Name: Anonymous 2020-02-18 17:33
I'm so sad right now.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/16/black-lives-matter-cashes-100-million-liberal-foun >>357Inside the article it's about "raking in pledges of more than $100 million", rather than actual money, and "a six-year pooled donor campaign aimed at raising $100 million", rather than actual money, while the clickbait title and clickbait url make it look like they actually cashed a cheque. Also the article is from August 16, 2016. Sasuga Washington Times.
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#29_September_2020_(The_corrupter's_loans) -- The corrupter will have to pay $400 million in loans within the next few years, and he may not have that much. No wonder his palm is always open for gifts. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/27/new-york-times-trump-tax-returns-key-findings -- Six key findings from the New York Times' Trump taxes bombshell -- Mon 28 Sep 2020 -- The president pays little, faces hefty audit costs as well as loans coming due soon, and Ivanka is not in the clear -- >>347
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#2_October_2020_(Human_Rights_Watch_Details_NYPD_Attack_on_Peaceful_Protesters) -- *Human Rights Watch Details NYPD Attack on Peaceful Protesters.* It was a Black Lives Matter protest on June 4. The thugs encircled the protesters to force them to remain till after the curfew, at which point the thugs attacked them systematically. -- https://theintercept.com/2020/09/30/nypd-nyc-protests-police-report/ -- A Human Rights Watch investigation found that police deliberately trapped and assaulted medics, legal observers, and peaceful protesters. -- September 30 2020 -- >>342
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#30_September_2020_(Diverting_money_out_of_business) -- The conman's tax affairs illustrate that the US has made it easy for rich "businessmen" to divert money out of a business as an excuse to say it made no profit and owes no tax. -- https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/09/28/new-york-times-trump-tax-revelation-confirms-what-we-already-know -- New York Times’ Trump Tax Revelation Confirms What We Already Know -- Monday, September 28, 2020 -- "The New York Times’ revelation of Trump’s years of dodging taxes confirms something we already know. There are two tax systems: one that most of us follow and another far more generous one for the very rich."
Following is a statement from Steve Wamhoff, federal policy director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, regarding a New York Times report that revealed President Trump paid $0 in federal income taxes in 10 of the last 15 years and just $750 in 2016 and 2017. “The New York Times’ revelation of Trump’s years of dodging taxes confirms something we already know. There are two tax systems: one that most of us follow and another far more generous one for the very rich. “In a detailed report [ https://itep.org/how-true-tax-reform-would-eliminate-breaks-for-real-estate-investors-like-donald-trump/ ], ITEP outlined how tax rules are particularly permissive for wealthy real estate investors like Trump, especially when it comes to when and how they can report losses to wipe out other income.
“Business owners have income from a venture only if it is profitable, so some rules are necessary to recognize when a venture fails to profit. But so-called ‘losses’ allowed by federal tax rules are not what most people think of when they hear the word ‘losses.’ “A business owner can report a loss when expenses exceed revenue, but the expenses that Trump reports are problematic to say the least. For example, some of his reported expenses appear to involve overcompensating family members through ‘consulting fees,’ which can have the added bonus of avoiding payroll taxes.
“ITEP has explained [ https://itep.org/the-cares-act-provision-for-high-income-business-owners-looks-worse-and-worse/ ] why many of the ‘business losses’ reported by the rich exist only on paper and why Congress recently made a mistake when it included a provision in the CARES Act that made it even easier for wealthy business owners to claim these losses. “While it is common for the wealthy to use the tax code this way, Trump is in a league of his own. His losses seem to be, in many cases, more than just paper losses. Anything he is personally involved in tends to lose money. And it is possible that his various maneuvers do, in fact, exceed what is allowed by the law. The IRS may soon find that he owes more than $100 million, according to the Times. “But the fact is that Trump has been able to get by for years with sketchy claims on his tax returns, including his endless business deductions for clearly personal expenses and his claim that a mansion is a business investment despite publicly identifying it as a family residence. Trump’s decades-long ability to avoid consequences for this tax dodging demonstrates that he enjoys a set of rules more generous than anything the rest of us can imagine.
“The New York Times report did not include Trump’s tax returns for 2018 and 2019, the first two years after the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect. The law opened new tax avoidance opportunities for wealthy business owners. “F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, ‘Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.’ As Fitzgerald knew, they often play by their own set of rules. Trump may not be as rich as he says, and he may be losing money by the minute, but when it comes to his taxes, he still fits that description.”
Those are all the rich's way of fighting, fund a militia here, another there.. get some political dissidence going under the guise of charityIf you want me to post the stallman.org entry with some names and amounts of QAnonsense donors, I can do that too in a few days. The fact that billionaires use charities to buy image and pretend they're not tax-evading parasites does not magically invalidate a cause that is otherwise just, merely because of any association with donations from the rich, in the same way that the CIA backing Solidarnosc to help bring down the commie plague in Eastern Europe was right and was not invalidated by the same CIA installing and backing Pinochet's torture regime. The cause of abolishing slavery was also not invalidated by any support from rich northerners. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, [...]" And as for "political dissidence", political action and activism is the best path to achieving things without stepping outside the framework of democracy, and as we've seen with the suffragettes it can occasionally achieve fundamental, positive change.
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#2_October_2020_(Cars_driven_into_Black_Lives_Matter_protesters) -- 104 drivers have driven cars into Black Lives Matter protesters since May 25. Some of them were terrorist attacks, and 39 drivers face criminal charges. Some right-wing fanatics escaped prosecution by claiming they were afraid of the protesters they had driven into the middle of. -- https://eu.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/08/vehicle-ramming-attacks-66-us-since-may-27/5397700002/ -- Cars have hit demonstrators 104 times since George Floyd protests began -- updatedate="2020-09-27T22:55:35Z" -- >>324
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#1_October_2020_(Proud_boys) -- The "Proud Boys" in Portland were few but violent; they attacked three journalists while thugs did nothing to stop them. However, thugs did attack BLM and antifascist protesters, as well as journalists. -- https://theintercept.com/2020/09/28/portland-proud-boys-rally-journalists/ -- Proud Boys Rally Fizzled but Portland’s Cops Went on the Attack -- September 28 2020 -- Dozens of riot cops chased protesters and the press, pummeling them with fists and clubs following an order to disperse.
The Proud Boys claimed that they would bring legions of dedicated patriots to the city of Portland, Oregon, in a powerful show of strength against their anti-fascist foes, but when the moment of truth came on Saturday, the right-wing gang failed to deliver. Despite weeks of hype and deep concerns over the possibility of severe and deadly violence, the organization, which the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as a hate group, drew a modest crowd of angry men and women, whose brief gathering mostly consisted of swilling cheap beer and hard seltzers and assaulting journalists in a park on the edge of town. The absence of large-scale violence, which has so often defined the group’s forays into Portland over the past few years, came as a relief to a city that has been blanketed in wildfire smoke in recent weeks and targeted by the Trump administration as an “anarchist jurisdiction” for its nightly protests against police brutality. In the run-up to the rally, Gov. Kate Brown declared a state of emergency and established a law enforcement task force led by the Oregon State Police, which reportedly deployed approximately 500 officers to police the event. At most, several hundred people turned out for the demonstration, a far cry from the 20,000 participants and observers the Proud Boys had estimated in their request for a permit — the city denied [ https://www.opb.org/article/2020/09/23/portland-refuses-permit-for-right-wing-groups-sept-26-rally/ ] the request, citing coronavirus restrictions that cap group gatherings at 50 people.
“The events over the weekend show that law enforcement knew how to keep the far-right groups from unleashing violence in Portland all along, they simply chose not to in previous instances,” Michael German, a former FBI agent, now at the Brennan Center, said in an email to The Intercept. What the event lacked in numbers, it made up for in paranoia and talk of persecution. Billed as demonstration against “domestic terrorism,” the day’s speakers focused their rage against the left broadly and against the anti-fascist movement known as antifa in particular. Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who was charged with two counts of murder after killing two Black Lives Matter protesters and wounding a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin, came up often, as did Aaron Jay Danielson, a supporter of the far-right group Patriot Prayer, who was shot and killed by a self-described anti-fascist in Portland last month. “This is a war, folks, and we have got to fight back,” Carol Leek, the founder of Oregon Women for Trump, told the crowd. Connecting the day’s events to President Donald Trump’s reelection efforts, Leek railed against the threat of encroaching Marxism and the dangers of “Black supremacy,” while self-styled Proud Boy security guards roamed through the crowd questioning journalists about their affiliations and attempting to intimidate those whose answers they found unsatisfactory.
Police in tactical gear were mustered near overpasses outside Delta Park on the northern edge of the city, but with the exception of occasional visits from a handful of liaison officers, the Proud Boys were largely permitted to police themselves. Attendees were well-armed: carrying rifles, sidearms, knives, bats, bear spray, and at least one electrified Taser shield. Nearly all of the demonstrators wore some type of tactical gear. The letters “RWDS,” an abbreviation for “right-wing death squads,” were commonly seen on patches, and there was an abundance of pro-police “Thin Blue Line” flags fixed to pickup trucks, body armor, and the merchandise table. A handful of gunmen ran a checkpoint near an entrance to the park, and an RV in a Walmart parking lot appeared to serve as a weapons and body armor depot for some of the protesters. Neither attracted attention from the police. Demonstrators also received a load of branded shields from a man driving a box truck who said he was with a group called American Wolf. One of the shields was scooped up by a man who looked to be a middle-aged skinhead, dressed in heavy black boots with white laces. Another shield ended up in the back of a truck that was later pulled over by police. Law enforcement seized several guns from the vehicle and a third shield spray painted with the words “FUCK BLM.” Two of the men in the truck were given criminal citations for possession of loaded firearms in public. Authorities also said they were investigating an incident [ https://www.thedailybeast.com/police-investigate-assault-on-livestreamer-after-far-right-proud-boys-descend-on-portland ] in which a man was filmed kicking a livestreamer in the face — one of at least three instances in which demonstrators were recorded putting their hands on members of the media. The victim said he was also punched in the head and received a concussion. The assailant, who was also photographed chatting with state police, gave a casual TV interview after the attack.
German, who has closely tracked law enforcement response to far-right violence in Portland under the Trump administration said the means for protecting the public have been long clear. “It’s not as if it required aggressive police action, just proper planning, a presence, and a few token citations and weapons seizures made a huge difference,” he said. “Yet, law enforcement still left room for criticism. Allowing the militants to man armed checkpoints and harass and beat journalists and others without interference reinforces the idea that the police condone these armed out-of-state groups coming into Portland and intimidating, threatening, and assaulting residents.” Days before the Proud Boys rally took place, The Guardian >>285 and Bellingcat, an investigative journalism organization, reported on a trove of leaked chats obtained by anti-fascists in Eugene, Oregon, which showed a network of Pacific Northwest-based pro-Trump and pro-law enforcement activists planning to engage in acts of targeted political violence, including the assassination of elected officials. “People will get shot, stabbed and beat,” one of the members of the so-called Patriot Coalition said in a leaked message. On Saturday, one of the participants in the chat group, a man named David Willis, who had identified legal advocates and the press as “targets,” threatened a reporter while holding a paintball gun. Shane Burley, the experienced Portland-based journalist and author whom Willis targeted, later described the demonstration as “the most paranoid far right-rally I have ever been to.” Despite the low turnout, the Proud Boys sought to paint a picture of a mission accomplished. Standing on the stage with a sunburned face and wide grin, Proud Boy leader Joe Biggs said the rally gave him a “boner,” while National Chair Enrique Tarrio opted for a more measured tone, praising the governor’s decision to declare a state of emergency in interviews with reporters. Both men were involved in ordering the physical removal of an independent journalist. According to a detailed, firsthand account published by Courthouse News Service, the two men and their organization engaged in extensive collaboration with law enforcement throughout the day, including meeting with the FBI Saturday morning to discuss the violent chats that had leaked online. Biggs told the news service “They’re not with us,” referring to participants in the chat, and said the meeting with the bureau was part of an ongoing dialogue with the feds.
“We’ve talked to state and federal law enforcement for every event we do,” he said. “The feds say, ‘you’re the only group out there that’s willing to sit down and tell us stuff.’ They know every move we do before we do it because we tell them.” The demonstration wrapped up ahead of schedule and many of the Proud Boys drove across state lines to celebrate their demonstration in Washington state. Two separate anti-facist and anti-racist demonstrations a short drive from the scene drew considerably larger crowds. Last month, a caravan of amped-up Trump supporters drove into downtown Portland and opened fire on counterprotesters with bear spray, paintballs, and live rounds. As day turned to night, speculation swirled as to whether the Proud Boys would return to the city in similar fashion — they did not.
In the end, it was the local police who were responsible for violence in the streets, as dozens of riot cops chased protesters and the press from Multnomah County Justice Center downtown and pummeled them with fists and clubs following an order to disperse. Ahead of Saturday’s rally, roughly 50 police officers assigned to the Portland Police Bureau’s Rapid Response were deputized as federal marshals, allowing members the local police to bring federal charges against individuals accused of assaulting an officer. The move is seen as an end-run around District Attorney Mike Schmidt, who in August established a policy in which his office would decline to prosecute certain protest related offenses. “The perception that the police favor the far-right agitators was further informed by the sharp contrast with how the police treated those protesting police violence and racism later that day,” German, the former FBI agent, said. “That they would modify the law enforcement command structure specifically to avoid restraints on police violence ordered by courts and local political leaders demonstrates complete disregard for the law, democratic restraints on police power, and the security of Portland residents from unaccountable law enforcement actions.” Among the members of the media who received the worst of the authorities’ treatment on Saturday night was 73-year-old John Rudoff, a beloved local photojournalist, who was tossed onto the concrete on video. In a statement posted on Facebook Sunday, the veteran journalist said the helmet he was wearing may have saved his life. “The cops need to understand that an action like this — shoving a guy down on the cement with no warning — can fracture a hip or an arm or a skull, and can be a life-ending or career-mobility ending move,” Rudoff wrote. “Actions have consequences; and they should gauge some of their less-warranted actions accordingly.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection -- Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others.[1] For example, a bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target. It incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping.[2] Projection has been described as an early phase of introjection.[3]
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/end-child-marriage-u-s-you-might-be-surprised-who-n1050471 ✞🐘✞ End child marriage in the U.S.? You might be surprised at who's opposed ✞🐘✞ Sept. 8, 2019 ✞🐘✞ Conservatives have found some surprising allies as they fight efforts to raise the marriage age. ✞🐘✞ A bill that would have ended child marriage in Idaho — which has no minimum age for couples who want to wed — died in the Statehouse this year. Republican lawmakers, who control the Legislature, opposed it, including state Rep. Bryan Zollinger, who said it "went too far." ✞🐘✞ >>328
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#4_October_2020_(Governor_of_Texas_ordered_reduction_in_places_to_drop_off_ballots) -- The governor of Texas ordered counties to reduce the number of places to drop off ballots. This is a new method, but it continues the Republican pattern of voter suppression. If you can't win honestly, cheat, is their motto. If Republicans were loyal to the idea of democracy, they would not seek to stop people who disagree with them from voting. Their use of voter suppression demonstrates that they are opposed to the basic ideas of the United States. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/01/texas-governor-greg-abbott-ballot-votes-election -- Outrage as Texas governor orders closure of multiple ballot drop-off sites -- Thu 1 Oct 2020 -- Counties told to offer voters one single place to return ballots
Texas is already one of the hardest places in America to vote, and Greg Abbott, the state’s governor, on Thursday made it even harder. The announcement from Abbott, a Republican, limits an executive order from July that made it modestly easier for voters to return their ballots during the pandemic. Texas usually only lets voters return their mail-in ballots in person on election day, but Abbott’s July order said voters could return their ballots in person to the election clerk’s office earlier. He also extended early voting by six days. As a result, some of the biggest counties in the state had planned to offer voters multiple places to drop off their ballots. Harris county, the most populous in the state, planned to let voters return their ballots at 11 of the clerk’s annex offices around the county. Travis county, home of Austin, planned to offer four places to return their ballots. But the move drew backlash within his own party; Republicans sued [ https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/23/texas-republicans-greg-abbott-early-voting/ ] the governor over the changes.
On Thursday, Abbott backtracked on his earlier order and issued a new executive order only allowing counties to offer voters a single place to return their ballots. Abbott’s order also said officials had to let official poll-watchers inspect the process. Abbott’s order quickly drew outcry and accusations of voter suppression. Texas already severely limits mail-in voting to those who are 65 and older, or who meet a select few other requirements. The state has aggressively opposed a slew of lawsuits seeking to ease those restrictions amid the pandemic. Texas has seen massive growth among Hispanic and other minority voters in recent years, and many of the restrictions in place are seen as a blatant effort to preserve white political power. The Harris county clerk, Chris Hollins, said the new proclamation issued by Abbott “will result in widespread confusion and voter suppression”.
“Multiple drop-off locations have been advertised for weeks,” Hollins said in a statement. “Our office is more than willing to accommodate poll watchers at mail ballot drop-off locations. But to force hundreds of thousands of seniors and voters with disabilities to use a single drop-off location in a county that stretches over nearly 2,000 sq miles is prejudicial and dangerous.” Abbott’s Thursday order is the latest in a series of moves Republicans across the country have made to limit [ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-dropboxes/ballot-drop-boxes-are-latest-battleground-in-u-s-election-fight-idUSKBN25G14I ] how Americans can return their mail-in ballots. In Ohio, Frank LaRose, the state’s top election official, is seeking to limit each county to a single drop-box for voters to return their ballots. In Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign is seeking to block the use of drop boxes. Voting advocates have stressed the need for in-person drop-off locations amid concerns about the reliability of the United States Postal Service after widespread delays this summer. In early September, the Texas supreme court blocked Harris county from sending absentee ballots to all of its 2.4 million registered voters. The lawsuit was brought by Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton.
In an interview with the Guardian, Paxton said he opposes universal mail-in ballots, citing widespread voter fraud. Several studies and investigations have shown voter fraud is not a widespread problem. “I think that’s a wonderful utopia – people who don’t want to commit fraud. Fraud is much more easily associated with mail-in ballots because we don’t have any proof of who actually voted,” Paxton said. “If you open the door, your vote doesn’t matter as much. It’s being diluted by fraudulent voters. You’d be giving up your vote by making it easier for everyone to mail in their ballot.” The Texas Democratic party was quick to condemn Abbott’s order.
“Republicans are on the verge of losing, so Governor Abbott is trying to adjust the rules last-minute,” Gilberto Hinojosa, the chairman of the state Democratic party said in a statement, describing state Republicans as “cheaters”. “Make no mistake, Democracy itself is on the ballot. Every Texan must get out and vote these cowards out!”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection -- Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others.[1] For example, a bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target. It incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping.[2] Projection has been described as an early phase of introjection.[3]
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/end-child-marriage-u-s-you-might-be-surprised-who-n1050471 ✞🐘✞ End child marriage in the U.S.? You might be surprised at who's opposed ✞🐘✞ Sept. 8, 2019 ✞🐘✞ Conservatives have found some surprising allies as they fight efforts to raise the marriage age. ✞🐘✞ A bill that would have ended child marriage in Idaho — which has no minimum age for couples who want to wed — died in the Statehouse this year. Republican lawmakers, who control the Legislature, opposed it, including state Rep. Bryan Zollinger, who said it "went too far." ✞🐘✞ >>328
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#8_October_2020_(The_bullshitter_lied_when_he_said_jobs_were_staying_in_the_US) -- [The bullshitter] lied to America's workers when he told them jobs were staying in the United States. Under his watch jobs have left while he continues rewarding outsourcing corporations with millions of dollars in lucrative government contracts — in the middle of a pandemic. -- https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/10/05/during-trump-presidency-200000-jobs-offshored-and-corporations-involved-awarded -- During Trump Presidency, 200,000 Jobs Offshored and Corporations Involved Awarded $425 Billion in Federal Contracts -- Monday, October 5, 2020 -- Public Citizen releases new report "promises made, workers betrayed: Trump’s bigly broken promise to stop job offshoring."
President Donald Trump has awarded more than $425 billion in federal contracts to corporations listed among those responsible for offshoring 200,000 American jobs during his presidency, according to a new report [ https://medium.com/@gtwdailyhill/promises-made-workers-betrayed-trumps-bigly-broken-promise-to-stop-job-offshoring-8b671fd008cf ] released today by Public Citizen. In 2016, Trump promised voters in key industrial swing states that he would end job offshoring. He said he would deny firms that offshored from U.S. government contracts so that they would bring jobs back to America in order to keep billions in lucrative government business. Yet eight out of the top 10 firms receiving government contracts during the Trump presidency have been government-certified as having offshored jobs, the report reveals. Public Citizen’s report, which analyzes U.S. Labor Department (DoL) trade-related job loss and USASpending procurement data includes tables of firms, contract amounts and jobs offshored. Key report findings include:
🐘 To date, 311,427 American workers have been government-certified as losing jobs to trade during Trump’s presidency, with 202,543 jobs explicitly certified as offshored.
🐘 Under Trump, one-in-four taxpayer dollars spent on federal procurement contracts – at least $425.6 billion – went to firms offshoring jobs during his presidency.
🐘 Half of the top 10 recipients of Trump-era contracts were certified by the U.S. government as having offshored jobs during the Trump administration.
🐘 Trump is currently pledging to ban federal contracts to firms that offshore to China, but to date has awarded $113.9 billion to firms that did just that. Top-100 federal contract recipients, Boeing, General Electric, Dell, Honeywell and Merck collectively offshored 6,038 jobs to China during the Trump administration and were awarded $113.9 billion in government contracts starting in FY 2017.
🐘 United Technologies (UT) was a top recipient of Trump government contracts, receiving $15.1 billion dollars from FY 2017 to FY 2019 even as it offshored at least 1,300 of the Carrier jobs that president-elect Trump pledged to save. Jobs of 600 workers at Carrier’s Indianapolis plant and all 700 at Carrier’s Huntington, Indiana plant were offshored to Mexico in 2017. Under Trump the DoL certified UT as offshoring a total of 1,572 jobs and previously certified 11,459 jobs offshored among the 16,981 jobs that the DoL shows that UT eliminated due to trade.
🐘 Of the top 50 federal contractors, by dollars awarded in FYs 2017, 2018 and 2019, 28% were government-certified as having engaged in offshoring during the Trump administration, and of the top 100, 25% had offshored American jobs during his term. Many of the top 100 firms to which the Trump administration awarded government contracts offshored jobs during his administration and were notorious chronic job offshorers certified for tens of thousands of job losses.
🐘 Boeing, General Electric and UT were among the largest recipients of government contracts during the Trump era even as they all offshored jobs. During the Trump administration, Boeing offshored 5,800 jobs; General Electric offshored 2,046; and United Technologies offshored 1,572 jobs – including many from its Carrier division, the firm whose workers Trump promised to save.
🐘 The Trump administration awarded on average 2.5 times the amount, or $10 billion more, in contracts to firms that offshored during his term than to those that did not.
The report was released at a press conference (recording available here). Participating members of Congress discussed the report’s findings:
☸ Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources said: “Trump lied to America's workers when he told them jobs were staying in the United States. Under his watch jobs have left while he continues rewarding outsourcing corporations with millions of dollars in lucrative government contracts – in the middle of a pandemic. This latest report by Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch confirms the gaping hole between Trump's campaign promises and his failed leadership. Hard-working Americans who have dedicated decades to these companies are now forced to fend for themselves in an unstable job market that continues reeling from the impacts of COVID-19. Working families deserve better.”
☸ Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said: “After promising Michiganders the moon, there’s been a net loss of over 50,000 manufacturing jobs under Trump. And he’s currently the first president in generations to oversee a net job loss. This report shows what workers in my state already know: the Trump administration awarded at least $425 billion in government contracts to corporations that offshored U.S. jobs. He may have promised workers to end job offshoring. But his actions show, he was really just paying billions to corporations who took away American jobs. Bringing the supply chain back to America strengthens domestic manufacturing and improves national security.”
☸ Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) said: “I first ran for Congress to put an end to the destructive trade deals that were shipping jobs overseas. In 2016, Trump struck a chord with voters in my district, and across the country, by promising to bring those jobs back – but he has done just the opposite. Since elected, President Trump has given tax incentives and awarded hundreds of billions of dollars in federal contracts to corporations that send jobs overseas. Enough is enough. It is past time to level the playing field and cut American workers in on the deal.”
☸ Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said: “Time and time again, Donald Trump has proven that he will always put his corporate friends’ profits over the lives of American workers. An administration that has promised to bring jobs back to our country – including Wisconsin – has given some of the largest government contract handouts to companies known for offshoring jobs. The people of Wisconsin are fed up with the endless broken promises from Donald Trump and job losses that have only gotten worse because of his failure to respond to this pandemic. Donald Trump has failed American workers.”
☸ Rep. Brendon Boyle (D-Pa.) said: “As a candidate in 2016, President Trump said he’d stop job offshoring and quickly. As President, his administration has overseen 200,000+ jobs offshored. Working families know this economy is stacked against them as American workers face stagnant wages, benefit reductions and unfair foreign competition. Many of the top 100 firms to whom the Trump administration awarded government contracts, are notorious & chronic job offshorers. President Trump simply failed in holding up his end of the bargain when he allowed these jobs to land in foreign countries.”
☸ Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass. ) also commented on the report: “This report is more evidence that Donald Trump is the King of Offshoring. For his entire term in office, Trump has awarded billions in new government contracts to firms notorious for serial American job outsourcing, showered giant multinational corporations with tax giveaways, shrugged his shoulders while people get laid off and jobs are shipped overseas – and he keeps lying through his teeth about it all. We need a President and a Congress that will defend our workers and create jobs here at home.”
Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch said: “This is straight up promises made, workers betrayed. Trump won in 2016 by pledging to voters in key industrial swing states that he would end job offshoring but 200,000 more American jobs have been offshored during his presidency. Trump said he would bar firms that offshored from getting U.S. government contracts so that they’d bring jobs back to America in order to keep that lucrative government business but eight out of the top 10 firms receiving government contracts during the Trump presidency have been government-certified as having offshored jobs with at least one of every four taxpayer dollars spent on federal procurement contracts - at least $425.6 billion – going to firms offshoring jobs during his presidency.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection -- Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others.[1] For example, a bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target. It incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping.[2] Projection has been described as an early phase of introjection.[3]
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/end-child-marriage-u-s-you-might-be-surprised-who-n1050471 ✞🐘✞ End child marriage in the U.S.? You might be surprised at who's opposed ✞🐘✞ Sept. 8, 2019 ✞🐘✞ Conservatives have found some surprising allies as they fight efforts to raise the marriage age. ✞🐘✞ A bill that would have ended child marriage in Idaho — which has no minimum age for couples who want to wed — died in the Statehouse this year. Republican lawmakers, who control the Legislature, opposed it, including state Rep. Bryan Zollinger, who said it "went too far." ✞🐘✞ >>328
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#10_October_2020_(FBI_shut_down_right-wing_terrorist_kidnapping_plot) -- The FBI shut down a real right-wing terrorist plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan. I hope that after January we can prosecute the extremist that encouraged this plot. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/08/six-people-charged-plot-kidnap-michigan-governor-gretchen-whitmer -- Six people charged in plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer -- Thu 8 Oct 2020 -- FBI said plot involved contacting members of a militia who ‘talked about murdering tyrants or taking a sitting governor’
Six people have been charged with a plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, that involves links to a rightwing militia group, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced. Another seven people were charged with plotting to target law enforcement and attack the state capitol building. The state attorney general, Dana Nessel, announced additional charges under Michigan’s anti-terrorism law. Seven men, all in custody, are linked to the militia group Wolverine Watchmen. They are suspected of attempting to identify the homes of law enforcement officers to “target them, made threats of violence intended to instigate a civil war”. They also planned and trained for an operation to attack the Michigan capitol building and to kidnap government officials, including the governor, Nessel said. The news sent shockwaves through a country facing one the most contentious elections in its history and already marred by accusations of voter suppression, civil unrest linked to police brutality and sometimes violent incidents and protests by heavily armed rightwingers.
Whitmer told reporters on Thursday that she knew the job would be hard when she took the oath of office nearly two years ago but she “never could have imagined anything like this”. She thanked law enforcement, and said she hoped the criminal charges would “lead to convictions, bringing these sick and depraved men to justice”. She said the pandemic ought to be a time for unity – saying “we are not one another’s enemy, the virus is our enemy” – but she accused Donald Trump of stoking division instead of bringing the American people together. Referencing the first presidential debate last week, when Trump told [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/29/trump-proud-boys-debate-president-refuses-condemn-white-supremacists ] the far-right group the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”, she said the president was “rallying” groups such as the ones that plotted her kidnap.
“Hate groups heard the president’s words not as a rebuke but as a rallying cry, as a call to action,” she said. The FBI said in an affidavit that the plot to kidnap Whitmer had involved reaching out to members of a Michigan militia. The criminal complaint states that the alleged plot involved her second home in northern Michigan. “Several members talked about murdering ‘tyrants’ or ‘taking’ a sitting governor,” an FBI agent wrote in the document. “The group decided they needed to increase their numbers and encouraged each other to talk to their neighbors and spread their message.” The six men charged with plotting against Whitmer were arrested on Wednesday night and each faces up to life in prison. US attorney Andrew Birge called them “violent extremists”.
“All of us in Michigan can disagree about politics, but those disagreements should never, ever amount to violence. Violence has been prevented today,” the Detroit US attorney Matthew Schneider told reporters. The affidavit was filed on Wednesday hours after FBI agents raided a home in Hartland Township, a community about an hour outside Detroit. The criminal complaint identified the six as Adam Fox, Ty Garbin, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris, Brandon Caserta, all of Michigan, and Barry Croft of Delaware. Whitmer, a Democrat, has been the frequent target of protests by often heavily armed anti-lockdown groups who have launched numerous demonstrations against her efforts to control the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. She put major restrictions on personal movement throughout the state and on the economy, although many of those limits have been lifted.
Whitmer’s moves once caused Trump to tweet “Liberate Michigan” as an exhortation to his supporters against her policy. As news of the foiled plot unfolded, many commentators fingered the president’s words as a contributing factor to the alleged conspiracy. Former FBI agent and national security commentator Asha Rangappa asked pointedly: “Who knew that Trump and Fox News’ exhortations to “liberate Michigan” might lead to an attempt to harm the governor and lead a coup? Completely unforeseeable.” The Detroit News reported [ https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/10/08/feds-thwart-militia-plot-kidnap-michigan-gov-gretchen-whitmer/5922301002/ ] that the investigation dated to early 2020 when the FBI learned via social media that individuals were discussing a violent overthrow of several state governments. A confidential paid informant then recorded a meeting between more than a dozen people from several states that took place in Dublin, Ohio. “The group talked about creating a society that followed the US Bill of Rights and where they could be self-sufficient,” the affidavit said. “They discussed different ways of achieving this goal from peaceful endeavors to violent actions. At one point, several members talked about state governments they believed were violating the US constitution, including the government of Michigan and Governor Gretchen Whitmer.”
Through electronic communications, two of the alleged conspirators then “agreed to unite others in their cause and take violent action against multiple state governments that they believe are violating the US constitution”, the FBI said. One of the alleged conspirators, Adam Fox, said he needed 200 men to storm the capitol building in Lansing and take hostages, including the governor, according to the FBI. He said he wanted to try Whitmer for “treason” and would execute the plan before the 3 November election, the government said. Later, however, the group shifted to targeting the governor’s vacation home, the FBI said. Speaking on CNN late Thursday, Whitmer said the White House’s attacks have stoked threats against her.
“We have to call it out for what it is – it is domestic terrorism,” she said of the plot. Whitmer said White House had not checked up on her, while Joe Biden and Charlie Baker – the Republican governor of Massachusetts – had. “That’s what decent people do,” she said. Not long after news of the thwarted plot broke, Trump campaign official Jason Miller attacked Whitmer: “If we want to talk about hatred, then Gov Whitmer, go look in the mirror – the fact that she wakes up every day with such hatred in her heart towards President Trump.” “Every time that this White House identifies me or takes a shot at me, we see an increase in rhetoric online – violent rhetoric,” the Michigan governor said. The foiled kidnapping plot “took it to a whole new level”.
In a statement, Biden said he had spoken to Whitmer and delivered a harsh rebuke of Trump’s rhetoric: “There is a throughline from President Trump’s dog whistles and tolerance of hate, vengeance and lawlessness to plots such as this one. He is giving oxygen to the bigotry and hate we see on the march in our country.” In a tweet, Trump renewed his attacks on Whitmer, saying she had “done a terrible job”, before saying: “I do not tolerate ANY extreme violence. Defending ALL Americans, even those who oppose and attack me, is what I will always do as your President! Governor Whitmer – open up your state, open up your schools and open up your churches!”
Richard Rhinophytonecrophiliac Stallman >>377https://stallman.org/articles/texas.html "Stallman Does Dallas"
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#8_October_2020_(The_bullshitter_lied_when_he_said_jobs_were_staying_in_the_US) -- [The bullshitter] lied to America's workers when he told them jobs were staying in the United States. Under his watch jobs have left while he continues rewarding outsourcing corporations with millions of dollars in lucrative government contracts — in the middle of a pandemic. -- https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/10/05/during-trump-presidency-200000-jobs-offshored-and-corporations-involved-awarded -- During Trump Presidency, 200,000 Jobs Offshored and Corporations Involved Awarded $425 Billion in Federal Contracts -- Monday, October 5, 2020 -- Public Citizen releases new report "promises made, workers betrayed: Trump’s bigly broken promise to stop job offshoring." -- >>375
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#10_October_2020_(Plot_to_kidnap_or_kill_Michigan_governor) -- The plot to kidnap or kill Michigan Governor Whitmer has been planned since June. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/08/michigan-governor-gretchen-whitmer-kidnap-plot -- How the domestic terror plot to kidnap Michigan's governor unravelled -- Fri 9 Oct 2020 -- An FBI affidavit exposes the disturbing details of a rightwing group’s months-long effort targeting Gretchen Whitmer
“Snatch and grab, man,” Adam Fox told an FBI informant in July. “Grab the fuckin’ governor. Just grab the bitch. Because at that point, we do that, dude – it’s over.” Fox, from Michigan, is now facing a potential life sentence, along with five other men, for an elaborate plan to kidnap the state’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and put her on trial for “treason”, according to the FBI. The chilling plot, revealed in an FBI affidavit released on Thursday [ https://eu.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/10/08/militia-kidnapping-michigan-governor-whitmer-complaint/5923896002/ ], was a months-long effort that also saw members of a rightwing militia consider forgoing the kidnapping and instead executing Whitmer on her doorstep. The news sent shockwaves through the country, as the US faces one the most divisive and viciously fought elections in its history in less that four weeks. The vote has already been marred by accusations of voter suppression, civil unrest linked to police brutality and sometimes violent incidents by heavily armed rightwingers.
The FBI document showed just how far along the men got in their planning, and how credible the threat became against Whitmer, who had been considered for the role of Joe Biden’s running mate. In recent months, Whitmer has become a focal point of anti-government sentiment and anger over coronavirus lockdown measures. According to the affidavit, plotters twice surveilled the governor’s vacation home and discussed blowing up a bridge leading to the house and using a boat to flee with the captured Whitmer. The plot continued to gather pace into October, before the FBI arrested Fox, Barry Croft, Ty Garbin, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta in a series of raids on Wednesday night. “When I put my hand on the Bible and took the oath of office 22 months ago, I knew this job would be hard,” Whitmer said on Thursday. “But I’ll be honest, I never could have imagined anything like this.”
Fox, Croft, Garbin, Franks, Harris and Caserta face federal charges over conspiring to kidnap Whitmer, while a further seven men, each linked to a militia group called “Wolverine Watchmen”, face state charges relating to Michigan’s anti-terrorism act. The FBI affidavit provides a detailed look into how the plot to kidnap Whitmer developed through June, July, August and September, and also shows how the men were doomed throughout – as an informant reported back to the FBI at every turn. The FBI had begun to monitor a “group of individuals” in early 2020, the agency said, after it became aware of discussions about “the violent overthrow of certain government and law-enforcement components”. Croft and Fox were among those involved, after they became convinced that Michigan was one of several states violating the US constitution.
Whitmer had become a hate figure among the rightwing through spring, when she was among a number of state governors to issue stay-at-home orders in an attempt to stop the spread of coronavirus. In April, thousands of protesters, many armed, besieged [ https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2020/apr/16/armed-protesters-demand-an-end-to-michigans-coronavirus-lockdown-orders-video ] the Michigan state capitol, in Lansing, to demonstrate against Whitmer’s order. The protesters chanted: “Lock her up”, a common refrain used by Trump supporters towards Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Donald Trump seemingly offered his support, tweeting: “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” on April 17. It was against this backdrop that the FBI picked up on plans to attack the Michigan state capitol.
At a meeting on 6 June, Croft, Fox and more than a dozen people from several states discussed creating “a society that followed the U.S. Bill of Rights and where they could be self-sufficient”, according to the FBI. Croft and Fox decided they needed to increase their numbers, and contacted a militia group led by Garbin. From there, plans to attack the capitol began to escalate. Fox asked to join forces with Garbin, and at a meeting in Dublin, Ohio, Fox said he needed to recruit “200 men” to storm the capitol building and take hostages, including Whitmer. If successful, the group would have tried Whitmer for treason, according to the FBI affidavit. They intended to carry this out before the elections on 3 November.
The plan was more than just a pipe dream. On 20 June, Fox held a clandestine meeting at his business in Grand Rapids to plan the attack, the FBI said. Attendees, who included Grabin, were required to hand over their cellphones and used a hidden trapdoor to reach a basement. At the meeting Fox and others discussed how they would assault the state capitol and counter police. They planned to use “Molotov cocktails”, according to the FBI, to destroy police vehicles.
At the end of the meeting, recorded by an FBI informant who was wearing a recording device, the conspirators agreed to conduct firearms and tactical training over a weekend in July. That event saw the plan develop further. In Cambria, Wisconsin, Fox, Croft, Garbin, Franks and Caserta took part in “combat drills”, according to the FBI. Over the weekend the militia group attempted to construct two explosive devices, using balloons, a fuse and ball bearings, although neither device detonated.
By mid-July, the plans were shifting away from an assault on the Michigan capitol, as the group homed in on Whitmer’s vacation home and the governor’s official summer residence. “We about to be busy ladies and gentlemen,” Fox posted to a private Facebook page. “This is where the Patriot shows up. Sacrifices his time, money, blood sweat and tears… it starts now so get fucking prepared!!” On 27 July, Fox discussed his plan to “snatch” Whitmer with the FBI informant, and in August, one of the planners suggested taking the kidnapping plan further.
“Have one person go to her house,” Harris wrote in an encrypted group chat. “Knock on the door and when she answers it just cap her.” In a follow up chat Franks wrote: “Ok sounds good I’m in for anything as long as it’s well planned.”
The execution plan seems to have been set aside, as the group instead discussed how to map out Whitmer’s vacation home, and how they would recruit people who could read blueprints to help refine the attack. Some of those arrested by the FBI continued to experiment with explosive devices, and proposed hiring a “demo guy” for the heist. At the end of August, some of the conspirators conducted surveillance on the Whitmer’s vacation home, taking photos and video footage as they discussed how many people would be needed for the kidnapping. A plan to escape from the property by boat – with Whitmer hostage onboard – was also discussed.
Croft, Fox, Garbin, Franks and others travelled to the house again on 12 September, according to the FBI. The next day they agreed to conduct a final training exercise in late October – an exercise which now will not take place. Speaking on Thursday, Whitmer thanked law enforcement and said she hoped the criminal charges would “lead to convictions, bringing these sick and depraved men to justice”. She said the pandemic ought to be a time for unity – saying “we are not one another’s enemy, the virus is our enemy” – but she accused Trump of stoking division instead of bringing the American people together and said the president was “rallying” groups such as the ones that plotted her kidnap. “Hate groups heard the president’s words not as a rebuke but as a rallying cry, as a call to action,” she said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/end-child-marriage-u-s-you-might-be-surprised-who-n1050471 ✞🐘✞ End child marriage in the U.S.? You might be surprised at who's opposed ✞🐘✞ Sept. 8, 2019 ✞🐘✞ Conservatives have found some surprising allies as they fight efforts to raise the marriage age. ✞🐘✞ A bill that would have ended child marriage in Idaho — which has no minimum age for couples who want to wed — died in the Statehouse this year. Republican lawmakers, who control the Legislature, opposed it, including state Rep. Bryan Zollinger, who said it "went too far." ✞🐘✞ >>328
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#8_October_2020_(Republican_disinformation_operatives_intimidating_voters) -- Two Republican disinformation operatives face criminal charges of trying to intimidate voters with frightening lies. -- https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/01/politics/jacob-wohl-jack-burkman-voter-suppression-operation/index.html -- Michigan attorney general charges right-wing political operatives with intimidating voters through robocalls -- October 1, 2020
Two notorious right-wing political operatives were charged Thursday for allegedly running a voter suppression operation [ https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/27/politics/robocalls-detroit-chicago-racist/index.html ] targeting voters in Michigan, according to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. The operatives, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, are accused of orchestrating a series of robocalls aimed at deterring Detroit residents from voting by mail. They are each charged with one count of intimidating voters, one count of conspiracy to commit an election law violation, one count of using a computer to commit the crime of intimidating voters and using a computer to commit the crime of conspiracy. The first two charges each carry a maximum of five years in prison and the latter two charges carry a maximum of seven years in prison. "Any effort to interfere with, intimidate or intentionally mislead Michigan voters will be met with swift and severe consequences," Nessel, a Democrat, said in a news release. "This effort specifically targeted minority voters in an attempt to deter them from voting in the November election."
An arraignment date hasn't been set and the Michigan attorney general's office said it would work with local law enforcement, if necessary, to secure Wohl and Burkman's appearance. The release states Wohl lives in California and Burkman lives in Virginia. Wohl declined to comment when reached by CNN, and Burkman could not be reached Thursday evening. The charges come two months after elected officials in Michigan and Illinois say a racially charged robocall had targeted voters with misinformation about mail-in balloting. The call falsely claimed that mail-in voters will have their personal information shared with law enforcement "to track down old warrants" and that they could be added to a list for "mandatory vaccines."
The voice on the robocall said it was sponsored by a group founded by Burkman and Wohl, who have spent years perpetrating hoaxes and false smears against Democratic politicians and opponents of President Donald Trump. In a brief interview with CNN in August, Wohl denied that he or Burkman was responsible for the misleading and racist calls, and said they had learned about them only after Burkman started receiving angry messages from people who saw his number on their caller ID. "We've never done any robocalls," Wohl said. "We are categorically uninvolved." One of their most notorious stunts was in 2018, when Wohl and Burkman attempted to slime then-special counsel Robert Mueller [ https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/31/media/gateway-pundit-robert-mueller-false-allegations/index.html ] with a sexual assault allegation. That story collapsed after journalists and internet sleuths tied the scheme to the duo.
THE ANTI-RUSSIAN LIES >>383
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#7_September_2020_(Navalny_poisoning) *Navalny poisoning forces Merkel's party to ask: how do we hit back at Putin?* Here's a suggestion: switch to renewable energy as fast as possible. It's vitally necessary anyway, and it will eliminate demand for Russia's key exports (fossil fuels). >>258
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#2_September_2020_(Private_documents_from_the_saboteur_in_chief's_Covid-19_task_force) -- Private documents from the saboteur in chief's Covid-19 task force show that when he said it would disappear, he knew the opposite was true. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/31/white-house-cover-covid-19-task-force-reports-withheld-public-reveal-trump-knew -- Covid-19 Task Force Reports Withheld From Public Reveal Trump Knew of Threats as He Spread Lies -- Monday, August 31, 2020 -- "Rather than being straight with the American people and creating a national plan to fix the problem, the president and his enablers kept these alarming reports private while publicly downplaying the threat to millions of Americans." -- >>231
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#4_October_2020_(What_we_have_learned_from_the_conman's_tax_returns) -- A thorough report on what we have learned from the conman's tax returns. -- https://www.deccanherald.com/international/world-news-politics/donald-trump-did-not-pay-income-tax-in-10-of-last-15-years-894048.html -- Donald Trump did not pay income tax in 10 of last 15 years -- Sep 28 2020
Donald Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750. He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made. As the President wages a reelection campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decadelong audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million. The tax returns that Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the IRS portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.
The New York Times has obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office. It does not include his personal returns for 2018 or 2019. This article offers an overview of The Times’ findings; additional articles will be published in the coming weeks. The returns are some of the most sought-after, and speculated-about, records in recent memory. In Trump’s nearly four years in office — and across his endlessly hyped decades in the public eye — journalists, prosecutors, opposition politicians and conspiracists have, with limited success, sought to excavate the enigmas of his finances. By their very nature, the filings will leave many questions unanswered, many questioners unfulfilled. They comprise information that Trump has disclosed to the IRS, not the findings of an independent financial examination. They report that Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia. In response to a letter summarizing The Times’ findings, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said that “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate” and requested the documents on which they were based. After The Times declined to provide the records, in order to protect its sources, Garten took direct issue only with the amount of taxes Trump had paid. “Over the past decade, President Trump has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015,” Garten said in a statement.
With the term “personal taxes,” however, Garten appears to be conflating income taxes with other federal taxes Trump has paid — Social Security, Medicare and taxes for his household employees. Garten also asserted that some of what the president owed was “paid with tax credits,” a misleading characterization of credits, which reduce a business owner’s income-tax bill as a reward for various activities, like historic preservation. The tax data examined by The Times provides a road map of revelations, from write-offs for the cost of a criminal defence lawyer and a mansion used as a family retreat to a full accounting of the millions of dollars the president received from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Together with related financial documents and legal filings, the records offer the most detailed look yet inside the president’s business empire. They reveal the hollowness, but also the wizardry, behind the self-made-billionaire image — honed through his star turn on “The Apprentice” — that helped propel him to the White House and that still undergirds the loyalty of many in his base. Ultimately, Trump has been more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life.
“The Apprentice,” along with the licensing and endorsement deals that flowed from his expanding celebrity, brought Trump a total of $427.4 million, The Times’ analysis of the records found. He invested much of that in a collection of businesses, mostly golf courses, that in the years since have steadily devoured cash — much as the money he secretly received from his father financed a spree of quixotic overspending that led to his collapse in the early 1990s. Indeed, his financial condition when he announced his run for president in 2015 lends some credence to the notion that his long-shot campaign was at least in part a gambit to reanimate the marketability of his name. As the legal and political battles over access to his tax returns have intensified, Trump has often wondered aloud why anyone would even want to see them. “There’s nothing to learn from them,” he told The Associated Press in 2016. There is far more useful information, he has said, in the annual financial disclosures required of him as president — which he has pointed to as evidence of his mastery of a flourishing, and immensely profitable, business universe. In fact, those public filings offer a distorted picture of his financial state, since they simply report revenue, not profit. In 2018, for example, Trump announced in his disclosure that he had made at least $434.9 million. The tax records deliver a very different portrait of his bottom line: $47.4 million in losses.
Tax records do not have the specificity to evaluate the legitimacy of every business expense Trump claims to reduce his taxable income — for instance, without any explanation in his returns, the general and administrative expenses at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey increased fivefold from 2016 to 2017. And he has previously bragged that his ability to get by without paying taxes “makes me smart,” as he said in 2016. But the returns, by his own account, undercut his claims of financial acumen, showing that he is simply pouring more money into many businesses than he is taking out. The picture that perhaps emerges most starkly from the mountain of figures and tax schedules prepared by Trump’s accountants is of a businessman-president in a tightening financial vise. Most of Trump’s core enterprises — from his constellation of golf courses to his conservative-magnet hotel in Washington — report losing millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars year after year. His revenue from “The Apprentice” and from licensing deals is drying up, and several years ago he sold nearly all the stocks that now might have helped him plug holes in his struggling properties.
The tax audit looms. And within the next four years, more than $300 million in loans — obligations for which he is personally responsible — will come due. Against that backdrop, the records go much further toward revealing the actual and potential conflicts of interest created by Trump’s refusal to divest himself of his business interests while in the White House. His properties have become bazaars for collecting money directly from lobbyists, foreign officials and others seeking face time, access or favour; the records for the first time put precise dollar figures on those transactions. At the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, a flood of new members starting in 2015 allowed him to pocket an additional $5 million a year from the business. In 2017, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association paid at least $397,602 to the Washington hotel, where the group held at least one event during its four-day World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians.
>>388 part 2 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#4_October_2020_(What_we_have_learned_from_the_conman's_tax_returns) -- A thorough report on what we have learned from the conman's tax returns. -- https://www.deccanherald.com/international/world-news-politics/donald-trump-did-not-pay-income-tax-in-10-of-last-15-years-894048.html -- Donald Trump did not pay income tax in 10 of last 15 years -- Sep 28 2020
The Times was also able to take the fullest measure to date of the president’s income from overseas, where he holds ultimate sway over American diplomacy. When he took office, Trump said he would pursue no new foreign deals as president. Even so, in his first two years in the White House, his revenue from abroad totaled $73 million. And while much of that money was from his golf properties in Scotland and Ireland, some came from licensing deals in countries with authoritarian-leaning leaders or thorny geopolitics — for example, $3 million from the Philippines, $2.3 million from India and $1 million from Turkey. He reported paying taxes, in turn, on a number of his overseas ventures. In 2017, the president’s $750 contribution to the operations of the US government was dwarfed by the $15,598 he or his companies paid in Panama, the $145,400 in India and the $156,824 in the Philippines. Trump’s US payment, after factoring in his losses, was roughly equivalent, in dollars not adjusted for inflation, to another presidential tax bill revealed nearly a half-century before. In 1973, The Providence Journal reported that, after a charitable deduction for donating his presidential papers, Richard Nixon had paid $792.81 in 1970 on income of about $200,000. The leak of Nixon’s small tax payment caused a precedent-setting uproar: Henceforth, presidents, and presidential candidates, would make their tax returns available for the American people to see.
The contents of thousands of personal and business tax records fill in financial details that have been withheld for years. “I would love to do that,” Trump said in 2014 when asked whether he would release his taxes if he ran for president. He’s been backpedalling ever since. When he ran, he said he might make his taxes public if Hillary Clinton did the same with the deleted emails from her private server — an echo of his taunt, while stoking the birther fiction, that he might release the returns if President Barack Obama released his birth certificate. He once boasted that his tax returns were “very big” and “beautiful.” But making them public? “It’s very complicated.” He often claims that he cannot do so while under audit — an argument refuted by his own IRS commissioner. When prosecutors and congressional investigators issued subpoenas for his returns, he wielded not just his private lawyers but also the power of his Justice Department to stalemate them all the way to the Supreme Court. Trump’s elaborate dance and defiance have only stoked suspicion about what secrets might lie hidden in his taxes. Is there a financial clue to his deference to Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin? Did he write off as a business expense the hush-money payment to the pornographic film star Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election? Did a covert source of money feed his frenzy of acquisition that began in the mid-2000s?
The Times examined and analyzed the data from thousands of individual and business tax returns for 2000 through 2017, along with additional tax information from other years. The trove included years of employee compensation information and records of cash payments between the president and his businesses, as well as information about ongoing federal audits of his taxes. This article also draws upon dozens of interviews and previously unreported material from other sources, both public and confidential. All of the information The Times obtained was provided by sources with legal access to it. While most of the tax data has not previously been made public, The Times was able to verify portions of it by comparing it with publicly available information and confidential records previously obtained by The Times. To delve into the records is to see up close the complex structure of the president’s business interests — and the depth of his entanglements. What is popularly known as the Trump Organization is in fact a collection of more than 500 entities, virtually all of them wholly owned by Trump, many carrying his name. For example, 105 of them are a variation of the name Trump Marks, which he uses for licensing deals. Fragments of Trump’s tax returns have leaked out before.
Transcripts of his main federal tax form, the 1040, from 1985 to 1994, were obtained by The Times in 2019. They showed that, in many years, Trump lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer. Three pages of his 1995 returns, mailed anonymously to The Times during the 2016 campaign, showed that Trump had declared losses of $915.7 million, giving him a tax deduction that could have allowed him to avoid federal income taxes for almost two decades. Five months later, the journalist David Cay Johnston obtained two pages of Trump’s returns from 2005; that year, his fortunes had rebounded to the point that he was paying taxes. The vast new trove of information analyzed by The Times completes the recurring pattern of ascent and decline that has defined the president’s career. Even so, it has its limits. Tax returns do not, for example, record net worth — in Trump’s case, a topic of much posturing and almost as much debate. The documents chart a great churn of money, but while returns report debts, they often do not identify lenders. The data contains no new revelations about the $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford, the actress who performs as Stormy Daniels — the focus of the Manhattan district attorney’s subpoena for Trump’s tax returns and other financial information. Trump has acknowledged reimbursing his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who made the payoff, but the materials obtained by The Times did not include any itemized payments to Cohen. The amount, however, could have been improperly included in legal fees written off as a business expense, which are not required to be itemized on tax returns.
No subject has provoked more intense speculation about Trump’s finances than his connection to Russia. While the tax records revealed no previously unknown financial connection — and, for the most part, lack the specificity required to do so — they did shed new light on the money behind the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, a subject of enduring intrigue because of subsequent investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The records show that the pageant was the most profitable Miss Universe during Trump’s time as co-owner and that it generated a personal payday of $2.3 million — made possible, at least in part, by the Agalarov family, who would later help set up the infamous 2016 meeting between Trump campaign officials seeking “dirt” on Hillary Clinton and a Russian lawyer connected to the Kremlin. In August, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that looked extensively into the circumstances of the Moscow pageant and revealed that as recently as February, investigators subpoenaed Russian singer Emin Agalarov, who was involved in planning it. Agalarov’s father, Aras, a billionaire who boasts of close ties to Putin, was Trump’s partner in the event. The committee interviewed a top Miss Universe executive, Paula Shugart, who said the Agalarovs offered to underwrite the event; their family business, Crocus Group, paid a $6 million licensing fee and another $6 million in expenses. But while the pageant proved to be a financial loss for the Agalarovs — they recouped only $2 million — Shugart told investigators that it was “one of the most lucrative deals” the Miss Universe organization ever made, according to the report.
That is borne out by the tax records. They show that in 2013, the pageant reported $31.6 million in gross receipts — the highest since at least the 1990s — allowing Trump and his co-owner, NBC, to split profits of $4.7 million. By comparison, Trump and NBC shared losses of $2 million from the pageant the year before the Moscow event, and $3.8 million from the one the year after. Losses reported by businesses Trump owns and runs helped wipe out tax bills on hundreds of millions of dollars in celebrity income. While Trump crisscrossed the country in 2015 describing himself as uniquely qualified to be president because he was “really rich” and had “built a great company,” his accountants back in New York were busy putting the finishing touches on his 2014 tax return. After tabulating all the profits and losses from Trump’s various endeavors on Form 1040, the accountants came to Line 56, where they had to enter the total income tax the candidate was required to pay. They needed space for only a single figure. Zero.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection -- Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others.[1] For example, a bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target. It incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping.[2] Projection has been described as an early phase of introjection.[3]
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/end-child-marriage-u-s-you-might-be-surprised-who-n1050471 ✞🐘✞ End child marriage in the U.S.? You might be surprised at who's opposed ✞🐘✞ Sept. 8, 2019 ✞🐘✞ Conservatives have found some surprising allies as they fight efforts to raise the marriage age. ✞🐘✞ A bill that would have ended child marriage in Idaho — which has no minimum age for couples who want to wed — died in the Statehouse this year. Republican lawmakers, who control the Legislature, opposed it, including state Rep. Bryan Zollinger, who said it "went too far." ✞🐘✞ >>328
>>390 part 3 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#4_October_2020_(What_we_have_learned_from_the_conman's_tax_returns) -- A thorough report on what we have learned from the conman's tax returns. -- https://www.deccanherald.com/international/world-news-politics/donald-trump-did-not-pay-income-tax-in-10-of-last-15-years-894048.html -- Donald Trump did not pay income tax in 10 of last 15 years -- Sep 28 2020
For Trump, that bottom line must have looked familiar. It was the fourth year in a row that he had not paid a penny of federal income taxes. Trump’s avoidance of income taxes is one of the most striking discoveries in his tax returns, especially given the vast wash of income itemized elsewhere in those filings. Trump’s net income from his fame — his 50 per cent share of “The Apprentice,” together with the riches showered upon him by the scores of suitors paying to use his name — totalled $427.4 million through 2018. A further $176.5 million in profit came to him through his investment in two highly successful office buildings.
So how did he escape nearly all taxes on that fortune? Even the effective tax rate paid by the wealthiest 1 per cent of Americans could have caused him to pay more than $100 million. The answer rests in a third category of Trump’s endeavours: businesses that he owns and runs himself. The collective and persistent losses he reported from them largely absolved him from paying federal income taxes on the $600 million from “The Apprentice,” branding deals and investments. That equation is a key element of the alchemy of Trump’s finances: using the proceeds of his celebrity to purchase and prop up risky businesses, then wielding their losses to avoid taxes. Throughout his career, Trump’s business losses have often accumulated in sums larger than could be used to reduce taxes on other income in a single year. But the tax code offers a workaround: With some restrictions, business owners can carry forward leftover losses to reduce taxes in future years.
That provision has been the background music to Trump’s life. As The Times’ previous reporting on his 1995 return showed, the nearly $1 billion in losses from his early-1990s collapse generated a tax deduction that he could use for up to 18 years going forward. The newer tax returns show that Trump burned through the last of the tax-reducing power of that $1 billion in 2005, just as a torrent of entertainment riches began coming his way following the debut of “The Apprentice” the year before. For 2005 through 2007, cash from licensing deals and endorsements filled Trump’s bank accounts with $120 million in pure profit. With no prior-year losses left to reduce his taxable income, he paid substantial federal income taxes for the first time in his life: a total of $70.1 million. As his celebrity income swelled, Trump went on a buying spree unlike any he had had since the 1980s, when eager banks and his father’s wealth allowed him to buy or build the casinos, airplanes, yacht and old hotel that would soon lay him low.
When “The Apprentice” premiered, Trump had opened only two golf courses and was renovating two more. By the end of 2015, he had 15 courses and was transforming the Old Post Office building in Washington into a Trump International Hotel. But rather than making him wealthier, the tax records reveal as never before, each new acquisition only fed the downward draft on his bottom line. Consider the results at his largest golf resort, Trump National Doral, near Miami. Trump bought the resort for $150 million in 2012; through 2018, his losses have totaled $162.3 million. He has pumped $213 million of fresh cash into Doral, tax records show, and has a $125 million mortgage balance coming due in three years. His three courses in Europe — two in Scotland and one in Ireland — have reported a combined $63.6 million in losses. Overall, since 2000, Trump has reported losses of $315.6 million at the golf courses that are his prized possessions.
For all of its Trumpworld allure, his Washington hotel, opened in 2016, has not fared much better. Its tax records show losses through 2018 of $55.5 million. And Trump Corp., a real estate services company, has reported losing $134 million since 2000. Trump personally bankrolled the losses year after year, marking his cash infusions as a loan with an ever-increasing balance, his tax records show. In 2016, he gave up on getting paid back and turned the loan into a cash contribution. Trump has often posited that his losses are more accounting magic than actual money out the door. Last year, after The Times published details of his tax returns from the 1980s and 1990s, he attributed the red ink to depreciation, which he said in a tweet would show “losses in almost all cases” and that “much was non monetary.”
“I love depreciation,” Trump said during a presidential debate in 2016. Depreciation, though, is not a magic wand — it involves real money spent or borrowed to buy buildings or other assets that are expected to last years. Those costs must be spread out as expenses and deducted over the useful life of the asset. Even so, the rules do hold particular advantages for real estate developers like Trump, who are allowed to use their real estate losses to reduce their taxable income from other activities. What the tax records for Trump’s businesses show, however, is that he has lost chunks of his fortune even before depreciation is figured in. The three European golf courses, the Washington hotel, Doral and Trump Corp. reported losing a total of $150.3 million from 2010 through 2018, without including depreciation as an expense. To see what a successful business looks like, depreciation or not, look no further than one in Trump’s portfolio that he does not manage.
>>394 part 4 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#4_October_2020_(What_we_have_learned_from_the_conman's_tax_returns) -- A thorough report on what we have learned from the conman's tax returns. -- https://www.deccanherald.com/international/world-news-politics/donald-trump-did-not-pay-income-tax-in-10-of-last-15-years-894048.html -- Donald Trump did not pay income tax in 10 of last 15 years -- Sep 28 2020
After plans for a Trump-branded mini-city on the Far West Side of Manhattan stalled in the 1990s, Trump’s stake was sold by his partner to Vornado Realty Trust. Trump objected to the sale in court, saying he had not been consulted, but he ended up with a 30 per cent share of two valuable office buildings owned and operated by Vornado. His share of the profits through the end of 2018 totaled $176.5 million, with depreciation factored in. He has never had to invest more money in the partnership, tax records show. Among businesses he runs, Trump’s first success remains his best. The retail and commercial spaces at Trump Tower, completed in 1983, have reliably delivered more than $20 million a year in profits, a total of $336.3 million since 2000 that has done much to help keep him afloat. Trump has an established track record of stiffing his lenders. But the tax returns reveal that he has failed to pay back far more money than previously known: a total of $287 million since 2010.
The IRS considers forgiven debt to be income, but Trump was able to avoid taxes on much of that money by reducing his ability to declare future business losses. For the rest, he took advantage of a provision of the Great Recession bailout that allowed income from canceled debt to be completely deferred for five years, then spread out evenly over the next five. He declared the first $28.2 million in 2014. Once again, his business losses mostly absolved his tax responsibilities. He paid no federal income taxes for 2014. Trump was periodically required to pay a parallel income tax called the alternative minimum tax, created as a tripwire to prevent wealthy people from using huge deductions, including business losses, to entirely wipe out their tax liabilities. Trump paid alternative minimum tax in seven years between 2000 and 2017 — a total of $24.3 million, excluding refunds he received after filing. For 2015, he paid $641,931, his first payment of any federal income tax since 2010.
As he settled into the Oval Office, his tax bills soon returned to form. His potential taxable income in 2016 and 2017 included $24.8 million in profits from sources related to his celebrity status and $56.4 million for the loans he did not repay. The dreaded alternative minimum tax would let his business losses erase only some of his liability. Each time, he requested an extension to file his 1040; and each time, he made the required payment to the IRS for income taxes he might owe — $1 million for 2016 and $4.2 million for 2017. But virtually all of that liability was washed away when he eventually filed, and most of the payments were rolled forward to cover potential taxes in future years. To cancel out the tax bills, Trump made use of $9.7 million in business investment credits, at least some of which related to his renovation of the Old Post Office hotel, which qualified for a historic-preservation tax break. Although he had more than enough credits to owe no taxes at all, his accountants appear to have carved out an allowance for a small tax liability for both 2016 and 2017. When they got to line 56, the one for income taxes due, the amount was the same each year: $750.
“The Apprentice” created what was probably the biggest income tax bite of Trump’s life. During the Great Recession bailout, he asked for the money back. Testifying before Congress in February 2019, the president’s estranged personal lawyer, Cohen, recalled Trump’s showing him a huge check from the US Treasury some years earlier and musing “that he could not believe how stupid the government was for giving someone like him that much money back.” In fact, confidential records show that starting in 2010 he claimed, and received, an income tax refund totaling $72.9 million — all the federal income tax he had paid for 2005 through 2008, plus interest. The legitimacy of that refund is at the center of the audit battle that he has long been waging, out of public view, with the IRS.
The records that The Times reviewed square with the way Trump has repeatedly cited, without explanation, an ongoing audit as grounds for refusing to release his tax returns. He alluded to it as recently as July on Fox News, when he told Sean Hannity, “They treat me horribly, the IRS, horribly.” And while the records do not lay out all the details of the audit, they match his lawyers’ statement during the 2016 campaign that audits of his returns for 2009 and subsequent years remained open, and involved “transactions or activities that were also reported on returns for 2008 and earlier.” Trump harvested that refund bonanza by declaring huge business losses — a total of $1.4 billion from his core businesses for 2008 and 2009 — that tax laws had prevented him from using in prior years. But to turn that long arc of failure into a giant refund check, he relied on some deft accounting footwork and an unwitting gift from an unlikely source — Obama.
Business losses can work like a tax-avoidance coupon: A dollar lost on one business reduces a dollar of taxable income from elsewhere. The types and amounts of income that can be used in a given year vary, depending on an owner’s tax status. But some losses can be saved for later use, or even used to request a refund on taxes paid in a prior year. Until 2009, those coupons could be used to wipe away taxes going back only two years. But that November, the window was more than doubled by a little-noticed provision in a bill Obama signed as part of the Great Recession recovery effort. Now business owners could request full refunds of taxes paid in the prior four years and 50 per cent of those from the year before that. Trump had paid no income taxes in 2008. But the change meant that when he filed his taxes for 2009, he could seek a refund of not just the $13.3 million he had paid in 2007 but also the combined $56.9 million paid in 2005 and 2006, when “The Apprentice” created what was likely the biggest income tax bite of his life. The records reviewed by The Times indicate that Trump filed for the first of several tranches of his refund several weeks later, in January 2010. That set off what tax professionals refer to as a “quickie refund,” a check processed in 90 days on a tentative basis, pending an audit by the IRS.
>>395 part 5 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#4_October_2020_(What_we_have_learned_from_the_conman's_tax_returns) -- A thorough report on what we have learned from the conman's tax returns. -- https://www.deccanherald.com/international/world-news-politics/donald-trump-did-not-pay-income-tax-in-10-of-last-15-years-894048.html -- Donald Trump did not pay income tax in 10 of last 15 years -- Sep 28 2020
His total federal income tax refund would eventually grow to $70.1 million, plus $2,733,184 in interest. He also received $21.2 million in state and local refunds, which often piggyback on federal filings. Whether Trump gets to keep the cash, though, remains far from a sure thing. Refunds require the approval of IRS auditors and an opinion of the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, a bipartisan panel better known for reviewing the impact of tax legislation. Tax law requires the committee to weigh in on all refunds larger than $2 million to individuals. Records show that the results of an audit of Trump’s refund were sent to the joint committee in the spring of 2011. An agreement was reached in late 2014, the documents indicate, but the audit resumed and grew to include Trump’s returns for 2010 through 2013. In the spring of 2016, with Trump closing in on the Republican nomination, the case was sent back to the committee. It has remained there, unresolved, with the statute of limitations repeatedly pushed forward.
Precisely why the case has stalled is not clear. But experts say it suggests that the gap between the sides remains wide. If negotiations were to deadlock, the case would move to federal court, where it could become a matter of public record. The dispute may center on a single claim that jumps off the page of Trump’s 2009 tax return: a declaration of more than $700 million in business losses that he had not been allowed to use in prior years. Unleashing that giant tax-avoidance coupon enabled him to receive some or all of his refund. The material obtained by The Times does not identify the business or businesses that generated those losses. But the losses were a kind that can be claimed only when partners give up their interest in a business. And in 2009, Trump parted ways with a giant money loser: his long-failing Atlantic City casinos. After Trump’s bondholders rebuffed his offer to buy them out, and with a third round of bankruptcy only a week away, Trump announced in February 2009 that he was quitting the board of directors.
“If I’m not going to run it, I don’t want to be involved in it,” he told The Associated Press. “I’m one of the largest developers in the world. I have a lot of cash and plenty of places I can go.” The same day, he notified the Securities and Exchange Commission that he had “determined that his partnership interests are worthless and lack potential to regain value” and was “hereby abandoning” his stake. The language was crucial. Trump was using the precise wording of IRS rules governing the most beneficial, and perhaps aggressive, method for business owners to avoid taxes when separating from a business. A partner who walks away from a business with nothing — what tax laws refer to as abandonment — can suddenly declare all the losses on the business that could not be used in prior years. But there are a few catches, including this: Abandonment is essentially an all-or-nothing proposition. If the IRS learns that the owner received anything of value, the allowable losses are reduced to just $3,000 a year.
And Trump does appear to have received something. When the casino bankruptcy concluded, he got 5 per cent of the stock in the new company. The materials reviewed by The Times do not make clear whether Trump’s refund application reflected his public declaration of abandonment. If it did, that 5 per cent could place his entire refund in question. If the auditors ultimately disallow Trump’s $72.9 million federal refund, he will be forced to return that money with interest, and possibly penalties, a total that could exceed $100 million. He could also be ordered to return the state and local refunds based on the same claims. In response to a question about the audit, Garten, the Trump Organization lawyer, said facts cited by The Times were incorrect, without citing specifics. He did, however, write that it was “illogical” to say Trump had not paid taxes for those three years just because the money was later refunded. “While you claim that President Trump paid no taxes in 10 of the 15 previous years,” Garten said, “you also assert that President Trump claimed a massive refund for tens of millions for taxes he did pay. These two claims are entirely inconsistent and, in any event, not supported by the facts.”
House Democrats who have been in hot pursuit of Trump’s tax returns most likely have no idea that at least some of the records are sitting in a congressional office building. George Yin, a former chief of staff for the joint committee, said that any identifying information about taxpayers under review was tightly held among a handful of staff lawyers and was rarely shared with politicians assigned to the committee. It is possible that the case has been paused because Trump is president, which would raise the personal stakes of reelection. If the recent Fox interview is any indication, Trump seems increasingly agitated about the matter. “It’s a disgrace what’s happened,” he told Hannity. “We had a deal done. In fact, it was — I guess it was signed even. And once I ran, or once I won, or somewhere back a long time ago, everything was like, ‘Well, let’s start all over again.’ It’s a disgrace.” Helping to reduce Trump’s tax bills are unidentified consultants’ fees, some of which can be matched to payments received by Ivanka Trump.
Examining the Trump Organization’s tax records, a curious pattern emerges: Between 2010 and 2018, Trump wrote off some $26 million in unexplained “consulting fees” as a business expense across nearly all of his projects. In most cases the fees were roughly one-fifth of his income: In Azerbaijan, Trump collected $5 million on a hotel deal and reported $1.1 million in consulting fees, while in Dubai it was $3 million with a $630,000 fee, and so on. Mysterious big payments in business deals can raise red flags, particularly in places where bribes or kickbacks to middlemen are routine. But there is no evidence that Trump, who mostly licenses his name to other people’s projects and is not involved in securing government approvals, has engaged in such practices. Rather, there appears to be a closer-to-home explanation for at least some of the fees: Trump reduced his taxable income by treating a family member as a consultant and then deducting the fee as a cost of doing business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection -- Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others.[1] For example, a bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target. It incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping.[2] Projection has been described as an early phase of introjection.[3]
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/end-child-marriage-u-s-you-might-be-surprised-who-n1050471 ✞🐘✞ End child marriage in the U.S.? You might be surprised at who's opposed ✞🐘✞ Sept. 8, 2019 ✞🐘✞ Conservatives have found some surprising allies as they fight efforts to raise the marriage age. ✞🐘✞ A bill that would have ended child marriage in Idaho — which has no minimum age for couples who want to wed — died in the Statehouse this year. Republican lawmakers, who control the Legislature, opposed it, including state Rep. Bryan Zollinger, who said it "went too far." ✞🐘✞ >>328
>>396 part 6 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#4_October_2020_(What_we_have_learned_from_the_conman's_tax_returns) -- A thorough report on what we have learned from the conman's tax returns. -- https://www.deccanherald.com/international/world-news-politics/donald-trump-did-not-pay-income-tax-in-10-of-last-15-years-894048.html -- Donald Trump did not pay income tax in 10 of last 15 years -- Sep 28 2020
The “consultants” are not identified in the tax records. But evidence of this arrangement was gleaned by comparing the confidential tax records to the financial disclosures Ivanka Trump filed when she joined the White House staff in 2017. Ivanka Trump reported receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totalling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Vancouver and Hawaii. Ivanka Trump had been an executive officer of the Trump companies that received profits from and paid the consulting fees for both projects — meaning she appears to have been treated as a consultant on the same hotel deals that she helped manage as part of her job at her father’s business. When asked about the arrangement, the Trump Organization lawyer, Garten, did not comment. Employers can deduct consulting fees as a business expense and also avoid the withholding taxes that apply to wages. To claim the deduction, the consulting arrangement must be an “ordinary and necessary” part of running the business, with fees that are reasonable and market-based, according to the IRS. The recipient of the fees is still required to pay income tax.
The IRS has pursued civil penalties against some business owners who devised schemes to avoid taxes by paying exorbitant fees to related parties who were not in fact independent contractors. A 2011 tax court case centred on the IRS’ denial of almost $3 million in deductions for consulting fees the partners in an Illinois accounting firm paid themselves via corporations they created. The court concluded that the partners had structured the fees to “distribute profits, not to compensate for services.” There is no indication that the IRS has questioned Donald Trump’s practice of deducting millions of dollars in consulting fees. If the payments to his daughter were compensation for work, it is not clear why Trump would do it in this form, other than to reduce his own tax liability. Another, more legally perilous possibility is that the fees were a way to transfer assets to his children without incurring a gift tax. A Times investigation in 2018 found that Trump’s late father, Fred Trump, employed a number of legally dubious schemes decades ago to evade gift taxes on millions of dollars he transferred to his children. It is not possible to discern from this newer collection of tax records whether intra-family financial manoeuvrings were a motivating factor. However, the fact that some of the consulting fees are identical to those reported by Trump’s daughter raises the question of whether this was a mechanism the president used to compensate his adult children involved with his business. Indeed, in some instances where large fees were claimed, people with direct knowledge of the projects were not aware of any outside consultants who would have been paid.
On the failed hotel deal in Azerbaijan, which was plagued by suspicions of corruption, a Trump Organization lawyer told The New Yorker the company was blameless because it was merely a licenser and had no substantive role, adding, “We did not pay any money to anyone.” Yet, the tax records for three Trump LLCs involved in that project show deductions for consulting fees totalling $1.1 million that were paid to someone. In Turkey, a person directly involved in developing two Trump towers in Istanbul expressed bafflement when asked about consultants on the project, telling The Times there was never any consultant or other third party in Turkey paid by the Trump Organization. But tax records show regular deductions for consulting fees over seven years totalling $2 million. Ivanka Trump disclosed in her public filing that the fees she received were paid through TTT Consulting LLC, which she said provided “consulting, licensing and management services for real estate projects.” Incorporated in Delaware in December 2005, the firm is one of several Trump-related entities with some variation of TTT or TTTT in the name that appear to refer to members of the Trump family. Like her brothers Donald Jr. and Eric, Ivanka Trump was a longtime employee of the Trump Organization and an executive officer for more than 200 Trump companies that licensed or managed hotel and resort properties. The tax records show that the three siblings had each drawn a salary from their father’s company — roughly $480,000 a year, jumping to about $2 million after Donald Trump became president — although Ivanka Trump no longer receives a salary. What’s more, Donald Trump has said the children were intimately involved in negotiating and managing his projects. When asked in a 2011 lawsuit deposition whom he relied on to handle important details of his licensing deals, he named only Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric.
On Ivanka Trump’s now-defunct website, which explains her role at the Trump Organization, she was not identified as a consultant. Rather, she has been described as a senior executive who “actively participates in all aspects of both Trump and Trump branded projects, including deal evaluation, predevelopment planning, financing, design, construction, sales and marketing, and ensuring that Trump’s world-renowned physical and operational standards are met. “She is involved in all decisions — large and small.” Hair stylists, table linens, property taxes on a family estate — all have been deducted as business expenses. Private jets, country clubs and mansions have all had a role in the selling of Donald Trump.
“I play to people’s fantasies,” he wrote in “Trump: The Art of the Deal.” “People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.” If the singular Trump product is Trump in an exaggerated form — the man, the lifestyle, the acquisitiveness — then everything that feeds the image, including the cost of his businesses, can be written off on his taxes. Trump may be reporting business losses to the government, but he can still live a life of wealth and write it off. Take, for example, Mar-a-Lago, now the president’s permanent residence as well as a private club and stage set on which Trump luxury plays out. As a business, it is also the source of millions of dollars in expenses deducted from taxable income, among them $109,433 for linens and silver and $197,829 for landscaping in 2017. Also deducted as a business expense was the $210,000 paid to a Florida photographer over the years for shooting numerous events at the club, including a 2016 New Year’s Eve party hosted by Trump. Trump has written off as business expenses costs — including fuel and meals — associated with his aircraft, used to shuttle him among his various homes and properties. Likewise the cost of haircuts, including the more than $70,000 paid to style his hair during “The Apprentice.” Together, nine Trump entities have written off at least $95,464 paid to a favourite hair and makeup artist of Ivanka Trump.
In allowing business expenses to be deducted, the IRS requires that they be “ordinary and necessary,” a loosely defined standard often interpreted generously by business owners. Perhaps Trump’s most generous interpretation of the business expense write-off is his treatment of the Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, New York. Seven Springs is a throwback to another era. The main house, built in 1919 by Eugene Meyer, the onetime head of the Federal Reserve who bought The Washington Post in 1933, sits on more than 200 acres of lush, almost untouched land just an hour’s drive north of New York City. “The mansion is 50,000 square feet, has three pools, carriage houses, and is surrounded by nature preserves,” according to The Trump Organization website.