Trump is not the exception; he is the rule. The entire
ruling class owes its social existence to various forms of criminal activity,
whose victims are inevitably workers. The expropriation of this financial
oligarchy is an urgent social necessity.
Trump’s tax returns and the parasitism of the
financial oligarchy
29 September 2020
The detailed analysis
of the tax returns of President Donald Trump, spread across the front page of
Monday’s New York Times, is more than an exposure of the corrupt
gangster who lives in the White House. It is an indictment of the American ruling
class as a whole, of the super-rich families who monopolize the country’s
wealth, exploit the working people and dominate its politics, including the
Democratic and the Republican parties.
The Times gained
access to 20 years of personal and business tax returns that provide exhaustive
details about the financial manipulations conducted by the Trump Organization. The
family holding company used hundreds of subsidiaries and shell companies to
evade the payment of taxes, incur paper losses that were used to offset real
income, and ensure the never-ending enrichment of Trump and his children
despite the fact that their empire of real estate, casinos and golf clubs was
largely unprofitable.
As the report declared, “ultimately, Mr.
Trump has been more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real
life.” His long-running NBC reality program, The Apprentice, was
far more profitable than his actual business activities. His bankruptcies and
reverses have long been known, but the Times account gives a
picture, in granular detail, of how the tax system—set up and run by both
Democratic and Republican administrations—allowed him to amass and maintain
great wealth despite his generally disastrous forays in business.
The Times account
does add another dimension to the explanation of the response of the Trump
administration to the coronavirus crisis. Given his vast holdings in real
estate, hotels and golf clubs, Trump had a direct and immediate financial
interest in demanding the reopening of the economy and the resumption of
travel, business meetings and sporting events, regardless of the cost in human
lives. In this he was not alone, but rather spoke for the interests of his
class.
The details in the newspaper account—that Trump paid zero
income taxes in 10 of the 15 years before he ran for president; paid $750 in
income taxes in 2016 and 2017, about the same amount as a waitress working at
the minimum wage; wrote off $75,000 in haircuts as a business expense; and
steered hundreds of thousands in “consulting fees” into the pockets of his
adult children—are damning. But it is hardly surprising to see it proven in
black and white that Donald Trump is a phony and a fraud. Millions of working
people have long recognized him as an unscrupulous swindler in both business
and politics.
Two years ago, the Times published
an equally detailed examination of how Trump’s father manipulated the tax
system to pass on the bulk of his wealth to his son Donald while paying an
effective tax rate of only 10 percent, even though the official estate tax was
then 55 percent. “With its detailed exposure of the Trump fortune, the Times has
unwittingly confirmed the insistence of socialists that the continued existence
of a parasitic oligarchy is incompatible with the most basic social and
democratic rights of the vast majority of the population.”
Corruption and tax evasion, perhaps less crude but in some
cases on an even larger scale, are commonplace throughout the American ruling
elite. According to IRS figures, the effective tax rate on the transfer of
inherited wealth is less than 4 percent, compared to the average tax rate for
working people of 18–19 percent. Decades ago, before her conviction for tax
evasion, Manhattan hotel heiress Leona Helmsley sneered, “Only the little
people pay taxes.” That serves today as the motto of the entire financial
aristocracy.
Everyone knows that the IRS makes it a point to prey upon
workers. Woe unto the teacher or auto worker who is accused of underpaying the
IRS, even as the agency regularly turns a blind eye to massive tax-avoidance
schemes like those run by the Trump family. Economists Emmanuel Saez and
Gabriel Zucman have described how, for decades, the US government continuously
slashed taxes for the wealthy and destroyed enforcement mechanisms, with the
deliberate outcome of expanding social inequality.
A central aspect of Trump’s financial flim-flam over many
decades is that he has taken advantage of tax laws enacted by both Democrats
and Republicans for the deliberate purpose of enabling such chicanery and
minimizing the tax burden on the financial elite. It was under the Obama
administration in 2010 that the IRS authorized a payment of $72.9 million to
Trump, supposedly as a refund of “overpayments.”
At least until he launched his campaign for the Republican
presidential nomination in 2015, Trump bribed Democrats and Republicans alike
with “campaign contributions” and was rewarded with loopholes such as the
favored treatment of real estate losses in the Obama administration bailout of
Wall Street in 2009.
Among the politicians
benefiting from Trump’s largesse over the years were Joe Biden and Kamala
Harris, his current opponents. He gave campaign contributions on 17 occasions
to the two New York Democratic senators, Charles Schumer, now the Senate
Democratic leader, and Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent in the 2016
presidential contest. None of this politically inconvenient history appears in
the Times account of Trump’s tax evasion.
Apologists for the Democratic Party,
particularly in the camp of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), may see
the Times article as a brilliantly timed masterstroke. They
no doubt hope that the conclusive exposure of Trump as a corrupt fraud—unlike
the release of the sex scandal transcripts in 2016—will succeed in sinking his
campaign.
It is possible that the exposure of Trump’s blatant tax
evasion will cost him some votes. But this exposure does not change the
reactionary character of the Biden campaign.
A central feature of this campaign is the suggestion that
Trump is an agent or patsy of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that his
administration has undermined US “national security” interests in the Middle
East, Central Asia, and more generally, in relation to both Russia and China.
Many media commentators immediately seized on the fact that Trump paid far more
taxes to foreign governments, including India, the Philippines, Turkey and
Panama, than he did to the US government.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of the
most vociferous advocates of the anti-Russia campaign, was quick to sound this
theme again in response to the publication of the details of Trump’s taxes and
personal finances. Noting the Times’ conclusion that Trump
had accumulated $400 million in losses since taking office, including $300
million in loans that would come due during a second term in the White House if
he should be reelected, she declared that Trump’s taxes revealed a “national
security issue.”
Even though the Times admitted
that the tax returns showed no business income from Russia, Pelosi connected
Trump to Moscow: “The question is what does Putin have on the president
politically, personally, financially in every way that the president would try
to undermine our commitment to NATO, give away the store to Russia and Syria …
he says he likes Putin and Putin likes him. Well, what’s the connection? We’ll
see.”
Such grotesque McCarthy-style attacks on Trump’s alleged
master in Moscow contribute to a political atmosphere justifying an explosion
of American militarism. It moreover simply ignores the equal role of American
banks in financing Trump’s swindles.
Moreover, the use of a scandal to unseat Trump—assuming
that this is the outcome—does nothing to change the political climate in the
United States. With or without Trump, the intensification of the social
crisis—for which the Democrats have no answer—will provide fuel for the
development of fascist and authoritarian movements.
It is impossible to defend democratic rights and defeat Trump’s
drive towards authoritarian rule through the Democratic Party, which defends
the capitalist system of which Trump is a product.
Trump’s tax returns paint a portrait of a ruling class
totally enmeshed in corruption and criminality. The oligarchs generate their
wealth through shuffling around money, based on the provision of endless
amounts of cash by the central banks. Trump’s gaudy and tasteless palaces, with
the look of bordellos, are the product of a whole period of American capitalism
dominated by swindling, speculation and fraud, creating nothing of value
besides ever-greater heaps of debt.
Trump is not the exception; he is the rule. The entire
ruling class owes its social existence to various forms of criminal activity,
whose victims are inevitably workers. The expropriation of this financial
oligarchy is an urgent social necessity.
Trump's millions from Turkey and the Philippines are corrupt
by Timothy P. Carney, Senior Columnist |
When President Trump speaks glowingly of brutal strongmen atop the governments in Turkey and the Philippines, remember that he’s making millions of dollars in these countries with the tacit approval of these authoritarian governments.
Trump’s personal finances depend on the goodwill of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Rodrigo Duterte, who are not good guys.
Trump earned $73 million from his overseas businesses during his first two years as president, according to the New York Times. About $3 million of that is from Duterte’s Philippines, and about $1 million is from Erdogan’s Turkey.
Duterte and Erdogan are known for their offenses against human rights and liberal democracy. Duterte has been excoriated for extrajudicial killings, arbitrary imprisoning, and punishment of political dissent. Erdogan has severely restricted free speech and political dissent, locking up critics, and his regime has been accused of torturing or “disappearing” dissidents.
In a 2015 interview with Breitbart News, Trump was asked about Erdogan’s regime in Turkey, and he said, “I have a little conflict of interest because I have a major, major building in Istanbul, and it's a tremendously successful job. It's called Trump Towers — two towers instead of one, not the usual one, it's two. And I've gotten to know Turkey very well, and they are amazing people, they're incredible people, they have a strong leader.”
Trump is right: This is a conflict of interest. Trump should have unloaded all his foreign business operations upon coming into office, and Congress should have passed a law forcing him to.
Trump personally profits from authoritarian and unreliable regimes. If Trump took actions that upset Erdogan, such as threatening sanctions in response to human rights abuses or getting in the way of Erdogan’s designs on Kurd-controlled regions, he could be harming his own profits by provoking a response from Erdogan or simply by weakening a regime that is friendly to Trump’s business.
It’s crucial to remember that businesses in a place like Turkey are more dependent on the government than are businesses in freer economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom. State-owned banks in Turkey have been propping up businesses, especially tourism.
The worries here apply to the Philippines as well, where Duterte exercises tight control over foreign business operations. He could easily cut off Trump’s businesses if Trump were to upset him.
The president shouldn’t be in a position to lose or gain millions depending on the good favor of a foreign leader, and it’s even more corrupt when the foreign leader is himself a corrupt and abusive authoritarian.
Left-wing ‘Nation’ Ponders Seccession of Democrat-run States
The Nation, a storied left-wing magazine, pondered the possibility of secession in an interview published Tuesday morning.
The idea has been circulating on the left over the past few weeks, as Democrats ponder the possibility of President Donald Trump being re-elected. Though many mainstream media polls show former Vice President Joe Biden with a lead, the polls have been wrong before — and Trump is running a confident, energetic campaign, while Biden is barely leaving his house.
The interview, “Should the United States Stay United?“, conducted by Jessica Suriano with Richard Kreitner, author of Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union, focuses on the idea that secession need not be tarnished by slavery. Abolitionists, Kreitner argues, also considered seceding from the Union — and progressives should consider it today:
JESSICA SURIANO: Why did you think it was important in this book to address all of these other separatist movements that have happened in the past and across the political spectrum?
RICKY KREITNER: Of course everybody’s heard about the Confederacy and slavery, and it started my historical research, but that’s not really where the book came from. It came from this late-Obama-era moment where the thought occurred to me just based on things I’d been reading: What if the United States broke apart? Would that be such a bad thing? Is it possible that the progressive policies and programs that I wanted to see put into place might be easier to enact in a smaller entity than the United States, with its 330 million people and the need to always convince people with very different attitudes and interests? So with that question, I was curious if anybody else in American history had favored secession for noble or progressive reasons—not to perpetuate slavery but even to oppose it.
The answer, I quickly found, is yes: There were disunion abolitionists who were fiercely against slavery and who wanted the northern states to secede from the union in the 1840s and 1850s as a way not only to protest slavery but to undermine it. Taking in their arguments and their rhetoric was really, really interesting. One of the places I started was with this convention that took place in Worcester, Mass., in January of 1857. It was summoned by a bunch of abolitionists right after the first presidential election in which the Republican Party ran a candidate, John C. Fremont, who was opposed to slavery. A lot of Republicans had said that the fate of the Republic, of the union, and then of freedom itself depended on Fremont’s victory. When that didn’t occur, the Republicans were ready to just try again in four years, but the hard-core abolitionists said, “Well, what about everything you were just talking about?” They thought the fate of the Republic was at stake; if so, maybe it was time to end the union. That rhetoric really appealed to me in the fall of 2016, when Trump won, and it was like, “Wow, is a country that elects Trump possibly worth saving?”
Read the full interview here.
After the 2016 election, there was a surge in interest in secession in deep-blue California — so much so that the president pro tem of the state senate used his speech at the opening of the new legislature to discourage the idea.
But it seems to have returned: Lanny Davis, an adviser to the Clintons, tweeted a satire last week that others had been circulating on the Internet:
1) DEAR RED STATES; WE'RE LEAVING.
We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, we're taking the other Blue States with us…that includes Hawaii, Oregon, California, New Mexico, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and all the Northeast.— Lanny Davis (@LannyDavis) September 26, 2020
The original post suggested that blue states secede and leave the red states to suffer on their own, hypothetically.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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