October 26, 2018: Should've Had Hart, Monkey Business, At All Cost

"We haven't had a free election in this country for a long time."
                       ---from "The Quotations of Chairman Joe"

In The Atlantic Magazine comes a report that the 1988 presidential candidacy of former Senator Gary Hart was sabotaged by Rescumlickan dirty trickster Lee Atwater.(1) Hart, for those of us old enough to remember, was an up and coming star turned political meteor by the machinations of the Rescumlickan slime machine. 

Like so many of us, he had cut his teeth in the brief and tragic campaign of Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968, and, like Bill Clinton had worked for Senator George McGovern, managing his campaign for president in 1972.  He went on to serve in congress, representing Colorado in the United States Senate. Hart, young, attractive, articulate and Kennedyesque, had achieved national stature, working hard to become a universally recognized authority on national security. 

In 1984, Hart challenged the moribund Walter Mondale of Minnesota for the Democratic Presidential nomination in a campaign very reminiscent of Bernie Sanders challenge to the mossback Hillary Clinton in 2016.  Like Clinton, Mondale was the choice of the party regulars, but unlike Clinton the party chose to field the former Vice President under the defeated Jimmy Carter against Ronald Reagan who had administered the beating just four years previously.  At the Democratic convention, Hart supporters, reading the handwriting on the wall, put targets on their shoes.  Sure enough, when the votes were counted Reagan carried 49 states, leaving the nation to ponder what might have been.

Certainly the Democrats would have had a more articulate and forceful champion.  Gary Hart would never have stood dumbfounded in debate with the senile old actor as the spokesman of television's  Death Valley Days charged falsely (it is always, it seems, falsely with these Rescumlickans) that the United States had unilaterally disarmed under Jimmy Carter.  Hart would have rushed to the defense of our military and our nation, not to mention of our former president who had actually reversed the trend and increased military spending as a percentage of GDP, overturning a legacy of the nation's reactions to Viet Nam, Nixon and Watergate. 

Imagine a polished, poised, articulate and confident Gary Hart on the podium facing the rambling and increasing incoherence of a man that all but drooled on stage.  But it was not to be.

But Hart had established his Bona Fides and by 1988 was seen as the clear front runner for the Democratic nomination, a prospect that the Rescumlickan establishment found deeply unsettling.  What to do?  Sabotage his campaign.

From the bowels of the Young Rescumlickans came the likes of Lee Atwater and his disciple Karl Rove, young acolytes to the new religion and totally without ethical bearing.  Practitioners of the politics of unlimited political expediency acting in the guise of Machiavellian 'realpolick',  and confusing calling with mendacity while making an ethic of greed, they set about doing their worst.

Their worst, in this case, was a confession by Atwater of arranging the scene that put Gary Hart and Donna Rice together on a boat called Monkey Business. 

It is difficult to imagine a reported affair between a politician and a young woman being taken so seriously, but this occurred well before the Republicans had coarsened the language and lowered the political bar of accepted behavior.  In my youth, for instance, it was unthinkable that a man who had divorced his wife would even be considered for the presidency.  Indeed, it kept the likes of Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller out of the White House. 

Normally, one's sex life would have not been reported but, since Watergate, young would-be Woodward's and Bernstein's roamed the land considering everything fair game. 

Hart, it must be confessed, had a reputation for being a lady's man.  But he challenged the press to follow him around--which is exactly what they did. 

In a 'gotcha' moment, the press obtained a photo of the young Miss Rice sitting on the candidate's lap dockside next to the Monkey Business leading to a national scandal.  Later reporters from the Miami Harold supposedly caught Miss Rice going into the Senator's Washington apartment and not exiting the building, apparently staying the night--all this while Hart's wife Lee was out of town.

It transpires that some political junkie named Broadhurst, who had tried unsuccessfully to ingratiate himself into Hart's inner campaign circles, needed money.  He reportedly like to put on a show, freely spending and gambling.  Atwater found his man.  Arranging for Broadhurst to invite Hart on his boat and then tell the candidate that the boat was unavailable, transferring the party to a boat with a more salacious and headline-grabbing name Monkey Business--Broadhurst then arranged for young ladies to join the group. 

Hart described the encounter saying that he was sitting on this piling dockside when all of a sudden Miss Rice jumped in his lap and her friend snapped a picture of the two.  Later, Broadhurst arranged Rice's trip to Washington, tipping off the Herald.  The press recorder her arriving through the front door, but did not know that there was a back door to the building and Hart, suspecting something amiss, sent her out the rear entry. 

All of this Atwater confessed to his counterpart in Hart's 1988 campaign as he was dying of cancer some 30 years ago.  He was making amends for the damage he had done. 

And, indeed, the damage was considerable.  Where would the nation be if there had been no Pappy Bush, no communications to the Iraqi government that it was a matter of no concern what Saddam would do with Kuwait--triggering the Gulf War.  Without George Bush the Greater there would have been no Bill Clinton.  There would have been no George Bush the Lesser. 

This is but part of the legacy of the Rescumlickan campaign tactics.  The country is numb and now paralyzed by them. From voter suppression, the return of Jim Crow, the falsifications and outright boldfaced lies, these are the symptoms of the cancer that is the modern conservative movement.  Power by any means, power at all cost. 

"An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh"

Impeach and Imprison.

______________________
(1). Fallows, James. "Was Gary Hart Set Up?" The Atlantic November 2018. Pages 26-29.

October 24, 2018: Parasite and the Host, Into the Fun-house Mirrors, Down the Rat Hole

“Our Caesar Disgustus needs a good lie like a parasite needs a good host”

                                          ----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

In a desperate attempt to keep control of the Congress, and prevent a legitimate full-scale investigation into his corruption, our Caesar Disgustus has become more revolting.

Dialing up the demagogy our modern “Willie Stark” is “spewing dark warnings about a Democratic mob clamoring to usher in an era of open borders, rampant crime, social chaos and economic radicalism.

“As is so often the case,” writes the editors of The New York Times, “Mr. Trump is not letting reality interfere with his performance. At a rally in Nevada this weekend, the president told the crowd that Californians were rioting to 'get out of their sanctuary cities'. (They aren't.) He also suggested that Democrats will soon be looking to hand out free luxury cars to illegal immigrants. (They won't.) 'Give 'em a driver's license. Next thing you know, they'll want to buy 'em a car,' he riffed. 'Then they'll say the car's not good enough, we want—how about a Rolls-Royce'”. (1)

On “Twitter” when the birdbrain isn't insulting someone (usually a woman like former Porn Star Stormy Daniels) he draws the boldface lie. So he spends his early hours “tweeting” endlessly about how he is going to defend the Obamacare protections against pre-existing conditions when his Justice Department has refused to defend the measure as it is being litigated in federal court as a consequence of a suit brought by 18 Republican attorneys general. Actions which give lie to the johnny-come-lately defense of the measure by not only Disgustus but several congressional candidates as they have discovered that their much ballyhooed tax cut gains no favor with the majority, and they have nothing else upon which to stake a claim to office. Desperate they follow the example of their Supreme Leader, falsely laying claim to Obama and Democratic achievement while accusing the Democrats of wanting to destroy what had cost them the majority to build. The universe stands on its head as we gaze into the fun-house mirrors.

The scum have been reduced to draconian measures involving not only purging voter lists, holding up absentee ballots, and the usual outrages attendant to every election, but they have, it seems, outdone themselves in repulsiveness. For instance in Georgia by stopping black congregants on their way from church to the ballot box and pulling them off the bus and informing them that they must turn back. We haven't seen anything this brazen since the sad days of Jim Crow.

But the big ace-in-the-hole is the lie...the big lie..the little lie...hell any lie will do.

We are faced not only with the daily stream of boldface lies coming from this White House, but are now confronted with the video of a group of refugees fleeing Central America now in Southern Mexico heading north. They number about 7,000 strong.

“The highway is for gamblers
better use your sense
and take what you have gathered
from coincidence”
                       ----Bob Dylan “It's All Over Now, Baby Blue”

Is it mere coincidence that this throng is now gathered and marching north? It makes a great visual for the former 'reality' television star. Painting the refugees as a 'mob', he invokes images of an invading army, complete with bad hombre's hell-bent upon rapine and pillage. He's said, without any supporting facts whatsoever, that not only are the Democrats and/or the boogeyman George Soros are responsible but that there are middle eastern terrorists among them. Disgustus went so far as to suggest the need to call out the army and do battle, as in some central American Armageddon.

I suggest that it is no mere coincidence. When Disgustus accuses someone else, the deed is invariably done by his own hands. What he is really saying is that he and his minions are organizing this march—for someone must organize the logistics for such a number. How else can he waive the flag when migration, although experiencing a recent spike, is still far below what it was at the turn of the century. How else can he enrage his minions when the facts are that there has been, over the last several years, a net migration out of the United States and back into Mexico and Central America?

But then, again, this is the post-information world of Donald John Trump, where fantasy daily becomes reality and where we are all sucked down the rat-hole of this national nightmare.

“Look out, Ma, the saints are marching through
and it's all over now, Baby Blue.”

“An' Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

____________________

1. Editors. “Mr. Trump Is Lying Up a Storm” The New York Times. Tuesday, October 23, 2018: Page A22.

October 23, 2018: Glass Onion, There is No Truth, Greed Runs Riot

“I told you about strawberry fields

you know the place where nothing is real”

                                              ---The Beatles “Glass Onion”

The carnival barker has drawn us into the house of mirrors, that place where nothing is real; or, as Disgustus' confidant Rudy Giuliani has told the nation, there is no truth.

Disgustus has further moved to isolate this country from the rest of the world, announcing this week that he is unilaterally withdrawing from an arms agreement reached between Reagan and Gorbachev thirty years ago. Citing Russian “cheating”, Disgustus announced that we are withdrawing from the pact that had eliminated the development and deployment of short and medium range missiles in Europe, which had given the continent some greater measure of security since it sits geographically on the doorstep of one of the great nuclear powers. Here we have yet another pillar kicked from beneath the structure of international security leaving Europe, and the world, to question the reliability of the United States.

It is strange that we have heretofore heard nothing about any alleged Russian violations, even leading up to this radical departure from U.S. Foreign policy. In any case the action plays directly into the hands of the Kremlin, serving Putin's strategy of dividing, destabilizing and weakening the western alliance.

The action is sure to kick-start a new arms race, not to mention a looming new cold war, only this time with China as a third-party in the mix, making geopolitical calculation all the more complicated and capricious.

Disgustus has now led us out of the Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Agreement, the Transpacific Partnership Agreement, and now a nuclear missile agreement. He has started a trade war with our allies and threatened to pull out of the World Trade Organization. He has cut funding to international agencies and the United Nations and announced to the world that no accord supersedes a frighteningly narrow national self interest. Our Caesar cannot build; he can only destroy. Disgustus is all about vandalizing.

In an interview earlier this week Vladimir Putin, while praising tRUMP, observed that the United States has lost its preeminent position in the world; a development welcomed by the Russian leader. Saying that he couldn't understand why the critics of Disgustus complain that he doesn't listen to anyone, the Russian assured his audience that when he speaks, our Caesar is all ears.

Every poll taken in the last two years reflects a steep decline in how the rest of the world views this nation. America is no longer seen as aspirational; but rather as transactional and, far too often, confrontational. The tRUMPists betray their disbelief in America as exceptional, opting instead for a Machiavellian “America First” mentality, wherein we are just another snake in the snake-pit.

This loss of prestige in the world is not without cost. It has strained our relations with our allies. It has weakened international institutions. It has rendered nearly worthless any agreements entered into by this country as we declare ourselves no longer bound by them.

“I told you 'bout the fool on the hill

I tell you, man, he's living there still”

Nowhere is this more serious than our husbandry of mother Earth. As the United States, in deep denial, further withdraws into self-imposed isolation, mother nature—the last revolutionary—is organizing her armies. This year saw record forest fires in the Western United States and in the rain forests of the Northwest and Canada's British Columbia. The hurricane season recorded the greatest number of severe storms in the Eastern Pacific on record. Glaciers and the polar ice caps continue to melt. The great Barrier Reef is dead, as is the Black Sea, most of the Baltic, and much of the Mediterranean. And in the ocean off the California coast the purple urchin is devouring Northern California's kelp forests, destroying yet another ecosystem. (1)

But in Donald tRUMP's America there is no room for truth, and certainly not “inconvenient truth”. We live in a post-informational society, where up is down, in is out, black is white, and where one is liberated and free to oppose anyone or anything that questions your right to whatever is in your narrow, short-term, personal interest. A nation that now embraces coal and asbestos. A place where greed runs riot.

It is idiocy by original definition (2). It is the death knell of the Republic.

“fixing a hole in the ocean

trying to make a dove-tail joint
looking through a glass onion”.

“An' Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

_______________

1. Pierre-Louis, Kendra. “A Purple Pest Is Chewing Up Ocean Forests” The New York Times. Tuesday, October 23, 2018: Page A1 & A12.
2. See previous post: December 2, 2014: Generation of Swine, The Idiot, Bad Citizenship

October 18, 2018: Any Means Necessary, Nefarious and Infamous, Get Out of Town

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's nefarious decision rendered in the now infamous “Citizens United” case involving limits on campaign contributions, then President Barack Obama chastised the court warning that money would soon drown nearly all other political expression and become a threat to our republic. Justice Samuel Alito, sitting front and center, was seen shaking his head and muttering the word “no” in opposition. Alito, who has never stood for election and has never held responsibility for governing can be forgiven his ignorance if it weren't so ideologically inspired.

This decision, as well as the gutting of the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act, reasoning, falsely, that the country had outgrown the need for federal supervision of the electoral process have laid the groundwork for the systematic manipulation of a determined minority in this country to silence the majority. All this to serve the interests of malignancy and greed.

The ink had not yet dried on the effective negation of the Voting Rights Act when states like North Carolina and Georgia, quickly followed by more than a score more, were introducing voter I.D. Laws using the wholly bogus claim of widespread voter fraud to erect barriers to those who generally vote to fetter capital and demand services. As time went by, even these measures weren't sufficient as the conservative drive to service only the top one percent kept running up against an albeit smaller but solid wall of opposition. Gaining majority in congress through crass gerrymandering, and electing two 'presidents' via the electoral college has give the scum control of the entire federal government, but so unpopular is the agenda of the political wrong that they have had to resort to shredding congressional rules and procedure to get even their ill-considered tax cut passed, normally—because it is the only thing Rescumlicans are able to do consistently—a “slam-dunk”.

Indeed, the scum had to run riot over the senate rule requiring 60 votes for a Supreme Court nomination because the choices presented were so unpopular.

How then to hold unto power. Simple. In the absence of effective federal oversight states have gone about gerrymandering districts and purging voter lists as the means to silencing the opposition. Earlier this year the court upheld a state law passed by the Rescumlican-dominated Ohio legislature purging the state's voter rolls of over 400,000 voters because they vote only in presidential election years. The court, employing the ever more frequent use of judicial levitation, reasoned that somehow exercising your political right not to vote mid-term or off-year elections invalidated your registration.

Of course, Democrats and the young tend to vote in higher numbers in presidential election cycles and, therefore, by employing this bit of political legerdemain, the conservatives are able to further strip the rolls in places like Ohio and Florida of hundreds of thousands of voices in opposition.

It get's worse. In the South hundreds of polling places are being closed, all most all in heavily black or Democratic precincts, causing voters to trek miles to the polls. In Dodge City, Kansas, a city now with a majority Hispanic population of 27,000, and over 7,000 registered voters, there was one polling place. Normally a polling place accommodates roughly 1,200 voters. This has, in recent years, led to long lines requiring hours of time to cast one's ballot. That wasn't good enough for the scum running the state. Due to the disgust with Disgustus, solid Rescumlican Kansas is experiencing highly competitive political contests for the first time in decades. What to do? Well in Dodge City, you get out of town.

That's right, they've moved the single polling place out of town, and over a mile from the nearest bus stop. And, because the scum control the state government and nobody in Washington is watching, there is nowhere for the good citizens to turn.

Then there is North Dakota where Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp is facing an uphill fight to keep her seat. She narrowly won last time around by about 3,000 votes, the margin largely determined by two Indian reservations that voted heavily in her favor. Answer: concoct a laser strike at the Native American population by requiring that all new Voter I. D.s require street addresses. Many on the reservations don't have street addresses, but post office box numbers instead. Passing this requirement on the eve of the balloting is designed to insure that thousands will come to vote only to be turned away.

This is how the scum—in addition to their usual tactics—plan to hold on to power. This is what happens when your leader is a fraud and so is your claim to represent the people.

Meanwhile the Rooskies are still at it and, reports are filtering in that the Chinese and even the Saudi's are joining in the manipulations of our coming election.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

October 17, 2018: Gravedigger of the Republic, Serious Malignancy, Distopian Nightmare

“Donald J. tRUMP is the gravedigger of the republic.”

                            ----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

Was it simply tRUMP's much observed proclivity toward hyperbole, or a naked appeal to the dispossessed, that animated his inaugural address? Gangs roaming the streets, boarded up storefronts, populations huddling in fear. America as a vast wasteland. It was an ugly Distopian vision delivered by an ugly Distopian man. But given the reaction of the new administration to the reporting on crowd size, his speech was quickly dismissed as the rant of a madman.

Perhaps it was, but it might have been the harbinger of a more serious malignancy.

What I'm referring to is psychological 'projection', a condition that I have noticed is rather pronounced in the personality that possesses our present Caesar; a trait that renders him disgusting.

Disgustus, it has been observed, has the annoying—but effective—habit of projecting unto others his own shortcomings. Hillary is “crooked”, reads as an admission of his own crookedness. His assertions that Maxine Walters and others are “Low I.Q.” or “Dumb”, confesses his own intellectual handicaps. He accuses his adversaries of being corrupt as he stands neck deep in money laundering, racketeering and profiting from public office. The election is “rigged”, meaning, of course, that he and his enablers are the ones who rigged it. Hillary now stands accused of colluding with the Russians when we all know it was Disgustus and his Republican cohorts who stand guilty of sedition. Whatever he says about others can only be about himself because he sees nothing but himself. You get the picture.

He can't help himself, for he is eternally mesmerized by his own image. He sees nothing but what is before him as he stands transfixed in the mirror. It is all he knows of the external world. And, since the only image he sees is of himself what he describes is revealing. By venting his spleen Disgustus unwittingly tweets the essence of his soul. Twitter, it can be said, is for Donald tRUMP a ruthlessly revealing instrument, showing the entire world what a petty, vindictive, little, ugly and malignant man he is...

What, then, can we make of the inaugural address? The tales of boarded up storefronts, America as a wasteland. Was he simply resonating what are clear realities in certain parts of the country as globalization causes dislocation? Or was this a picture, because he views all of humanity as tRUMP writ large, of where he must lead the country? For if everything is an extension of Donald tRUMP, and the soul of Donald tRUMP is indeed a wasteland, it follows that America must be laid waste.

One is left to ponder, given two years of savaging every institution, defiling everything and everyone within his reach, disrupting decades of foreign policy, enraging friends and comforting enemies, running the country deeper in debt as he enables those who would shred what is left of the social safety net, and delegitimizing every major institution of governance. The infrastructure of the country is left to crumble; the educational system is in tatters; privateers* are plundering the public domain; the economy rushes headlong unprotected toward the next financial crisis. Was he truthfully describing the America he inherited from Obama—who had a much more legitimate claim to such visions when he took office—or was he subconsciously projecting his vision of America's future?

Given the penchant of our Caesar to project his own failings upon the larger society I suspect that what he was really saying is that this is where he wants to lead us. Welcome to the Distopian Nightmare that is Caesar Disgustus.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison

__________________

• The use of the word 'privateers' has a two-fold meaning; Here meaning a reference to the privatization of the public domain and it's more traditional meaning of someone who is a pirate. Both meanings are meant to apply. A pirate plundering the public domain.

October 16, 2018: Simple Carnival Barker, tRUMP's Castle, Blood-sucking Parasite

On October 3, The New York Times,published a 14,000 word expose on the fraud that is Donald John tRUMP. “President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990's including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents...” (1)

The details, gleaned from tens of thousands of documents, receipts, tax records and interviews reveal the man behind the curtain who, like the character in Oz was, in real life, a simple carnival barker.

As a former motion picture projectionist, I know something about projecting images in space and in time. So potent are these images that it has been observed by more that a few that life in America is like a movie; someone will remark that something that happened feels like a scene in a film or, as Paul McCartney once observed about the “Pretty nurse selling poppies from a tray...she feel's as if she's in a play...she is anyway” . In America, the line between fact and fiction, between what is real and what is not has blurred so much that we have confused celebrity with substance, electing first an actor and now a deeply flawed and corrupt “business celebrity” president of the United States.

We did this because we bought the image. We paid no attention to the 'man behind the curtain'. We did this because in America we are taught to celebrate the celebrity. We are taught that wealth creates substance. So Donald John tRUMP was able to parlay an image of great wealth—and, therefore, accomplishment—as well as his ubiquitous celebrity into national political power.

This is why he is so defensive about anyone who questions his wealth. Once, at a roast, those present were allowed to criticize his wife, his children, his hobbies but he forbade anyone to say anything negative about his presumed wealth. Indeed, tRUMP sued David Cay Johnston over an article he wrote thirty years ago contending that you, the reader, are probably wealthier than tRUMP. Johnston, invoking legal discovery demanded the records. Disgustus withdrew his lawsuit. This maneuver is outranked only by tRUMP's lawsuit against comedian Bill Maher for his claim that Mary Trump found an orangutan more appealing that presumed father Fred. Disgustus got the better of that confrontation but, then, we only have Mary's version to rely upon. In delicious irony Disgustus was forced to produce his birth certificate. But shades if illegitimacy hound anthing involving a tRUMP. In any case, everything about Disgustus now depends upon the illusion of wealth. It is his gateway to celebrity and now political power. Without it, he is what he is—nothing; an Orangutan without robes.

After admitting its role in the creation of the myth, the Times expose makes the first real effort by a major newspaper to set—albeit belatedly—the record straight.

“The Times's investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least 413 million from his father's real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.” (2). Indeed, at the age of 3, Disgustus was getting $200,000 a year from his dad. He was a millionaire by age 8. By the time he was in college he was getting over a million dollars a year from business owned by his father. The tale told by Disgustus that all he got from his dad was a million bucks, which he had to repay with interest, is a boldface lie.

More damning, the report revealed, was that “Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents' real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.”

“ The Trumps paid a total of 52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax records show.”(3) The tax should have been at 55 percent, or over 500 million dollars.

Disgustus chronicler David Cay Johnston, himself a tax expert, has said that tRUMP has a long history of routinely undervaluing properties when the tax bill comes due as well as overvaluing his properties when seeking loans from commercial banks. Through combinations of tax and bank fraud, the tRUMPs have made millions.

Disgustus was aided by his father in many other dubious ways. There was a “previously unreported flood of loans”(4) given to the son, many of which were never paid back. In the 1990's as many of his enterprises were going bust, dad stepped in to bail out his son.

“What didn't fail was the Trump safety net. Just as Donald Trump's finances were crumbling, family partnerships and companies dramatically increased distributions to him and his siblings. Between 1989 and 1992, tax records show, four entities created by Fred Trump to support his children paid Donald Trump today's equivalent of $8.3 million...

“Such was the case with the rescue mission at his son's Trump's Castle casino. Donald Trump had wildly overspent on renovations, leaving the property dangerously low on operating cash. Sure enough, neither Trump's Castle nor its owner had the necessary funds to make an $18.4 million bond payment due in December 1990.

“On Dec. 17, 1990, Fred Trump dispatched Howard Snyder, a trusted bookkeeper, to Atlantic City with a $3.35 million check. Mr. Snyder bought $3.35 million worth of casino chips and left without placing a bet. Apparently, even this infusion wasn't sufficient, because that same day Fred Trump wrote a second check to Trump's Castle, for $150,000, bank records show.

“With this ruse—it was an illegal $3.5 million loan under New Jersey gaming laws, resulting in a $65,000 civil penalty—Donald Trump narrowly avoided defaulting on his bonds”. (4)

“The most overt fraud”, according to the Times, “was All County Building Supply and Maintenance, a company formed by the Trump family in 1992. All County's ostensible purpose was to be the purchasing agent for Fred Trump's buildings, buying everything from boilers to cleaning supplies. It did no such thing, records and interviews show. Instead, All County siphoned millions of dollars from Fred Trump's empire by simply marking up purchases already made by his employees. Those millions, effectively untaxed gifts, then flowed to the All County's owners—Donald Trump, his siblings and cousin. Fred Trump then used the padded All County receipts to justify bigger rent increases for thousands of tenants....

“All told, the Times documented 295 streams of revenue that Fred Trump created over five decades to enrich his son.” (5) These included myriad bogus positions Donald theoretically held within the organization, including property manager, public relations consultant, purchasing agent...

The Times article cites chapter and verse concerning frauds in purchasing and billing, fraudulent transfers of money from father to children, undervaluing properties when it came time to pay real estate taxes or transfer wealth. But there are other dimensions to the fraud that is Donald J. tRUMP not discussed here including the cost to business partners and banks over his several bankruptcies, defrauding clients and customers, and stiffing contractors when it came time to pay his bills.

Red flags should have gone up when Disgustus declared—after proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire—his Atlantic City casinos bankrupt in the early 90's. With all that wealth, why could he simply not bail them out? The truth is that his father tried but, realizing how hopeless was the position his son had created, simply cut them lose lest they cause further damage to the 'empire'.

But the country has quickly moved on the the Kavanaugh hearings and subsequent outrageous allowing Disgustus to demure that all this is “old news”; for those who have ears a classic non-denial denial.

Our little Lord Fauntleroy has indeed made a pig's breakfast of everything he has touched. What has bailed him out has been the eternal patience of his father, the forgiveness of the banks and other creditors, and the family's remarkable ability to avoid the scrutiny of the I.R.S. Disgustus has been revealed for what he is: not simply a misbegotten charlatan, but a blood-sucking parasite in constant search of another host.

This leads us, in due course to Moscow and the Russian mafia, luxurious hotels and expensive prostitutes.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

_______________

1. Barstow, David., Craig, Susanne., and Beuttner Russ. “Trump Took Part In Suspect Schemes to Evade Tax Bills: Behind the Myth of a Self-Made Billionaire, a Vast Inheritance From His Father” The New York Times. Page 1. See also pages A10-A17.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid. page A12.
5. Ibid.

October 15, 2018: The Boldface Lie, Politics as Farce, A Lower Calling

Black is white, up is down, and Republicans are Medicare's defenders”

                                         ---Paul Krugman

So summed up Paul Krugman in last Friday's New York Times. (1). The Rescumlickan Party has gone 'round the bend, from the simple dishonest of political 'spin', to the blatant audacity of the boldface lie.

As Krugman notes, from the party that since Reagan has despised Medicare, going so far as Newt Gingrich shutting down the government in an attempt to force deep cuts in the program, we now have a host of Rescumlickan office holders and office seekers posturing as the champions of Medicare as well as certain provisions in Obama's Affordable Health Care. Take “Josh Hawley, as Missouri's attorney general, is part of that lawsuit against Obamacare's regulation of insurers; but in his campaign for the Senate, he's posing as a defender of Americans with pre-existing conditions. Dean Heller, running for re-election to the Senate in Nevada, voted for a bill that would have destroyed Obamacare, including all protection for pre-existing conditions; but he's misrepresenting himself just like Hawley is.

“And they aren't just lying about their own position. They're also lying about their opponents'. Incredibly, Republicans have spent the years since passage of the A.C.A. Accusing Democrats of wanting to destroy Medicare.”(2)

Then there is Caesar Disgustus. In an opinion piece published in USA Today, Disgustus claimed that he was defending Obamacare's regulations preventing insurers from denying insurance or inordinately raising rates if one has a pre-existing condition—say diabetes, cancer, or heart disease. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions has declined to defend the law against a suit filed by 20 Republican state attorney's general “trying to eliminate protection for pre-existing conditions”.

Then to complete the politics as farce, Disgustus went on to claim in the USA Today piece as well as he has at numerous appearances 'on the stump', that the Democrats want to dismantle the very program that they created and champion. Again, Disgustus didn't invent this—he is incapable of inventing anything—this charge goes back to when Obamacare was created. Obama took money from Medicare to fund the health bill because it was money previously earmarked under Medicare for health care. Obama was simply changing the category in the service of administrative efficiency. But the Scums misrepresented the transfers and claimed, falsely, the Democrats had somehow become Republican. Oh yes, and for good measure, he also charged that passage of 'Medicare For All' a proposal pushed by Bernie Sanders, would reduce the United States to Venezuela.

“As fact-checker Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post put it, 'Almost every sentence contained a misleading statement or a falsehood'. Even the president of the United States isn't entitled to his own facts.” (3)

It is said, by David Cay Johnston and other biographers of tRUMP that he sleeps with a copy of Hitler's speeches on his nightstand. He has learned, perhaps, only one lesson in his life; a lesson that he applies to creating the myths and deceptions that have served him—but virtually no one else around him—very well. If you are going to lie, tell the Big Lie and tell it often. This is also the lesson increasingly employed by his party of followers, going back at least to Reagan's “government isn't the solution; government is the problem”.

Belittling politics makes public service a lower calling. It also makes it easier to float from fact to fiction; from reality to some alternative universe in which Obama was born in Kenya, subsidizing the rich will help the poor, and the Democrats are against health care. It is the demeaning of political discourse and the decay of the public forum. And it's in this fog of confusion that the Scum are robbing us blind.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison

________________

1. Krugman, Paul. “Goodbye, Political Spin, Hello Lies”. The New York Times. Friday, October 12, 2018. Page A23.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

October 14, 2018: Draconian Measures, Dire Straits, A Rough Ride

“It is not wise to piss off mother nature”

                                          ----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

Nearly a half-century ago I read the report of the Club of Rome published in book form under the title World Dynamics. It was the first attempt by a group of world-renowned scientists at creating computer models that would predict—as best we could at the time—the impact of world population on resource depletion, energy use and heat generation, food and water supply, and pollution. All the indicators pointed to disaster by the end of this century unless draconian measures were undertaken. This was before the discovery of the effect of greenhouse gasses and measurable global warming. The models have since been refined to include numerous so-called 'negative feed-back loops'. For instance, decline in the growth of populations has heretofore been the result of rising standards of living because one does not need children for support in old age, and children have been supplanted as needed labor by machines. This has resulted in a trade-off of lower population projections at a cost of higher energy consumption and pollution. Similarly, the melting of the polar ice caps means not only that less sunlight is reflected back into space and that the poles are warming at a faster rate than the rest of the planet, but that the melting of the permafrost releases trapped methane into the air—a greenhouse gas more toxic than carbon dioxide. The same is true as warming oceans release more trapped methane.

The problem facing humanity isn't simply global warming. If one could solve that problem with a wave of one's hand, we would still be in dire straits. We would still be faced with the daunting challenges of population explosion, resource depletion, pollution, food and water shortage and all their various ramifications.

The response, it occurred to me, given the unholy alliance with the Liberal Democratic order and Capitalism, as well as the uncritical adoption by the Marxists and the left of the industrial revolution, will be wholly inadequate. Indeed, given that the entire political spectrum rests upon the assumption that the exploitation of nature is a positive good, civilization as we know it is poised to be blind-sided by a revolt that we are—institutionally and politically, unprepared.

It isn't simply that governance is reactive or reactionary, it's that politically, one cannot disprove a negative. It isn't simply that by the time a palpable majority recognizes that the problems are serious if not dire, it may well prove too late; it is that even if we assume the best case scenario and we move to quickly address these problems, as the crisis is avoided we will constantly find ourselves wrestling with the reactionary forces saying—as the Rescumlickan Party says today—that the problem doesn't exist. Indeed, it never existed and was all the time simply a 'hoax' perpetrated by some international conspiracy designed to oppress. What crisis? It never happened. That it didn't happen because we had taken these draconian steps would be lost on the billions who were asked to sacrifice and the resentments would become manifest.

A milder version of this scenario occurred in the wake of the Dust Bowl. Modern farming techniques had stripped the prairie of its cover exposing the land. The drought of the 1930's created huge dust storms laying waste much of the bread-basket of America making farmers destitute as mother nature laid waste the land. The federal government stepped in, planting trees, creating wind breaks, buying up bankrupt farms and turning the land into federal reserves, taking millions of acres out of production, holding classes to teach farmers more intelligent use of the land. So desperate were the farmers that they, albeit grudgingly, submitted to instruction. These actions took hold and the crisis passed—the first large-scale man-made ecological disaster in the history of the country.

Then, when prosperity changed, farmers went back to their old ways. Larger tractors, for instance, made contour farming impossible. Soon, by the early 50's the dust returned—not quite the disaster of two decades earlier because some of the practices were still in use and much of the federal lands were still managed by the government. But this experience is instructive because it informs us of what will happen even under the best of circumstance. This struggle will be a hard one. It will also be a long one for it demands a new revolution.

A revolution in our politics. Political institutions must somehow have to become pro-active rather than re-active. It also means that much of what needs to be done must be top-down because it involves not only the redirection of major industry but multinational organization. These are problems that transcend the ability of one nation to solve, much the same as pollution of Lake Michigan involves the cooperation of several municipalities and states as well as the federal government. Chicago alone, cannot insure the drinking water.

A revolution in economics. Marx is wrong: the internal contradiction of industrial and post-industrial society is not between capital and labor; it is between the industrial order and the environment. Mother nature is the antithesis to the industrial thesis be it communist, socialist or capitalist industrial production. A new economics based not upon growth but upon homeostasis is imperative. This demands, politically, a more equitable distribution of intentionally—that is, politically determined-- limited resources. It demands a rationing of resources. Here, adopting Marx's categories of “market value” vs. “use value” in determining production would be helpful. Simply because something has 'market value', would not be enough to warrant production. It would also have to have beneficial 'use value'. Under this criteria, a regime would need to be established to pass judgment on a product to license its production. Under this criteria, for instance, the snowmobile for large scale, and guns for universal use would be banned.

A revolution in our religion. We need a new religion. And the sooner the better. A religion that adopts the universal observation that we as a species are a subset of the natural order. We do not control mother nature, she controls us. A religion that does not stand on its head but instead puts its feet firmly back upon the ground. A religion that does not give humanity dominion; a religion in which there is no sky-god and does not confuse god with man. A religion that instead teaches that we have arisen and are one with the earth.

Only then will we have made the first step toward honesty with ourselves; and only by being honest with ourselves can we develop a true respect for—based upon a true understanding of—our place we call home.

It's a tall order and its going to be a rough ride.

October 13, 2018: The Last Revolutionary, Smoke Alarm, His Sorry Role

“Mother nature is the last revolutionary, and mother nature is ruthless”.

                           ---from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

This week the editors of The New York Times wrote an opinion (1) based upon a report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The opinion is a siren call to those in power to pay attention.

The panel “Says the world must utterly transform its energy systems in the next decade or risk ecological and social disaster,” concluded The Times, underscoring the gravity of the report. (2)

Ninety one scientists from over 40 countries were convened at the request of several island countries—all signatories of the Paris Accords—who are rightly concerned about the consequences of rising sea levels due to global warming.

“Fearing that their countries might someday be lost to rising seas, they asked the intergovernmental panel for further study of a lower threshold of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit”, as opposed to 3.6 degrees below preindustrial levels. “The panel's report concluded that the stricter threshold should become the new target. The alternative is catastrophe—mass die-offs of coral reefs, widespread drought, famine and wildfires, and potentially conflict over land, food and fresh water.” (3)

We've got, according to the best evidence, about a decade to get our 'house' in order and, “there is no such thing as a gentle glide path”. The world must go to public transportation, fuel efficient cars and trucks, even diets must change since cows with their constant flatulence contribute 14.5 per cent of the greenhouse gasses in the form of methane. Renewable energy must increase from around 20 per cent today to two-thirds of the world's energy supply and the “use of coal would need to be phased out, vanishing almost entirely by midcentury”(4)

“This will take enormous public and private investment and technological progress, even a breakthrough or two.” (5). In short, it will require political will.

Therein lies the rub. Governments are, by their very nature, reactive rather than pro-active, if not reactionary. It stands to reason, for they have much invested in the status quo. But the status quo, it is becoming increasingly obvious, will not hold; for the status quo threatens to bring about the end of civilization as we know it. If you think migration and war over oil is bad, imagine war over food and water.

But in the United States, long before the emergence of this buffoon we have as Chief Magistrate, a movement has arisen that has made denial it's political mantra. Beginning with the idiot senator Inhofe of Oklahoma who first stood on the Senate floor and denounced climate change as a 'hoax', more and more the Rescumlickan Party has gravitated to the level of environmental No-Nothingism. Deep from the bowels of the evangelical madness that has always lurked just below the surface, a derangement that welcomes—at some fundamental level—the end of the earth, came the Teabaggers who have catapulted into congress men and women with whom one cannot reason when it comes to climate change. But the time Caesar Disgustus was imposed upon us there was already in place an unholy combination of Koch-funded stink-tanks, a cabal of willfully ignorant politicians calling itself the 'freedom caucus', and a billionaire-funded 'astro-turf'(6). Movement posturing as modern-day patriots. Before our Disgustus there were Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich; political arsonists with the social intelligence of room temperature. Indeed, one can cite Ronald Reagan removing the solar panels from the White House roof put there by his predecessor Jimmy Carter. Rescumlickans don't know how to build, only how to dismantle.

“Unfortunately, no alarm seems loud enough to penetrate the walls of the White House or the cranium of its principle occupant...(H)aving already announced that he would withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, having also rolled back a suite of Obama-era efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Mr. Trump thus reaffirmed his sorry role as an outlier in the global struggle against climate change—a struggle very few believe can be won without the enthusiastic participation of the United States”. (7)

And therein lies the rub. We have a major political party in this country, ostensibly representing half the country, lending political—if not intellectual—legitimacy to its policy positions that has made ignorance and greed its mantra. It is willful, belligerent ignorance, and unabashed, naked greed. This is why Noam Chomsky has labeled the Republican Party the greatest threat facing humanity.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison

__________________

1. The Editors. “A Deafening, Piercing Smoke Alarm” The New York Times. Wednesday, October 10, 2018: Page A18
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. “Astro-Turf” means a false or plastic 'grass-roots' or 'bottom-up' movement. False because it is a billionaire organized and funded political movement designed to appear to be the spontaneous outrage of the 'people'. The first known appearance of such a strategy was the so-called Brooks Brothers Riots during the recount of the Florida election returns in 2000 when Rescumlickan congressional staffers came down from D.C. And, posing as Florida residents, packed the County Clerks offices and closed down the recount. The idea then took root a decade later on a national scale when the Billionaires funded buses and organized the 'Teabagger' revolt against Obama falsely claiming he had raised taxes only days after he was inaugurated.
7. . Op. Cit.

October 12, 2018: Paranoia Strikes Deep, In These Swamps, The Fetid Fevers

Paul Krugman, writing in The New York Times, echoes my concern that the “Republicans are an authoritarian regime in waiting.” (1)

Forget, for a moment, the allegations surrounding the Kavanaugh nomination. Focus instead, says Krugman, on “What we saw on the Republican side during and after the hearing: not just contempt for the truth, but also a rush to demonize any and all criticism. In particular, the readiness with which senior Republicans embraced crazy conspiracy theories about the opposition to Kavanaugh is a deeply scary warning about what might happen to America, not in the long run, but just a few weeks from now.

“About that conspiracy theorizing: It began in the first moments of Kavanaugh's testimony when he attributed his problems to ' a calculated and orchestrated political hit' motivated by people seeking 'revenge on behalf of the Clinton's'. This was a completely false, hysterical accusation, and making it should in itself have disqualified Kavanaugh for the court.

“ But Donald Trump quickly made it much worse, attributing protests against Kavanaugh to George Soros and declaring, falsely (and with no evidence), that the protesters were being paid.

“An here's the thing: Major figures in the G.O.P. Quickly backed Trump up. Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate committee that heard Blasey and Kavanaugh, insisted that the protesters were indeed employed by Soros. Senator John Cornyn declared, 'We will not be bullied by the screams of paid protesters.' No” continues Krugman, “ the protesters are not being paid to protest, let alone by George Soros. But to be a good Republican, you now have to pretend they are.” (2)

How did we come to this? Krugman cites, as I have previously in these columns, the work of historian Richard Hofstadter that paranoia has long been a staple of American politics. Krugman cites Hofstadter's account of segregationists insistence that all the trouble was caused by 'outside agitators', mostly Jews. There is, of course, a much longer history. The red scares of the early 1920's and 1950's come to mind.

Conspiracy, widely speaking, has also taken root in the American psyche as a consequence of the Kennedy assassinations and the Viet Nam war. One man's conspiracy can be seen as another man's lunacy, but not all conspiracies are created equal. For instance, a conspiracy to kill Abraham Lincoln is universally accepted fact. A conspiracy to kill Kennedy, however, is seen by all except the Warren Commission and Bill O'Rielly. Nevertheless, it is the commission's view that has held as the accepted version and the public's view that is seen as the collective misapprehensions of the 'tin-hat' crowd. However legitimate the questioning of the Warren Commissions findings, it didn't help that the generation long lost in space and in time has careened in the intervening decades down the rat-holes of endless conspiracies and fantasies from Vincent Fosters alleged suicide to the 'chariots of the gods'.

But there is another element to this not addressed by historian Hofstadter nor contemporary scribes. That is, the role of fundamentalist religion in the creation of the American paranoid. Teaching uncritical thinking, the belief in magic, dubious historical timelines, the belief in strong forces hidden and beyond one's control leads to the hard-wiring of young minds to resist and reject what is plainly before them. This is why it is nearly impossible to 'reason' with these people. They are programmed to be deeply suspicious of reason and reason's handmaiden—fact. It is in these swamps that the fetid fevers of paranoia are born.

“But”, writes Krugman, “the significance of conspiracy theorizing depends on who does it.

“When people on the political fringe blame shadowy forces—often, as it happens, sinister Jewish financiers—for their frustrations, you can write it off as delusional. When people who hold most of the levers of power do the same thing, their fantasizing isn't a delusion, its a tool: a way to delegitimize opposition, to create excuses not just for disregarding but for punishing anyone who dares to criticize their actions.

“That's why conspiracy theories have been central to the ideology of so many authoritarian regimes, from Mussolini's Italy to Erdogan's Turkey. It's why the governments of Hungray and Poland, former democracies that have become de facto one-party states, love to accuse outsiders in general....

“And now senior figures in the Republican Party, which controls all three branches of the federal government...are sounding just like the white nationalists in Hungary and Poland. What does this mean?

“The answer, I submit, is that the G.O.P. Is an authoritarian regime in waiting” (3)

Krugman then cites a litany of tRUMPian behaviors from threatening to imprison political opponents to demonizing the free press, to idolizing authoritarian rulers to challenging the legitimacy of law enforcement. “Does anyone doubt that Trump would like to go full authoritarian, given the chance?

“And who's going to stop him? The senators parroting conspiracy theories about Soros-paid protesters? The newly-rigged Supreme Court? What we've learned in the past few weeks is that there is no gap between Trump and his party, nobody who will say stop in the name of American Values.” (4)

It certainly won't be the most paranoid among the devout—the religious wrong. No. Billy Graham's son Franklin has decreed that our Caesar has, since elevated to the throne, stopped sinning.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison

_________________

1. Krugman, Paul. “The Paranoid Style in G.O.P. Politics.” The New York Times. Tuesday, October 9, 2018. Page A24.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

October 11, 2018: Unprecedented Power Grab, Voter Suppression, A Daunting Challenge

The financial levitation that is the tRUMP empire, well documented as it is in The New York Times, has, nevertheless, been pushed off the front page and the daily news by the Kavanaugh fiasco and hurricane Michael now savaging the Gulf Coast and the Southeastern United States.

The Rescumlickans are about nothing if not power and money. Stealing a Supreme Court nomination from Obama by holding the seat open for ten months and now “ploughing through” (to use Mitch McConnell's terms) the confirmation of a deeply challenged nominee has the GOP quite literally gloating. It has been, in David Leonhardt's phraseology “an unprecedented power grab”. (1)

“The real problem, to be clear, isn't that the governing party won power with minority support. That's always possible in our system. The problems are, first, that the victory depended on illegal activity, and second, that the governing party is exercising power in radical ways.” (2)

Stealing comes easy for both tRUMP and his Rescumlickan Party. Long before he arrived the Scum had become practiced at the art of election chicanery ranging from voter suppression in the last quarter of the twentieth century to the frauds in Florida in 2000 and Ohio and elsewhere in 2004. Today, as we speak, they are about doing the same thing in places like Pennsylvania and Georgia where the Secretary of State has purged a reported 1.4 million people from the rolls--about 1/6 of the registered voters--and is holding over 53,000 absentee ballot requests 75% of whom are African-Americans. In Alabama, the scum have closed numerous polling places as well as Secretary of State offices in the 'black belt'--a string of counties in the middle of the state with a heavy black population—making it almost impossible for citizens to register. In the run-up to the 2016 election in Wisconsin, the Scum opened offices in which one could get your newly required voter I.D. In heavily Democratic Madison only on the 5^th Wednesday of every month—an occurrence that happens only 4 times a year. It is through these measures that the scum have stolen and seek to hold power.

The tRUMP family, of course, has a long history of larceny, feeling quite comfortable functioning with this den of thieves. As detailed in The Times, Fred and Donald, as well as his siblings and his children have been implicated in a host of scams and frauds over the decades. No, Disgustus isn't going to 'drain the swamp' for to do so would destroy his natural habitat.

The scum have every reason to fear the people. They represent nothing like the majority who are appalled and disgusted by not only by Disgustus' behavior but by the actions he has taken. He has savaged not only health care but environmental protections embracing coal and asbestos. Soon, no doubt, he will be pining for the return of lead in gasoline and paint.

It remains to be seen whether the anger and the resistance will be enough to swamp these frauds. It remains to be seen if the opposition can muster enough strength to overcome not only the geographic advantage built into the conservative power base, but the host of voter suppression and the gerrymandering that has taken place over the last decade. The Democrats face a very steep uphill climb, indeed a daunting challenge.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

________________

1. Leonhardt, David. “Yes, Get Angry. Then Get Involved” The New York Times. Monday, October 8, 2018. Page A22
2. Ibid.

October 10, 2018: Fraud and Sham, Richly Documented Expose, Blood-sucking Vampires

“Not a scintilla of verifiable evidence shows that Donald is anything like as rich as he claims.”

                                                    ----tRUMP historian David Cay Johnston

Caesar Disgustus is a fraud and a sham. Many of us have known this for years our understanding of the 'man' having been informed by the reporting of tax authority David Cay Johnston. Johnston has been reporting on Disgustus for the better part of three decades now and, along with Tony Swartz author of “The Making of The Deal”, one of the people who know our 'president' best.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Johnston had this to say in the wake of a blistering 14,000 word article that appeared last week in The New York Times about the nature of the tRUMP 'fortune', and the origins of Donald's wealth. The New York Times reported that Disgustus' father, Fred, funneled the eqivalent in today's dollars of over 413 million dollars to his son through the creation and use of over 295 shell companies designed to transfer wealth without paying estate taxes. It is clear, from the record, that the son squandered most of this money compelling his father to repeatedly step in and rescue the son over one of his many financial debacles.

Here is Johnston's take on the New York Times report:

“Americans were confronted Tuesday with a profound problem, one that challenges our commitment to accountable democratic government and justice. It is an awful truth that we must face now that the New York Times has published a richly documented, 14,000-word expose alleging decades of deeply corrupt Trump family finances.

”After 18 months of interviewing people who worked for or with the Trump family and scrutinizing more than 100,000 documents, the newspaper painted a portrait “unprecedented in scope and precision” of Trump family money, including “outright fraud” that enriched the man who is now the sitting president. Those extraordinary words require us to pay close attention.

“ Leaked financial records reveal decades of calculated tax cheating, according to the New York Times. Father Fred Trump created 295 revenue streams to transfer money to his children, many of which appear to have broken laws. A lawyer for the president claims the published allegations are false and the reporting “extremely inaccurate,” but the reporters cite bank statements, canceled checks, invoices and tax filings that reveal the apparent evasion of close to half a billion dollars of taxes in today’s money.

“In one scheme the value of properties transferred from Fred Trump to his children was discounted by 94%. Prices paid for refrigerators and stoves were inflated 46%, which enabled dishonest tax deductions while cheating people in rent-stabilized Trump apartments by justifying higher rents.

“As that paper’s former tax reporter and a journalist who has covered Donald Trump for more than 30 years, this was no surprise. In 1990 I broke the story that Trump was no billionaire. He called me a liar for months, until he had to put documents in the public record showing he was worth negative-$295 million.

“Not a scintilla of verifiable evidence shows that Donald is anything like as rich as he claims. Candidate Trump said he was worth more than $10 billion, but his 2017 presidential disclosure statement shows just $1.4 billion.

“Yet millions of Americans believe Trump is a modern Midas. They believe the president will lift them out of hard times, after a half-century during which the super-rich flourished and their incomes were mostly flat. The awful truth is that the man in the Oval Office is not a wealth-building entrepreneur, but a financial vampire who extracts cash from enterprises, leaving behind unpaid workers, vendors and governments.

“The president’s father got his start profiteering, to the tune of millions of dollars, from programs to help returning GIs get housing, which prompted President Eisenhower to throw a fit. Donald Trump is already a proven tax cheat. He admitted to sales tax fraud in 1983. He lost two income tax civil fraud trials. His own tax lawyer, Jack Mitnick, testified that Trump’s 1984 tax return was fraudulent.

“Court records show how Trump and his children misled investors in failed condo projects in Baja California and Florida. Trump promised strivers who paid tens of thousands of dollars to attend Trump University that he would hand-pick a faculty and give them a better education than the best business schools. That’s not what happened. In the end, Trump gave back $25 million after insisting he had done nothing wrong.

“A Trump project in New York employed hundreds of workers who were in America without permission, paid them laughably low wages and worked them beyond legal limits. He denied knowledge of the situation, but a judge said Trump’s testimony was not credible. Trump promised to show voters that his immigrant third wife, Melania, always worked legally. Business records show she worked illegally as a model.

“Trump’s longtime fixer, Michael Cohen, is talking to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. So is his former campaign manager, who along with Trump’s first son and son-in-law eagerly embraced the Kremlin’s offer of campaign help. Trump’s first national security advisor has pleaded guilty to being an unregistered agent for Russian interests in Turkey. Son-in-law Jared Kushner sought to use Russian diplomatic channels to communicate secretly with Moscow

“For many Americans the truth too horrible to consider is that Donald Trump could be a criminal, a wildly successful con artist. He may well be disloyal. For those who grasp what Trump is, the corollary truth is that our Constitution’s checks and balances are failing us

“The Republican majority in Congress refuses to properly investigate Trump. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, is rushing a vote on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, whose legal writings indicate he might protect Trump from law enforcement.

“Prosecutors, tax authorities, casino regulators and other government officials appear to have let the Trump family get away with dishonest conduct again and again. Trump has bragged that in return for campaign donations politicians always obeyed his wishes, and it seems many did.

“The latest expose focuses mainly on the 1950s through the 1990s. We need to see Trump’s tax returns, and the books and records behind them, from this century. And if they show cheating, we need to enforce the laws Trump violated.” (1)(2)

From the days when Disgustus' grandfather laid the foundation for the family fortune running a series of whore houses on the West Coast and Alaska, through his daddy's plundering public housing for returning G.I's and his close business ties to organized crime, to the well documented tax evasions it is clear that the tRUMPs have succeeded on the backs of all the rest of us. There is no reason to assume that Donald had an epiphany any time during his lifetime. It just isn't in him. No dollar is to be left ungrubbed. Why then assume that the behavior has ceased? It is time to lift the casket on these blood-sucking vampires and reveal to all the world how they amassed their money and how Donald the 'genius' has squandered it.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

_______________

1. Johnston, David Cay. “Following Trump's money exposes an awful truth: Our President is a 'financial vampire'. http://latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-johnston-trump-cons-and-cheats-20181004-story-html.
2. David Cay Johnston, a former Los Angeles Times and New York Times reporter, is the author of “The Making of Donald Trump” and “It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America.”