Tuesday, September 29, 2020

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

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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?"





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8 Comments:

At 9:12 AM, Blogger Modestybl said...

"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." That pretty much describes the leadership of both parties.

 
At 9:29 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Can you imagine being a secret service agent assigned to guard Trump in jail i.e. all presidents get lifetime SS protection.

 
At 9:43 AM, Anonymous Hone said...

History is so important. The rich raping everyone else is classic and ubiquitous. It ebbs and flows, and with the Republicans, it has flowed, with many Democrats in heel as well. American citizens need to take our country back.

It has seemed a complete fantasy for Trump and the Republicans to lose, and for Trump, his family and many in his administration to face criminal prosecution. If it does happen, we will be ecstatic, dancing in the streets.

It is obvious that Republicans hate education and critical thinking.

 
At 10:07 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Trump will not go to prison. The elites of this nation will prevent that from happening. Can't show the world that there is equal justice under the law when there is NO rule of law! The law -like paying taxes- is only for the little people. Elites are exempt from its application until convicted in the Court of Elite Public Opinion. Just ask Leona Helmsley and Martha Stewart about that.

 
At 11:46 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

nodding in agreement with all of the above.

But why notice the symptom/consequence of 5 decades of rot and corruption and unbounded greed NOW. Why not notice it when Reagan started the firehose showering the rich with money (to drip down all the way to the bottom... which never seems to happen)? Why not notice it when cheney/W not only opened the flow further but also borrowed even more to pay for wars of choice? Why not notice it when obamanation charged up the firehose even more?

Wrt trump's being owned by foreign interests: Why didn't anyone notice it when Donnie fuckup admitted that they get "a lot" (read: all) of their money from Russia (after also admitting that other banks won't touch them)? Why not bother to read the Mueller report? And why did it take the NYT so long to do reporting on documents they've had for a decade and a half?

Trump can stay out of jail by remaining president (so says Mueller who admits that the DOJ won't indict a sitting president -- unless he's a democrap... maybe).

The speculation about trump's real strategy has included such things as martial law and election fraud. Why haven't any pundits connected this to a 'national security crisis'?

So his motivation for not leaving should be clear. His indebtedness to the Russians has already been admitted. and the numbers flying around should be no surprise since his bid'ness sector has been the hardest hit by the pandemic (in spite of his many emoluments violations by forcing Nazi government business toward his hotels). The numbers make it clear he is a security risk. Admissions have already indicated guilt for treason and fraud.

His tax returns show he has commited tax fraud. And we knew this long before he rode the escalator.

Hone says: "American citizens need to take our country back." Well, yes, this is true. However, with the democraps equally guilty of both enriching themselves at the expense of the rest and all of their future offspring, as well as guilty of refusing to remedy a single such thing done by the Nazis, I would ask Hone how the FUCK will electing democraps ever "take our country back"?
Sadly, if the past few years is any indication, Hone has no answer to this. Neither do any of the other potted plants who reflexively vote for democraps because they are not Nazis (in label anyway. biden has everything in common with trump ideologically and nothing in common with the Democrats of FDR's era, except maybe racism).
Hone also says that Nazis hate critical thinking. Yes, this is also true. But it is also true of everyone who still votes for democraps in spite of 50 years of democrap refusals to do anything at all they get elected to do.

It all comes down to voters. And voters have had shown no potential to make anything better for 50 years. And while voters have never forced anything to get better, the parties they keep electing have made sure everything (for the bottom 99.99%) keeps getting worser and worser and worsest.

thus, trump and biden and $hillbillary and pelo$i and $cummer and Moscow's bitch... all of them are symptoms/consequences of a system that encourages minority rule (and corruption, fraud and shunning of the rule of law) and all voters being far too stupid and evil to make it change.

We unseated cheney/W but we never undid their proto-naziism. And when the useless, feckless, corrupt neoliberal fascist democraps refuse to do what they were elected to do, they'll suffer another slaughter (as in 2010 - 2016) and the Nazis will pick right up where they left off. again. still.

nothing will ever get better if all you voters ever do is swap today's Nazi with today's do-jack-shit democraps. because those democraps will lose next time and an even worse Nazi will replace him.

and one of the next couple of such elections will be the last as the Nazis will tire of the charade of elections.

and voters will never know what hit them... because potted plants don't even know they are alive.

 
At 12:54 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Vote Jack Shit 4 Pres!!

: )

 
At 2:20 PM, Anonymous Hone said...

Yes, above, I do not have the answers. Not at all. Sorry, very sorry to say. I wish fervently that I did.

 
At 3:17 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Neither do I, Hone. But I will do the right thing and NOT vote for trump nor biden.

I sincerely hope you search your soul to come up with the right thing for you to do.

I don't know how much longer this place will survive with only democraps ever being elected as alternatives to Nazis. It cannot be much longer.

 

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