WHEN THE PRESIDENT IS A ONE-LINER

My wife and I were watching an old TV  show last night.  In one exchange was a one-liner that could have come from one of tonight’s late night comedy/political comment shows.

The show was Northern Exposure. It aired on CBS from 1990-95.  This happened to be in Episode 1 of Season 3.  It first aired on September 23, 1991.  That’s over 28 years ago.  Millions of Americans have been born and grow up to become voters since then, and probably have never seen this program.
Maurice Minnifield was character who was the local booster/ land baron/millionaire in Ciceley. Alaska, where the show is placed.  He has met and fallen in love with an equally hefty, muscular state patrol office, Sergeant Barbara Semanski.  He returns home from shopping one day to find her leaving his fancy log mansion in a huff.  She has heard a voice mail message from Minnfield’s tax accountant, elated over a tax loophole. Here’s the brief bit.

Maurice: “Loophole’s an  American tradition.”
Barbara: “Not in my book.”
Maurice: “Besides, it’s not the law, it’s the tax code. I’ll bet Donald Trump doesn’t pay a dime.”

THERE YOU HAVE IT–28 YEARS AGO TRUMP’S TAX RECORDS WERE ALREADY A COMEDY ONE-LINER.  And I’ll bet Maurice was right.

After all these years, all the lies, the joke is still on us.

THE ATLANTIC CITY BANKRUPTCIES

Trump has long played on the limitations of other people who follow rules, worry about consequences, consider responsibility.
Click here for the pathetic story of how New Jersey regulators let him continue to run casinos there even when it was clear he had no business plan and was losing money daily.  The regulators were worried because they could not see how the Trump casinos could survive, but, alas, they also judged him too big to fail so he kept his licenses.  Here is a section from this account’
“Other people’s money. Because in 1995 and ’96, Trump took his casinos public—selling stock in himself. ‘Shareholders and bondholders have to be total fools to ever think that Donald Trump will put their interests ahead of his own,’ one financial columnist wrote. Analysts issued warnings: ‘We are not entirely confident that Mr. Trump will respect the interests and preserve the capital of equity investors in his properties.  Even the prospectus made it plain. While it touted ‘The Trump Name’ and its ‘widespread recognition,’ it also sounded guarded notes: ‘There can be no assurance that Trump will be successful in repaying or rescheduling his indebtedness or that his assets will appreciate sufficiently to provide a source of repayment for such indebtedness.’ It mattered little. ‘Defying reason,’ as Forbes put it, people invested in Trump.”

The piece ends with this bit of warning for any business partners,  henchmen, Russian oligarchs, Republican Senators, wives and ex-wives that are swirling in the current Trump maelstrom:

“Anyone who thinks that Donald Trump is important to their long-term viability is either not very bright or kidding themselves,” O’Brien said. “He never shows any gratitude for the people who cut him slack. He just blames things on them.”

“The lesson, then, from 1991?

“That if they tether their future to Donald Trump in the belief that without him they won’t have a bright or successful future,” he said, “they might as well just step right off the cliff with him.”

Let’s recall those hundreds of millions of dollars in junk bonds he sold to build the Taj Mahal that devolved into a rat and roach infested hotel before bankruptcy.  And the looses haved ben proclaimed the largest by any business any time in history!

ATLANTIC PITY

Trump’s foray  into casinoland,  Atlantic City ended badly as we know…multiple bankruptcies.  
All the lenience of the Jersey regulators was for nought:  The above article contains his pithy comment:
““He left the city desolate, with high unemployment, high vacancies. You look at Atlantic City and you see, in a very graphic way, the result of Donald Trump’s business model and his way of doing things.”

That quote came from Brian Rose,  a photographer who went to Atlantic City to see what Trump left in his wake.

The self-proclaimed chosen one and stable genius tried to market his Taj Mahal casino as the eighth wonder of the world.  The real wonder was that anybody wold have funded over a billion dollars of construction and start-up costs.  Tghe Taj is now Hard Rock, having devolved from bankrupt Trumproperty to Karl Icahn investment to property of the Florida Seminole tribe, purchased for 4 cents on the dollar of original cost.

NOTHING HAS CHANGED

Of course, any body could easily see that Trump was a typical loud-mouthed real estate shyster.  But you must admit using a charitable foundation for personal gain is a little less ordinary, right?
Here’s how the foundation closes dow , with a pay-out and a lot of twitter claims having nothing to do with reality.

On that score some vitriol courtesy of Esquire.

DINNER WITH THE MAN 

Last, probably least, there have fifteen contests run for donors to the Trump Campaign Committee…winners to be chosen and given VIP travel and Dinner with The Donald.  So far no evidence that any winners have been named, let alone and winners given travel and food.

 

THE NEW MOST POWERFUL MAN IN AMERICA COULD BE CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS

As many court battles head to the Supreme Court it will be Justice Roberts who decides which side of the deeply divided court gets the fifth and deciding vote.  Pro-Trump or liberals?  Protect Trump or send his tax returns to investigators?

Of course, I’ve seen no speculation about what could or should happen if the Trumpistas refuse to abide  by any court ruling.  However, you can bet his accounting firm would not defy the court and continue to withhold Trump tax returns.

And some of these Trump-related cases may be before the Supremes even before impeachment hits the Senate…where, again, Justice Roberts will have to preside.  Should Roberts get hit by a meteor, the presiding justice for impeachment would be Clarence Thomas who would then be required to speak…at least occasionally.  Many far right groups are speculating about trying to get Roberts to recuse himself because he has openly disagreed with some of President Trump’s attacks on the federal courts.  That, too, would put Thomas into the Senate trial as presiding judge.

Click here for piece on Justice Roberts and impeachment trial.

Here is analysis of Justice Roberts’ partisanship and willingness to overturn precedent.

WHY AMERICANS ARE LIVING SHORTER

Our efficient market economy is killing us.  Coincidentally it’s killing life on this planet as well.
Make. Sell. Buy. Consume energy.  Repeat.
Henry Ford is surely the patron saint of efficiency.  Make it fast.  Make it cheaply.  Market it hard.  Sell it.  Repeat process as long as possible.
Crucial to economic efficiency is paying  no attention to resource supply, damage done by extraction…or pollution…or health effects. Why else did it take decades to finally admit smog, drunk drivers, lack of seat belt safety, leaded gas is toxic, etc. etc. etc.?

American life expectancy is falling.  The reasons are many, and inter-related.  It is likely most people are not perfectly suited to dense urban living.  Our public health stats show America rife with obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, stress from job insecurity.  Throw in some addictive and occasionally fatal pain killers that have been widely prescribed.  Layer on some illegal heroin that we could legalize and make clean…hah.  Anyway, our for-profit “health” industry makes its most money when people are sick.  That is the true meaning of life right?  Consuming as much and as long as we can?  Keep that consumer confidence index up and stocks flying high.  Have another donut.

Our farm industry is financially powerful, and efficient, so efficient.  America produces excess corn, beef, wheat, soybeans, chicken, eggs, milk, pork, peanuts, potatoes…   Then we process it to make it taste better, sell cheaper, store longer, sell repeatedly.  What we can’t produce year-round we fly in by plane.  F*c k the atmosphere, I need my January cherries.

When American farming went modern after World War II all that mattered was out-producing  that evil empire, Soviet Union.  We did it brilliantly and efficiently.  The effects on the animal victims, the curse of toxic run-off that ends up in the ocean or ground-water simply doesn’t figure. Who ever questioned what efficient farming would do to American bodies?  And we still have only vague ideas what deleterious effects result from greasy palm-oiled, salty, sugared, corn syrupy food.  What matters is that Walmart never run out of your favorite sweets or salted snacks, that meat is frozen and can be accessed in minutes via your microwave.  We are what we eat–both the people and the food are unhealthy together.

Here’s a little menu of inedible facts to consume:

The US spends very little on studying nutrition and effects of food.  Just bring it on.

Water pollution is a fact of life across America.  Run-off, fracking, plastics, chemicals that never degrade but keep on killing.  Lead pipes are so yesterday, but still lie around our older cities for mile after mile.

It is no surprise that perhaps the most polluted state is in the Confederacy.  Louisiana.  Beholden to oil and chemical companies and just daring the Gulf of Mexico to take another bite of land.

Louisiana is on the front-line of rising sea level as it is taking away American coastal land.  One island there will disappear before mid-century and we taxpayers are paying $48 million to relocate the people.  Deer and snakes are on their own.  This island may be a model for what will have to happen all along our coasts, east and west and south.   Can we afford it?  Will we also pay to move motels, car dealers, airports (so many are on converted mudflats), churches, schools…military bases?

The whole vaping fiasco is a case study in rampant profiteering.  Fortunes were made selling this supposedly safer alternative to smoking.  No single regulatory (that word has become a cynical farce in this America) agency did anything to find out what was being sold to kids and what possible effects it could have.  While FDA staff wanted the products controlled or banned a decade ago, the political appointees who make decisions, refused.  And that was when we had a Democrat as President.  The corporate corruption of our efficient system is nearly total.  People must die before anything happens…see Boeing, Perdue, Flint, et al.  Make the new product, market it to hell and back, sell,  baby, sell.  Government, step aside.