This could end Trump’s last chance at victory

One of the main reasons Donald Trump is sitting in the Oval Office is that he sold Americans on the lie that he is some kind of genius businessman.

In fact, even with 13 million people out of work right now, polls still have Trump over Joe Biden when it comes to the economy.

But this week, we were handed a silver bullet to destroy Trump’s phony image as a good businessman forever.

As you likely saw, the New York Times published a bombshell expose on Trump’s tax returns that show that he not only pays almost nothing in federal taxes, but he’s also lost billions over the past two decades, and almost certainly broke the law along the way. Details from the Times story show Trump could face prosecution for bank fraud, tax fraud, wire fraud, and mail fraud.

His golf courses hemorrhage money. His real estate investments have crashed spectacularly. The only way he’s ever made money is by inheriting it and selling his image.

Right now, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are nearly tied in swing states like Florida, Arizona, Ohio, and North Carolina. But if we can blow up his phony reputation on the economy, we can eliminate any remaining chance of another Trump comeback victory.

That’s where we come in. We’re making short, easy-to-process and share explainer videos showing just what Trump’s tax returns mean about his business acumen and presidency.

We know this tactic works. A study last year found that 54% of voters thought that Trump was a “successful businessman,” but once those voters were shown evidence that Trump lost $1.2 billion in a decade, that number fell to 43%, more than enough to erase Trump’s lead on the economy.

We have built one of the largest social media followings in the country, and now we need to leverage that audience to help make our explainer videos on Trump’s tax returns go viral before he wins another term.





Robert Reich

Sunrise: Our plan to stop Trump

If you’re like me, you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed this election season. Just like last election, Trump is trying to divide us with lies and violence. And he’s threatening to use any means necessary to hold onto power if he loses. But we aren’t powerless.

Leaders in youth movements all over the country are gathering together on Monday, October 5th at 8pm Eastern / 5pm Pacific to discuss how we will defeat Trump at the polls and, if he tries to steal the election, force him to count every vote. Click here to join us.

No matter what we look like or where we’re from, across race and place, we want to live in communities that are safe for our families. We want safe air to breathe, water to drink, and cozy homes to live in. We don’t want to have to worry about record-setting wildfires, hurricanes, or floods sending us fleeing from our homes. That’s what is at stake this election season.

For decades, fossil fuel executives have polluted our air and water, damaging our climate and threatening our future, all while the politicians they bought off stood by and let it happen. We have an opportunity to reverse course, to push our political leaders to adopt a Green New Deal framework that creates millions of well-paying jobs rebuilding our infrastructure, upgrading our energy grid, and not just averting the climate crisis, but undoing the damage already done to this planet and all the neighborhoods in it—our home.

But Trump is threatening all of that. Terrified he’s going to lose, Trump is openly rejecting our democratic process in a panicked attempt to cling to power. He’s trying to tear us apart with distractions while he tries to steal the election. He’s already shrugged off the idea of leaving office peacefully, and is crying out for help from white supremacist groups on national television.

You’re not alone in feeling nervous about what he might do next. When I spoke to other young people in allied movements, they revealed that they were worried about the same things as me, as all of us. And in having these conversations, in reconnecting with each other, we realized how much stronger we are when we stick together.

Our movements are a force to be reckoned with. Look at the Dreamers who win protections for immigrants against ICE. Look at the young people who took on the NRA to fight gun violence. This generation made Black Lives Matter a national rallying cry against police brutality and made the Green New Deal a political priority.

There is nothing we can’t accomplish when we stay united. We can build the future of our dreams, but first we have to escape the nightmare we’re in. So all these youth movements are gathering on Monday to make a plan together for the coming weeks. Click here to register and save your spot.

Together, we can assemble a nonviolent tidal wave of young people who will make sure Donald Trump loses this election with a margin so wide, even he can’t cheat his way to denying it.

See you on Monday,

Mattias, Digital Director

The Two Huge Questions About Trump's Tax Returns

Did he personally enrich himself with his own tax legislation? And are we prepared to fix a corrupt tax code that helps rich people avoid paying $266 billion of taxes every year?


David Sirota
Sep 28






Donald Trump’s $70,000 hair styling bill may be getting all the attention, but there are two unanswered questions from the New York Times expose on Donald Trump’s tax returns.
Question 1: How Much Did Trump Enrich Himself In 2017?

You may recall that back in 2017, Trump spearheaded a massive tax cut bill that was criticized for delivering most of its benefits to the very wealthy. At the time, I led the investigative reporting team that broke open the story of what would become known as the Corker Kickback — and the question is how much Trump was personally enriched by that specific provision, which was designed to benefit real estate investors.

We won a major award for our reporting, but we weren’t able to discern exactly how much Trump and his family may have reaped from the language.

It was a dirty deal — it became linked to Republican Sen. Bob Corker because he is a real estate mogul who decided to support the tax bill after the language was added in. However, it was spearheaded by the Trump White House.

Here’s what we reported at the time:


Republican congressional leaders and real estate moguls could be personally enriched by a real-estate-related provision GOP lawmakers slipped into the final tax bill released Friday evening, according to experts interviewed by International Business Times. The legislative language was not part of previous versions of the bill and was added despite ongoing conflict-of-interest questions about the intertwining real estate interests and governmental responsibilities of President Donald Trump — the bill’s chief proponent.

The Trump organization and the Kushners (the family of Ivanka's husband, Jared) have overseen vast real estate empires, and top GOP lawmakers writing the tax bill collectively have tens of millions of dollars of ownership stakes in real-estate-related LLCs. The new tax provision would specifically allow owners of large real estate holdings through LLCs to deduct a percentage of their “pass through” income from their taxes, according to experts. Although Trump, who became famous for his real estate holdings, has transitioned into branding in recent years, federal records show Trump has ownership stakes in myriad LLCs.

The new provision was not in the bill passed by the House or the Senate. Instead, it was inserted into the final bill during reconciliation negotiations between Republicans from both chambers.

So the big question that perhaps can be answered from Trump’s tax returns is: Exactly how much did he personally benefit from legislation that he himself pushed?
Question 2: Are We Prepared To Fix This Systemic Problem?

There’s an impulse to try to turn Trump’s tax shenanigans into a story only about Trump — as if he is a singular villain. But while he deserves much criticism for gaming the system, we can’t ignore the fact that it is a system — one that allows wealthy people like Trump avoid paying $266 billion of taxes every single year.

That figure comes from a government report that we covered earlier this year. Here’s what we reported back in July:


The first report came from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which found that between 2011 and 2013, $381 billion of taxes went unpaid every single year. Couple that data with recent Harvard University research showing that the top 1 percent of income earners are responsible for 70 percent of the tax gap, and you see the full picture: The wealthiest sliver of the population is depriving the American public of about $266 billion of owed tax revenue every year.

There are about 1.6 million households in the top 1 percent — so that means among this income group, the rate of tax cheating is about $166,000 per household.

That tax gap didn’t just magically happen — it is the result of conservatives’ huge cuts to the Internal Revenue Service’s enforcement budget, which resulted in a particularly precipitous decline in audit rates for the super rich. In fact, the $266 billion figure could be an understatement, because the congressional budget analysts were estimating the tax gap that existed before those IRS budget cuts.

Trump’s tax returns are a towering example of both one charlatan’s scammy behavior and a tax system that encourages such behavior.

That leads to a policy question: Are we prepared to not just remove Trump from the White House, but to also change the tax code so that it no longer helps the rich fleece America? 

Interviewed by Alexandre Dayanton

EUROPE & THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM




https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2020/09/28/lowy-institude-interviewed-by-alexandre-dayanton-on-europe-the-future-of-capitalism/

Diary entries on Brexit, defending refugees & writing postcapitalist fiction

Yanis Varoufakis




Reading the newspapers last Monday, I was reminded that negotiations with Brussels are always an occasion for second-rate theatre. Ultimatums are usually issued by EU negotiators facing UK governments that talk enthusiastically of red lines and sovereignty. But now, if the Telegraph is to be believed, it is Boris Johnson who has given the EU 38 days to propose a postBrexit deal – or else. While history is not on Johnson’s side, there is a difference between him and other premiers who buckled: he is not bluffing. It seems he would like a deal, but is not desperate for one. Let’s see how the EU deals with this in October, when trade talks are supposed to conclude. Setting aside this latest episode of the Brexit saga, I began preparing for a leaders’ debate in Greece’s parliament over our government’s handling of Covid-19. Our party, MeRA25, was not the only one to chastise the government for failing to hire extra doctors and nurses, leaving our national health service in a dilapidated state after a decade of austerity. However, I was the only parliamentary leader to absolve the government of incompetence and instead claim that it was its explicit policy to drive public health into the ground for a parasitic oligarchy seeking to privatise it.
Saddened and angered
Two days later, I awoke to the news that the Moria refugee camp on Lesbos had burned down overnight. Assembled in 2015, when nearly a million people passed through the island, it eventually became an EU-sanctioned prison camp, with 13,000 people packed in a space designed for 1,800. While at first they were free to move in and out of the camp, more recently the gates were locked shut. In response to reports that refugees had started the fires intentionally to burn down the hideous camp, xenophobic yells filled the airwaves. Politicians, bureaucrats and commentators competed to find ways to condemn the “ungrateful” migrants. One minister said the state must not be blackmailed into providing better conditions, and that the refugees should be taught a lesson by being left to suffer in makeshift tents for months. Saddened and angered by this cacophony, I posted the following in my blog: What would you do if you, your family and another 13,000 people were incarcerated in a prison camp built for 1,800 people, without running water, without heating, without knowing when you will be given a hearing to decide between deportation and asylum (some people have been in there for four years) and, to cap it all, you heard that 35 positive Covid-19 tests were returned in an environment where it is impossible to self-isolate and where there are zero doctors to look after you? Would you not try to find a way to break down the gates so that you can escape the living hell? Would it be wrong to start thinking that maybe starting a fire is the answer? No, you would be right. Indeed, it would be your duty to start that fire! Soon, the Greek media were reporting that the leader of MeRA25 was siding with violent foreigners against his own people. Funnily enough, I felt honoured to be on the receiving end of their venom.
Missing main characters
Tuning into Radio 4, I was greeted with the news that Boris Johnson had introduced his “rule of six”. Switching to Greek stations, I heard that hordes of officials and riot police had disembarked on Lesbos intent on “turning the screw on refugees”. I so wished the rule of six applied here too. Trying to turn my thoughts elsewhere, I remembered that it was 10 September, the day my new book (Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present) was released in the UK. Readers would soon be dissecting my first political science-fiction novel. Using that medium proved to be the only way I could do what I spent decades avoiding: sketch a plausible alternative to capitalism. What, I wondered, will people make of Iris, Eva and Costa, the three characters I conjured up to tell the story of how, after the financial crash in 2008, humanity built a type of democratic socialism – characters from whom I ended up learning so much and whom I now miss badly?
The weight of the past
Two awful anniversaries are marked on 11 September; images of the falling twin towers mix with echoes of the 1973 coup d’état that killed Salvador Allende and brought the Butcher of Chile into office. I met Chilean refugee friends at the University of Essex in 1979, and I remember the courage with which they hid their pain. Back in our strange times, the UK commentariat was going ballistic over Johnson’s manoeuvre to threaten the sanctity of his Withdrawal Agreement. Has politics become unbearably dull? Or does the weight of these two anniversaries make it seem so? Before long, the Greek prime minister forced me to refocus. With our public health system and economy in tatters, he gave a speech to fan the flames of nationalism. Greece, he declared, would be buying fighter jets and frigates from France for billions, boosting our already unpayable debt. There we have it: a new arms race with Turkey, which Greece can only lose, is underway – and it will bring more austerity and sink our people deeper into debt bondage.
Entering post-capitalism
On 12 August it was reported that Britain’s economy was in its worst slump since records began as GDP fell by more than 20 per cent over the first half of the year. Half an hour later, the London Stock Exchange shot up, the FTSE100 rising by more than 2 per cent. The world of money had finally decoupled from capitalism. Money markets were divorced from profit. What we now have is a dystopic variety of post-capitalism. Maybe my book saw the light of day at the right time. Then again, maybe not. l, Yanis Varoufakis, lead MeRA25 in Greece’s Parliament and am a Professor of Economics at the University of Athens.

Trump is Incapable of Even Pretending to Care About COVID-19 Deaths

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xW_ViEKajU&ab_channel=TheHumanistReport

From Under the Rubble: Trump Lies and Cheats (woah!), plus general lawlessness from our government

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDGn8_cyZdE&ab_channel=HLM