I Doubt The Tax Returns Will Lose Him Any Votes, But They May Send Him To Prison-- And Wouldn't You Prefer That Anyway?

 

Lawless Zone by Nancy Ohanian

Will the NY Times blockbuster from Sunday night matter election-wise. It will matter to some people, but those people have by and large already decided they're not voting for Trump. Maybe there are some Republican businessmen and women who dutifully pay their taxes and will resent Trump enough to sit out election day-- though I wouldn't bet on that being too many. At best the stories that will emanate from him being a tax swindler will knock Trump off his game and keep him rattled and on the defensive.

In his Bloomberg News oped yesterday, Trump's Taxes Show He's a National Security Threat, Timothy O'Brien raised something more important that how Trump's base will react. "What trade-offs," he asked, "would a president with this level of indebtedness be willing to make to save face? And few people know as much about the tax-swindling nature of Donald than O'Brien who had tangled with him in and out of court for years. "Step away from the tragicomic tawdriness and grift that the tax returns define," wrote O'Brien, "however, and focus on what they reveal about Trump as the most powerful man in the world and occupant of the Oval Office. Due to his indebtedness, his reliance on income from overseas and his refusal to authentically distance himself from his hodgepodge of business, Trump represents a profound national security threat-- a threat that will only escalate if he’s re-elected. The tax returns also show the extent to which Trump has repeatedly betrayed the interests of many of the average Americans who elected him and remain his most loyal supporters."

According to The Times, Trump has about $421 million in debts which he has personally guaranteed and which are coming due over the next several years. This is consistent with earlier reporting about how much debt he carries, a chunk of which could be gleaned from the personal financial disclosures he is required to file with the federal government. But Trump’s overall indebtedness is greater than the Times tally, I believe.

...Dan Alexander, a senior editor at Forbes, has been covering Trump’s business interests since 2016 and has a new book out about the president’s financial conflicts of interest, White House Inc. Alexander, in a helpful tally he shared Sunday evening, estimates Trump’s total indebtedness to be about $1.1 billion...

Trump has been bloviating about being worth $10 billion ever since he entered the 2016 presidential race, a figure that simply isn’t true. He’s worth a fraction of that amount, and the larger his indebtedness becomes, the more strain it puts on his assets. The Covid-19 pandemic has taken a particularly brutal toll on the sectors in which the Trump Organization operates-- real estate, travel and leisure. If Trump is unable to meet his debt payments, he’s either going to have to sell assets or get bailed out by a friend with funds. Trump has never liked to sell anything, even when it’s hemorrhaging money. So if he’s tempted to save himself by getting a handout, that makes him a mark.

...If Vladimir Putin, for example, can backchannel a loan or a handout to the president, how hard is Trump going to be on Russia? Not that we should worry about Trump’s relationship with Putin. That’s just a hypothetical question.

And then there's Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the Emirates, Israel, China, Brazil, the Philippines... and number of countries run by unscrupulous politicians who Trump would be more than willing to take bribes from. Will it change votes? Nah, but, hey, how bad to you want to see that slob rotting in prison?





Yesterday, Morris Pearl, the Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and a former managing director of BlackRock, Inc. wrote that "It seems obvious that Trump has committed some amount of criminal tax evasion, but that's not the biggest issue here. The real problem is a system that provides such absurd loopholes to the ultra-wealthy in the first place, and a deliberately underfunded IRS that lacks the capacity to properly prosecute rich people's criminal tax evasion. Trump's case may be particularly egregious, but he's far from unique. This is just evidence of the rot in our tax system, which is designed to allow rich people to avoid paying their fair share. This has been the case for decades, but the tax code is even more skewed in favor of the rich and powerful after Trump was able to rewrite the entire tax code to his liking in 2017 with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The American people should be angry about President Trump's tax evasion, but that's not all. They should be much more angry about how much of what Trump did is legal. The American people should be more angry about how many other millionaires and billionaires are able to avoid supporting the country that made them rich in the first place. Most of all, the American people should be pissed off about the fact that instead of offering them health care, or affordable childcare, or financial support during a pandemic, their government instead prioritizes protecting the wealth of the rich, powerful, and selfish."


This morning, Ted Lieu (D-CA), co-chair of the of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, reminded me that "When Trump announced that he was running for President he said he would run the government like a business. Unfortunately, he meant a Trump business. Now we know why he was so intent on not releasing his tax returns. It has now come to light that Trump has grossly mismanaged his business and personal finances the same way he has mismanaged our government. He has also paid virtually no federal income tax over the past 15 years, which makes it extra rich when he insults hard working immigrants-- many of whom have contributed far more to this country than Trump ever will. But perhaps the most important aspect of this is the implications for our national security. Trump's massive debt makes him a security liability. Who exactly does he owe more than $400 million to?"

Trump Vows To Cut "Entitlements" If He Gets A Second Term

That was quite the Fox New town hall in Scranton-- Biden's brithplace-- Thursday. The very first question was about his incompetence regarding the coronavirus. Trump responded that "we've been given tremendous marks... We've gotten the highest poll numbers of anybody for this kind of a thing." An election between he and Biden would leave voters to decide which codger's dementia is worse. anyway, Trump's answer wasn't just disjointed and manipulative; it was false. The U.S. response is being held up all over the world as the worst responder imaginable.

"Mike Pence is working 20 hours a day on this-- or more-- on this and really doing a fantastic job." Gee, how did he fit in that Vern Buchanan fundraiser in Florida where he shook hands with a guy now quarantined as a suspected coronavirus sufferer? "Nobody is blaming us for the virus-- nobody." OK, true-- he didn't create the virus; he just allowed it to spread to the U.S. with his stupid response to it.

Then he started lying about the impact of the pandemic on the economy. "we were set to hit 30,000 on the Dow. This is a number that nobody even came close to. And already we have the number and even though it’s down 10 or 11%, it’s still the highest it’s ever been, by far. It certainly might have an impact. At the same time, I have to say, people are now staying in the United States, spending their money in the U.S.-- and I like that. I've been after that for a long time. You know that. I've been saying 'let's stay in the U.S. and spend your money here-- and they're doing that, sought of enforced doing that. We met with the airline companies yesterday. They're doing a fantastic job... It's gonna all work out; everybody has to be calm. It's all going to work out. Feel reassured? The Dow dropped another xx points when it opened a few hours later.





Later they got to Trump promising to cut "entitlements," which is the way conservatives refer to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It came inside the discussion of trillions of dollars by which Trump has run up the national debut (up 18%). He said he had to fix the military; didn't mention the tax cuts for the wealthy. And then blamed the debt on Obama. He said he will focus ("absolutely") on cutting the debt in his second term. Asked about entitlements, he answered flippantly, "Oh, we'll be cutting."

Jonathan Chait noted in his column yesterday that that Trump's attempt to reassure people about the economy amounted to a "string of sentences like an onion of stupidity, and peeling back each layer revealed even more stupidity lying beneath." That's an accurate description. Trump's followers at the event cheered and applauded throughout. After all, Biden has spent his entire career vowing to cut entitlements as well. Maybe I made a mistake when I moved back to the U.S. from Holland in the '70s.

Morris Pearl, Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and former managing director at BlackRock, noticed Trump admitting his intentions even if the fools in the audience didn't. He reminded everyone why no one should be surprised. "This is straight out of the Republican playbook," he said. "First they passed the $2 trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, giving a huge windfall to millionaires, billionaires, and special interests. Next, they play shocked that cutting taxes results in less tax revenue, and say that the only way to shrink the deficit that they caused is to cut vital services that millions of Americans rely on. As GOP donors laugh all the way to the bank, GOP leadership calls for cuts to services the American people need and have earned and have paid for. That’s just un-American. When Republicans are cutting taxes for the rich they are allowed to change the deficit to whatever they want. When Democrats try to pass spending legislation, the deficit number is written in stone and cannot be changed. And when the Republicans decide to be 'deficit hawks' again and claim to worry about the increasing deficit, the only people they ask to sacrifice are the poor and needy. Tax cuts for the rich we can afford, but programs that give the poor and elderly healthcare are out of the question. This is textbook behavior, and it’s textbook cruel."

The perfect Democratic Party scenario-- a lesser of two evils election. The elites at the top of the party don't believe in Democratic Party values so they offer Republican-lite candidates as alternatives. Voters are then forced to choose between a complete nightmare or a... bad dream. Trump or Hillary? That went poorly. Trump or Biden? If that happens it will probably go even worse. Imagine an election about which one's family is more repulsive and corrupt. Which one's dementia is more advanced? Which one will cut Social Security and Medicare less? This is what anyone who votes for Bidenin the primaries is asking for. Knock yourselves out; you'll deserve exactly what you get... and it ain't gonna be pretty. Remember, a lesser evil is still evil. After primary season, it's too late to fix that.

Republicans Aren't The Only Bad Guys-- This Week's Swampiest Crooks: Andy Cuomo, Cheri Bustos, Joe Crowley

Last week, we looked at a video message from Abigail Disney from the Patriotic Millionaires, talking about-- though not by name-- some extremely bad Democrats in New York: Governor Cuomo and Senate Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, of course + The Long Island 6: legislators Todd Kaminsky, Monica Martinez, Kevin Thomas, James Gaughran, John Brooks and Anna Kaplan. Like the clip above, it's part of their campaign to pass a small tax on the super rich-- just people whose annual income is over $5 million. The purpose was to help bail out cash-strapped public schools that are facing further budget cuts, and the long-neglected subway system which just continues to decline. The 45 second clip above is Morris Pearl, the founder of Patriotic Millionaires, talking about a pervasive culture of corruption that defines Andrew Cuomo's political life. "Who says the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree? Andrew," my friend Skip Kaltenheuser quipped, "apparently fell during a tornado." Cuomo should be listening to his constituents and not just his rich donors. If he did, he wouldn't be blocking this common-sense legislation to make the lives of everyone in his state better.

Last month, no one even knew who Cheri Bustos is. Then this week, for no particular reason other than she could, she took an old DCCC nod-and-wink policy and formalized it into a rule, a rule that is meant to made it harder for Democratic challengers to primary Democratic incumbents. So now her name is well-known-- as an enemy of the netroots, just like her guru, Rahm Emanuel. Now there will be people digging around in her dirt and finding reasons to drive her out of Democratic politics-- or at least make her a pariah the way her buddy Wasserman Schultz is. This week author and former health insurance industry executive Wendell Potter exposed more of her corruption: Democrats On The Take: New DCCC Chair Is A Bets Friend Of Health Insurers-- How Health Insurance Cash Forms Opinions On Medicare-For-All. This is a very important piece for several reasons, not least of which is that as DCCC chair, she has a great deal of say over continuing to disadvantage progressives who favor Medicare-For-All, while pushing Blue Dogs and New Dems like herself, who are in politics to enrich themselves and to build a career-- not to serve; to self-serve. "Here’s a headline," wrote Potter, "you can bet my former colleagues in the health insurance business were thrilled to see last week: DCCC chief: Medicare for All price tag 'a little scary.' But it's part of a big picture with Bustos at the center since she is, explained Potter "a real pro when it comes to shaking down special interests, health insurers in particular, for the Dems."

That headline topped the lead story in the March 6 edition of The Hill, a newspaper widely read by Congressional staff and lobbyists and others in the influence-peddling business in Washington. You’ll see ads in The Hill by big corporations and special interests you won’t see anywhere else-- like the full-page “we’re-not-a-bad-guy” ad on page 2 by opioid maker Purdue Pharma and the two full-page “we’re-part-of the-solution” ads a bit deeper inside by Eli Lilly.

...I mentioned Bustos in a story I wrote on June 25, the day before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stunned party honchos with her upset victory over longtime incumbent Joe Crowley in the New York Democratic primary. Crowley, as I pointed out, was one of a handful of House Democrats who received campaign contributions from the political action committees of all five of the biggest for-profit health insurers—Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, Humana and UnitedHealth Group. But Crowley wasn’t those PACs’ favorite Democrat in Congress. That distinction at the time went to none other than Cheri Bustos.

So it came as no surprise to see Bustos pouring a big bucket of ice-cold water on the very idea that Congress would give serious consideration to improving and expanding the Medicare program to cover every American, which polls show a big majority of Democratic voters-- and even a sizable percentage of Republican voters-- favor. When Medicare covers all of us, there will be no need for health insurers as we know them-- and we know them increasingly as barriers to getting the care we need. To delay for as long as possible the day Medicare covers everybody, the insurance industry and its allies are showering Democrats with campaign cash and providing their friends in high places-- including Cheri Bustos-- with talking points designed to scare the daylights out of people.

Bustos and I have a lot in common. We both were journalists in our first career: She was a reporter for the Quad City Times in Davenport, Iowa; I was a reporter for Scripps-Howard newspapers in Tennessee and Washington. She left journalism to go work for a big hospital system in Iowa; I went to work for a big hospital system in Tennessee (and from there to Humana and Cigna). She and I even had the same title at the end of our corporate careers-- Vice President of Corporate Communications-- and we both were paid handsomely. The Quad City Times reported that Bustos was making north of $300,000 when she quit to run for Congress. She took a sizable pay cut when she was sworn into office to represent Illinois’ 17th congressional district in 2013. I took an even deeper pay cut when I left my corporate job and blew the whistle on my former employers. I have written about politicians on the take; she is one of those politicians.

Bustos was a proven fundraiser from the start. Since 2011, when she launched her first campaign, she has raised nearly $13 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Even though she was widely favored to win reelection last year (she beat her Republican opponent by more than 24 points), she still raised $4.5 million, much of which she didn’t need or spend. That big pile of Benjamins was considerably more than the average raised by other House members.

And there’s this: Nearly 85 percent of what her campaign took in came from corporate and special interest PACs and large individual contributions. Less than 13 percent came from small individual contributions.

Most of Bustos’ campaign cash last year came from people who couldn’t even vote for her. Nearly 80 percent came from outside of her district and more than half from out of state. None of the big five for-profit insurers that wrote big checks to her campaign are based in Illinois.

Bustos’ comments in the Hill story came a week after Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) introduced The Medicare for All Act of 2019 with 107 cosponsors, and they tracked with talking points now flooding Washington by the health care industry’s new front group, the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, which comprises health insurers, drug companies and big hospital systems like the one Bustos used to work for. It was created for the explicit purpose of scaring Democrats away from any Medicare for All legislation.

“What do we have-- 130 million-something Americans who get their health insurance through their work?” Bustos was quoted as saying in the Hill article. “The transition from what we have now to Medicare for all, it’s just hard to conceive how that would work. You have so many jobs attached to the health care industry. I think the $33 trillion price tag for Medicare for all is a little scary.”

Now compare that to the messaging in the Partnership’s first digital ad last month attacking Medicare for All proposals. And note, too, that that “scary” $33 trillion figure-- which, by the way, covers a ten-year-period-- came from a study produced by a think tank funded by the Koch Brothers, two rich guys no one would mistake for Democrats. What Bustos didn’t mention is that even that study, biased as it was, concluded that sticking with our current private insurance driven-system would cost $2 trillion more than Medicare for All. Bottom line: Medicare for All would be a bargain compared to the status quo Bustos, who thrives in the swamp that is Washington, is defending.

Did someone mention Joe Crowley? Since 1990 he's taken $1,730,665. After being ousted by AOC, he promptly got a job as a lobbyist at DC's shadiest firm, Squire Patton Boggs (which is not just unethical but also illegal, albeit never prosecuted). Since he was selling access, he refused to return his VIP government parking pass until last week, almost 3 months after he was forced to vacate his offices. Turn on the lookback machine for a few minutes:

Are Americans Ready For A Transformative Presidency?

The woman in the video is Disney heiress, Abigail Disney, a member of Patriotic Millionaires, which released the video yesterday to advocate for the inclusion of an ultra-millionaires tax in the New York state budget (which is going to be wrapped up in 2 weeks... and the villains here are Governor Cuomo and Senate Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, of course + The Long Island 6: Todd Kaminsky, Monica Martinez, Kevin Thomas, James Gaughran, John Brooks and Anna Kaplan). The tax only affects individuals with annual income over $5 million. It's meant to help bail out cash-strapped public schools that are facing further budget cuts, and the long-neglected subway system which just continues to decline.

I'm glad New York is trying to solve these problems on a local level. As for addressing these kinds of problems across the country-- on the national level-- obviously nothing's going to happen while Trump and McConnell have a choke-hold on the political system. But a transformative presidency would. Not a Status Quo Joe bullshit presidency or that of any other pick-me, pick-me candidate with nothing to offer the American people-- but a really transformative presidency, the likes of which we haven't seen since FDR passed away. I guess I gave it away, right? Bernie.

You've probably noticed that many of his once-shocking policy ideas have lately moved from the fringe to the mainstream of the Democratic Party-- from Medicare-For-All and the Green New Deal to putting working families interests before Wall Street's interests. Most of the potential nominees-- despite their own histories and records-- are now trying to offer some version of Bernie's populist economic message.

Faiz Shakir, Bernie campaign manager, reminds the media that all Trump offered to woo working class voters was a ripped-off, hollow version of what Bernie has been advocating for decades-- almost making himself sound like what Shakir calls a "faux-Bernie Sanders."

Yesterday the AP reported that the case for Bernie being able to beat Trump is now front-and-center in discussions of the Democratic nomination.

“The polls have been pretty consistent that Democratic primary voters are very focused on which candidate has the best chance to beat Trump, so I expect all the candidates to argue why they are uniquely positioned to win,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama.

“Bernie Sanders has a strong case that his economic message works in the states that delivered Trump the presidency in 2016, but his challenge is going to be articulating how he can defend himself against attacks that he is a socialist,” Pfeiffer said.

Karine Jean-Pierre, a Democratic strategist and senior adviser at MoveOn, argued against the notion that a more centrist candidate is inherently more electable. “Often you’ll hear arguments from centrist, or more corporate-aligned, Democrats that a candidate needs to run as a centrist to win-- but those comments say more about the commenters’ interests and ideology. They don’t actually tell you much useful about political outcomes,” she said.

“This year’s primary is obviously a different dynamic than 2016, when there were only two Democrats, and much of that debate centered on electability-- and then the candidate presumed by the Democratic establishment to be most ‘electable’ lost,” Jean-Pierre said.

So far, Sanders has been focused on Democrats’ shared goal of defeating Trump, whom he’s called the most dangerous president in American history. But he’s also placed himself as a standard-bearer in today’s political environment.

“In 2016, this is where the political revolution took off,” Sanders said during a recent trip to New Hampshire, a state that he won by 22 percentage points. He said that he began the race far behind Clinton, campaigning on ideas “considered by establishment politicians and mainstream media to be ‘radical’ and ‘extreme.’”

Sanders says that now his ideas are supported by a majority of Americans, particularly Democrats and independents, as well as his rivals in the race.

Ice Pick Donald's Budget Proposal, "Designed By Robber Barons"

Narcissistic Psychopath by Nancy Ohanian

-by Skip Kaltenheuser

Attending as press, alas, not as a member, I first crossed paths with the Patriotic Millionaires several years ago at one of their events in Washington. At a dinner they hosted afterwards, I had the added treat of Alan Grayson at my table, and was mighty impressed with both the group and with Grayson’s witty comments about naked influence-peddling on the Hill and Congressional hypocrisy. I can’t speak on the whole roster of the group, but those I met were not better-heeled because they started out as trust-funders. They’d combined their abilities with hard work and the businesses they ran represented a wide cross-section of the economy. Many started out as small business entrepreneurs. Usually not glamorous businesses, but clever ideas that bed-rocked well-run operations that after considerable effort had turned out decently well for them. Perhaps that fires their alarm at a deck stacked evermore against the little guy by the big money and complicit politicians taking in what in any sane society would be labeled as bribes. The group knows that as the playing field tilts, the opportunities they enjoyed diminish for others, and that bodes ill for America's economic future.

The group relishes the label “traitors to their class.” The three-legged stool on which the group sits is formed of equal political representation, a guaranteed living wage for all working citizens and a fair tax system.

Trump’s outrageous budget proposal motivated this essay by Morris Pearl, a former managing director at BlackRock, Inc. and chair of the Patriotic Millionaires.

Budget for a Nightmare America
-By Morris Pearl

On Monday, President Trump released his 2019 budget proposal, a plan that outlines a series of massive cuts to vital public programs in the ludicrously titled “A Budget for a Better America.”

While this is just a list of funding ideas that mean nothing without Congressional approval, it outlines Trump’s vision for our economic future-- one that allows us already wealthy people to get even richer, at the expense of everyone else. The chief targets of the budget are a proposed $845 billion cut from Medicare over the next decade, reductions to welfare programs and Social Security, and sharp cuts to agencies that keep us safe like the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department.

Strangely, while the President can’t seem to find the money to fund these programs, he thinks the government coffers have more than enough to fund $8.6 billion in border wall funding and a nearly 5 percent increase to the Pentagon’s budget.

It’s no secret that Republicans have been trying to gut public services for years, so what makes this new plan particularly heinous? It’s not just the immediate spikes in healthcare costs or the loss of crucial welfare assistance. It’s not even the fact that slashing those vital public services that will leave the majority of our most vulnerable citizens in an even more precarious position long-term.

It’s the shameless hypocrisy that comes from the President claiming we don’t have the money to fund all these services when he just gave his friends (and himself) a massive $1.5 trillion tax cut barely over a year ago. You would be hard pressed to find anyone outside of the White House who believes that the country is better off with more tax cuts for millionaires and less funding for Medicare.

To add further insult to injury, Trump’s budget proposal is the largest in federal history, at a total budget of $4.75 trillion. There was clearly no real attempt to limit federal spending, and this budget is going to be dead on arrival in Congress, which leads to the question: what’s the point?

With no chance of this budget becoming law anytime soon, it’s likely, then, that this serves as a blueprint for Trump’s re-election promises. That future is the true danger of Trump’s budget. Even if this is just a posturing plan right now, one that’s completely unrooted in reality, it serves as the economic vision that Republicans will propose to voters in 2020, and one they will try to deliver if elected.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them. If Trump and his Republican counterparts in Congress say they want to cut Medicare, believe them. If they tell you that they want to continue giving tax breaks to the wealthy while that happens, believe them. And you should believe me when I say this vision is bad economics – bad for business, bad for workers, and even bad for us millionaire investors and business people, who depend on healthy and happy consumers and workers to drive growth.

Conservatives rely on the constant refrain that spending is out of control and that cuts are needed to rein it in and balance the budget. But as this budget shows, the cuts come from everywhere except the people and corporations that have the most to give back to the system that allowed us to rise in the first place. It exacerbates our existing inequality by slashing these services and giving us millionaires even more opportunity to avoid paying our fair share. A better America is one that invests its dollars in its own citizens and ensures an equality of opportunity that benefits us all. A budget designed by robber barons to benefit the few, at the expense of everyone else, will not deliver that dream.

Revolving Door by Nancy Ohanian

While I can’t imagine Trump’s budget flying much faster than a lead balloon, it’s a gift to opponents seeking Exhibit A on the hypocrisy of Trump’s campaign claims of helping those in the country who are hurting. How rotten the proposal is was underscored by Pulitzer-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, editor of DCReport.org. Interviewed on Democracy Now!

…this budget is budget lessons I learned, as Donald Trump learned, from dictator Kim. So, the first thing you do is you take care of your military. You pour every dollar you can into a military that is bigger than you need. And that’s your number one goal, to make sure that you have loyalty and stay in power.

Then what you do is you take the disabled and the poor on Medicare, and you cut close to a trillion dollars over the next 10 years out of care for them. You take SNAP, which provides nutrition to pregnant women, children and elderly people and the disabled. “Hey, let’s slash that!”

Education. There were all these students who were ripped off by for-profit colleges that cost four or five times what a community college did, and gave you a lousy education, and some of them went broke. “Make them pay every penny!” They, in fact, say it isn’t fair unless these students pay it back. So they’re taking the side of the bankers against the students.

Housing. Let’s cut money for housing, people who are disabled, people who are on aids, people who are poor. We’re going to cut that. And to New York and New Jersey, by saying, “We are not going to fund the replacement of the 110-year-old tunnel,” through which thousands of commuters and people traveling up and down the East Coast travel every day, tunnels owned by the federal government’s Amtrak—

…what’s important here…is a budget is a statement of values. And Donald Trump has revealed his values. He has the values of a dictator. That’s why I said budget lessons from dictator Kim. And all of his claims about “I love the cops,” and then he took away their ability to take as a tax deduction buying uniforms and guns and dry cleaning and paying union dues; “I love the students,” and he wants to take away the subsidized loans and make people who got for-profit college educations that failed—colleges that failed—to make them pay. Donald Trump has no regard for anyone but himself. And so long as we treat him as if he’s a serious person who has real policies, we’re going to get nowhere. What we need to do is mock him and make fun of him. He’s not very smart, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

The Emperor by Nancy Ohanian

Johnston also mentioned some of the disturbing reality of Trump’s tax cut:

"…the economy is already slowing down. And 10 years into this market, which began under President Obama, you would expect it, at this point, to begin to slow down. So, we only saw 20,000 jobs last month. You know, Trump goes around talking about “I have the biggest employment in American history.” That’s not the measure. Job growth is a good measure. Job growth has been about 20 percent lower under Trump than under Obama since the economy turned around. Tax revenues in the last 90-day period were 2 percent lower, which goes right to the heart of how this tax cut for the rich is not paying for itself. And, you know, little-known fact: Donald Trump’s tax law gave 8-year loans at zero interest to all the multinational companies that had siphoned profits out of the country, and it also gave them a discount. So, I’ve written about how Apple alone-- just Apple-- will turn a $120 billion profit off the Trump tax law, $120 billion."

If the Democrats play their cards right, they can use Ice Pick Donald’s budget to help sink him in 2020, and to take the Republican Senate down with him. Consider how this budget will play in the critical counties in the states Trump flipped, where exasperated voters who voted for Obama twice, hardly racist deplorables, stood Trump up as their default middle finger to the Washington establishment. These are voters in areas where, in the immortal words of Wall Street’s Manchurian Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, people “foamed the runway for the banks.” These are areas where good jobs rusted out, leaving people scrambling in futile efforts to stay even, where affordable educational opportunities for their children faded away. These are communities where families shoulder disproportionate tragedies from America’s endless wars, and from the pharmaceutical assaults of opioids.

In many of these communities Bernie outperformed both Hillary and Trump in the 2016 primaries. For these citizens, Bernie’s well-articulated and steady message will continue to resonate.

We Owe It To America To Put The Country Back On The Right Path

Man, was I lucky! I was born into a working class family clinging by its fingernails to afford whatever it was the middle class was supposed to be offering. I rejected the entire project at an early age and fled. I washed up in Eurasia and made my way, by the grace of God, for almost 7 years from Germany to Afghanistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and back to Europe again. Nixon being impeached, I returned to America, I started my own record company-- for fun-- had some success (luck), and then got hired by a big corporation looking for an entrepreneurial type with some foreign market experience. Being recruited for that job was probably the fastest trip ever from $10,000/year to over a million. I'm retired now but last weekend my boyfriend told me not to worry about being part of the 1%; we were on our way to a $10 all-you-can eat Ethiopian vegan lunch. If I was in DC today-- God Forbid-- I'd have joined the Patriotic Millionaires demanding Congress raise taxes on the rich.

Yesterday we looked at how the 1%-- millionaires-- have thoroughly taken over Congress. Almost half the Members are millionaires themselves. Many are a lot richer than mere millionaires. And most of the rest cater to the demands of millionaires as a first tenet of their political careers. At the same time, ABC News was exposing the 8 most powerful businessmen influencing politics. And the list starts with the worst of the worst-- the fascist-oriented Koch brothers who are making war against democracy itself.

The Koch Brothers are typically secretive and reluctant to speak in public but in September 2011, David Koch addressed Tea Party leaders, saying, "The American dream of free enterprise, capitalism is alive and well."

According to one estimate, they've contributed more than $100 million to conservative political causes, and a foundation that they back has trained thousands of Tea Party activists.

David H. Koch, 71, and Charles Koch, 75, together own Koch Industries, a Kansas-based company started by their father. The privately-held, $100 billion-dollar-a-year company is best-known for its oil and energy business... Controversy has arisen around Koch Industries, which allegedly traded with Iran and paid bribes in France to get payments in six different countries. This summer, the Koch brothers admitted making from illegal campaign contributions between 2005 and 2009, and said that they fired an individual responsible for the bribes.

Demands to return to the good old days of Clinton era tax rates are bogus. The 1% had already taken over the government lock, stock and barrel by the time Clinton-- a completely dependable servant of the 1% in every way, much the way Obama is-- became president. The most pronounced social mobility in contemporary American history-- and the greatest thrust at social equality-- came to a peak during the Eisenhower years. Those should be the model for American tax policies. Obama wants to increase the top rate for 1%-ers from 35% to 39.6%. It was 70% under Nixon and a far healthier 91% under Eisenhower. That's when America was winning.



And in case you were wondering how the Chamber of Commerce is financing the advertising campaign against anyone will to stand up for working families, Amanda Terkel went into the specifics yesterday at Huff Po. No mention of the money that China funnels into the GOP through the Chamber but "88% of the donations they got were for $100,000 or more, and 53% of the members donated $1 million or more. The Chamber also received two contributions that were each in excess of $10 million." The 1% is not going down without a fight.

Can Powerful, Avaricious Multimillionaires & Billionaires Be Forced To Pay Their Fair Share Of Taxes Again?

The White House has been releasing a series of ghastly trial balloons about what el presidente plans to say today. From cutting back on COLAs to raising the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare, they've been shot down one by one by panic-stricken Democrats who have to face the voters in 2012 and by Democratic support groups... not to mention the increasingly angry folks in the video above.

Then, on Saturday, there was-- seemingly out of nowhere-- a good trial balloon. Though it's not a renewed push for Medicare-for-all or even a public option, it's still a trial balloon worthy of someone who did, after all, get elected as Democrat, promising Hope and Change. Republicans are already aiming every bit of artillery they possess skyward but apparently the president intends to announce a minimum tax on people making over a million dollars a year, as part of a $3 trillion deficit reduction package.

Mr. Obama will call for $1.5 trillion in tax increases, primarily on the wealthy, through a combination of closing loopholes and limiting the amount that high earners can deduct. The proposal also includes $580 billion in adjustments to health and entitlement programs, including $248 billion to Medicare and $72 billion to Medicaid. Administration officials said that the Medicare cuts would not come from an increase in the Medicare eligibility age.

Senior administration officials who briefed reporters on some of the details of Mr. Obama’s proposal said that the plan also counts a savings of $1.1 trillion from the ending of the American combat mission in Iraq and the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

In laying out his proposal, aides said, Mr. Obama will expressly promise to veto any legislation that seeks to cut the deficit through spending cuts alone and does not include revenue increases in the form of tax increases on the wealthy.

Allow me a tangent. I grew up in a family with modest means. I got through a subsidized state university with loans, by working and by living close to the bone. I never really had any idea I was poor, although by the time I was in college I started to notice that some of my schoolmates were rich. Eventually I built a small business, but I never actually connected it to getting rich... just to building a business and succeeding at the task at hand. The task at hand was never really self-enrichment... it was breaking records and developing artists. CBS bought the company. I put my share of the money in the bank and it didn't alter my lifestyle in the slightest. I lived in a "dangerous ghetto" and drove an ancient Mercury Comet. Then I wound up at Warner Bros, as an executive. My starting salary was $90,000 (+ perks). It was more money than I had ever made and more money than my father had ever made. I felt rich.

My two best friends at the company had been there much longer and one was making over a million a year and the other around a quarter million. Million dollar man was my direct supervisor and he was one miserable, dissatisfied multimillionaire, who felt he had been dealt a bad hand. I don't know exactly what he was worth at the time-- $30 million, $50 million?-- but he had worked hard for it and he was lucky and he "deserved" what he had. He always compared himself to much richer colleagues, like David Geffen, and was always unhappy and over-spending and broke and cheating. He used to borrow money from me. Quarter million dollar man, who was closer in age to me and less out of his mind, said to me, "One day we're going to break out of this cycle of poverty." I realized that by moving down to Los Angeles, or at least into "The Business" in Los Angeles, I had entered a mad house and had to be very careful or I'd catch what was afflicting so many of them.

I was lucky too and I was made president of the company one day. And that brings us to President Obama's proposal for those making over a million dollars a year. I was and I never begrudged paying my taxes, which, unlike the 1,400 millionaires last year who paid zero income taxes, were hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. My attitude was always, "Wow, I'm so blessed to be making so much money, I'm lucky to be paying this much in taxes." It's certainly not a Republican perspective.

Co-opting the rhetoric of the labor movement to describe America's corporations-- which are currently experiencing record profits-- Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) accused US government policies of forcing "job creators" to go "on strike."

Striking, meaning to refuse to work, is a tool used by labor activists in fights with business owners, and sometimes exercised across whole industries or even nationally, to coerce concessions from capitalists and the governments which support them.

A "strike by capital" was also how Republicans and their Big Business allies greeted President Roosevelt's New Deal-- that and the attempted coup financed by the DuPonts and some of the biggest names in American plutocracy. This weekend Boehner, Ryan and Romney were already running hither and thither claiming the wealthy already pay too much. I can't wait to see if Obama actually goes through with it today and what hideous caveats and loopholes we find in it if he does.

With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama’s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future cuts from Medicare and Medicaid.

Mr. Obama, in a bit of political salesmanship, will call his proposal the “Buffett Rule,” in a reference to Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor who has complained repeatedly that the richest Americans generally pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than do middle-income workers, because investment gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages.

Mr. Obama will not specify a rate or other details, and it is unclear how much revenue his plan would raise. But his idea of a millionaires’ minimum tax will be prominent in the broad plan for long-term deficit reduction that he will outline at the White House on Monday.

...The Obama proposal has little chance of becoming law unless Republican lawmakers bend. But by focusing on the wealthiest Americans, the president is sharpening the contrast between Republicans and Democrats with a theme he can carry into his bid for re-election in 2012.

It could also reassure Democrats who have feared that Mr. Obama would agree to changes in programs like Medicare without forcing Republicans to compromise on taxes.

The administration wants such a tax to replace the alternative minimum tax, which was created decades ago to make sure the richest taxpayers with plentiful deductions and credits did not avoid income taxes, but which now hits millions of Americans who are considered upper middle class. Mr. Obama has said that many average Americans could see a tax cut if the system is overhauled, since ending many tax breaks would allow for lower rates while raising more revenues from the wealthiest.

The millionaires’ tax is among several changes Mr. Obama will propose in urging Congress to overhaul the federal income tax code next year, both to raise revenues for reducing deficits and to make the tax system simpler and fairer, said the administration officials, who agreed to speak in advance of the president’s announcement on the condition of anonymity.

The millionaires’ rate would affect only 0.3 percent of taxpayers, they said. That would be fewer than 450,000; 144 million returns were filed for 2010.

Mr. Obama’s proposal comes a month after Mr. Buffett began reviving his longstanding objection that he and “my megarich friends” pay a significantly lower percentage of their income in federal taxes-- income and payroll taxes-- than everyone else, thanks to the tax code’s favoritism toward the rich, and especially toward investors like him.

“My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress,” he wrote in an opinion article in The New York Times, a complaint he has repeated in talks and media interviews since. “It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”

Mr. Obama has been citing Mr. Buffett as he promotes his $447 billion job-creation plan. He proposes to offset the cost of that plan and reduce future budget deficits through higher taxes on the wealthy and on corporations after 2013, when the economy will presumably be healthier.

Mr. Obama’s proposed Buffett Rule puts a new spin on that pitch, as he tries to put Republicans in Congress and in the presidential race on the defensive for their rigid stand against higher taxes.

And speaking of the Buffett rule, this video ad from Patriotic Millionaires just came in as we were about the publish this morning. It singles out a handful of reactionary millionaires in Congress who are die-hard fanatics against raising taxes on millionaires-- Paul Ryan (R-WI), Orrin Hatch (R-UT) John Boehner (R-OH), Eric Cantor (R-VA), John McCain (R-AZ), Ron Paul (R-TX)... “Millionaire Politicians who want to GIVE THEMSELVES A TAX CUT are hardly trust-worthy stewards of our country’s future. Their continued support of policies that advance their own economic self-interests is un-American,” said Erica Payne, spokesman for the Patriotic Millionaires and founder of the Agenda Project.

“Republicans call this modest proposal "class warfare"? It's never been more clear that they are in thrall to their wealthy patrons and have sold working people down the river," said David DesJardins, former Google engineer and Patriotic Millionaire.

“The Republican Party's absolute refusal to raise taxes is, in effect, a refusal to govern. Taxation has been a fundamental instrument of government virtually from the beginning of history, and to say you can't or won't use it is like refusing to use the army. It disqualifies you from holding high office,” Henry Bean, Producer and Patriotic Millionaire.

“It's time for millionaires-- LIKE ME AND THE ONES IN CONGRESS-- to step up to the plate and start paying their fair share, " said Guy Saperstein, lawyer and Patriotic Millionaire.

“I find it immoral that we can ask our soldiers especially our national guard members to help defend our country over and over and yet the republicans refuse to believe our country can't ask our wealthiest citizens to help get people jobs and pay for these wars rather than give the bill to our grandchildren. The idea that asking our wealthiest citizens to help will negatively affect the economy is ridiculous and unfair to our brave soldiers some of whom have sacrificed their lives for this country,” says Jeff Gural, Chairman, Newmark Knight and Patriotic Millionaire.