilles heel?

by Gaius Publius

The Trump phenomenon is taking off and shows every sign of "having wings," to not mix a metaphor. According to this excellent analysis by Lee Drutman, "What Donald Trump gets about the electorate," Trump has found a policy sweet spot with Republican voters (as opposed to the party's money-bought leaders):

As the punditry attempts to make sense of the continued popularity of Donald Trump, the prevailing establishment narrative has been simple: He's an anti-establishment buffoon; he's channeling an angry mood; his moment will pass. But as Ezra Klein argued on Monday, this narrative may be wrong. What if Trump actually represents a sizable electorate that Beltway elites have marginalized?

The data on this is pretty clear. Put simply: While most elite-funded and elite-supported Republicans want to increase immigration and decrease Social Security, a significant number of voters (across both parties) want precisely the opposite — to increase Social Security and decrease immigration. So when Trump speaks out both against immigration and against fellow Republicans who want to cut Social Security, he's speaking out for a lot people.

By my count of National Election Studies (NES) data, 24 percent of the US population holds this position (increase Social Security, decrease immigration). If we add in the folks who want to maintain (not cut) Social Security and decrease immigration, we are now at 40 percent of the total electorate, which I'll call "populist." No wonder folks are flocking to Trump — and to Bernie Sanders, who holds similar positions, though with more emphasis on the expanding Social Security part and less aggression on immigration.

The underlying data is fascinating. A taste — here's how the electorate feels about Social Security:

▪ Increase Social Security benefits: 50.7%
▪ Keep Social Security benefits the same: 43%
▪ Decrease Social Security benefits: 6.2%

And here's how the electorate feels about immigration:

▪ Increase immigration a lot: 4.4%
▪ Increase immigration a little: 9.9%
▪ Leave immigration as is: 42.9%
▪ Decrease immigration a little: 20.5%
▪ Decrease immigration a lot: 22.9%

Add the middle group to the top group on Social Security and you get a whopping 93% of the electorate. Add the middle group to the bottom two groups on immigration and you get a similarly impressive 86%. Trump is simultaneous selling to both of these large groups.

In addition, unlike all of the other top candidates, Trump is his own billionaire, more or less, and the billionaires backing the rest of the candidates hold exactly opposite views — they want to decrease Social Security benefits (to keep taxes low, among other reasons) and increase immigration (to make available the cheapest non-union labor possible). Thus, while all of the other Republican candidates have to mouth words crafted for them by the wealthy who pull their strings — words that hold little appeal for voters, including Republican ones — Trump, who pulls his own strings, can freely offer policies counter to what elite Republicans want.

He's on a roll in the polls, he's a natural crowd favorite for a certain kind of crowd, and he's apparently having a wonderful time. So what's likely to bring him down politically?

David Cay Johnston on Trump and the Mob

Arrogance is unlikely to do it; that may be his strong suit. And as others have argued, his vicious (and expensive) nativism is a feature to Republicans who live at the intersection of extreme economic insecurity and frightened-male racism. Does Donald Trump have an Achilles heel? David Cay Johnston thinks so; he thinks Trump has several in fact.

From a recent National Memo article, Johnston writes:

I have covered Donald Trump off and on for 27 years — including breaking the story that in 1990, when he claimed to be worth $3 billion but could not pay interest on loans coming due, his bankers put his net worth at minus $295 million. And so I have closely watched what Trump does and what government documents reveal about his conduct.

Reporters, competing Republican candidates, and voters would learn a lot about Trump if they asked for complete answers to these 21 questions.

So, Mr. Trump… 

There follow his 21 questions. The whole piece reads well — Johnston has a unique gift for making his subject clear — but I want to focus on just a few of them:

▪ Regarding Trump and the mob:

6. Trump Tower is not a steel girder high rise, but 58 stories of concrete.

Why did you use concrete instead of traditional steel girders?

7. Trump Tower was built by S&A Concrete, whose owners were “Fat” Tony Salerno, head of the Genovese crime family, and Paul “Big Paul” Castellano, head of the Gambinos, another well-known crime family.

If you did not know of their ownership, what does that tell voters about your management skills?

8. You later used S&A Concrete on other Manhattan buildings bearing your name.

Why?

And:

11. You sent your top lieutenant, lawyer Harvey I. Freeman, to negotiate with Ken Shapiro, the “investment banker” for Nicky Scarfo, the especially vicious killer who was Atlantic City’s mob boss, according to federal prosecutors and the New Jersey State Commission on Investigation.

Since you emphasize your negotiating skills, why didn’t you negotiate yourself?

12. You later paid a Scarfo associate twice the value of a lot, officials determined.

Since you boast that you always negotiate the best prices, why did you pay double the value of this real estate?

13. You were the first person recommended for a casino license by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Division of Gaming Enforcement, which opposed all other applicants or was neutral. Later it came out in official proceedings that you had persuaded the state to limit its investigation of your background.

Why did you ask that the investigation into your background be limited?

▪ On Trump and crooked deals:

1. You call yourself an “ardent philanthropist,” but have not donated a dollar to The Donald J. Trump Foundation since 2006. You’re not even the biggest donor to the foundation, having given about $3.7 million in the previous two decades while businesses associated with Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment gave the Trump Foundation $5 million. All the money since 2006 has come from those doing business with you.

How does giving away other people’s money, in what could be seen as a kickback scheme, make you a philanthropist?

2. New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman successfully sued you, alleging your Trump University was an “illegal educational institution” that charged up to $35,000 for “Trump Elite” mentorships promising personal advice from you, but you never showed up and your “special” list of lenders was photocopied from Scotsman Guide, a magazine found at any bookstore.

Why did you not show up?

And:

9. In demolishing the Bonwit Teller building to make way for Trump Tower, you had no labor troubles, even though only about 15 unionists worked at the site alongside 150 Polish men, most of whom entered the country illegally, lacked hard hats, and slept on the site.

How did you manage to avoid labor troubles, like picketing and strikes, and job safety inspections while using mostly non-union labor at a union worksite — without hard hats for the Polish workers?

10. A federal judge later found you conspired to cheat both the Polish workers, who were paid less than $5 an hour cash with no benefits, and the union health and welfare fund. You testified that you did not notice the Polish workers, whom the judge noted were easy to spot because they were the only ones on the work site without hard hats.

What should voters make of your failure or inability to notice 150 men demolishing a multi-story building without hard hats?

About that last, it's not the hard hats; it's the illegal Polish workers and his lack of "labor troubles" at the site. What kind of deal do you have to cut, and whom do you have to cut it with, to fly that low under the construction radar?

▪ Regarding his gaming licenses:

13. You were the first person recommended for a casino license by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Division of Gaming Enforcement, which opposed all other applicants or was neutral. Later it came out in official proceedings that you had persuaded the state to limit its investigation of your background.

Why did you ask that the investigation into your background be limited?

14. You were the target of a 1979 bribery investigation. No charges were filed, but New Jersey law mandates denial of a license to anyone omitting any salient fact from their casino application.

Why did you omit the 1979 bribery investigation?

David Cay Johnston is not alone in asking these questions.

CNN on Donald Trump and the Mob

A simple Web search on "trump mafia new jersey" produces a number of links, including this one, from CNN:

Donald Trump and the mob

Chris Frates, CNN Investigative Correspondent
Updated 12:37 PM ET, Fri July 31, 2015

Donald Trump's glittering empire of New York skyscrapers and Atlantic City casinos have long had a darker side, allegations that the mob helped build them.

Trump's alleged ties to New York and Philadelphia crime families go back decades and have been recounted in a book, newspapers and government records.

"The mob connections of Donald are extraordinarily extensive," New York investigative journalist Wayne Barrett told CNN in an interview.

Barrett, the author of the 1992 unauthorized biography "Trump: The Deals and the Downfall," wrote that Trump's life "intertwines with the underworld."...

In a recent Federalist article, David Marcus writes that Trump bought the property that his Atlantic City casino Trump Plaza would one day occupy -- for twice market price -- from Salvatore Testa, a Philly mobster and son of one-time Philly mob boss Philip "Chicken Man" Testa. (Springsteen fans might recognize the elder Testa from the opening lines of the song, Atlantic City.)

In his book, Barrett writes that Testa and a partner, who together headed a Philly mafia hit-squad called the Young Executioners, bought the property for "a scant $195,000" in 1977. In 1982, Trump paid $1.1 million for it.

"The $220 per square foot that Trump paid for the Testa property was the second most expensive purchase he made on the block, even though it was one of the first parcels he bought," Barrett wrote.

The casino was built with the help of two construction companies controlled by Philly mobsters Nicademo "Little Nicky" Scarfo and his nephew Phillip "Crazy Phil" Leonetti, according to, as Marcus notes, a New Jersey state commission's 1986 report on organized crime.

Trump also had a decade-long relationship with Scarfo's investment banker, according to Barrett's book. ...

There's much more in this article, and there are more articles.

What's the Next Move?

For those who call the shots in the Republican Party, what's the next move? They may or may not want to allow Trump to be their nominee, but they certainly won't let him run third-party. (I'm guessing the former won't be permitted and the latter will get Trump "an offer he can't refuse," but that's just me.)

So what do they do, these party bosses and owners, these Kochs and Friesses and Adelsons? Do they wait for Trump fever to die down (to mix a metaphor begun at the top of this page) and risk it growing stronger instead? Or do they make a move?

If it were me and I wanted him gone, I'd make the move and soon. There seems to be plenty to work with, to use for both behind-the-scene threats and for on-camera deep-fat frying. Would even the party's economically insecure racists follow Trump all the way to mobtown, or would they abandon him at the border? What's a bridge too far for Trump supporters? Whatever the answer, this may be the party's strongest move, short of a "friendly" DA filing a RICO indictment.

If I'm right — if big-money Republicans, those backing all other candidates, want to make him gone; and if they're willing to destroy Trump economically and as a brand to do it — this fall's Republican story will be even more interesting than what we've seen already. Republican oppo research is relentless, and Republican tactics seem to have little short of murder as an upper bound. R-on-R violence is violent indeed.

Of course, those are two big ifs in the paragraph above. Ann Coulter, for example, wants to see Trump nominated. How many in that small group of Republicans in a position to decide share her view? I think we're about to find out.

GP

Springsteen's "Atlantic City." As noted in the article, Mob boss Philip "Chicken Man" Testa is mentioned (as "Chicken Man") in the first line of the song.

Who Will Save Atlantic City? Certainly Not Carl Icahn And Chris Christie

New Jersey voters reelected Chris Christie with their eyes open; after a first term of breathtaking-- even for New Jersey-- corruption and non-stop, unabashed catering to Big Bucks special interests, they knew exactly what they were getting. And now the chickens are coming home to roost. New Jersey's economy is in turmoil as their governor spends his time jockeying for position inside his crazy right-wing ideological political party. This is falling hard on working families all over New Jersey, but right now it is absolutely devastating Atlantic City, whose vibrant gaming and tourism industry Christie had pledged to protect and make prosper.

Carl Icahn is just the kind of billionaire vulture capitalist who Christie gravitates to; working with predators like Icahan to disadvantage unions is his vision-- his only vision-- of building an economy. Today Icahn is threatening to shut down one of the major Atlantic City hotels unless he gets huge tax breaks from the state. "Carl Icahn is not the savior Atlantic City so desperately needs," editorialized the Courier-Post yesterday.

The billionaire investor, who controls the Taj Mahal, has offered to rescue the struggling casino. He’s willing to invest $100 million-- but only if owner Trump Entertainment Resorts can get $175 million in aid from New Jersey and Atlantic City and if the company can get out of paying into workers’ pensions and health insurance to the tune of $14.6 million a year.

The state said no. The city said no. And the workers said no. But while Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney and Mayor Don Guardian have held firm in refusing to throw good money after bad, the 2,953 people who keep the casino running have far less power. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross ruled last month that Trump Entertainment could cancel its collective bargaining agreement with UNITE HERE Local 54, eliminating the company-sponsored pension and health plan.

Instead, workers will get a 401(k) and an extra $2,000 to buy insurance through Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act health exchanges. Generous, isn’t Icahn, to allow taxpayers to share the honor of subsidizing compensation for rank-and-file workers while scaling back the company’s investment in them?

...In an open letter to the members of Local 54, he cast himself as a perpetual underdog who is the casino’s only hope... As a man who is not afraid to stand up to low-paid workers in order to maximize shareholders’ profits.

Rather than present the concessions he seeks as an investment in a more prosperous company that will benefit workers and Atlantic City in the long run, Icahn uses threats and speculation to cow them into giving him what he wants. Unfortunately, his plan to turn workers against their union and government against government seems to be working.

On Monday, Taj Mahal employees begged Mayor Don Guardian to reconsider. Guardian declined, noting that the company had already received massive tax breaks before it stopped paying its taxes. Yet while he’s drawn the line at giving any more of his suffering city’s money to a foundering company, he’s still trying to get the state to step in with a solution.

Given what Atlantic City has been through this year-- losing four of its 12 casinos and shedding some 8,000 employees-- no one wants to be standing near the next domino when it falls.

State Senator Ray Lesniak (D-Elizabeth) is a Jersey reformer who's battled the transactional, transpartisan political bosses for his entire career. He's probably best known for his pioneering environmental bills like the Environmental Cleanup Responsibility Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Pesticide Control Act and for an across-the-board progressive vision for the state, from marriage equality to abolishing the death penalty. But Lesniak, who won his last reelection battle 75.5- 24.5% and is the chairman of the Senate's Economic Growth Committee, has been the force behind a plan to legalize (and regulate) sports betting in Atlantic City casinos-- the same way it works in Las Vegas.

State Senate President Steve Sweeney has taken on Icahn and says he's working tp prevent Atlantic City from becoming "another Detroit." Last week he said he's introducing legislation that would redirect casino tax revenue to keep the city and schools running, and require casino operators to provide health benefits for their employees as a condition of holding a state license.

Highlights of the proposed legislation include:

• Requiring casinos to pay $150 million in lieu of property taxes for two years so city officials would know how much they could count on to pay the bills, with future payments tied to gaming revenues instead of property taxes.

• Redirecting about $25 million to $30 million a year from the investment alternative tax to pay down the city’s debt. Casinos pay a 1.25 percent on gross gaming revenues and 2.5 percent on internet gaming revenues to pay for economic development programs. About $30-$40 million is sitting in an account unspent.

• Finding $72 million in “cost savings” from the cost of running city government and the board of education.

• Amending casino licenses to require operators “provide a baseline health care and retirement package” for their workers, in response to the judge’s decision last month to allow Taj Mahal billionaire investor Carl Icahn to void its contract with the union.

Icahn says if he doesn't get his way, he'll shut down the casino on December 12, laying off a thousand workers and delivering another ghastly blow to Atlantic City's and New Jersey's struggling economy. To much power for the one percent? For decades, Icahn has built his immense fortune using the bankruptcy process to hurt workers and destroy companies. Workers say the current crisis in Atlantic City is the latest one that Icahn has created and profited from. But to Chris Christie, he's... a job creator.

Speaking of Atlantic City, we have a bit of "fact-checking" of the "Boardwalk Empire" image

The original trailer for Louis Malle's Atlantic City

by Ken

Okay, so we weren't actually speaking of Atlantic City, but we were not so long ago when I wrote about HBO's Boardwalk Empire. I'm still enjoying the dickens out of the show, but in the interest of fairness, I thought I should note that The New Yorker's excellent "Talk of the Town" reporter Ben McGrath has a lovely, er, counter-take -- printed under the standing head "FACT-CHECKING DEPT." in the Nov. 22 issue -- from an authority of sorts on Atlantic City. I was going to cherry-pick the piece, but I don't think that would be fair to McGrath. So here's his report:

FACT-CHECKING DEPT.
ANOTHER JERSEY SHORE
by Ben McGrath

In Atlantic City last summer, Bryant Simon, a Temple University history professor, was ticketed for running a red light—on foot. “I think you can get a ticket for anything here,” he said the other day. “This is notoriously a shakedown town.” Simon, who grew up in South Jersey and spent summers hanging around the Atlantic City boardwalk, was riding shotgun in a rusty Honda Civic, which he deemed “theft-proof,” and directing his driver on a tour of his old haunts. First stop: Enoch (Nucky) Johnson’s house, a modest, wood-panelled structure “downbeach,” in Ventnor. Johnson, the Prohibition-era political boss, is the model for Steve Buscemi’s character in HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire,” which has been a boon for the local talking-heads business. The house once doubled as a speakeasy and is across the street from Simon’s family’s place. “My sense is that he was nowhere near as vicious as the show makes him out to be,” Simon said.

Having watched a number of episodes, Simon has some quibbles: the show’s bungalow colony where Buscemi’s Irish love interest lives (“The housing stock here is like what you’d find in Philly or West Baltimore, all two stories or more”), the sight of white people pushing the famous rolling wicker chairs along the boardwalk. (“Even in the films made back in the period, the black guy pushing it is like a character out of ‘Gone with the Wind,’ ” he said.)

The car stopped at a red light on Atlantic Avenue. “To me, the best representation of Atlantic City, better than ‘Boardwalk Empire,’ is ‘Atlantic City,’ the Louis Malle film,” Simon said, and pointed ahead at a Flemish-style inn called the Knife and Fork. “That’s where Burt Lancaster takes Susan Sarandon on the date when he wants to impress her. They still serve, I think, lobster thermidor.” The light turned green, and Simon gestured to a park on his left. He said, “This is a very interesting Civil War memorial right here, despite the fact that Atlantic City barely existed during the Civil War.” Before long, he was riding through the city’s largest historically black neighborhood. “It’s called the Northside, even though it’s west,” he said. “Now you can see really bombed-out Atlantic City.”

Toward the northern end of the boardwalk, near an unfinished high-rise known as the Revel, Simon got out of the car and ducked into the Atlantic City Historical Museum, where a dozen mostly elderly people were seated and watching a video called “Boardwalk Ballyhoo” in the corner of the exhibition space. “This is very typical,” he said. “There’s no one young here, ever.” The video showed scenes from early Miss America pageants, boxing cats, and diving horses.

Out on the boardwalk, Simon noted that the benches face in, toward the parade of pedestrians, instead of out, overlooking the ocean, as in the television show. “I find this other story more compelling: the boardwalk as this stage where people came to announce they had made it in America,” he explained. On this day, a large number of bearded people had come in search of tickets to a Phish concert that evening at the old convention hall. “Archie Bunker came here for his second honeymoon—it was his kind of town,” Simon said, marvelling at the Phish fans. In the sixties, he said, “there was a real attempt to keep hippies from coming.”

Ahead in the distance was the old Ritz-Carlton, which has gone condo. Nucky Johnson kept an office there, occupying an entire floor. Simon went in, and was looking at old photographs on the walls when a woman approached. “Hello, were you looking to see someone in real estate?” she asked, with a smoker’s rasp. The woman and her husband, it turned out, moved to the building seven years ago, from Levittown, Pennsylvania, after they realized that they’d been making monthly pilgrimages to the casinos. “We never dreamed of living at the shore,” she said. “It’s a wonderful life. It really is.”

The boardwalk today

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