Monday Cartoon Blogging – May 13, 2019

Too much commencement fun has led to Sunday’s cartoons arriving on Monday.

Enforced Mother’s Day is the law in Georgia:

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex had a baby. Americans are envious:

Trump’s right to confront China. Too bad he’s using the wrong weapon:

Another cover up for the Orange Overlord:

Trump’s hiding a few things by using his tax forms to cover up. You can’t unsee this:

If its comfort food you’re after, Joe’s for you:

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How Trump Exploited NYC’s Financial Crisis

The Daily Escape:

Iceberg floating near Ferryland Newfoundland, April 2017 – photo by Greg Locke

The Intercept has an interview of Kim Phillips-Fein by Naomi Klein about how Donald Trump made his first big deal during the New York City financial crisis of the mid-1970s. Phillips-Fein’s book is “Fear City”, which describes the NYC fiscal crisis of the 1970s that brought it to the verge of bankruptcy. The WSJ reports:

By June 1975, New York faced default on $4.5 billion in outstanding short-term debt owed to a few big banks and to thousands of unidentifiable small investors. Not only did the city have no way to repay $4.5 billion, it could not meet its routine, daily operating expenses, including payroll.

The WSJ says that between 1970 and 1980, more than 823,000 city dwellers left for (literally) greener pastures.

Ultimately the city did not go bankrupt. The banks and the city’s unions were willing to buy enough of the city’s (otherwise unsalable) debt to avoid bankruptcy. Important to the mix was the creation of the Municipal Assistance Corporation (MAC) run by Felix Rohatyn, who became chief negotiator between the city, its labor unions and its creditors. A new type of agency, The New York State Financial Control Board, that controlled the city’s budget, became the model for the type of emergency city managers that we saw last year in Flint and Detroit Michigan.

The NYC financial crisis helped Donald Trump emerge as a New York deal-maker. Trump convinced New York to let him take over the Commodore Hotel, which we now call the Grand Hyatt, just east of Grand Central station. Trump modernized and renovated it, it was his first construction project in Manhattan. Phillips-Fein picks up the story:

…the Commodore Hotel was a previously very fancy hotel from the early 20th century. I think it opens in 1919 at 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. And it’s owned by the Penn Central Railroad. And the hotel kind of falls into disrepair and near collapse after Penn Central itself goes bankrupt in 1970.

The Commodore had stopped paying city property taxes and was for sale. The city was terrified that if the Commodore Hotel closed, the blight in Times Square would spread east, into the area around Grand Central Terminal. Trump saw an opportunity, while the city government saw a potential disaster. Together they hatched a plan for Trump to purchase the Commodore Hotel: (parenthesis by the Wrongologist)

What he actually wants to do is buy it and sell it to a state agency, the Urban Development Corporation (UDC)…And then the UDC will lease it back to Trump, [who was] working with the Hyatt organization.

The UDC leased it back to Trump and Hyatt. And this arrangement enabled them to pay substantially lower property taxes than usual. Phillips-Fein:

The New York Times reported that as of 2016, this tax arrangement with the Hyatt had cost New York City about $360 million in uncollected taxes in the years since the development.

Naomi Klein:

So I just want to pause there, because what you’re saying is…Trump and the Hyatt put down $9.5 million…They come up with this…sweetheart deal, a tax dodge. And that $9.5 million outlay translates back into roughly $360 million in tax savings…

The Trump/Hyatt tax deal set the stage for a wholesale change in the city. The fear of bankruptcy was central to understanding NYC politics at that moment: They feared an apocalyptic future. That fear created a need for a savior, and it found two in Donald Trump and Felix Rohatyn.

The NYC government decided that working with the business community was the bail-out it needed. It set the stage for the city’s luxury developments, for using different kinds of tax breaks that stimulated the development of properties primarily dedicated to the needs of corporations and the rich. It set the stage for a wholesale change in city politics from New Dealism to Neoliberalism. And it set the stage for Trump’s political career. Phillips-Fein: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

…you can see the straight line, really, from the Commodore to this skating rink [Wollman Rink in Central Park] to the presidential bid…”I’m not a politician. Washington is corrupt. I know how to do this better…”

Fear makes things that should be impossible suddenly feel as though they’re the only answer. Klein concludes by saying we should be very wary of the political exploitation of our fears, of political exploitation of an atmosphere of crisis.

It is clear that Donald Trump’s career and his fortune were really forged by doing just that.

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Debate Prep III – October 19, 2016

“I’m addicted to placebos. I’d give them up, but it wouldn’t make any difference.”Steven Wright

The nation is addicted to Presidential debates, which cannot even remotely be characterized as a placebo. And tonight’s debate in Las Vegas is unlikely to make a big difference to voters around America, unless one of the Pant Load or the Pant Suit are extremely clever. You can expect that The Pant Load will try to make this week’s WikiLeaks disclosures a torpedo below the waterline for the Pant Suit’s campaign. There are some nuggets in the emails, but do they really add up to all that much?

This from USA Today:

Companies used Clinton fundraisers to lobby [the] State Department. At least a dozen of those same companies lobbied the State Department, using lobbyists who doubled as major Clinton campaign fundraisers. Those companies gave as much as $16 million to the Clinton charities.

Sounds terrible, until you get down to paragraph #26 in the article:

In all, 181 foundation donors lobbied State during Clinton’s leadership tenure, Vox reported last year.

These relationships and giving on their own aren’t illegal, or even unethical. But critics, including Trump, have argued they at least pose potential conflicts of interest.

So, no quid, and apparently, no smoking gun of quo. Trump asks repeatedly how these disclosures are not dominating the news cycle and blames the media for being in the bag for Hillary. The emails often don’t prove what Trump says they do: that the Clinton campaign hates Catholics, that Clinton “openly colluded” with the Justice Department during its investigation of her private email server.

Even if there is some there, there with the emails, the real issue is that The Donald remains the story of this presidential election.

It has come down to a referendum on Donald Trump.

Unless Trump can get more than 43% of the vote, he can’t be president. And focusing on Trump’s personal attributes has been Clinton’s strategy all along. Still, if we fix on personal foibles and temperament, although relevant, we will miss any discussion of the issues.

Take tax plans. Hillary shouldn’t focus on Trump’s taxes. His taxes are relevant, although no worse than Mitt Romney’s low average tax rate: This just illustrates a problem with the tax code that Trump is well within his rights to exploit. The real problem with Trump, when it comes to taxes, is not what he pays or doesn’t pay, but how his proposed tax plan would affect everyone’s tax burden.

The numbers are not pretty.

Trump’s plan is the most Oprah-esque tax proposal since Ronald Reagan in 1980: You get a tax cut! You get a tax cut! You get a tax cut! But it’s mostly a massive tax cut for the top 1%, similar to those proposed by nearly every Republican presidential candidate in recent memory. Without that revenue, the government has to collect more in taxes from middle-class and low-income households, which will not reduce income inequality, or the federal deficit, or grow the economy.

Trump’s plan is spun as a “growth plan”. The idea is that if the US runs huge deficits by slashing taxes, most of that money will be spent, creating wealth and jobs. Sorry, but the failure in Trump’s plan is foreshadowed in the failed economy in Kansas, where the Republicans handed big tax breaks to a few of the highest-income taxpayers and businesses, hoping that would magically trigger an “adrenaline shot” to the Kansas economy. That didn’t happen. Since cutting taxes drastically, the state’s debt load has ballooned to an all-time high of $4.5 billion, a jump of 50% in two years.

So no growth, and mucho debt.

Trump’s plan doubles down on this failed “trickle-down” GOP fantasy as the answer to GDP growth and income inequality. Economic growth will never come from giving tax cuts to the rich. Why? Because they just sock their gains from tax cuts away in offshore tax havens.

Hillary needs to attack the Pant Load’s BS tax plan, not his failure to pay taxes. People should think hard about each candidate’s tax plan and how it could contribute to economic growth before deciding to cast their vote for president. An attack by Clinton on Trump’s tax plan will go directly against one of the core beliefs of Trump supporters, that tax cuts will give them better jobs and pay. Sow some doubt there, and it could pay dividends at the ballot box.

Hillary’s plan is to build infrastructure with tax increases on the rich and corporations. That creates jobs.

This is a message she needs to drive home in tonight’s third presidential debate.

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Friday Links – September 30, 2016

It’s been a busy week at the Mansion of Wrong, with out-of-town family staying with us. There were parties, dinners, trips to NYC, and limited blogging. Wrongo and Ms. Right accompanied our guests to the 9/11 Memorial Museum. Since our first visit, the Museum decided to exhibit a composite of five floors worth of material from one of the Twin Towers that was heat-fused and compacted during their collapse. It is a truly horrible object, a charred and pitted lump of fused concrete, melted steel, carbonized furniture and less recognizable elements, a meteorite-like mass that no human force could have forged, and it is unforgettable. It is among Wrongo’s favorite pieces in the collection:

wtc-composite

This weighs between 12 and 15 tons. It is four feet high. If you ever thought that humans remaining in the WTC when it collapsed might have survived, consider this pancake comprising five floors of the North Tower. Please visit the Memorial and Museum if you haven’t been there yet.

Here are a few links for Friday wherein Congress acted with unusual bipartisan, but self-serving alacrity:

Congress overrode Mr. Obama’s veto of the bill permitting 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia: Despite the efforts of the White House to kill “The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act “(JASTA), it will become law after yesterday’s veto override. The vote was 97-1 in the Senate, and 348-77 in the House. Very few in Congress wanted to be seen as against the 9/11 families in the weeks leading up to the election. The bill allows 9/11 victims and their families to sue Saudi Arabia for damages. JASTA is fairly narrowly tailored to Saudi Arabia, but it is unlikely to result in any accountability on the part of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

In another show bipartisanship, Congress averted a government shutdown Wednesday as the Senate and the House approved a short-term spending bill, allowing lawmakers to avoid a crisis and return home to campaign. The Senate approved the bill by 72 to 26. The House then approved it by 342 to 85. This kicks the can down the road for 10 weeks, when the partisans will come out all over again with knives sharpened.

The House passed a bill Thursday that would give tax breaks to Olympic athletes who win medals. The measure does not apply to athletes with incomes over $1 million. The Senate approved it earlier this year. The House approved it 415 to 1. What Congress person wants to be viewed as anti-Olympian in an election year?

The lone dissenting vote came from Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), who said:

We’ve got a Zika crisis, an opium epidemic and gun violence in the news every day…I think those are the issues that Congress should be spending time on.

He is not Wrongo’s Congress Critter, but he has Wrongo’s vote. Why should Olympians get tax breaks when other extraordinary Americans don’t? Nobel Peace Prize winners and Special Operations soldiers still have to pay their taxes. You pay your taxes, (well, maybe not you, Donald Trump). Another piece of bad policy by Congress.

That’s three cases of false bipartisanship in one week by the cynical people we keep electing.

This article suggests questions that should be asked of Trump about his taxes. Trump claims he can’t release his returns because he’s under audit. That could be a legitimate concern. It would hardly be fair if hundreds of tax professionals who oppose Trump politically helped the IRS by publishing their own analyses of the returns.

But, Trump pissed off Wrongo when he said how smart he was not to pay any taxes. On the one hand, none of us wants to pay more than we have to, but then along comes a billionaire who pays no taxes, and brags about it.

This is the guy who complains about the size of national debt, and says NATO members aren’t paying their “fair share”, when he isn’t paying his “fair share”.

Finally, a statue of Eagle Glenn Frey has been installed in the “Standing on the Corner” Park in Winslow, Arizona. Frey died in January. You remember the lyric:

Well, I’m standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, such a fine sight to see/It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford slowin’ down to take a look at me.

Frey’s statue joins that of song co-writer Jackson Browne that has been in the park since the late 1990s.

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