Trump Raid Is Sabotaging The Democrats' Campaign
Over the weekend the Democrats finally passed their rather mediocre $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act, which will not reduce inflation and is mostly about climate related measures and drugs. They hope to profit from it in the November midterm election:
Vulnerable incumbent Democratic senators like Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada are already planning events promoting the landmark legislation they passed over the weekend. Democratic ad makers are busily preparing a barrage of commercials about it across key battlegrounds. And the White House is set to deploy Cabinet members on a nationwide sales pitch.
The sweeping legislation, covering climate change and prescription drug prices, which came together in the Senate after more than a year of painfully public fits and starts, has kicked off a frenetic 91-day sprint to sell the package by November — and win over an electorate that has grown skeptical of Democratic rule.
But on the very same day the the Justice Department and the FBI handed republicans a huge new rallying point that will significantly increase their election turnout:
Hoards of angry Donald Trump supporters descended on his Mar-a-Lago home last night shortly after it emerged that the FBI had searched the ex-president's estate as part of an investigation into whether he took classified records from the White House to the Florida residence.
Trump, disclosing the search in a lengthy statement, claimed that agents had opened up a safe at his home and described their work as an 'unannounced raid' that he called 'prosecutorial misconduct.'
He accused the FBI of a double standard, claiming the bureau 'allowed' Hillary Clinton to 'acid wash' 33,000 emails from her time as Secretary of State.
Those in his camp said the raid was a clear attempt to thwart a potential 2024 Presidential run.
Trump has not formally announced any campaign but speculation that he will run again is rife. It was compounded by his appearance at C-Pac this weekend.
The raid is guaranteed to be covered in multiple news rounds. It will give Trump new momentum for announcing his campaign:
As Trump weighs running for the presidency for a third time, the implications of the FBI’s foray into Mar-a-Lago for his political fortunes are considerable. Will it boost his status as a martyr, prompting the GOP to rally around him? Or is it the first real sign of myriad legal difficulties, ranging from wire fraud to election tampering in Georgia to the January 6 attack, that could fatally entangle him?
Is this a 'bombshell'? Are the walls closing in (vid) on Trump? Is this the long awaited 'tipping point' that marks the 'beginning of the end' for Trump?
Of course not.
All attempts to get Trump over fake Russiagate claims or other issues have failed. Some 'classified' documents probably found in the possession of the person who, as president, had the power to declassify them will not change anything.
The raid and the accusations will only increase Trump's and his followers determination to win:
The short-term upside for Trump, in any case, is clear. He is now once more the center of political attention at a moment when President Joe Biden was scoring a bunch of victories this past week. Trump, a master showman, will milk the FBI search for all the publicity he can squeeze from it.
The raid was probably the best Trump could have hoped for:
Mr. Trump made clear in his statement that he sees potential political value in the search, something some of his advisers echoed, depending on what any investigation produces.
His political team began sending fund-raising solicitations about the search late on Monday evening.
Even those conservatives who do not like Trump will see the raid as an illegitimate attempt by democrats to prevent another Trump run for the presidency. It is something many will opposed on principal independent of who is targeted.
The White House claims to not have been noticed of the raid. Many people will doubt that.
If Attorney General Merrick B. Garland did not inform the White House he should be fired for political sabotage of the Democrats' campaign. Launching highly political action without informing the boss is a no-no for the Justice Department.
If the White House was informed its hatred for Trump must have pushed it into a very stupid mistake. Allowing the raid at this point of time was the worst thing that could happen to the Democrats.
(more...)
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/08/t ... .html#more
Gotta agree with 'b', if Garland didn't inform Biden of his intentions he should be sacked. But I find that unlikely, however they play the 'plausible deniability' card. And I cannot figure what 'gold' the investigators might find as the real juicy stuff has probably been disposed of, perhaps by the 'shredder in chief' himself. And if it is a ploy to 'pile on' while the committee amps up in an attempt to bury the Orange Man it is about stupid as was the Clinton's original 'bug in the ear' that The Donald should run.
It is only the blind arrogance of the two parties that allowed Trump to become president in the first place. Fat and complacent, with the 'common knowledge' that the masses have nowhere else to go(thanks to generations of propaganda and imperialist trickle down spoils) they don't really try to address the wants and needs of the masses, a congress that delivers to the rich only and a parade of presidents of either party who can be said to be 'alternatively gifted' (excepting Obama, who was mostly competent but evil) at best it is little wonder that the 'novelty act' got the prize.
Incompetent or 'crazy like a fox.? The worst political party in history or the most devious?
Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
Trump Derangement Syndrome Returns
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 17 Aug 2022
Why would Black people laud the FBI or criticize protection against self-incrimination? The FBI search of Donald Trump's home has reawakened Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Progressives love the FBI? Leftists embrace the Espionage Act? Of course, one man is responsible for this madness, and he is none other than Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States. The fallout from the FBI search conducted at Trump’s home shows the rank confusion spread by people who call themselves liberal but who are as dangerous as anyone on the right. From the moment that Trump announced the raid they were in full fascist mode, even as they claimed to be fighting fascism.
Trump did what he usually does, play fast and loose with the truth. Of all former presidents only he would ignore subpoenas and claim to have declassified documents when he hadn’t done so. He can’t get out of his own way and thus makes himself a target. But Democrats should know that the search is seen as nothing more than a personal attack against him. Millions of people who love Trump will love him all the more and conclude that the raid was meant to keep him from running for president again. Liberal dead-enders will be happy, but everyone else will say that something rotten was conducted at Mar a Lago.
Attorney General Merrick Garland says that the documents were subpoenaed but the former president didn’t respond. The FBI search warrant states that the search encompassed three different issues: gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, which is part of the Espionage Act; concealment, removal, or mutilation concerning the handling of records and reports; and the destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy, which is part of a section dealing with obstruction of justice. The warrant also states a search for information on Roger Stone and on the President of France.
Aside from the item descriptions, no one knows what Trump had or what the FBI found. Leaks from the Justice Department indicate something about nuclear weapons, but no one knows what that means. The lack of information hasn’t stopped the speculation which Trump always causes. There is conjecture that he was selling information to Russia or to Saudi Arabia or was plotting some other treason. There are even claims that documents were buried with his recently deceased ex-wife. It is fascinating that there can be so much guesswork about issues no one can know.
The years long Russiagate investigation is responsible for ordinarily sensible people losing their minds. Hardly anyone recalls that the charge of collusion was actually disproven, that Robert Mueller only indicted for process crimes, such as those which occur when people let down their guard and talk to the FBI. Most Americans who know the name Paul Manafort think he was a Russian spy but don’t know that he went to jail for tax and bank fraud. Propaganda works very well when it is repeated over and over again.
Worse than the silly Trump inspired derangement is the way that those who call themselves left or progressive have chosen to defend federal law enforcement and bad legislation like the Espionage Act. The Espionage Act is a relic from the earliest days of the cold war, and Woodrow Wilson’s infamous Palmer Raids which targeted the left for persecution and prosecution. Barack Obama used it more than all previous presidents combined in order to prosecute journalists who published what the state didn’t want us to know. As for the FBI, its Counter Intelligence Program, COINTELPRO, created dissension in the liberation movement, targeted individuals for prosecution, spied on Martin Luther King and told him to commit suicide, and killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark among others. The FBI continues to use informants to entrap Black people in phony terror cases.
It is truly shameful to see Black people exalt the FBI and act as if punishing Trump is the organizing principle of all political activity. The Trump organization is also under investigation by the New York Attorney and the former president refused to answer questions put to him in a deposition. The right to remain silent is one of the most important in American law and should be used a lot more often. But copaganda television shows and Trump hatred have caused their own form of insanity, and his exercise of a fundamental right was widely lampooned. No one should ever be condemned for utilizing their fifth amendment right, not even Donald Trump.
Of course, this spectacle is also used to deflect from Biden administration failures. His approval rating is still low, for the simple reason that he didn’t do what he claimed he would for American voters. He continues to pour public money into the losing effort in Ukraine and needlessly provokes Russia and China. But who is paying attention if there is speculation that Trump put files in Ivana’s casket?
It is time to nip this foolishness in the bud before it goes any further. Trump should not live rent free in our collective consciousness any longer. He cannot be allowed to distract from the current president’s actions or become a rallying point for politics which will inevitably be useless. No one has to follow Trump’s shenanigans any longer or allow the corporate media or the democratic party to make him their focus. Doing so only makes it harder to do the already hard work of recreating Black politics.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/trump ... me-returns
But look at it this way: Trump Derangement Syndrome is all the Dems got. Keep him barking, keep the sheep in the corral. Of course that didn't work out so well in 2016 due to massive ruling class hubris: precautions were not taken against the unlikely possibility that the chosen candidate, Clinton, would be so repulsive to voters. Such as we saw in 2000 against Gore . No more surprises, be assured, Trump set the Imperial project back four years*, they won't let it happen again.
*Fucked up with China and North Korea, set back the timetable on aggression against Russia, needlessly and gratuitously pissed off the entire Global South.
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 17 Aug 2022
Why would Black people laud the FBI or criticize protection against self-incrimination? The FBI search of Donald Trump's home has reawakened Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Progressives love the FBI? Leftists embrace the Espionage Act? Of course, one man is responsible for this madness, and he is none other than Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States. The fallout from the FBI search conducted at Trump’s home shows the rank confusion spread by people who call themselves liberal but who are as dangerous as anyone on the right. From the moment that Trump announced the raid they were in full fascist mode, even as they claimed to be fighting fascism.
Trump did what he usually does, play fast and loose with the truth. Of all former presidents only he would ignore subpoenas and claim to have declassified documents when he hadn’t done so. He can’t get out of his own way and thus makes himself a target. But Democrats should know that the search is seen as nothing more than a personal attack against him. Millions of people who love Trump will love him all the more and conclude that the raid was meant to keep him from running for president again. Liberal dead-enders will be happy, but everyone else will say that something rotten was conducted at Mar a Lago.
Attorney General Merrick Garland says that the documents were subpoenaed but the former president didn’t respond. The FBI search warrant states that the search encompassed three different issues: gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, which is part of the Espionage Act; concealment, removal, or mutilation concerning the handling of records and reports; and the destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy, which is part of a section dealing with obstruction of justice. The warrant also states a search for information on Roger Stone and on the President of France.
Aside from the item descriptions, no one knows what Trump had or what the FBI found. Leaks from the Justice Department indicate something about nuclear weapons, but no one knows what that means. The lack of information hasn’t stopped the speculation which Trump always causes. There is conjecture that he was selling information to Russia or to Saudi Arabia or was plotting some other treason. There are even claims that documents were buried with his recently deceased ex-wife. It is fascinating that there can be so much guesswork about issues no one can know.
The years long Russiagate investigation is responsible for ordinarily sensible people losing their minds. Hardly anyone recalls that the charge of collusion was actually disproven, that Robert Mueller only indicted for process crimes, such as those which occur when people let down their guard and talk to the FBI. Most Americans who know the name Paul Manafort think he was a Russian spy but don’t know that he went to jail for tax and bank fraud. Propaganda works very well when it is repeated over and over again.
Worse than the silly Trump inspired derangement is the way that those who call themselves left or progressive have chosen to defend federal law enforcement and bad legislation like the Espionage Act. The Espionage Act is a relic from the earliest days of the cold war, and Woodrow Wilson’s infamous Palmer Raids which targeted the left for persecution and prosecution. Barack Obama used it more than all previous presidents combined in order to prosecute journalists who published what the state didn’t want us to know. As for the FBI, its Counter Intelligence Program, COINTELPRO, created dissension in the liberation movement, targeted individuals for prosecution, spied on Martin Luther King and told him to commit suicide, and killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark among others. The FBI continues to use informants to entrap Black people in phony terror cases.
It is truly shameful to see Black people exalt the FBI and act as if punishing Trump is the organizing principle of all political activity. The Trump organization is also under investigation by the New York Attorney and the former president refused to answer questions put to him in a deposition. The right to remain silent is one of the most important in American law and should be used a lot more often. But copaganda television shows and Trump hatred have caused their own form of insanity, and his exercise of a fundamental right was widely lampooned. No one should ever be condemned for utilizing their fifth amendment right, not even Donald Trump.
Of course, this spectacle is also used to deflect from Biden administration failures. His approval rating is still low, for the simple reason that he didn’t do what he claimed he would for American voters. He continues to pour public money into the losing effort in Ukraine and needlessly provokes Russia and China. But who is paying attention if there is speculation that Trump put files in Ivana’s casket?
It is time to nip this foolishness in the bud before it goes any further. Trump should not live rent free in our collective consciousness any longer. He cannot be allowed to distract from the current president’s actions or become a rallying point for politics which will inevitably be useless. No one has to follow Trump’s shenanigans any longer or allow the corporate media or the democratic party to make him their focus. Doing so only makes it harder to do the already hard work of recreating Black politics.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/trump ... me-returns
But look at it this way: Trump Derangement Syndrome is all the Dems got. Keep him barking, keep the sheep in the corral. Of course that didn't work out so well in 2016 due to massive ruling class hubris: precautions were not taken against the unlikely possibility that the chosen candidate, Clinton, would be so repulsive to voters. Such as we saw in 2000 against Gore . No more surprises, be assured, Trump set the Imperial project back four years*, they won't let it happen again.
*Fucked up with China and North Korea, set back the timetable on aggression against Russia, needlessly and gratuitously pissed off the entire Global South.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
In FBI vs. Trump, the People Lose
AUGUST 31, 2022
A man carrying Trump posters and wearing a hat with US flag colors stands in front of a policeman. Photo: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images.
By Aaron Maté – Aug 21, 2022
Investigating Trump for an Espionage Act violation, the FBI opens a new chapter in a six-year, intra-elite feud.
For my money, the early beneficiary of the FBI’s espionage investigation of Donald Trump is Donald Trump.
According to the Washington Post, “Trump has told advisers that in the nearly two years since leaving office, no issue had better galvanized Republican voters around him.” A Politico poll of Republican voters in the aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago raid gave Trump a 10-point boost over his closest possible primary rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Trump’s ensuing fundraising campaign has done even better, quickly topping $1 million on at least two days, a jump of at least 700%.
Over the long run, it is difficult to form a conclusive judgment on Trump’s potential culpability in the absence of any confirmed detail about both the contents of the documents that Trump allegedly mishandled, and the evidence to support the Justice Department’s suspicions. But if the last six years of routine Trump standoffs with the national security state are any guide, the walls are nowhere closer to closing in.
Whatever your views on Trump, it is undeniable that the permanent military-intelligence bureaucracy in Washington does not see him as one of their own, and has gone to extraordinary lengths to target him when it sees fit. It is also undeniable that the national security state’s spats with Trump have distracted the public from vital issues that impact working people’s lives and the future of the planet. This includes, I have long argued, Trump’s most harmful policies as president, which were routinely overshadowed and even exacerbated by his standoffs with the “deep state.”
Accordingly, it is reasonable to expect that this latest “scandal” over the potential mishandling of classified documents will continue the trend that has defined the Trump era: an intra-elite, symbiotic feud that simultaneous boosts Trump among his base, and the national security state among his foes.
Pundits and politicians are resoundingly confident that the FBI must have the goods on Trump to have taken the unprecedented step of searching the former president’s home. This argument can only be made by ignoring that the FBI and other intelligence agencies took far more unprecedented and consequential actions against Trump when he was president, on grounds that were not only baseless, but fraudulent.
The FBI investigated Trump as a suspected Russian conspirator and asset—and not just once, but twice: first as a presidential candidate, and then months after he took office. To undertake this, they relied on the Hillary Clinton-funded Steele dossier’s conspiracy theories as source material; repeatedly lied to a FISA court; and, despite the full knowledge that they had come up empty, prolonged their investigation with media leaks and court filings that falsely suggested that a collusion “smoking gun” was within reach.
Russiagate apologists like to argue that the FBI’s use of the Steele dossier was an aberration that does not taint the whole enterprise. In fact, there are ample grounds to believe that Steele’s fabrications played an even greater role than the FBI has acknowledged—including, as I have detailed, possibly triggering the Russia investigation to begin with. But even taking the FBI’s official predicate at face value, the probe was baseless from start to finish.
https://orinocotribune.com/in-fbi-vs-tr ... ople-lose/
Only thing I'm sure of is that Trump will not be re-elected. By hook or by crook.....no hubris this time.
Which does not make me feel warm and fuzzy after two treacherous years of Biden, inciting the war in Ukraine, bungling Covid-19, and finessing his party left into impotence, not seriously addressing climate change while supporting fossil fuel.
Biden and Trump are both anti-humans.
Folks overseas don't know or care much about the Donald's hideous behavior, race baiting, thievery, etc. What they do know is that there were no major military conflicts initiated during his time, and a little the opposite. But Americans don't care about the deaths our country causes overseas, out of sight, out of mind.
AUGUST 31, 2022
A man carrying Trump posters and wearing a hat with US flag colors stands in front of a policeman. Photo: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images.
By Aaron Maté – Aug 21, 2022
Investigating Trump for an Espionage Act violation, the FBI opens a new chapter in a six-year, intra-elite feud.
For my money, the early beneficiary of the FBI’s espionage investigation of Donald Trump is Donald Trump.
According to the Washington Post, “Trump has told advisers that in the nearly two years since leaving office, no issue had better galvanized Republican voters around him.” A Politico poll of Republican voters in the aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago raid gave Trump a 10-point boost over his closest possible primary rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Trump’s ensuing fundraising campaign has done even better, quickly topping $1 million on at least two days, a jump of at least 700%.
Over the long run, it is difficult to form a conclusive judgment on Trump’s potential culpability in the absence of any confirmed detail about both the contents of the documents that Trump allegedly mishandled, and the evidence to support the Justice Department’s suspicions. But if the last six years of routine Trump standoffs with the national security state are any guide, the walls are nowhere closer to closing in.
Whatever your views on Trump, it is undeniable that the permanent military-intelligence bureaucracy in Washington does not see him as one of their own, and has gone to extraordinary lengths to target him when it sees fit. It is also undeniable that the national security state’s spats with Trump have distracted the public from vital issues that impact working people’s lives and the future of the planet. This includes, I have long argued, Trump’s most harmful policies as president, which were routinely overshadowed and even exacerbated by his standoffs with the “deep state.”
Accordingly, it is reasonable to expect that this latest “scandal” over the potential mishandling of classified documents will continue the trend that has defined the Trump era: an intra-elite, symbiotic feud that simultaneous boosts Trump among his base, and the national security state among his foes.
Pundits and politicians are resoundingly confident that the FBI must have the goods on Trump to have taken the unprecedented step of searching the former president’s home. This argument can only be made by ignoring that the FBI and other intelligence agencies took far more unprecedented and consequential actions against Trump when he was president, on grounds that were not only baseless, but fraudulent.
The FBI investigated Trump as a suspected Russian conspirator and asset—and not just once, but twice: first as a presidential candidate, and then months after he took office. To undertake this, they relied on the Hillary Clinton-funded Steele dossier’s conspiracy theories as source material; repeatedly lied to a FISA court; and, despite the full knowledge that they had come up empty, prolonged their investigation with media leaks and court filings that falsely suggested that a collusion “smoking gun” was within reach.
Russiagate apologists like to argue that the FBI’s use of the Steele dossier was an aberration that does not taint the whole enterprise. In fact, there are ample grounds to believe that Steele’s fabrications played an even greater role than the FBI has acknowledged—including, as I have detailed, possibly triggering the Russia investigation to begin with. But even taking the FBI’s official predicate at face value, the probe was baseless from start to finish.
https://orinocotribune.com/in-fbi-vs-tr ... ople-lose/
Only thing I'm sure of is that Trump will not be re-elected. By hook or by crook.....no hubris this time.
Which does not make me feel warm and fuzzy after two treacherous years of Biden, inciting the war in Ukraine, bungling Covid-19, and finessing his party left into impotence, not seriously addressing climate change while supporting fossil fuel.
Biden and Trump are both anti-humans.
Folks overseas don't know or care much about the Donald's hideous behavior, race baiting, thievery, etc. What they do know is that there were no major military conflicts initiated during his time, and a little the opposite. But Americans don't care about the deaths our country causes overseas, out of sight, out of mind.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
He's back....
Trump launches 2024 White House bid
Xinhua | Updated: 2022-11-16 09:57
Donald Trump arrives with his wife Melania Trump to announce that he will once again run for US president in the 2024 US presidential election during an event at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, US Nov 15, 2022. [Photo/Agencies]
WASHINGTON - Former US President Donald Trump announced Tuesday night that he will run for the White House again.
"I am tonight announcing my candidacy for President of the United States," the Republican said from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump, 76, also filed his paperwork establishing his candidacy to run for the US presidency in 2024 with the Federal Elections Commission on Tuesday.
The announcement came a week after the 2022 US midterm elections, in which all 435 seats of the House of Representatives and 35 spots in the 100-member Senate were among those up for grabs.
Democrats have been projected to retain control of the Senate in the next US Congress while neither party has won enough seats to be the House majority as of Tuesday night.
Trump on Tuesday night touted Republicans' midterm performance despite analysis that they had underperformed.
Trump served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
He lost to his Democrat challenger Joe Biden in the 2020 US presidential election but has refused to acknowledge defeat and continued to promote unsubstantiated claims that the race was rigged.
Biden said last week that he still intends to seek re-election and that he would likely make an official decision "early next year."
The 2024 US presidential election is scheduled for Nov 5 of that year.
http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20221 ... 2a005.html
Yep, it's champagne and cocaine time at the DNC, now they got a chance at retaining the White House in 2024. Cause they got nothing to show for these 1st two years and the next 2 look even less propitious. If ya ain't got nothing to run on ya need something to run against. Viola!
***********
What It Would Look Like to Put Trump on Trial (Literally) While He Runs for President
BY JEREMY STAHL
NOV 15, 20229:34 PM
The former president announces a thing. USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president in 2024. Isn’t this wildly early, you might ask? Yes, yes, it is—it’s the earliest presidential candidacy declaration for a non-incumbent major candidate in modern history.
The rushed nature of Trump’s announcement—coming also before we even know the final outcome of last week’s midterms—has raised speculation that Trump is only announcing his bid as a way to avoid prosecution. Indeed, there’s been reporting for months that Trump would try to use a candidacy to deter an indictment by the Department of Justice in the Mar-a-Lago case and other cases, hoping that Attorney General Merrick Garland would find such a prosecution too politically toxic and essentially give Trump a get out of jail free card.
But the situation presents a bit of a conundrum. As I’ve argued before, there are a lot—like a lot, lot, lot—of legal issues, criminal and civil, that potentially stand in the way of Trump even making it to that first primary, which is more than 14 months away. It’s unclear how they are all going to shake out, but they should make this a far different primary campaign than the one Trump ran in 2015 and 2016, when he shocked the Republican establishment, split the field, and ultimately took the prize.
The thorniest among those legal issues stems from the August FBI search on his home at Mar-a-Lago—also the site of Tuesday’s announcement—which uncovered more than 100 classified documents Trump had taken from the White House and which his lawyers had claimed had been returned in response to a grand jury subpoena. Experts in classified document cases have been saying for months that there’s already more than enough public evidence available to indict Trump, particularly given the apparent obstruction of justice involved in the case.
“If Trump were anyone else, he would have already faced a likely indictment,” Bradley Moss, a leading private attorney in classified documents cases, told NBC News last week. Trump likely hasn’t been indicted yet only because of a DOJ policy against taking prosecutorial steps that might be seen as interfering in an election—it prohibits any interference in the 60 days leading up to any election, in this case, the midterms. That midterm election, however, just ended. Which begs the question: What would it look like to prosecute Donald Trump now that the midterms are over and his is again a candidate for president?
Moss and I spoke back in August shortly after the Mar-a-Lago search and on Tuesday prior to Trump’s announcement. What he described a possible Trump prosecution and trial looking like was surprisingly straightforward—despite Trump’s attempt to insist we are already in a general election season via the announcement.
(more...)
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... nyway.html
From the Dept of Wishful Thinking....Mebbe it is and mebbe it ain't but I suspect the over-riding reason behind this early announcement is that Trump misses and wants the headlines, all the better to get out ahead of Desantis. Even if you are a baby raised in a wicker basket in a dark closet you know that Trump is the world master of running out the legal clock. That plus the above mentioned complexities leads one to expect that Trump will never be convicted unless it is posthumous. A plurality of the rich might hate him but class has it's privileges....and one must not set such precedence.....
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... nyway.html
********
PSL Statement – Workers shouldn’t be fooled: Trump is a tool of the ultra-rich
Party for Socialism and LiberationNovember 15, 2022 236 5 minutes read
Download PDF flyer https://flyer-generator.herokuapp.com/? ... sts/110082
Photo credit — Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons
Donald Trump announced tonight that he is launching his third campaign for the presidency. In a rambling speech filled with outrageous falsehoods and demagogic promises, Trump presented himself as someone who had brought about incredible prosperity during his time in office, but is hounded by a corrupt elite. He promised a police state crackdown involving the death penalty for drug dealers, called to make early voting illegal, ridiculed efforts to save the environment, grossly misrepresented his catastrophic handling of the pandemic and much more.
A central feature of Trump’s false appeal is the notion that he is “pro-worker” and stands up for the rights of working people against the establishment. This is especially targeted to people who work or used to work in the manufacturing sector, an area of the economy that has been devastated by corporate greed and shrunken down to a shadow of its former self.
But a look at Trump’s real record while in office makes it clear that the opposite is true. Trump is nothing more than a tool for the millionaires and billionaires to grow even more disgustingly rich while workers’ rights are trampled on. Trump is an ultra-rich real estate mogul himself, and uses his power to enrich himself and the class of wealthy parasites he belongs to.
Implementing the billionaires’ wishlist
Perhaps the clearest example of this is the 2017 tax “reform” law, something Trump constantly touts as one of his proudest accomplishments. Totaling $2 trillion, this overhaul was effectively a massive transfer of wealth from workers to the rich. Outrageously, many billionaires and multinational corporations pay a lower effective tax rate than many working class families. Trump’s tax law slashed the corporate tax rate from 36 percent to 21 percent. Likewise, the income tax rate paid by those in the highest bracket was reduced from 39.6 percent to 37 percent. And Trump wanted to make sure that inequality would persist from generation to generation – he exempted people with up to $12 million from paying any taxes at all on the inheritance they leave to their children.
Regulations meant to protect the health, safety and other basic rights of workers – won thanks to the courage and persistent struggle of the labor movement and other people’s movements – were shredded by Trump. Less than two weeks after taking office, Trump issued an executive order referred to as “two for one” – a mandate that no new regulation can be introduced unless two existing regulations are eliminated. This wave of deregulation made it easier, for instance, for companies to dump coal ash into water supplies or spew mercury into the air. And Trump systematically deprived OSHA of the resources it needed to keep workers safe on the job, reducing the number of inspectors at the agency’s disposal to the lowest level ever in its 50-year history.
The National Labor Relations Board, supposed to be an institution to uphold workers’ rights, turned into yet another tool of corporate America under Trump. Trump’s NLRB made it easier for bosses to rig union certification elections by arbitrarily adding unrelated employees to a potential bargaining unit. It also gave bosses more leeway to make unilateral changes to workplace conditions and undermined workers’ right to exercise their free speech rights at their place of employment. Trump appointed Peter Robb to be the General Counsel of the NLRB – the board’s top lawyer. Robb is a long-standing opponent of labor and even worked with Ronald Reagan to crush the landmark PATCO strike in 1981, a defeat that set off decades of decline for unions.
The Trump administration pushed a rule that left over 8 million workers ineligible for overtime pay. He also promised to veto a bill that raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour, something that would have raised standards across the board and improved the bargaining power of all workers.
Trump demagogically cites the tariffs he imposed as evidence of his commitment to the industrial working class, especially his trade war with China. But in reality, the number of manufacturing jobs in the country at the end of Trump’s term was 154,000 fewer than when he took office. There were modest gains registered in the first year and a half of Trump’s presidency, but by 2019 this stalled and then collapsed in 2020 as Trump stood by and refused to take the decisive action necessary to save people’s jobs as the pandemic broke out.
Democrats cannot lead people’s resistance to Trump
Considering this mountain of evidence, it is remarkable that Trump has managed to cultivate an image for himself as a fighter for working people. This notion could have been easily debunked by the Democrats, but they have never wanted the anti-Trump movement to become a pro-worker movement. They are beholden to the same class of Wall Street bankers and corporate executives that Trump serves.
Instead, throughout the Trump administration and beyond, the Democrats sought to organize opposition to him on the basis of nearly anything except class. The temperament of Trump – that he was a rash and self-interested decision maker who embarrassed the U.S. ruling class on the world stage – was their true objection. While Democrats would also correctly point out that Trump is a racist who subscribes to every form of bigotry imaginable, they obscured the roots of this oppression by presenting it as a matter of personal prejudice isolated from the broader social order dominated by a tiny elite.
After Trump’s upset election victory in 2016, spontaneous mass protests broke out like the dramatic airport demonstrations that challenged the Muslim Ban. This independent anti-Trump movement was viewed as a major threat by the Democratic Party establishment, which had just crushed the first Bernie Sanders campaign that drew on much of the same grassroots energy. Also desperate for an explanation to excuse Hillary Clinton’s humiliating shock defeat to Trump, the Democratic Party along with their allies in the intelligence agencies created the “Russiagate” hysteria. Falsely claiming that Russian interference swung the election to Trump, they sought to rally people against his administration on the basis that he is insufficiently committed to the new Cold War policies that have now brought the world to the brink of all-out conflict between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. A movement organized according to the priorities of the Pentagon cannot have a progressive character.
As Trump carries out his presidential campaign, he will posture as the underdog taking on a corrupt establishment that wants to take him down. This is beyond dishonest. Trump is a battering ram the ultra-rich want to use to demolish working people’s rights.
To the extent that sectors of the ruling class do stand against Trump – and coalesce around an alternative far right figure like Ron DeSantis – it is an expression of their disdain for his practice of putting his own narrow interests ahead of the collective interests of the capitalist class. He is not a competent manager of their system. The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal summed up this position on Nov. 9, “Mr. Trump had policy successes as President, including tax cuts and deregulation, but he has led Republicans into one political fiasco after another.”
The course of Trump’s new presidential campaign is completely unpredictable, as are the contours of the extremely volatile 2024 race overall. But one thing is a certainty: Trump is a sworn enemy of the working class.
https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-stat ... rationnews
I must disagree with this piece, I do not think that Trump is a tool of his class. Any benefits which came to the rich through the Trump regime were always and only because they benefited him. Like that great whooping tax cut, sure the entire class benefited from that but Trump was trying to bribe his peers to get them off his ass. And how long did that last? The MSM, the ruling class's mouthpiece, stayed all over him like a cheap suit except when he killed some foreigners...And his China sanctions probably cost many of his peers more quarterly than that one off windfall.
But his greatest sin was totally botching foreign policy, from the imperial pov. And it is this aspect of his regime which leads many non-Americans to see him at least somewhat favorably: There were no major wars launched by Trump, only a few spasmodic missile attacks and several attempts at reducing US overseas military presence which were scotched by intense Pentagon lobbying. As compared to Biden promoting WWIII..
Trump is always Trump First, the caricature and avatar of his class. The only people who believe he is for the 'little guy' is much of the 'lower middle class', very small business, mid-range managers and such. The very same strata constantly subject to being declassed by the grinding of monopoly. And coincidentally the spawning ground of nascent fascism. They think the people who work for them are no good worthless bums...These are the 'base' of the Republican Party who because they adhere to ruling class ideas must necessarily blame those 'below' for all their woes.
Gotta remember that around 50% of eligible voters in this country don't, and the vast majority of those are the real working class. They are waiting for the leadership which they know will never come from the Democratic Party. And only a Democratic Party so utterly useless to them might make cheap demagoguery seem an alternative.
Trump launches 2024 White House bid
Xinhua | Updated: 2022-11-16 09:57
Donald Trump arrives with his wife Melania Trump to announce that he will once again run for US president in the 2024 US presidential election during an event at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, US Nov 15, 2022. [Photo/Agencies]
WASHINGTON - Former US President Donald Trump announced Tuesday night that he will run for the White House again.
"I am tonight announcing my candidacy for President of the United States," the Republican said from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump, 76, also filed his paperwork establishing his candidacy to run for the US presidency in 2024 with the Federal Elections Commission on Tuesday.
The announcement came a week after the 2022 US midterm elections, in which all 435 seats of the House of Representatives and 35 spots in the 100-member Senate were among those up for grabs.
Democrats have been projected to retain control of the Senate in the next US Congress while neither party has won enough seats to be the House majority as of Tuesday night.
Trump on Tuesday night touted Republicans' midterm performance despite analysis that they had underperformed.
Trump served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
He lost to his Democrat challenger Joe Biden in the 2020 US presidential election but has refused to acknowledge defeat and continued to promote unsubstantiated claims that the race was rigged.
Biden said last week that he still intends to seek re-election and that he would likely make an official decision "early next year."
The 2024 US presidential election is scheduled for Nov 5 of that year.
http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20221 ... 2a005.html
Yep, it's champagne and cocaine time at the DNC, now they got a chance at retaining the White House in 2024. Cause they got nothing to show for these 1st two years and the next 2 look even less propitious. If ya ain't got nothing to run on ya need something to run against. Viola!
***********
What It Would Look Like to Put Trump on Trial (Literally) While He Runs for President
BY JEREMY STAHL
NOV 15, 20229:34 PM
The former president announces a thing. USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president in 2024. Isn’t this wildly early, you might ask? Yes, yes, it is—it’s the earliest presidential candidacy declaration for a non-incumbent major candidate in modern history.
The rushed nature of Trump’s announcement—coming also before we even know the final outcome of last week’s midterms—has raised speculation that Trump is only announcing his bid as a way to avoid prosecution. Indeed, there’s been reporting for months that Trump would try to use a candidacy to deter an indictment by the Department of Justice in the Mar-a-Lago case and other cases, hoping that Attorney General Merrick Garland would find such a prosecution too politically toxic and essentially give Trump a get out of jail free card.
But the situation presents a bit of a conundrum. As I’ve argued before, there are a lot—like a lot, lot, lot—of legal issues, criminal and civil, that potentially stand in the way of Trump even making it to that first primary, which is more than 14 months away. It’s unclear how they are all going to shake out, but they should make this a far different primary campaign than the one Trump ran in 2015 and 2016, when he shocked the Republican establishment, split the field, and ultimately took the prize.
The thorniest among those legal issues stems from the August FBI search on his home at Mar-a-Lago—also the site of Tuesday’s announcement—which uncovered more than 100 classified documents Trump had taken from the White House and which his lawyers had claimed had been returned in response to a grand jury subpoena. Experts in classified document cases have been saying for months that there’s already more than enough public evidence available to indict Trump, particularly given the apparent obstruction of justice involved in the case.
“If Trump were anyone else, he would have already faced a likely indictment,” Bradley Moss, a leading private attorney in classified documents cases, told NBC News last week. Trump likely hasn’t been indicted yet only because of a DOJ policy against taking prosecutorial steps that might be seen as interfering in an election—it prohibits any interference in the 60 days leading up to any election, in this case, the midterms. That midterm election, however, just ended. Which begs the question: What would it look like to prosecute Donald Trump now that the midterms are over and his is again a candidate for president?
Moss and I spoke back in August shortly after the Mar-a-Lago search and on Tuesday prior to Trump’s announcement. What he described a possible Trump prosecution and trial looking like was surprisingly straightforward—despite Trump’s attempt to insist we are already in a general election season via the announcement.
(more...)
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... nyway.html
From the Dept of Wishful Thinking....Mebbe it is and mebbe it ain't but I suspect the over-riding reason behind this early announcement is that Trump misses and wants the headlines, all the better to get out ahead of Desantis. Even if you are a baby raised in a wicker basket in a dark closet you know that Trump is the world master of running out the legal clock. That plus the above mentioned complexities leads one to expect that Trump will never be convicted unless it is posthumous. A plurality of the rich might hate him but class has it's privileges....and one must not set such precedence.....
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... nyway.html
********
PSL Statement – Workers shouldn’t be fooled: Trump is a tool of the ultra-rich
Party for Socialism and LiberationNovember 15, 2022 236 5 minutes read
Download PDF flyer https://flyer-generator.herokuapp.com/? ... sts/110082
Photo credit — Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons
Donald Trump announced tonight that he is launching his third campaign for the presidency. In a rambling speech filled with outrageous falsehoods and demagogic promises, Trump presented himself as someone who had brought about incredible prosperity during his time in office, but is hounded by a corrupt elite. He promised a police state crackdown involving the death penalty for drug dealers, called to make early voting illegal, ridiculed efforts to save the environment, grossly misrepresented his catastrophic handling of the pandemic and much more.
A central feature of Trump’s false appeal is the notion that he is “pro-worker” and stands up for the rights of working people against the establishment. This is especially targeted to people who work or used to work in the manufacturing sector, an area of the economy that has been devastated by corporate greed and shrunken down to a shadow of its former self.
But a look at Trump’s real record while in office makes it clear that the opposite is true. Trump is nothing more than a tool for the millionaires and billionaires to grow even more disgustingly rich while workers’ rights are trampled on. Trump is an ultra-rich real estate mogul himself, and uses his power to enrich himself and the class of wealthy parasites he belongs to.
Implementing the billionaires’ wishlist
Perhaps the clearest example of this is the 2017 tax “reform” law, something Trump constantly touts as one of his proudest accomplishments. Totaling $2 trillion, this overhaul was effectively a massive transfer of wealth from workers to the rich. Outrageously, many billionaires and multinational corporations pay a lower effective tax rate than many working class families. Trump’s tax law slashed the corporate tax rate from 36 percent to 21 percent. Likewise, the income tax rate paid by those in the highest bracket was reduced from 39.6 percent to 37 percent. And Trump wanted to make sure that inequality would persist from generation to generation – he exempted people with up to $12 million from paying any taxes at all on the inheritance they leave to their children.
Regulations meant to protect the health, safety and other basic rights of workers – won thanks to the courage and persistent struggle of the labor movement and other people’s movements – were shredded by Trump. Less than two weeks after taking office, Trump issued an executive order referred to as “two for one” – a mandate that no new regulation can be introduced unless two existing regulations are eliminated. This wave of deregulation made it easier, for instance, for companies to dump coal ash into water supplies or spew mercury into the air. And Trump systematically deprived OSHA of the resources it needed to keep workers safe on the job, reducing the number of inspectors at the agency’s disposal to the lowest level ever in its 50-year history.
The National Labor Relations Board, supposed to be an institution to uphold workers’ rights, turned into yet another tool of corporate America under Trump. Trump’s NLRB made it easier for bosses to rig union certification elections by arbitrarily adding unrelated employees to a potential bargaining unit. It also gave bosses more leeway to make unilateral changes to workplace conditions and undermined workers’ right to exercise their free speech rights at their place of employment. Trump appointed Peter Robb to be the General Counsel of the NLRB – the board’s top lawyer. Robb is a long-standing opponent of labor and even worked with Ronald Reagan to crush the landmark PATCO strike in 1981, a defeat that set off decades of decline for unions.
The Trump administration pushed a rule that left over 8 million workers ineligible for overtime pay. He also promised to veto a bill that raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour, something that would have raised standards across the board and improved the bargaining power of all workers.
Trump demagogically cites the tariffs he imposed as evidence of his commitment to the industrial working class, especially his trade war with China. But in reality, the number of manufacturing jobs in the country at the end of Trump’s term was 154,000 fewer than when he took office. There were modest gains registered in the first year and a half of Trump’s presidency, but by 2019 this stalled and then collapsed in 2020 as Trump stood by and refused to take the decisive action necessary to save people’s jobs as the pandemic broke out.
Democrats cannot lead people’s resistance to Trump
Considering this mountain of evidence, it is remarkable that Trump has managed to cultivate an image for himself as a fighter for working people. This notion could have been easily debunked by the Democrats, but they have never wanted the anti-Trump movement to become a pro-worker movement. They are beholden to the same class of Wall Street bankers and corporate executives that Trump serves.
Instead, throughout the Trump administration and beyond, the Democrats sought to organize opposition to him on the basis of nearly anything except class. The temperament of Trump – that he was a rash and self-interested decision maker who embarrassed the U.S. ruling class on the world stage – was their true objection. While Democrats would also correctly point out that Trump is a racist who subscribes to every form of bigotry imaginable, they obscured the roots of this oppression by presenting it as a matter of personal prejudice isolated from the broader social order dominated by a tiny elite.
After Trump’s upset election victory in 2016, spontaneous mass protests broke out like the dramatic airport demonstrations that challenged the Muslim Ban. This independent anti-Trump movement was viewed as a major threat by the Democratic Party establishment, which had just crushed the first Bernie Sanders campaign that drew on much of the same grassroots energy. Also desperate for an explanation to excuse Hillary Clinton’s humiliating shock defeat to Trump, the Democratic Party along with their allies in the intelligence agencies created the “Russiagate” hysteria. Falsely claiming that Russian interference swung the election to Trump, they sought to rally people against his administration on the basis that he is insufficiently committed to the new Cold War policies that have now brought the world to the brink of all-out conflict between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. A movement organized according to the priorities of the Pentagon cannot have a progressive character.
As Trump carries out his presidential campaign, he will posture as the underdog taking on a corrupt establishment that wants to take him down. This is beyond dishonest. Trump is a battering ram the ultra-rich want to use to demolish working people’s rights.
To the extent that sectors of the ruling class do stand against Trump – and coalesce around an alternative far right figure like Ron DeSantis – it is an expression of their disdain for his practice of putting his own narrow interests ahead of the collective interests of the capitalist class. He is not a competent manager of their system. The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal summed up this position on Nov. 9, “Mr. Trump had policy successes as President, including tax cuts and deregulation, but he has led Republicans into one political fiasco after another.”
The course of Trump’s new presidential campaign is completely unpredictable, as are the contours of the extremely volatile 2024 race overall. But one thing is a certainty: Trump is a sworn enemy of the working class.
https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-stat ... rationnews
I must disagree with this piece, I do not think that Trump is a tool of his class. Any benefits which came to the rich through the Trump regime were always and only because they benefited him. Like that great whooping tax cut, sure the entire class benefited from that but Trump was trying to bribe his peers to get them off his ass. And how long did that last? The MSM, the ruling class's mouthpiece, stayed all over him like a cheap suit except when he killed some foreigners...And his China sanctions probably cost many of his peers more quarterly than that one off windfall.
But his greatest sin was totally botching foreign policy, from the imperial pov. And it is this aspect of his regime which leads many non-Americans to see him at least somewhat favorably: There were no major wars launched by Trump, only a few spasmodic missile attacks and several attempts at reducing US overseas military presence which were scotched by intense Pentagon lobbying. As compared to Biden promoting WWIII..
Trump is always Trump First, the caricature and avatar of his class. The only people who believe he is for the 'little guy' is much of the 'lower middle class', very small business, mid-range managers and such. The very same strata constantly subject to being declassed by the grinding of monopoly. And coincidentally the spawning ground of nascent fascism. They think the people who work for them are no good worthless bums...These are the 'base' of the Republican Party who because they adhere to ruling class ideas must necessarily blame those 'below' for all their woes.
Gotta remember that around 50% of eligible voters in this country don't, and the vast majority of those are the real working class. They are waiting for the leadership which they know will never come from the Democratic Party. And only a Democratic Party so utterly useless to them might make cheap demagoguery seem an alternative.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
<snip>
But we have long known the basic story. Trump is a bad businessman who seems to lose money on everything from casinos to golf clubs, with steaks and vodka and even a so-called university in between. So the main reason he often pays so little, if any, in taxes, is that he often reports a loss. He also lost other people’s money and got big tax breaks for that.
President Joe Biden deliverers a Christmas address in the East Room of the White House on December 22, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Opinion: The 10 political questions that could determine the future of US politics
Trump has benefitted from the huge head start given to him by his father Fred Trump, which continued to pay dividends with large capital gains from the sale of inherited property in 2018 (leading to Trump paying some taxes that year – just under $1 million). And like his father, Trump emerges as an aggressive and rather crude tax avoider, using standard tactics like putting the kids on the payroll, writing off personal expenses, overvaluing in-kind charitable contributions and so on. Friday’s release has already shown, for example, that Trump did not donate his presidential salary to charities in 2020, as he had promised – he made no charitable gifts at all in 2020, when he paid no taxes.
Trump’s taxes often push the lines of propriety, and his company’s sometimes cross them, as we now know from the Manhattan DA’s criminal conviction of Trump Organization.
Nothing new there.
But sometimes nothing is the story, like the dog that does not bark. So here are some nothings we can resolve to do something about in 2023.
Nothing is what Trump paid in federal income taxes in 2020, and in many other years. Given his massive and mysterious income tax refund of nearly $73 million in 2010, Trump may not have paid net positive income taxes in his life. And he is not alone. Many billionaires pay no income tax, and many do so perfectly legally.
The final report released by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, is photographed Thursday, Dec. 22, 2022.
Opinion: The January 6 report is a 'mirror test' for the American people
Nothing is also what the IRS did in regards to Trump’s tax returns during his first two years in office until the Democrats took power and forced them to do something starting in 2019.
(more...)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/30/opinions ... index.html
It is as we stated 6-7 years ago, most of Trump's crimes are 'business as usual' for his peers, thus his nonchalance about these investigations:"Everybody does it."
Violations of justice, by any sane measure, but not of the laws of a capitalists nation built specifically for capitalists to thrive.
There is a major consistency of ruling classes throughout the ages of commodities: They refuse to pay any but the most insignificant of taxes and arrange their governments to that effect. And so the burden of government falls most heavily upon the 'middle' classes until that resource is depleted, and then upon the already poor workers Thus assuring the alienation of the workers from their governments, a prerequisite for those government's fall.
And please, please, please, let us not restrict this criticism to billionaires, that rightfully maligned top tier of the ruling class, but include a whole lot of these parasites, otherwise we engage in a most useless form of reformism, which will be thwarted before the sun sets.
But we have long known the basic story. Trump is a bad businessman who seems to lose money on everything from casinos to golf clubs, with steaks and vodka and even a so-called university in between. So the main reason he often pays so little, if any, in taxes, is that he often reports a loss. He also lost other people’s money and got big tax breaks for that.
President Joe Biden deliverers a Christmas address in the East Room of the White House on December 22, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Opinion: The 10 political questions that could determine the future of US politics
Trump has benefitted from the huge head start given to him by his father Fred Trump, which continued to pay dividends with large capital gains from the sale of inherited property in 2018 (leading to Trump paying some taxes that year – just under $1 million). And like his father, Trump emerges as an aggressive and rather crude tax avoider, using standard tactics like putting the kids on the payroll, writing off personal expenses, overvaluing in-kind charitable contributions and so on. Friday’s release has already shown, for example, that Trump did not donate his presidential salary to charities in 2020, as he had promised – he made no charitable gifts at all in 2020, when he paid no taxes.
Trump’s taxes often push the lines of propriety, and his company’s sometimes cross them, as we now know from the Manhattan DA’s criminal conviction of Trump Organization.
Nothing new there.
But sometimes nothing is the story, like the dog that does not bark. So here are some nothings we can resolve to do something about in 2023.
Nothing is what Trump paid in federal income taxes in 2020, and in many other years. Given his massive and mysterious income tax refund of nearly $73 million in 2010, Trump may not have paid net positive income taxes in his life. And he is not alone. Many billionaires pay no income tax, and many do so perfectly legally.
The final report released by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, is photographed Thursday, Dec. 22, 2022.
Opinion: The January 6 report is a 'mirror test' for the American people
Nothing is also what the IRS did in regards to Trump’s tax returns during his first two years in office until the Democrats took power and forced them to do something starting in 2019.
(more...)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/30/opinions ... index.html
It is as we stated 6-7 years ago, most of Trump's crimes are 'business as usual' for his peers, thus his nonchalance about these investigations:"Everybody does it."
Violations of justice, by any sane measure, but not of the laws of a capitalists nation built specifically for capitalists to thrive.
There is a major consistency of ruling classes throughout the ages of commodities: They refuse to pay any but the most insignificant of taxes and arrange their governments to that effect. And so the burden of government falls most heavily upon the 'middle' classes until that resource is depleted, and then upon the already poor workers Thus assuring the alienation of the workers from their governments, a prerequisite for those government's fall.
And please, please, please, let us not restrict this criticism to billionaires, that rightfully maligned top tier of the ruling class, but include a whole lot of these parasites, otherwise we engage in a most useless form of reformism, which will be thwarted before the sun sets.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."