Poetry, don’t say I won’t put it on the Front Page.

Welcome back John. You keep me hanging on.

Not funny.

Well, the one you’ve been waiting for. The New York Times somehow obtained copies of the Tax Returns. It is both interesting and instructive, also very, very long.

TRUMP’S TAXES SHOW CHRONIC LOSSES AND YEARS OF TAX AVOIDANCE

Yeah, that’s the Headline and it’s the Front Page Feature on the e-Edition, takes up the whole first page. If you click through it looks more like this-

The Times obtained Donald Trump’s tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due.
By Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire, The New York Times
Sept. 27, 2020

Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.

As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.

The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.

The New York Times has obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office. It does not include his personal returns for 2018 or 2019. This article offers an overview of The Times’s findings; additional articles will be published in the coming weeks.

The returns are some of the most sought-after, and speculated-about, records in recent memory. In Mr. Trump’s nearly four years in office — and across his endlessly hyped decades in the public eye — journalists, prosecutors, opposition politicians and conspiracists have, with limited success, sought to excavate the enigmas of his finances. By their very nature, the filings will leave many questions unanswered, many questioners unfulfilled. They comprise information that Mr. Trump has disclosed to the I.R.S., not the findings of an independent financial examination. They report that Mr. Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.
…
The tax data examined by The Times provides a road map of revelations, from write-offs for the cost of a criminal defense lawyer and a mansion used as a family retreat to a full accounting of the millions of dollars the president received from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.

Together with related financial documents and legal filings, the records offer the most detailed look yet inside the president’s business empire. They reveal the hollowness, but also the wizardry, behind the self-made-billionaire image — honed through his star turn on “The Apprentice” — that helped propel him to the White House and that still undergirds the loyalty of many in his base.

Ultimately, Mr. Trump has been more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life.
…
Most of Mr. Trump’s core enterprises — from his constellation of golf courses to his conservative-magnet hotel in Washington — report losing millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars year after year.

His revenue from “The Apprentice” and from licensing deals is drying up, and several years ago he sold nearly all the stocks that now might have helped him plug holes in his struggling properties.

The tax audit looms.

And within the next four years, more than $300 million in loans — obligations for which he is personally responsible — will come due.

Against that backdrop, the records go much further toward revealing the actual and potential conflicts of interest created by Mr. Trump’s refusal to divest himself of his business interests while in the White House. His properties have become bazaars for collecting money directly from lobbyists, foreign officials and others seeking face time, access or favor; the records for the first time put precise dollar figures on those transactions.

So, outside the criminality and Tax Fraud, the reason he kept them hidden is because he’s not a Billionaire.

There is lots more and you should read it. Here is a summary of Bullet Points from New York Magazine.

The Key Takeaways From the Times’ Trump Tax-Return Investigation
By Matt Stieb and Chas Danner, New York Magazine
9/27/20

• Trump paid $0 in federal income taxes in ten of the last 15 years
• Trump only paid $750 in taxes in 2016
• Trump’s presidential bid may have been a ploy to bolster his flagging empire
• A new look at how Trump and his businesses may be profiting from his presidency
• Trump wrote off $70,000 in haircuts as business expenses
• The IRS is auditing a $72.9 million tax refund
• Trump’s golf courses are big losers, and lost him much of his ?Apprentice fortune
• Trump’s debt is massive, and will soon get worse
• There’s new evidence about how big a stiffer Trump is
• Trump’s (predictable) response to the Times report
• How might the investigation change the 2020 race?

More to that also but it at least it tells you what to look for.

The Times says there are addtional stories coming and you’ll no doubt be seeing lots of analysis about what it all means and if it will effect the Polls.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Ariel Sharon visits Jerusalem’s Temple Mount; The American Revolution’s last battle begins; William the Conqueror invades England; First round-the-world flight ends; Jazz great Miles Davis dies.

The past always looks better than it was. It’s only pleasant because it isn’t here.

Finley Peter Dunne

Continue reading

So, you remember Pebble Mine? The one that everyone in Alaska hated because it will ruin about a 3rd of their Salmon fishery which is only worth a few Billion a year? The one that got pushed through because of corrupt Republicans?

Why looky here-

In secret tapes, mine executives detail their sway over leaders from Juneau to the White House
By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
September 23, 2020

A direct line to the White House, but routed through a third party to hide it from public view. Easy access to Alaska’s governor, as well as the state’s two U.S. senators. A successful push to unseat nine Republican state lawmakers who opposed their plan to build a massive gold and copper mine — the biggest in North America — near Bristol Bay in Alaska.

Those were some of the boasts made by two top executives of a company trying to build the Pebble Mine in videotapes secretly recorded by an environmental group and made public Monday. It was a rare glimpse into the private discussions surrounding the company’s heated campaign to win federal permits for the project, which environmentalists say will destroy a pristine part of Alaska and decimate its world-famous sockeye salmon fishery.

The conversations were secretly recorded over the past month and a half by the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency. Posing as potential investors in the mine, EIA investigators conducted Zoom calls in which the mine’s sponsors detailed how they sought to curry favor with elected politicians from Juneau to Washington, D.C.

The tapes feature separate conversations with two key men behind the project — Roland Thiessen, chief executive of the Canadian-based Northern Dynasty Minerals, and Tom Collier, chief executive of its U.S. subsidiary, Pebble Limited Partnership.

Within a matter of weeks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could grant a permit for the mine. While the agency found in late July that the project would have “no measurable effect” on the area’s fish populations, last month it informed Pebble Limited Partnership that it had to do more to show how it would offset the damage caused by the operation.

But even as the executives jump through several regulatory hoops, they are focused on wooing Republican politicians. In the taped conversations, they detailed their plan to manage all the decision-makers.

Thiessen described both of the state’s Republican U.S. senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, as politicians who might make noises about the project to appear sensitive to environmental concerns but ultimately won’t stand in their way. “It’s an age-old practice where when you have constituents, you have important people who support you on two sides of an issue, all right, you try to find a way to satisfy them both,” he said in the recording.

He noted that Murkowski declined to move a bill that would have barred the federal government from permitting the mine. Instead, she included language in a spending bill that raised some questions about Pebble Mine but did not hinder it. “She says things that don’t sound supportive of Pebble, but when it comes time to vote, when it comes time to do something, she never does anything to hurt Pebble, okay?” Thiessen said.

At a different point in the tapes, Collier said both senators misinterpreted the letter the Corps sent last month and are now embarrassed. “So right now, they’re just sort of sitting over in a corner and being quiet, okay?”

The senior senator from Alaska was not amused.

“Let me be clear: I did not misunderstand the Army Corps’ recent announcement,” she said in a statement. “I am not ‘embarrassed’ by my statement on it, and I will not be ‘quiet in the corner.’ I am dead set on a high bar for large-scale resource development in the Bristol Bay watershed. The reality of this situation is the Pebble project has not met that bar and a permit cannot be issued to it.”

Neither was Sullivan. “Any suggestion otherwise is either wishful thinking, a blatant mischaracterization, or a desperate attempt to secure funding for a mine that cannot move forward,” he said. “This incident demonstrates how far Mr. Collier, who has serious credibility problems of his own, is floundering in the face of this project’s overwhelming challenges.”

An unusual coalition of Alaska Natives, conservationists and some famous anglers who enjoy fishing in Bristol Bay — including the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., the vice president’s former chief of staff, Nick Ayers, and Fox News host Tucker Carlson — have opposed the plan out of concern that waste from the operation could pollute the waters of southwest Alaska.

Jason Metrokin, president and CEO of Bristol Bay Native Corp., assailed the companies in a phone interview and accused them of hypocrisy.

“They’ll tell anyone what they want to hear based on whatever they think will move the needle for the Pebble Limited Partnership,” he said. “Now I think the public, at least those who have seen the tapes, they’re seeing behind the curtain now.”

In a statement Monday evening, Collier said he had not had time to review the tapes but that “there are some pretty questionable ethics at play” given that the individuals making the recordings disguised their identities.

A spokesman for Collier said he “regrets the way he conveyed their influence and importance” of the two senators.
…
Collier, who worked as chief of staff to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt during the Clinton administration, said that he registered as an independent in Alaska but was “a well-known Republican fundraiser” in the state. He describes how he helped lead a successful effort to defeat nine state GOP legislators last election because they worked with Democrats and did not support Pebble Mine.

“Now, having said that, it’s entirely possible that we may have [former vice president Joe] Biden as a president, and if we do, I’m gonna brush off my Democratic credentials and start using them a little more actively than I do,” he added.

Collier will get a roughly $4 million bonus if the mine receives a favorable Record of Decision from the Corps and another $8.4 million if the permit can withstand a legal challenge.

More stuff about how this is a very bad idea to begin with and open bragging about Republican corruption-

Thiessen, for his part, explained to EIA investigators how he and his colleagues have ready access to Trump’s chief of staff but use Dunleavy’s office as a conduit.

“I mean, we can talk to the chief of staff of the White House any time we want. You want to be careful with all this because it’s all recorded,” Thiessen said. “It’s not that they tape the call, it’s just that it’s recorded that ‘He had a call with Tom Collier, the CEO of Pebble Limited Partnership.’ You don’t want to be seen to be trying to exercise undue influence. It’s better for us if we want to push that envelope that Tom talks to the governor of the state of Alaska and the governor of the state of Alaska picks up the phone and calls the chief of staff to the White House, yes.”

Roland Thiessen is the CEO of Canadian-based Northern Dynasty Minerals, Tom Collins is just his U.S. Vice President and yes, they are both on tape.

So Saturday, the day after, yesterday, there was this-

Alaska mining executive resigns a day after being caught on tape boasting of his ties to GOP politicians
By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
September 23, 2020

Mining executive Tom Collier, who boasted in secretly taped conversations that he had leveraged his ties to Republican officials to advance a controversial project in Alaska, resigned Wednesday.

Collier, CEO of the Pebble Limited Partnership, offered his resignation a day after the group Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) released recordings of Zoom calls in which he talked of currying favor with the White House and Alaska lawmakers to win federal approval for a massive gold and copper mine.

Collier and Ronald Thiessen, CEO of the Canadian parent company, Northern Dynasty Minerals, were recorded separately suggesting that GOP politicians would not block Pebble Mine even though some had raised concerns about its environmental impact.

Collier, who served as chief of staff to then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt under President Bill Clinton, stood to receive $12.4 million in bonuses if the federal government approved a key permit for the mine and it could be upheld in court. Speaking to EIA investigators, who were posing as possible investors in the project, he touted his effort to funnel money to Republican politicians in Alaska and defeat those who sided with Democrats against the mine.

“I’ve supported all the Republican candidates in the state,” said Collier, who is registered as an independent. “I meet with the two senators, the congressman, the governor on a regular basis and they welcome me as someone they know supports the Republican Party.”

“Now, having said that, it’s entirely possible that we may have [former vice president Joe] Biden as a president, and if we do, I’m gonna brush off my Democratic credentials and start using them a little more actively than I do,” he added.
…
Chris Wood, president of the conservation group Trout Unlimited, said in a phone interview that Collier’s resignation marked a blow for a project that does not deserve federal approval.

“Tom Collier is a fall guy for a project that is fundamentally flawed and has essentially been a flimflam operation from the very beginning,” Wood said. “From the beginning, it has been an exercise in obfuscation. They took more than a dozen years to get an application together, and then they lied about the scope and scale of the potential project — either to Congress or to investors. But no matter how you slice it, they lied.”

In the taped conversations, Thiessen and Collier suggested that while they were seeking a permit for a 20-year operation, it might expand and last for as long as 180 years. In Wednesday’s statement, Thiessen left open the possibility that they could apply for additional permits to extend the scope and duration of the mining operation.

I used to teach severely Learning Disabled kids to swim. Well, not drown in a puddle, you have to set realistic goals.

I did this 9 – 5 the entire School year and it really wasn’t so bad. We all got season passes to Greek Peak and 2 or 3 days a week we’d take off after work and do some night Skiing. During the times you could see the ground we’d play Pitch for money and I’m very good, winner buys the next deck though because pasteboard doesn’t react to a humid chlorine environment well.

It was considered a “hardship” post however and because my employers liked me they gave me a Summertime gig at The Olympic Pool. It was trick, roof that opened (never did, too expensive), 50 meter 8 lane, 10 meter and 3 meter board, movable bulkheads.

The bulkheads moved so you could set up a 25 yard pool, customary for non-Olympic U.S. competition, AND a Water Polo Court. That part was all over 8 feet so you couldn’t cheat and these people kick all the time.

They are buff and they wear two swimsuits because they have a tendency to get torn off in the scrum. My sister spent the summers with me and after she finished her shift at the Sandwich shop she’d stop by with a snack but it was really just an excuse to park herself in the stands and watch the team practice.

2019 NCAA Men’s Water Polo Championship: Stanford vs. Pacific

2019 NCAA Women’s Water Polo Championship: Stanford v. USC

I suppose this is as good a time as any to say I’ll not be covering Baseball Playoffs this year. Too complicated, not really Baseball (universal DH), and too much other stuff happening.

Me or your lying eyes?

Parsing Trump’s ‘there won’t be a transfer’ comments
By Philip Bump, Washington Post
September 23, 2020

“Mr. President, real quickly, win, lose or draw in this election, will you commit here today for a peaceful transfer of power after the election?” a reporter asked. He noted various incidents of violence that have occurred in recent weeks, apparently to demonstrate the elevated national temperature. “Will you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transferral of power after the election?”

Trump’s answer was not reassuring.

“Well,” he began, “we’re going to have to see what happens.”

It’s a sharply atypical response for a president, certainly. George W. Bush or Barack Obama, for example, would probably have said something like, while I’m confident I’ll win, of course I will cede my position should that be what voters want. But they weren’t asked similar questions, to my knowledge, because they didn’t need to articulate those obvious answers.

Given his rhetoric in 2016, this was not an atypical response for Trump. To some extent he likes to accentuate this tension, to see cable news pundits gasp and to watch reporters scribble in their notepads. And, of course, he is heavily invested in suggesting that there might be some reason not to accept the results, a position that will allow him, if needed, to rail against the counting of mail-in ballots after Election Day, ballots that will almost certainly favor his opponent.

He transitioned to again bashing those mail-in ballots, as he has so often before.

“You know that.” Trump continued “I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster and—”

“I understand that,” the reporter interjected, “but people are rioting. Do you commit to making sure that there’s a peaceful transferal of power?”

“We want to have—” Trump continued, before changing direction. “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very trans — we’ll have a very peaceful—”

We’ll awkwardly interject here to illustrate how Trump’s thought process was probably playing out. His argument, which he seems perhaps to actually believe, is that mail-in ballots are subject to massive fraud, which is not at all demonstrably true. Since those ballots will be counted after Election Day, he views them (or, at least, hopes America views them) as suspect. While counting the ballots is obviously necessary to determine the will of voters, Trump argues that the inclusion of those ballots is itself an act that introduces instability and uncertainty, a factor that will erode public confidence in the count. Again, this is only because he incorrectly claims that these ballots are subject to rampant fraud, but that’s his position.

So: Get rid of those ballots, and everything’s copacetic.

But he doesn’t really finish that thought before he realizes what he’s about to say. He begins, “We’ll have a very peaceful—” But the only way to end that sentence is with “transfer of power.” And the only way you have a transfer of power is if he loses. And he can’t admit he loses. So, instead, he abruptly transitions.

“There won’t be a transfer, frankly,” he continued. “There’ll be a continuation.”

Then back to his main point — bashing mail-in votes.

“The ballots are out of control,” he said. “You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else.”

(“I don’t know that,” the reporter interjected.)

If we stop and pick this apart, it’s obviously misleading and centered on self-preservation, as surely as was his response in that 2016 debate. But the result is stark. The result is the president of the United States saying not that he’ll accept the results of the election but that “we’re going to have to see what happens.”

The result is the president saying, “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very trans-, we’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation.” As though he’s advocating stepping away from voting itself or advocating that he simply be granted another four years.

It’s a fool’s errand to try to translate Trump, in part because he’ll deny what he actually meant without any qualms whatsoever. But, assuming the above distillation is accurate, it’s disconcerting for a reason other than Trump apparently embracing the elimination of democracy. It’s disconcerting because it reinforces that Trump’s interest in appearing to be victorious remains a primary concern.