Breaking Democracy Is A Republican Party Thing Now

 

Slimeball by Nancy Ohanian

I have no idea if George Packer knew he was comparing democracy to religion in his Atlantic essay Trump Is Trying to Trick Americans Into Giving Up on Democracy... but that's how I read it. "Democracy," he wrote "depends on belief in democracy-- on an extraordinary leap of faith by ordinary people that their rulers will abide by the rules, that their votes will count, that their compatriots won’t tear the country apart, that lies won’t become truth. When the checks and balances have all given way, the last barrier to an authoritarian regime is public opinion. It will stand or fall on November 3. According to a new poll by the international organization More in Common, the only issue that matters to Americans across the political spectrum is the integrity of the November presidential election. In the same poll, more than three-quarters of Americans-- again, from left to right-- still express a belief that citizens can change society through their actions. And yet similarly large majorities expect high levels of voter fraud or voter suppression in November; trust in government, the media, and one another is abysmally low. Another recent poll, by YouGov, finds that just 22 percent of Americans expect the election to be free and fair; when told that experts say the election cannot be rigged, only 19 percent believe it. Americans are in the desperate position of clinging to something precious that they expect to betray them."

Yesterday I was talking with western New York congressional candidate, Nate McMurray about a stunt his opponent, hereditary billionaire Chris Jacobs, pulled on Saturday. The Trumpist incumbent, speaking at a rally of extremists where an effigy of Gov. Andrew Cuomo was beaten and hung, was part of a mob. "This district has a history of political climbers like Bill Paxon, Tom Reynolds, Chris Lee and Chris Collins who used the communities and families of NY-27 for personal gain," McMurray told me. "But the hatefulness on display Saturday was a disgraceful new low. Chris Jacobs and his comrades in western New York have fully embraced the worst of Trumpism. Extreme Republicans like Chris know that if every American votes they will lose. So they traffic in conspiracies, lies and the politics of fear to destabilize the electoral process and end democracy as we know it. And their march toward authoritarianism will not end with a whimper but with the bang and butt of a gun. Chris should be ashamed of how far he has debased himself, all to try and win an election."

Packer wrote that "Democratic faith turns out to be as fragile as it is necessary, and Trump specializes in undermining it. When he repeatedly asserts massive fraud months before Election Day, announces that he won’t respect results that go against him, and refuses to promise a peaceful transfer of power-- the litmus test of democracy-- he is forcing Americans into a mental trap that can resemble madness. The president says that the election is rigged, and he also insinuates that he will rig the election. To believe him is frightening; to discount him is foolish. Either way, Trump becomes ever more powerful, while the people-- on whose consent his power entirely depends-- slip into passivity and paralysis, or are pushed into rage, even political violence.This is exactly the atmosphere of chaos in which Trump thrives. He makes it almost impossible to hold on to the idea that the election can be free and fair. But the survival of democracy, which lives and dies in our minds before anywhere else, depends on that idea. For the election to succeed, we have to think and act as if it will succeed.

Trump uses words the way Russian intelligence employs “active measures” operations: not to inform or persuade, but to poison the mental atmosphere, to confuse and agitate the public until it begins to lose faith in rational discourse and, ultimately, in democracy. Whether or not this continuous ink spray could actually lower voter turnout, Morris said, it will degrade “our belief in each other as common citizens of a republic.” Sizable numbers of Americans in both parties are now willing to tolerate political violence in the aftermath of an election, according to a Democracy Fund Voter Study survey last spring: 20 percent of Republicans in the event of alleged vote fraud, 20 percent of Democrats if Trump loses the popular vote but wins the Electoral College. Americans are edging toward civil conflict.

In the coming weeks, anyone who cares about our democracy has to hold two conflicting ideas in mind while remaining sane. The first is that Trump should be taken at his word when he warns that he will do whatever is necessary to stay in power. This dark prospect requires a constant state of alertness, a refusal to seek comfort in hoping for the best or looking to Trump’s party or his judges for some glimmer of salvation. At this stage of his presidency, naivete is unforgivable.

But the second idea, even more demanding, is that our votes still matter. Not just that they’ll be counted, but that they are sacred, if anything in a secular democracy can be called by that word. This idea means refusing to give way to panic or despair or, most crippling of all, the sullen resentment into which subject populations are worn down by authoritarian rulers. The more we dwell on what Trump might do, the likelier he’ll be to get away with something. He’ll have become the omnipotent central character in the drama, occupying the place that rightfully belongs to a democratic people, who are reduced once more to watching in outrage. We have to believe that power still lies in the people, or else we’ve already surrendered it.

For weeks, Belarusians have filled the streets of their cities to insist that their votes are sacred. Beatings, grenades, flashbangs, arrests, torture, and disappearances by the state have neither deterred them nor driven them to violence. Some commentators have said that the United States is not yet Belarus. This is true enough, though we are closer than seemed imaginable just a few years ago. The real question is whether Americans have what it takes to be Belarusians.

Tuesday, Nick Ackerman, a former Watergate prosecutor, was on CNN, where he said that after reading the NY Times piece on Trump's taxes, he realized that Trump makes Nixon look like a rookie amateur. He sees Trump going to trial if he loses the election because what he's guilty of is not tax avoidance but full-blown tax fraud. "Tax evasion is a 5 year felony. It's a pretty serious crime and the more money that's stolen, the longer you go to jail for... The only thing saving him at this point is the Department of Justice’s guideline that says you can’t indict a sitting president."

Ah... yes, the Department of Justice. It's like when The Mob takes over the FBI. CREW-- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington-- made an abuse of power case for impeaching Barr. Pelosi is bound to ignore it for narrow partisan reasons but CREW made the case that Barr abused the powers of his office by engaging in a course of conduct that impaired the Special Counsel investigation of Trump, "the conduct of lawful inquiries by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and the purpose of that agency, and the oversight and impeachment powers of the United States House of Representatives. These actions violate DOJ’s founding principal to maintain the independence and impartiality of federal prosecutions from political intervention." There can be little doubt that Barr is also guilty of directing federal law enforcement officers to violate the First and Fourth Amendment rights of American citizens who gathered to engage in peaceful protest outside of the White House and across the country. They want to see an impeachment inquiry by the House that focuses on whether Barr abused the powers of his office by engaging in a course of conduct that was 'seriously incompatible with our system of constitutional government.' At a minimum, that inquiry should consider whether Barr:

• Corruptly subverted the Special Counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and of President Trump for obstruction of justice;
• Interfered with the lawful functions of the Department of Justice by overturning the actions of career prosecutors in the cases of Roger Stone Jr. and Michael Flynn and by firing United States Attorney Geoffrey Berman;
• Obstructed lawful investigations of the United States House of Representatives; and
• Abused and exceeded the powers of the Attorney General to violate the First and Fourth Amendment rights of American citizens.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

 

by Noah

Well, well, well! It's the $750 Man! President Deadbeat paid a whole $750 in taxes in his first year as president. He gamed the IRS and, by extension, all of us. I'm shocked I tell ya! Shocked and, definitely appalled and pissed, really pissed. Here's what our 6 most recent presidents paid in their first year in office. Compare and Contrast:

1. President Ronald Reagan- $165,202
2. President H. W. Bush- $101.382
3. President Bill Clinton- $62,670
4. President George W. Bush- $250,221
5. President Barrack Obama- $1,792,414
6. Herr Trump, aka Dear Leader- $750

Yep, everyone I know paid more taxes than Trump did. Oh, and what we've seen so far shows that Trump is no billionaire but we already knew that. He just plays one for the suckers and fools. He's a hoax, a hoax, a hoax, a hoax! From any angle Donald Trump and his entire grifting family are a hoax. Always have been. Now let's see Trump's bank transactions and a complete record of the ruble laundering and, while we're at it, how about that missing DNA test and his medical records, the real ones. No need to see his school records since he had other students take his tests. Oh, and a detailed record of where all that COVID relief money went would be nice. That's where it gets tricky though. There's just too many people involved in that one so I'll settle just for how much went to his syndicate of associates and we'll see where that leads. We need a wiki-leaks for Swiss bank accounts.

Figuring Out Trump (But Not Really) Plus-- All The President's Taxes

 

While I was working on this post, the NY Times dropped the bombshell opus on Trump's taxes. Who better than Dorothy Reik, President of the Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains, to deal with the fact that Donald pays less in taxes than the millions of people who are unemployed due to his criminal mishandling of the pandemic? So... ladies first:

All The President's Taxes
-by Dorothy Reik

Just as I was trying to wrap my head around the two latest books exposing the criminal in the White House, White House, Inc. by Dan Alexander and Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World by Tom Burgis, an alert popped up on my phone from the NY Times. They had the goods-- the tax records Donald Trump has been hiding for the last two decades.

He is right about one thing-- he is under audit and has been for years-- over a tax deduction he took-- $72.9 million-- for abandoning his losing casinos but the deduction is illegal of he received anything in return and he did. The payback to the American taxpayers is over $100M. But the big headline is that Trump paid only $750 in taxes in the year he was elected and the year after. Everyone understands that! And for ten years he paid NO taxes due to a $900 million loss which he was able to "carry forward" for ten years.

Digging further we learn-- as I posited years ago-- that he is cozying up to tyrannical murderers because he has investments in their countries to protect-- the Philippines, Turkey and India are cited in this first installment. I wrote then that he also covets beach front properties in North Korea-- which he admitted. This is the most chilling yet least surprising revelation. The NY Times promises to dribble out more during the weeks to come a la the Hillary emails project.

Another fun fact is that he deducted "consulting fees" for projects that required no such services. The exact amounts of the deductions showed up in Ivanka's financial statements even though she was employed by the entity taking the deduction. My friend just called to suggest Ivanka and Jared head to temple early to start atoning but I think their sins call for a walk to the sea.

They should start now. It's a long walk from their mansion. Whether the Atlantic is big enough to wash away their sins is a question for Jewish scholars. How they allowed Ivanka to convert is another one.

More fun-- entities looking to do business with the government are renting space in Donald's office buildings in Manhattan and San Francisco. They are getting contracts worth many multiples of the rent they are paying.

Donald also has about $400 million in personally guaranteed loans coming due in the next four years and the gravy train of payouts from The Apprentice has stopped.  When asked about the report at his press conference the Donald labeled it "fake news" and walked off.

Maybe Chris Wallace needs to reconsider his questions for Tuesday.

Cousins? Distant

Louisiana is number 1. Louisiana has the most cases per million residents (35,262) in the U.S.-- which is also more than any country in the world, other than make-believe countries like Qatar and Arbua. In 2016 Trump won big in Louisiana-- 1,178,638 (58.1%) to 780,154 (38.4%). Of Louisiana's 64 parishes, Trump won 54. And in those 54 parishes, the folks heard Trump call the pandemic a hoax and they heard him belting people who wear masks or who practice social distancing. The worst hit county in the parish in the state is Jefferson-- Trump territory. It's mostly white and Trump beat Hillary there 55.3% to 40.5%. Jefferson Parish has 17,459 cases... but every single parish in the state has cases. Some are spiking very badly now. On Friday Caddo, Lincoln, Lafayette and West Feliciana led the way in new cases. Hillary won 50% of the votes in Caddo but those are parishes... Trump country.

Though the state elected a Democratic governor-- his election and reelection were outliers. The state Senate consists of 27 Republicans and 12 Democrats. The state House consists of 68 Republicans, 35 Democrats and 2 independents. The Louisiana Democratic Party is a hot mess. Yesterday PBS broadcast a focus on how the party is struggling to stay relevant.

Natasha Williams from Louisiana Public Broadcasting explains that rural voters are Trump's base in the state. "The Democrats," she said, "basically have lost a lot of the rural voters because in their estimation, rural voters feel like the Democratic Party has gone too big. They've gone to big city politics and they basically deal with issues that don't pertain to rural voters."

The Trumpist Secretary of State attempted to promulgate rules that would make it harder-- and in some cases impossible-- for voters to vote by mail. He was shot down by a federal judge who, said Williams, "stopped just short of saying that this was a political move and we are going to not put people in danger while politics kind of rears its ugly head in mail-in voting as well."

Louisiana is very concerned about healthcare and jobs. Education is also a big deal here. A lot of folks are really kind of struggling with the pandemic. You know, how do I pay my bills? How do my kids get a good education? How will I maintain and get what I need for my family?

...[I]n New Orleans in fact, even though we're in phase three, a lot of New Orleans is still closed down. The governor has been very sensitive to the fact that people want to go back to work. We need to open our economy. But also gauging those numbers, watching those numbers. And anywhere you go, you see evidence that the state is trying to indicate to you, we're not out of the woods yet. We need to do what we can to kind of, you know, keep that curve going in the right direction.

The only current polling I've seen in Louisiana was about oil ad gas drilling but they did ask some election questions. Trump's approval has fallen by 10 points, although it's still 51% approve/45 disapprove. And when they asked who people will vote for-- 48% Trump, 42% Biden, a serious erosion for Trump since 2016.

How could that be happening? Andrew Sullivan had an idea about how, generally speaking, on his blog last night. He compared Trump-- a would-be tyrant-- to Shakespeare’s fictional Richard III. "Denial. Avoidance. Distraction. Willful ignorance. These are all essential to enabling a tyrant’s rise," wrote Sullivan. "And keeping this pattern going is Richard’s profound grasp of the power of shock. He does and says the unexpected and unthinkable in order to stun his opponents into a kind of dazed passivity. It’s this capacity to keep you on your heels, to keep disorienting you with the unacceptable (which is then somehow accepted), that marks a tyrant’s relentless drive. He does this by instinct. He craves chaos, lies, suspense, surprises-- not because he’s a genius, but because stability threatens his psyche. He cannot rest. He is not in control of himself. And whenever the dust settles, as it were, he has to disturb it again.

This is what we’ve been dealing with in the figure of Donald Trump now for five years, and it is absurd to believe that a duly conducted election is going to end it. I know, I know. I’m hysterical and over-the-top and a victim of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Trump is simply too incompetent and too lazy to be an actual tyrant, I’m constantly scolded. He’s just baiting me again. And so on. But what I think this otherwise salient critique misses is that tyranny is not, in its essence, about the authoritarian and administrative skills required to run a country effectively for a long time. Tyrants, after all, are often terrible at this. It is rather about a mindset, as the ancient philosophers understood, with obvious political consequences. It’s a pathology. It requires no expertise in anything other than itself.

You need competence if you want to run an effective government, or plan a regular campaign, or master policy with a view to persuading people, or hold power for the sake of something else. You need competence to create and sustain something. But you do not need much competence to destroy things. You just need the will. And this is what tyrants do: they destroy things. Richard III ruled for two short years, ending in his own death in battle, and a ruined country.

This is Trump’s threat. Not the construction of a viable one-party state, but the destruction of practices, norms, civility, laws, customs and procedures that constitute liberal democracy’s non-zero-sum genius. He doesn’t need to be competent to destroy our system of government. He merely needs to be himself: an out-of-control, trust-free, malignant narcissist, with inexhaustible resources of psychic compulsion, in a pluralist system designed for the opposite. All you need is an insatiable pathological drive to avoid any constraint on your own behavior, and the demagogic genius to carry a critical mass of people with you, and our system, designed as the antidote to tyranny, is soon unspooling into incoherence, deadlock, and collapse.

I’m told he’s been ineffective even as a tyrant, so no worries. To which I can only say: really? Once you realize he doesn’t give a shit about any actual policies, apart from doing all he can to wipe the legacy of Barack Obama from planet earth, he’s been pretty competent. Note how he turned Congressional subpoenas into toilet paper; how he crippled and muzzled the Mueller inquiry; how he installed a crony at the Department of Justice to pursue his political enemies and shield him from the law; how effectively he stymied impeachment; how he cucked every previous Republican opponent; how he helped destroy the credibility of news sources that oppose him; how he filled his cabinet with acting secretaries and flunkies; how he declared fake emergencies to claim the power of the purse assigned to the Congress; and how he has reshaped the Supreme Court with potentially three new Justices, whom he sees solely as his loyal stooges if he comes up against the rule of law.

And gotten away with all of it!

In protecting his own power over others, he has been as competent as hell. Imagine where we’d be in four more years. Despite a mountain of criticism, he has not conceded a single error, withdrawn a single statement, or acknowledged a single lie. His party lost the mid-terms, but seriously, what difference did that make? His control of the Republican party, and his cult-like grip on the base, has never been greater than now. Yes, he has said and done racially polarizing things-- but the joke is he may yet have more support from blacks and Latinos in 2020 than he did in 2016. Think of his greatest policy failures: the appalling loss of life in the Covid epidemic and the collapse of law and order in the cities. Now recall that on February 1 of this year, Trump was at 43.4 percent approval; 200,000 deaths later, and the wreckage from Seattle to Portland to Minneapolis, and his approval today is at 43.1 percent.

This is, of course, not enough to win re-election. And Trump has no interest in broadening his appeal, because it would dilute the tribalism he feeds off. So he has made it abundantly clear that if the results of the election show him the loser, he will not accept them. Simple, really. He said this in 2016, of course, refusing to honor the result in advance. But this year, he has stumbled upon something quite marvelous for his purposes. Because of Covid19, it is likely that mail-in ballots will be far higher in number than before, and, as Barton Gellman has shown in this essential new piece, this gives Trump an opportunity he has instinctively seized. He has been saying for months now that: “MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE... WE CAN NEVER LET THIS TRAGEDY BEFALL OUR GREAT NATION.” In late summer, Gellman noted, Trump was making this argument four times a day: “Very dangerous for our country.” “A catastrophe.” “The greatest rigged election in history.” He is telling us loud and clear that, if he has anything to do with it, this election will not be decided at the ballot box, but at the Supreme Court, which he expects to control.

...All he wants is chaos, because in chaos, the strong leader wins. Would he incite violence on his behalf if the votes seem to be drifting away from him? You bet he would. Would he urge his supporters to physically prevent ballot-counting? He already has. Would he try to corral Republican state legislators to back him in electing electors? Gellman has sources. Would he take this country to the brink of civil conflict? Way past it. Will anyone in the GOP do anything to stop him? We know the answer to that already. If they cannot condemn him this week, when would they? And he will do all this not out of some strategic calculation or tactical skill but because he cannot do anything else. He is psychologically incapable of conceding anything. And he has no understanding of collateral damage because his narcissism precludes it.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Those eyes! That smile! How could anyone not believe him!

Well, here's your big second chance Donnie! You're running again, running for reelection while you use your sleazebag legal team to run from the law. Oh, we know you call it "presidential harassment," "political prosecution" and "prosecutorial misconduct." Such fancy words, Donnie. Best words? Did you come up with them all by yourself? Do you awake in cold sweats? I hope so but how long before you start firebombing law offices and judges homes? We know you're thinking of it. Your kind always does. You even feel you have permission.

How Much Do Voters Care About Honesty And Trustworthiness? We'll Soon Find Out

Me The People by Nancy Ohanian

In his Washington Post column yesterday, Greg Sargent explained why evidence that Trump knew of the whistleblower complaint when he unfroze military aid to Ukraine is devastating evidence against him, reducing his absurd "I want nothing-- no quid pro quo" defense to smoking ruins. No doubt the Judiciary Committee members-- think Ted Lieu, Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal, David Cicilline, Joe Neguse...-- were thinking about this yesterday as they prepared for next week's impeachment hearings. Those are some of the sharpest mind's in Congress. Will the eyes of the country be focused on the hearings? Yesterday, the L.A. Times reported that "more than 70 million viewers watched some portion of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry."

Trump likes screeching at his bund rallies that no one was watching. He wishes! "Both Fox News Channel and MSNBC saw significant year-over-year increases in audience levels for November. MSNBC’s daytime viewing levels for November were the highest in its 23-year history."

Viewing of live gavel-to-gavel coverage that aired on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and the three major broadcast networks peaked on its opening day, Nov. 13, when it reached an average of 13.1 million viewers. By the fifth session on Nov. 21, the audience leveled off to 11.3 million, comparable to what a top-rated non-sports entertainment program draws in prime time. Fox News was the most-watched network each day.

Gym Jordan by Nancy Ohanian

The figures reflect the average number of people who watched the coverage at any time. The total number of viewers who tuned in-- determined by Nielsen as those who watched at least six minutes of coverage over five days-- came in at 70.8 million. The number does not include C-SPAN or PBS stations that carried the coverage.

The daytime impeachment hearings also gave a boost to cable news opinion shows in prime time. Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight averaged 3.4 million viewers in November, a record high for the program. Hannity also reached an all-time high with 3.6 million viewers. Fox News averaged 2.7 million viewers in prime time, up 15% from November 2018, a high-rated month that included coverage of the midterm elections. MSNBC was up 12% to 2.06 million viewers as The Rachel Maddow Show had its best month since January with an average of 3.3 million viewers. CNN was down 11% to 999,000 viewers.

Many more people also watched some portion of the impeachment hearings online, with all the networks citing a lift in traffic. NBC News counted 9.6 million video “starts” for impeachment coverage across its streaming platforms, which include Twitter and Facebook. CNN said digital viewing boosted its November audience by 3.4%, the largest lift the network has ever seen.

The new SSRS poll released yesterday by CNN asked voted how important the impeachment inquiry be in their vote for president:

• extremely important- 27%
• very important- 19%
• moderately important- 12%
• not that important- 39%

Along with the 2% who have no opinion, that 39% is the pool from which concentration camp guards could be drawn were Trump to win a second term.

That same poll asked all voters regardless of party if Trump is honest and trustworthy. 36% said he is, 62% say he isn't. On top of that, Pro-Publica just published a devastating exposé on Trump's tax swindling. "Documents," wrote Heather Vogell, "show the president’s company reported different numbers-- higher ones to lenders, lower ones to tax officials-- for Trump’s signature building," part of a pattern Trump has long engaged in.

Donald Trump’s business reported conflicting information about a key metric to New York City property tax officials and a lender who arranged financing for his signature building, Trump Tower in Manhattan, according to tax and loan documents obtained by ProPublica. The findings add a third major Trump property to two for which ProPublica revealed similar discrepancies last month.

In the latest case, the occupancy rate of the Trump Tower’s commercial space was listed, over three consecutive years, as 11, 16 and 16 percentage points higher in filings to a lender than in reports to city tax officials, records show.

For example, as of December 2011 and June 2012, respectively, Trump’s business told the lender that 99% and 98.7% of the tower’s commercial space was occupied, according to a prospectus for the loan. The figures were taken from “borrower financials,” the prospectus stated.

In tax filings, however, Trump’s business said the building’s occupancy was 83% in January 2012 and the same a year later. The 16 percentage point gap between the loan and tax filings is a “very significant difference,” said Susan Mancuso, an attorney who specializes in New York property tax.

...Trump had much to gain by showing a high occupancy rate to lenders in 2012: He refinanced his share of Trump Tower that year and obtained a $100 million loan on favorable terms.

...Those discrepancies were “versions of fraud,” according to Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley. The penalties for false filings can include fines or criminal charges.

The diverging numbers match a pattern described by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, in congressional testimony this year. Cohen said Trump at times inflated assets’ value in documents submitted to lenders in an effort to secure loans. In reports to tax officials, Cohen testified, Trump would lower the value to reduce what he owed.

The focus on Trump’s business and personal financial records has been particularly intense of late. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has subpoenaed a wide array of Trump financial records to investigate claims that the Trump Organization falsified records of hush-money payments to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, who said she and Trump had a sexual encounter. (He has denied the affair.)

Congressional lawmakers are seeking Trump’s personal tax returns, as well as other financial information, as part of their investigation into potential foreign influence on the presidency. Two federal courts have affirmed lawmakers’ right to enforce the subpoenas, and Trump has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jail to the chief? What do you think? So far, no former American president has ever been thrown in prison. Of course, we've never had one as crooked as Trump, have we? I think it's time, primarily because he deserves it-- but also as a warning to future presidents. We don't elect kings... and we won't accept candidates conspiring with foreign powers to meddle in our elections.

Trump-- An Impeachable Offense Nearly Every Single Day!

Over the weekend, Adam Schiff, noted that "The real risk of the Trump administration’s blanket stonewalling of Congress is that it’s fundamentally altered the balance of power that our framers intended. If a president can thwart congressional oversight that means any future president can be as corrupt as they choose and there’s no recourse."

Before dawn yesterday, the Washington Post published a piece by Seung Min Kim and Rachel Bade: Trump’s defiance of oversight challenges Congress’s ability to rein in executive branch. Constitutional crisis anyone? "Lawmakers, including Schiff, have discussed the possibility of trying to fine, censure or withhold money from obstinate Trump officials-- but even those possibilities, they warn, may do nothing... For the first time since Democrats took control of the House last year," Kim and Bade reported, "Trump’s effort to stonewall congressional efforts at oversight have begun to show some cracks. On Thursday, a former State Department official set off a firestorm when he defied the White House’s no-cooperation strategy and provided Congress with text messages detailing the administration’s effort to leverage a meeting with Trump to pressure his Ukrainian counterpart to launch investigations into the U.S. president’s political rivals. And House Democrats are expected to interview other critical witnesses as they try to build a case for impeaching Trump over his alleged willingness to seek the help of a foreign leader for his own political gain. But these rare triumphs are seen as fleeting even by Democrats and serve as a stark reminder of how much the administration has run roughshod over Congress, prompting concerns among constitutional experts and lawmakers that Trump’s hostile stance toward congressional oversight is undermining the separation of powers in a way that could have long-term implications for democracy."

“He is shaking the foundations of the republic,” said Kerry Kircher, who was House counsel for the Republican majority between 2011 and 2016. “He is poking his fingers into all of the places where we have norms and traditions and things that both parties have respected for years, and he has blown all of those out the window.”

...For the 276 days that Trump has faced an adversarial House Democratic majority, his administration has worked systematically to resist congressional investigations and further diminish Capitol Hill’s power to keep the executive branch in check.

Administration officials have ignored subpoenas, blocked witnesses from testifying and even defied the legislative power of the purse stipulated in the Constitution.

...[E]xperts say Trump’s defiance stands apart because of his unwillingness to engage in any oversight. Ever since he vowed last spring to ignore “all the subpoenas,” his subordinates have refused to allow even a single Trump official to cooperate, creating what some experts call a constitutional crisis that Democrats have struggled to respond to and counter.

“It’s just gotten steadily worse with each president being more and more resistant to congressional oversight,” said former Republican congressman Tom Davis of Virginia, who chaired the House Oversight Committee from 2003 to 2007. “The tendency over the last 40 years has been, the president’s party tends to under-investigate and the opposition party tends to over-investigate.”

Davis added: “It didn’t start with Trump; he’s certainly taken it to the next level.”

This year alone, the Trump administration has worked to methodically delay and block about two dozen probes into his conduct as president, his personal finances and the policies of his administration. He has stonewalled on everything from security clearances given to his family to his tax returns. He has ignored compulsory measures on his controversial family separation policy at the border and refused to let his staff testify about what they told former special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

You and I may have some voyeuristic tendencies in our desire to see Trump's taxes. Congress has entirely different reasons. Yesterday, a federal judge in New York dismissed Trump's objections and ruled that his longtime accounting firm must turn over eight years of tax returns as part of a criminal probe of his business dealings led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance. Judge Victor Marrero said he could not endorse such a "categorical and limitless assertion of presidential immunity from judicial process... [which] would constitute an overreach of executive power."

Marrero: "Shunning the concept of the inviolability of the person of the King of England and the bounds of the monarch's protective screen covering the Crown's actions from legal scrutiny, the Founders disclaimed any notion that the Constitution generally conferred similarly all-encompassing immunity upon the President." Nonetheless, just a few minutes later, a federal appeals court granted Trump a temporary stay, meaning he won't have to turnover his tax filings pending a review by a three-judge panel of the appeals court.

Krugman's first choice in his Monday morning tweet about why Trump betrayed the Kurds is why series Members of Congress-- albeit, of course, not Republicans (at least not publicly)-- have been hammering away in an attempt to get Trump's tax returns. It's not about anyone being a yenta; it's about someone else being a serial crime wave.

The Only Thing Trump Has Never Denied Is That He Has A Mushroom Dick

Trump would rather people see him as a tax cheat than as a loser. He's both, of course. If you think his base of drooling morons and racists cares, you haven't been paying any attention at all. They don't. He's their hero. When he said he could shoot someone in the face on 5th Avenue and not lose a supporter, he was 100% correct. But the NY Times isn't publishing for the drooling morons and racists who back Trump, are they? The 5 biggest takeaways from the investigation into his 1985-1994 taxes:

• Trump was deep in the red even as he peddled deal-making advice

Trump: The Art of the Deal came out in 1987. It became a best seller-- and a powerful vehicle for the self-spun myth of the self-made billionaire that would ultimately help propel him to the presidency.

Mr. Trump has long attributed his first run of business reversals and bankruptcies to the recession that hit three years later, in 1990. But the new tax information reveals that he was already in deep financial distress when his master-of-the-universe memoir hit the shelves.

For Mr. Trump, the 1980s were a frenzy of acquisition and construction, buoyed by hundreds of millions of dollars of borrowed money. In 1985, for the first time, Forbes’s “rich list” included Mr. Trump individually, independent of his father. But his estimated net worth according to the magazine, $600 million, included the real estate empire Fred Trump still owned.

With Mr. Trump’s vast debt and other expenses on his properties-- among them Trump Tower and the Grand Hyatt hotel in Manhattan, and two Atlantic City casinos-- his fortunes were already on the way down. In 1985, his core businesses reported a loss of $46.1 million; they also carried over a $5.6 million loss for earlier years.

Because those businesses were generally created as partnerships, they did not pay federal income taxes themselves. Instead, their gains, and their losses, flowed onto Mr. Trump’s ledger. To put his results in perspective, The Times compared them with detailed information that the I.R.S. compiles on an annual one-third sampling of high earners. Most of them appeared, like Mr. Trump, to be businessmen who received what is known as pass-through income.

For 1985, the I.R.S. information indicates this: Only three individual taxpayers in the sampling reported bigger losses than Mr. Trump.

• In multiple years, he appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual taxpayer

The tax results for the years that followed trace an arc of continued empire building-- and gathering loss.

He bought the Eastern Airlines shuttle for $365 million; it never made a profit, and he spent more than $7 million a month to keep it flying. His new Trump Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino, opened in 1990 with more than $800 million in debt, sucked revenue from his other casinos, pulling them along into the red.

And so, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual taxpayer, according to the I.R.S. information on high earners-- a publicly available database with taxpayers’ identifying details removed. Indeed, in 1990 and 1991, his core businesses lost more than $250 million each year-- more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the sampling for those years.

The tax code allows owners of commercial property to write down the cost of their buildings-- a valuable tax shelter known as depreciation. In The Art of the Deal, Mr. Trump cited one of his Atlantic City casinos to show how it works. Built for $400 million and depreciated at a rate of 4 percent a year, he said, it could allow him to shelter $16 million in taxable income annually. But Mr. Trump’s example, meant to demonstrate the magic of depreciation, shows something else: Depreciation alone cannot account for the hundreds of millions of dollars in losses he declared on his taxes.

• He paid no federal income taxes for eight of the 10 years

Business owners like Mr. Trump may also use their losses to avoid paying taxes on future income. Over the years, those losses rolled into a $915.7 million free pass, known as a net operating loss, that appeared on his 1995 tax returns, pages of which were mailed anonymously to The Times during the 2016 campaign.

The new tax information shows how Mr. Trump’s net operating losses snowballed, reaching $418 million in 1991. That was fully 1 percent of all the losses that the I.R.S. reported had been declared by individual taxpayers that year.

And the red ink continued to accumulate apace. In all, Mr. Trump lost so much money that he was able to avoid paying any federal income taxes for eight of the 10 years.

• He made millions posing as a corporate raider-- until investors realized he never followed through

For a time, Mr. Trump was able to stave off his coming collapse with the help of a new public role: He traded on his business-titan brand to present himself as a corporate raider. He would acquire shares in a company with borrowed money, suggest publicly that he was contemplating a takeover, then quietly sell on the resulting bump in the stock price. An occasional quote from a high-profile associate helped burnish the myth.

“He has an appetite like a Rocky Mountain vulture,” his stockbroker, Alan C. Greenberg, told the Wall Street Journal in 1987. “He’d like to own the world.”

From 1986 through 1989, Mr. Trump declared $67.3 million in gains from stocks and other assets bought and sold within a year.

But ultimately, the figures show, he lost most, if not all, of those gains after investors stopped taking his takeover talk seriously.

• His interest income spiked in 1989 at $52.9 million, but the source is a mystery

Amid the hundreds of figures on 10 years of tax transcripts, one number is particularly striking: $52.9 million in interest income that Mr. Trump reported in 1989.

In the three previous years, Mr. Trump had reported $460,566, then $5.5 million, then $11.8 million in interest.

The source of that outlier $52.9 million is something of a mystery.

Taxpayers can receive interest income from a variety of sources, including bonds, bank accounts and mortgages. Hard data on the workings of Mr. Trump’s businesses is hard to come by. But public findings from New Jersey casino regulators show no evidence that he owned anything capable of generating that much interest. Nor is there any such evidence in a 1990 report on his financial condition, prepared by accountants he hired at his bankers’ request.

Mr. Trump’s interest income fell almost as quickly as it rose. By 1992, he was reporting only $3.6 million.

As Chris Cillizza noted for CNN yesterday, it's an emperor has no clothes moment for Señor Trumpanzee. The pig's "entire persona is built on a singular idea: He's the brash, break-all-the-rules billionaire. Like him or hate him, you can't help but admire his massive wealth and the smarts that allowed him to accrue it." What a laugh! And Cillizza points to the Times/ report to prove it: "The numbers show that in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses-- largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade. In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer, The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the I.R.S. compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991-- more than $250 million each year-- were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years."

More than $1 billion in losses in a single decade!

More than double the losses of the nearest other taxpayer in 1990 and 1991!

The single biggest loser (of money) of all American taxpayers in the period 1985-1994!

What the Times story does is something simple but profound: It punctures the balloon-- puffed up by years of Trumpian marketing and salesmanship-- that the President of the United States was some sort of business genius. In fact, Trump was one of-- if not the-- biggest failures (in terms of money making and losing) in the country during a decade-long stretch. His ability to maintain his wealth and, eventually, to grow it was born of taking advantage of a system of tax laws and loopholes friendly to big business.

...Trump explicitly ran for president on the idea that his business acumen gave him a unique-- and more valuable-- perspective on how to run the country than anyone else who had ever held the office (and certainly the other Republicans and Democrats running for the White House in 2016.)

...The logic is simple: I am rich. I made all of this money for myself over all these years but now I want to make the country-- and you, individual voter!-- rich too. Trump was pitching a secularized version of the Joel Osteen aspirational gospel; I can teach you to think and act like me, and, in so doing, you can be just like me!

A huge part of Trump's appeal was encased in the idea that he was the American dream: A super-wealthy guy with a beautiful wife, lots of homes and his own plane with his name on the side. His years as a reality TV star served to codify that idea in peoples' minds; Trump was always getting off a helicopter or riding in a limousine-- in the middle of some major deal that would make him millions.

Thanks to the New York Times, we know now all of that was pure American myth-making. Trump wasn't-- as he tried to portray himself-- a self-made man at all.

His wealth was hugely derived from his father. (Trump famously/infamously said his father, Fred, gave him only a "small" $1 million loan as he began his career as a real estate developer.) And now we know that during a critical period of his business life, Trump was losing more than $1 billion in a 10-year span-- a total that made him one of the single largest losers of money in America at the time.

Put plainly: The story that Donald Trump has been telling himself and the American public for much of his life-- and especially since becoming a presidential candidate in 2015-- isn't true. And it's more than an exaggeration. It's the opposite of what happened. Trump was gifted huge amounts of money by his father. He lost it at eye-popping rates.

Will any of this matter to Trump's supporters or, more broadly, to the 2020 electorate? Probably not. Minds have been made up-- on both sides-- about Trump for a very long time. Facts and reality don't seem to puncture those opinions about the President.

But whether voters vote on this issue next November is, really, beside the point. And the point is this: Donald Trump is not the person he sold himself to be to the American public in 2016. Period.

Tuesday I took an odd call-- and stayed on the phone for two hours with someone I didn't know. He recently wrote the autobiography of another brash New Yorker who happens to be a Trump doppelgänger. Writing the book-- he wrote every single word, just the way Tony Schwartz wrote every single word of The Art of the Deal-- he came to loathe the monster he was helping to mythologize, just as Schwartz had. He told me there wasn't a single word of truth in the book, that it was just one self-serving lie after the other. He described his subject to me as the very definition of a malignant narcissistic sociopath, which is also the way mental health experts describe Trumpanzee.

Malignant narcissism is "a psychological syndrome comprising an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial behavior, aggression, and sadism. Grandiose, and always ready to raise hostility levels, the malignant narcissist undermines families and organizations in which they are involved, and dehumanizes the people with whom they associate." Sound like anyone you know?

By understanding the characteristics of a high functioning sociopath, you can see how this individual may be manipulating and exploiting you. They are usually very charming and clever and, at first, their actions may seem genuine. Over time, their lies, deceptions, and lack of empathy are exposed to reveal their sociopathic nature. These characteristics traits include:

• High IQ: High functioning sociopaths often have a higher IQ than other sociopaths or people without personality disorders. This helps them plan, manipulate, and exploit others.
• Lack of empathy: Difficulty in empathizing with others or understanding the emotional consequences of their actions.
• Narcissism: They often have strong self-love and grandiose self-image. This occurs because of low esteem and delusional beliefs.
• Charming: Although most sociopaths lack empathy, they are capable of mimicking and manipulating emotions to appear charming and normal.
• Secretive: A sociopath doesn't feel the need to share intimate details with others unless it is to manipulate.
• Sexually deviant: Since they lack guilt, remorse, and emotional attachments, sociopaths tend to have affairs and engage in the questionable sexual activity.
• Sensitive to criticism: Despite their lack of empathy, sociopaths desire the approval of others. They feel entitled to admiration and are quick to anger when criticized.
• Impulsive behavior: Sociopaths often live in the moment and will do what they feel is needed to reach their immediate goals.
• Compulsive lying: Disregarding the truth to make themselves look better or get what they want.
• Needing constant stimulation: Sociopaths often get bored easily and need to be actively engaged.
• Addictive Behavior: Their compulsive mindset may result in addiction to drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, or other addictive behaviors.
• Criminal Behavior: Criminal activity associated with sociopaths could include theft, assault, or destruction of property.

Time for a new president? I have a good idea on that... if you're so disposed.

Or do you want 4 more years? If you want for more years of Trump, just help make Status Quo Joe the Democratic nominee. He's exactly what voters don't want. This morning an old friend wrote me a long letter about Biden. She thinks he would be a much worse disaster for Democrats than Hillary was. "As bad as we think Hillary was, Biden would be a MUCH MUCH WORSE candidate than she was. She is gigantically smarter than him, for one, and she would have been much better than him policy wise in several areas-- women’s health issues for sure and racial and social issues, and maybe even protecting the environment. I don’t think she would have compromised about Social Security and Medicare whereas Biden would in a heartbeat (and has historically). She would have been much stronger about health care coverage, too, although perhaps not behind medicare for all-- after all she did try in the 1990’s-- but Biden would be totally awful. Oh, and I have said-- I heard him speak-- she is eloquent and he is a bumbling jerk. He is a lousy speaker and Trump will bully him and make him look stupid quickly and easily, whereas Hillary stood up to Trump and did well in the debates. Biden would fare very poorly-- he is not swift on his feet. As you said, he is not smart by a long shot, he is an idiot."

Good. The second part of her letter is disturbing though, for several reasons: "My friend’s husband, a progressive with whom I talk politics occasionally," she wrote "is now behind Biden all the way. When I entered their house recently he yelled, "This is Biden country." I offered to send him stuff about Biden but he was not interested and said he wouldn’t read it. I am very disappointed in him and have revised my opinion of him-- he is an idiot. Literally and clearly, he is not a smart guy. He keeps up with politics but still, he is not bright. I think he is a rigid thinker and he is feeling relief that he can get behind someone he thinks could beat Trump-- totally wrong, of course. Biden would lose to Trump, unquestionably. His horrible history and poor speaking ability would and should ruin him as a candidate."

Both Biden and Bernie are very much today like they were in the 1970s. Biden is grudgingly apologizing for everything he ever did. Bernie embraces his earliest policies.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

You didn't really think we were ever going to see Trump's tax returns, did you? Putin probably has but he's not a sharing kind of guy. Will someone leak them? Will some genius 12 year old computer hacker come up with them? Where there's a will, there's a way, but who has the will?

Meanwhile, the malignant tumor that is Donald Trump continues to metastasize, spreading its lethal tentacles into every corner of America. The patient is dying while those tentacles infiltrate at will. The worst in Washington laugh in dark corners and the best in Washington play around with words and legal shell games. They all secretly hope that the White House Don never has to give up his tax returns. They long for that precedent to be established so that they won't ever have to show theirs either. Who says our so-called representatives aren't looking to the future?

Who Wants To See Trump's Dumb Old Taxes Anyway?

John Kennedy is a Republican senator from Louisiana. He used to be a Democrat and served as Secretary of the state Department of Revenue and was then elected State Treasurer, as a Democrat, twice before going over to the Dark Side in 2007. Kennedy knows how to read a tax return and figure out where the fraud and corruption lies. And he told a CNN audience the other day that he "would like to see" Señor Trumpanzee's taxes. "I would like to see the President’s taxes, I wouldn’t be adverse to turning over my taxes, I don’t have anything to hide." Almost 70% of Americans agree with Senator Kennedy and would like to take a look at Trump's tax returns.

Richard Neal, Pelosi's sketchy House Ways and Means Committee chair has finally told the IRS to send them over-- something you could have should have done in January. The law is clear: House Ways and Means Committee chair tells IRS to send over taxes; IRS sends over taxes. But this Trump Regime isn't about laws. And they're refusing. Charles Rettig was a Beverly Hills attorney specializing in helping rich people avoid paying taxes. Trump appointed him IRS commissioner in February of 2018 for one reason-- to have a patsy at the IRS would would never turn over his taxes. Rettig has until Wednesday to comply.

Aside from Trump's personal returns, Neal has told the IRS to send over the returns from crooked organizations Trump has used to corruptly enrich himself: Bedminster golf course LLC, the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, DJT Holdings LLC, DJT Holdings Managing Member LLC, DTTM Operations LLC, DTTM Operations Managing Member Cor, LFB Acquisition Member Corp, and LFB Acquisition LLC.

Yesterday Bloomberg ran an OpEd by it's executive editor Timothy O'Brien, who is also author of the 2005 best-seller, TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, the book that claimed Trump's true net worth was $250 million, not the billions he was claiming. Trump sued and the judge threw the suit out of court. Trump appealed and the appeals court judge and the appeals court told Trump to stop wasting everyone's time with his publicity-seeking frivolous lawsuits. Since being installed by Putin, Trump has had to bear O'Brien frequently been invited on TV to make fun of him. Yesterday's column, I’ve Seen Trump’s Tax Returns and You Still Haven’t, is sure to enrage Trump, whose mental health is already fragile. O'Brien begins by asking his readers if they "remember back in early 2016 when Donald Trump, who was still regarded as something of a long shot for the presidency, promised he would disclose his tax returns publicly-- just like every other candidate had done voluntarily since 1973. Trump told Meet the Press at the time, "I have big returns, as you know, and I have everything all approved and very beautiful and we'll be working that over in the next period of time." O'Brien noted, as any serious Trump-watcher would that the "next period of time" turned out to mean "never."

Once Trump became skittish about releasing his returns he landed on one recurring reason for why he couldn’t put them out there, as forever memorialized when he was asked about his taxes during a presidential debate.

“As far as my return, I want to file it, except for many years, I've been audited every year,” he said in Houston on Feb. 25, 2016. “Twelve years or something like that. Every year, they audit me, audit me, audit me.”

An audit doesn’t prevent anyone from releasing their tax returns. If they really want to, they can go right ahead. Richard Nixon-- RICHARD NIXON-- released his tax returns when he was being audited. And it is extremely rare, also bordering on never, for someone to be audited several years in a row, much less twelve. So maybe Trump hasn’t been entirely forthright about his audits. But who knows? When asked during one interview why he thought he had been targeted, he gave a faith-based response. “Well, maybe because of the fact that I'm a strong Christian, and I feel strongly about it, maybe there’s a bias,” he once offered.

In the end, Trump, who regards disclosure of his tax returns as a financial form of open-heart surgery, decided that people should just stop bothering him. “I'm worth more than $10 billion by any stretch of the imagination. Has tremendous cash. Tremendous cash flow. You don’t learn much from tax returns,” he told Meet the Press several months before Election Day in 2016. “But I would love to give the tax returns. But I can't do it until I'm finished with the audit.”

All that talk of an audit may have put Trump in a corner. On Wednesday night, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee asked the Internal Revenue Service to release six years of the president’s personal and business tax returns, attributing their request to Congress’s oversight role. Representative Richard Neal, chairman of the committee, said he was making the request precisely because he wanted to make sure that the IRS was properly auditing Trump.

Trump has already said he isn’t inclined to release his tax returns in accordance with Neal’s request, so this is certain to ignite a legal battle. In the interests of good government and the avoidance of financial conflicts of interest in the Oval Office, I hope Congress wins this one. And I know, for a fact, that it’s not true that you don’t learn much from a tax return. As I noted back in early 2016, I have seen Trump’s tax returns, and I think you should too.

Trump unsuccessfully sued me in 2006 for libel over a biography I wrote called TrumpNation, citing unflattering sections of the book that examined his business record and wealth. He lost the suit in 2011, and during the litigation he was forced to turn over his tax returns to my lawyers.

As I noted in 2016, I think there are five broad categories of disclosure related to his returns that should matter to voters, politicians, and anyone else interested in making sure the White House is conflicts-of-interest free.



1) Income: The returns would offer a gauge of how financially robust the president’s businesses actually are and how much of that money flows to him.

2) Business Activities: Trump has always said that the Trump Organization employs thousands and that U.S. companies shouldn’t relocate overseas and take jobs away from U.S. workers. Tax returns would offer a view of Trump’s global footprint and provide a clearer sense of the size and scope of his company.

3) Charitable Giving: Trump has often bragged about being a dedicated philanthropist. If that’s true, his returns would prove it.

4) Tax Planning: The president uses a lot of shell companies, or LLCs, as part of his business and personal dealings. Some wealthy people have also used shell companies overseas to mask their fortunes and hide the money from authorities. Trump’s returns would show how actively he has used tax havens, if at all.

5) Transparency and Accountability: This may be the most important category of all. Trump is now, arguably, the most powerful and influential man in the world. His tax returns would provide a much clearer picture of potential financial conflicts or pressures that would come to bear on him in the White House. They would also provide a way of monitoring whether the president is more interested in his financial self-interest and deal-making than policy-making.

Neal has only requested six years of Trump’s returns, which is, I think, regrettable. Some of the transactions that may interest investigators the most took place around 15 years ago, when Trump, suddenly flush with cash, went on a shopping spree. He bought and developed golf courses, launched a new hotel and condominium in Chicago, and deepened his involvement with the Trump SoHo Hotel in lower Manhattan.

It is still curious to me how Trump, who always used to finance his transactions with debt, raised the funds to do all that in the mid-2000s and pay cash. To find out, Neal will have to dig deeper than six years ago.