The Times and Trump’s taxes
The New York Times would have you believe that it’s a big big story to learn that Donald Trump sometimes lost a lot of money and most likely took a tax write-off for it in accordance with the law.
Such a story should be a big yawn and an even bigger “so what?” But the Times is counting on its propaganda skills and its ability to manipulate enough readers to make a difference. And with the Times it’s not just its own readers, but its influence on readers of other publications and consumers of other news and social media.
What is the word they want to get out? Well, if they were honest, it would go something like this: Real estate mogul Donald Trump sometimes loses big, as you already know if you know his history or the real estate development business. 1995, the year for which we’ve obtained some tax records of Trump’s, was one of those years when he lost big. According to current tax laws, Trump (exactly like anyone else who might be in his position, including us or you if we were dealing in that sort of business) is entitled by those losses to a particular kind of write-off for a certain number of future years. And like all of us, he probably took the tax advantage to which the law entitles him. He would have been a fool not to, and his accountants would have been negligent not to advise him to do it.
But that doesn’t quite have the requisite punch, does it? The way the Times wrote the article was different [emphasis mine]:
The 1995 tax records, never before disclosed, reveal the extraordinary tax benefits that Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, derived from the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.
Tax experts hired by The Times to analyze Mr. Trump’s 1995 records said that tax rules especially advantageous to wealthy filers would have allowed Mr. Trump to use his $916 million loss to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income over an 18-year period…
The $916 million loss certainly could have eliminated any federal income taxes Mr. Trump otherwise would have owed on the $50,000 to $100,000 he was paid for each episode of “The Apprentice,” or the roughly $45 million he was paid between 1995 and 2009 when he was chairman or chief executive of the publicly traded company he created to assume ownership of his troubled Atlantic City casinos. Ordinary investors in the new company, meanwhile, saw the value of their shares plunge to 17 cents from $35.50, while scores of contractors went unpaid for work on Mr. Trump’s casinos and casino bondholders received pennies on the dollar.
“He has a vast benefit from his destruction” in the early 1990s, said one of the experts, Joel Rosenfeld, an assistant professor at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. Mr. Rosenfeld offered this description of what he would advise a client who came to him with a tax return like Mr. Trump’s: “Do you realize you can create $916 million in income without paying a nickel in taxes?”
There’s a lot going on there, isn’t there? I bow to no one in my detestation of Donald Trump, but following the tax laws is not one of the things for which I’m going to excoriate him. I’m not even so concerned that he didn’t always make good decisions in business; anyone who deals on that scale is going to have some “ill-fated” and “ill-timed” purchases. Hey, I’ve had some myself, although they’ve been confined to some “extraordinarily” small-scale dabbling in stocks.
It is quite obvious that the Times is creating a narrative of a rapacious top-hatted exploitative Rich Uncle Pennybags and using the tax story to push it. Now, Trump may indeed be a rapacious exploitative SOB (minus the top hat), but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the story of these completely legal tax returns and speculation on what would probably happen next in terms of deductions.
The Times is driving home three points. The first is that sometimes Trump failed at certain business endeavors, and they would like you to therefore see him as a failure. The second is that despite being a lousy businessman, Trump has too much money; in other words, the paper is trying to drum up class envy. The third is that if you put the first one and the second one together, you can see that Trump is rich despite his being incompetent, and that can only be explained by the fact that he’s a cheater and an exploiter of the people who work for him and those who invested with him. The fourth is that even though everything he did with his taxes was completely legal, it’s a form of cheating and ties in with Trump’s cheating in number three.
If anyone objects to that last bit, the proper remedy would be to change the tax code, of course, but the Times hasn’t bothered to explain why the law is written that way, or what would be the pros and cons of changing it. The Wall Street Journal attempts to give it some context here:
The tax treatment of losses, bound to become a subject of national debate, is a typically uncontroversial feature of the income-tax system. The government doesn’t pay net refunds when business owners lose money, but it lets taxpayers use those losses to smooth their tax payments as they make money. That reflects the fact that “the natural business cycle of a taxpayer may exceed 12 months,” according to a congressional report.
Typically, for federal returns, such net operating losses can be carried backward for two years to offset past income, then kept on a taxpayer’s books for 20 years. Mr. Trump’s losses could only qualify for a 15-year carryforward under the law at the time.
Real-estate developers can generate losses more easily than other taxpayers. They can take deductions for depreciation of their property and can also deduct interest when they borrow. Unlike investors in other businesses, they can use those losses to offset other income.
Tax law is nothing if not complicated, and it’s especially complicated if you get into the laws governing the very rich with many investments. Most of us have enough trouble understanding our own taxes without wading into the deep waters of the taxes of a typical large-scale real estate developer. But the Times considers that lack of understanding a feature, not a bug; an opportunity to push the propaganda line it favors. Trump has done them a favor, of course, by not disclosing all of this long ago, which would have at least stilled the part of the argument that hints that he’s hiding something even bigger. He probably has calculated that whatever is in his tax returns would upset the public, even if perfectly legal, and that it was smarter to withhold them. But it was inevitable that some of it would be leaked anyway.
Trump as candidate always had very unique vulnerabilities. The MSM, the left, the Times, Hillary Clinton, all of the above, are doing exactly what could have been (and was) easily predicted: bringing out this sort of thing at a timely juncture, just a few weeks before the election. They’ve got plenty more where that came from. Did anyone ever doubt they would be able to obtain access to some of Trump’s tax filings? And does anyone have any doubt that the following statements by Hillary Clinton during last week’s debate were probably the result of advance knowledge from the Times that the tax story was coming out?:
“There is something he is hiding,” Clinton said of Trump during the debate.
“Or maybe he doesn’t want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax,” she said.
“That makes me smart,” Trump said.
Well, I wouldn’t go that far. At the very least, it makes him not-dumb. It also makes his tax accountants smart, or at least competent.
Neither the Times nor Hillary suggests what Trump might have done instead, of course. Not made money? Not lost it? Hired accountants who didn’t know their asses from their elbows? Donated many millions to the IRS of his own free will, over and above what was required?
Or remained a Democrat, perhaps? Then all would have been forgiven.
“Do you realize you can create $916 million in income without paying a nickel in taxes?” That’s a great line. Of course you can. And if you just lost $2 billion, you can generate $2 billion in income without paying a nickel in taxes. That’s not an advantage for the extremely high-income, it’s an advantage for the extremely low-income.
So what are our laws worth now?
Let’s assume that one of Trump’s accountants or lawyers did this. If so the Times has broken the law and they probably have as well.
Now let’s assume someone in the IRS did this. And given the Lois Lerner scandal, is there any reason to automatically trust that someone in the IRS would not have done so?
That should be the Trump campaign’s research teams main focus for now – to resolve what this says about the state of law a citizen’s rights in the US.
Either way, it is dire.
Now you know why he doesnt want to release them, why release perfectly legal and fine documents that the left and news will twist into issues that are not issues.
i am using the same tax thing on my stock investments and so on… everyone can… everyone that is not ignorant!!!!!
and we still dont even know if these are actual documents
and it was illegal and a federal offense to disburse them regardless if your the newspaper or not, or if the soure is known or not.
there is no brouhahaha
and today we find out why hillary and such are sooooo big on abortion..
Bill clinton seems to have an illigitimate black child for a son, and pulled that boner like another democrat that was agin it before he was for it…
oh, and the reporting for this tax item is even more stringent under obama… my taxes cost more now that he did that, and i have to spend a lot more time keeping records and details taht are required (as do other firms)
most people watch tv and piddle in some pleasure they like a lot more than they take care of their own finances, figure out how it works and what the rules are… then when poor and so on, they rail that those that didnt do that stupid thing are evil
stupids… passing the buck to the smarter
even investopedia says those that do tax planning and so on as part of their investment strategy for retirement are smart.
oh, and the number of people who could do a billion dollar loss is 1% of 1% of 1%… the people who actually benefit from this idea are most of the middle class!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
so this is how they dismantle the middle class pretending to do something to the wealthy and we are all dullards for allowing it and getting angry at people like trump.. [kind of like being angry at the police officer who gives you a ticket for speeding when your speeding]
if you remove this item, then taking risks to build businesses, and property and all that becomes WAY WAY to risky for anyone BUT the superwealthy..
but a plank of the communist manifesto is the destruction of the middle class to create a two class system, in which the poor are forever poor and the wealthy are forever wealthy.
Actually there are a number of issues which may not be correct in the Times article. I have not personally seen Mr. Trump’s 1995 state return, however, the following below are what’s important under the tax laws in effect in 1995 in this analysis:
Business losses may be offset against other ordinary taxable income as follows: 3 year carryback then 18 year carryforward or (elect) 18 year carryforward (no carryback)
You need to determine your basis in those losses first. In order to deduct those losses against ordinary income, Mr. trump would have to have basis to deduct the losses. What constitutes basis? Basically 3 items contribute basis (a) prior year income (b) Money you actually contributed to the business (c) any loans you personally guaranteed on behalf of the business. From what i read, i understand he personally guaranteed a number of loans, and had previous income for which he would have received basis for those. Not sure about actual cash contributed
Now – assuming that he had basis
If Mr. Trump had taxable income in the three prior years, he could file amended tax returns for the prior years and claim the net operating losses and receive back the taxes he paid in those years. Its entirely not outside the range of impossible that his taxable income in the three prior years was greater than $916 million. However, assuming that the prior 3 years was not $916 million he could carry forward whatever remaining losses he had basis for when the loss incurred.
Also remember the bank loans he personally guaranteed for the businesses. Understand, when a lot of those loans were written down after the fact during negotiations with the banks, that those reductions would result in taxable income to Mr. Trump in the year in which the reductions occurred, which he could then apply whatever loss carrforwards he had not yet taken.
It’s not just the fact that these were legal tax avoidance maneuvers, nor that the tax laws are unnecessarily complicated. Yet another leitmotif is the fact that the IRS expects one to take advantage of them. For example, if one owns a business/commercial property, that property is subject to depreciation. Oftentimes that depreciation creates a tax loss even though the income v. hard expenses result in a profit (e.g., $10,000 in revenue minus $7,000 expenses nets a $3,000 profit minus $5,000 in depreciation creates a $2,000 tax loss). If one does not take this depreciation, at the eventual property sale the IRS expects and assumes that you have taken the depreciation throughout your ownership and taxes your sale accordingly. Let me make that succinct; if you don’t take the depreciation you will eventually pay the same tax twice on a portion of the property you sell.
Who in their right mind would voluntarily do that?
I expect that this flagrant attempt at baiting will backfire for the NYT simply because anyone who has ever complained about income taxes (that is most people) and anyone who has even dabbled in investments (as Neo acknowledges) will see this for the non-issue it is. Those who are already anti-Trump will seize on it (the NYT), but I don’t expect that it will change any minds or influence many undecided voters.
Also the dirty little secret about class envy that Neo mentions above is that while Progressives encourage you to look up the economic ladder envious of those who have what you do not, no matter where you sit on that economic ladder, there is someone below you looking up envious of you!.
The U.S. isn’t one of the top 10 most free countries in the world, study says
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article105618381.html
US suspends contacts with Russia on Syria
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UNITED_STATES_RUSSIA_SYRIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-10-03-13-41-42
and now VDH is on the same idea that i have been on and pointing out… (except he has to earn a living with his opinion and has to time them right, and i dont have to earn a living with it and can say way before he could)
ya could have been first neo!!!
A Hard Rain is Going to Fall
http://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2016/09/22/a-hard-rain-is-going-to-fall-n2221725
he uses the term that engels used to predict or call for the holocaust of the jews that hitler put into motion, after that it got a new term… funny how that happens so much that one cant find the quotes to show where its origin is!!!!
The return of appeasement, collaboration and isolationism
The world of 2016 is beginning to resemble the powder keg of 1939
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/feb/17/victor-davis-hanson-the-return-of-appeasement-coll/
been telling you where this goes because war gives the left powers to remold society the way fdr did, wilson did, and post WWII let america do to the world..
and last…
Trump or Clinton – a Hobson’s Choice?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435138/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-conservatives-loathe-having-choose
cmon neo, i can make a very good case as to where this isgoing now,… so can others who know histiry a lot and who have EXPERIENCE with these other systems…
war is coming…
Obama made sure…
and regardless of who is elected
though the oppositoin fears Trump a lot more
and Trump may make them think twice
thats what bombast does to your opposition
it sets them to worry aboutg what they cant see
but hillary is an open book… playing a play book from 50 years ago… and would refuse to let generals do what generals do, preferring to control things from the basement of the white house… yhou know, like fdr and vietnam later and and and…
Artfldgr:
I don’t think anyone was in the dark previously about why he didn’t release them. There were multiple reasons. One of them was that even without any wrongdoing whatsoever, there would be plenty of things to arouse envy and/or resentment. Another was that there were probably some revelations that he wanted to hide (such as, for example, the magnitude of his losses, the magnitude of his write-offs, the paucity of his charitable contributions, etc. etc.) The latter is all speculative, but I think some of that is probably there.
It was never a mystery as to why he wouldn’t release them. The disagreement was on whether on the whole it would have been better for him to have released them himself, gaining points for doing that at least, and heading the MSM and Hillary off from releasing them at their convenience and schedule. Reasonable minds can differ on the question of whether releasing them himself would have been better, the same, or worse.
DNW:
The speculative scuttlebutt is that ex-wife Marla Maples did it.
Woman scorned?
This will play well among the lefty LIV set, who are all about wanting to tax the snot out of what you made this year, if you make more than them; the handful that are financially literate enough to understand the difference between income and wealth want to tax whatever you have left over from other years, that you already paid income tax for; and if you’re a business owner who lost money this year, then they cheer – because as a rich evil person, you deserve to lose your money.
But it was inevitable that some of it would be leaked anyway.
Yet, after 9 years, absolutely none of Obama’s controversial, likely damning past and highly questionable associations has been leaked, not even by wikileaks or Russian/Chinese hackers who might not be allies of the LightBringer.
There is a very long list of open, very important questions that have never been addressed, which I won’t repeat here even though I could do 95% of it from memory. But the media has never been interested in digging into their little tin dictator, and many of the answers lie in the government bureaucracies ruled by Democrat hacks and unions, and Marxist propaganda mills formerly known as universities.
Geokstr,
I couldn’t agree more (how could one disagree with that?).
The problem, as I see it, is that those engaging in the battle against a progressive media are dismissed by their own allies. Yes there are conservative/traditionalist voices such as Thomas Sowell, VDH, et.al., but they are only heard by a small minority who read them. The two major figures who engage the media as adversaries are Gingrich and Trump and they are most often dismissed as having too much baggage or simply being petulant and off-task.
This is not to diminish that criticism; much of it is valid, but they are the only two figures that I can think of who currently get national media traction in their opposition to the media. IMO this is where that battle must to begin.
I have repeatedly written on this site that IMO Trump is waging a battle against the media as much as against a Clinton adversary. There are instances where he has done it well; I just wish he would abandon his petulance and do it consistently.
To give you some hint as to the subterranean financial IQ level the Marxist Party is appealing to, over at Althouse the tax return was being discussed. One leftling insisted, in a whole series of comments, that the billion dollar loss must have been either just a tax loophole or an indication that Trump was incompetent, because good businesses always cover their losses in the price of their product/service. No matter how many times it was explained to him why he was wrong, it didn’t sink in.
Imagine 50 million of them that think like that, 98% who don’t pay any income taxes, thus having no skin in holding down the tax rates.
T Says:
“The problem, as I see it, is that those engaging in the battle against a progressive media are dismissed by their own allies. Yes there are conservative/traditionalist voices such as Thomas Sowell, VDH, et.al., but they are only heard by a small minority who read them. The two major figures who engage the media as adversaries are Gingrich and Trump and they are most often dismissed as having too much baggage or simply being petulant and off-task.
This is not to diminish that criticism; much of it is valid, but they are the only two figures that I can think of who currently get national media traction in their opposition to the media. IMO this is where that battle must to begin.”
May I suggest you forgot one – Ted Cruz. He was poised to get that recognition. If you’ll remember in one of the first debates, he had a brilliant riff against the so-called moderators that called them out for asking questions that began with a planted critical assumption about the candidate, or pitted one candidate against another.
Then that got buried in the tsunami of “lyin’ Ted”/birther crap from Trump and the alt-right.
That is the media in a nutshell. No, these tax methods aren’t designed to benefit the rich- anyone who pays income taxes can declare and carryover losses just like Trump did. I did it for several years after the stock market crash in 2000, and I am firmly middle class. I even declared a $2K real estate loss on a return with copied documentation sent with the return, and the IRS held up my refund on that issue alone for a measly $300 dollar difference- it took a face to face meeting with and agent and with the original documents to get the return approved. This idea that Trump got away with something in 1995 is completely ludicrous. The IRS isn’t incompetent in these matters- a person like Trump would have had an agent or two specifically assigned to him to audit his returns every year.
If you read the story close enough you will find where the major part of the loss occurred. He personally guaranteed $832 million dollars of $3.4 billion in loans to the entities that bought the casinos, ran the airline, and probably bought the other real estate he purchased in the late 80s during that real estate bubble that burst with the 1990 recession- the Northeast was hit particularly hard by that real estate bust. The idiots in the media don’t understand that the bondholders would never waive that guarantee- it is an iron clad contract that Trump would have to honor in its entirety as long as he had the assets to pay it off, which he must have done since I don’t think anyone has shown he declared personal bankruptcy.
Even worse, there are people in the journalism business who think the rest of that 3.4 billion dollars in loans that weren’t paid back should have counted as Trump’s income thus more than netting out the declared loss, but that is income to bankrupt entities- not Trump personally. To try to claim that debt forgiveness was his income is the same as trying to claim I earned income when GM’s debt was forgiven because I owned some of its stock in a mutual fund.
And the worst thing I see here- you can’t even get pro-business writers at the Journal or on some of these blogs to even really explain this to the readers- they leave hanging the idea that loss carryovers are some kind of loophole put into the tax code, but they are an attempt, and not a really good one at that, to make the taxing of net income fairer. If I start a business and make $1 million dollars the first year, and lose $1 million dollars the second year, what should the tax on my net profits be? If you can answer that question, then you understand why there is such a provision in the tax code, why it makes the tax itself more fair rather than less.
Attacks on Trump’s tax returns and his wealth (even if he is worth no more than the Clintons) were inevitable. The DNC MSM axis of evil kept their powder dry until their attacks would carry more weight in the final weeks leading up to the election. Is it possible that the Trump campaign did not see this coming?
parker : yep. I still can’t figure out what he’d be doing different if he wasn’t trying to get Hillary elected.
I did not see any reference in the article to the fact that the NYT did not pay any taxes in 2014. Some things are news; and some just are not.
They did report back in 2010 that GE, which at the time owned NBC & MSNBC ,not only paid no taxes on U.S. income of $5.1B ($14.2 worldwide), but claimed a benefit of $3.2B on their U.S. tax return. Shrug!
Parker, it sure seems that Trump does not recognize any of the negative stuff coming his way; neither that which is historical in nature, nor that which he generates in real time with his off-the-wall statements and tweets. I presume that there are level heads around him who try to warn him to no apparent avail.
As Oldflyer points out, the NYT did the exact same thing in 2014. Last night on PBS, they interviewed one of the NYT people involved in that ‘story’ and not one word was said of the NYT’s having done the same, much less that they got a $3.5 MILLION REFUND even though they didn’t pay a dime in federal taxes. Utter hypocrisy, justified by the end sought. But wait! There’s more… the real irony is that it turns out that Hillary and Billy boy have previously taken advantage of the same ‘loophole’.
Neo, “Donated many millions to the IRS of his own free will, over and above what was required?”
Yet, that is exactly what she’s doing:
“Mrs. Clinton said, ‘it seems Trump wasn’t contributing anything to our nation.’
‘Nothing for young children in Head Start, nothing for Pell grants to help kids go to college, nothing for veterans, nothing for our military,’ she continued.
Mrs. Clinton said that Mr. Trump’s business practices were in a ‘category all by himself,’ and that he was ‘taking from America with both hands and leaving the rest of us with the bill.'”
This from a person who, in sixteen years of working in the public sector, has not created one private sector job; has not risked one dime of capital to create anything of worth to the economy; and who has, by selling political favors, influence, and access; amassed a multi million dollar fortune. Yes, she’s a veritable genius at public graft and corruption.
Unfortunately, there are multitudes of LIVs who don’t understand and buy her line of reasoning.
KLSmith,
I agree… what else would he do differnt. My initial thought was that he was a Clinton plant to sow discord. Then, I think his success in the primaries stoked his yuge ego and he enjoyed the 24/7 attention he gained. Now, he is the unhinged maniac straying off course at every opportunity. Bottom line, djt sees the Oval Office as a yuge drag on his lifestyle.
Oldflyer,
Level heads and Trump are an oxymoron. Trump has the self control of a 3 year old who is constantly placated tantrum after tantrum. How anyone fell for this scam is beyond my limited imagination.
“KLSmith,
I agree… what else would he do differnt.” – parker
Rather agree. What he “could” be doing, and should have been, is making a case for capitalism and that it is risky – sometime you lose. If we want to tax businesses and investors on the upside, only fair to allow them to recover some of that value if they lose.
But, this is trump, after all, who talks in the opposite direction, making the case that the system is rigged in favor of the rich and connected, and that corporations are somehow cheating by holding their earnings overseas (following the laws) rather than moving their investments to the US.
Nig Maq,
Trump has no consistent message simply because his mind is full of inconsistencies. No there there, just brain farts and thin skinned tantrums. A man at 70 is the father of the 7 year old child. A very disturbed and petulant child, filled with anger and visions of granduer. And I am not a trained professional.
😉
A lot of people jumped on Trum’s band wagon, to form the Alt Right coalition, because they thought the rest of the Left were just like more SJWs. I kept telling them that this wasn’t the case, the SJWs were merely the discards and trash heap of the Leftist alliance. The amount of money and power SJWs get is the crumbs of the crumbs, that fall off what the dog and pets get. SJWs are not the Left’s elite vanguard, they are the Left’s cannonfodder and scouts. Unpaid volunteer interns, worse than that even.
So when the Alt Right thought they would take on DC, the capital of evil, and the elites of the Leftist alliance, they thought they could use the same tricks and cheap traps that the SJWs fell into. I kept telling them that this wasn’t so, but I suppose people will have to experience failure first before they understand wisdom.
In military tactics history, there’s something called the “victory disease”. I wonder how long this one will keep going on for.
Victory disease – Imperial Japanese Army and Navy 1943- 45, not that long ago.
Commenters here Keep on blaming the messenger…
The problem here has been Trump’s unwillingness to disclose his taxes early on. If he revealed it, owned it, explained it, this is a non story at this point in the campaign.
The issue is that he’s been a lying evasive weasel birther who, when asked to disclose what’s been customary for every presidential candidate, he stonewalled.
Stop repeating talking points and pretending otherwise.
You all here are smart enough to know that.
“ ‘He has a vast benefit from his destruction’ in the early 1990s, said one of the experts, Joel Rosenfeld, an assistant professor at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate.” Quoth the NYT, the propaganda arm of record.
An assistant professor, possibly less than age 30, who is a real estate and tax “expert”. Sure he is. Even some sheep I know will roll their eyes at this kind of crap: “His destruction”.
Trouble is, the sheeple are out there in their millions, ignorant as rocks, and ready to vote whether citizen or not. For freebies, what else?
I really do not like what this country has become. I am severely discouraged by the Clintonistas, marching as puppets in lock-step. And their dominating Ministry of Propaganda. If you are not against them, you are for them, say I. Sides must be chosen. The boat will capsize, or be righted. There is no in-between, no hanging on to the mast.
Y,
“The crumbs of the crumbs” is correct, but the acts of the crumbs can in this instance carry the narrative of their plantation masters across the finish line. Afterwards they can sip ashes on the heap of victooy and accept payment in crumbs.
Neo’s Fisking of the Times article is masterful, and the most complete on the web that I’ve seen, BUT:
People here and elsewhere keep saying Trump should have released his tax returns before they were leaked — and I know there is some legitimate concern about the most recent year, although I don’t know how far into the immediate past is now considered appropriate — but c’mon folks: we are talking about 1995.
Why on earth should he (or anyone else!) have been expected to release 21-year-old returns??
Is there something about their having reached the age of adulthood or passed some statute of limitations?
And where are Hillary’s 20+years of ancient documents?
Mark Martel,
Not all here repeat talking points. A few do so, but a few are not all, a few are merely a few. 😉
Frog,
Discouraged by Clintonistas…. welcome to the club.
AesopFan,
I hope you know the answer to your question.
@parker
You’re absolutely correct. Apologies for the generalization.
Mark Martel,
No need to apologize to me, but I am a rigid prick who does not like to generalize, except when I generalize. 😉
I am like Popeye, I do not wish to be confused with others who do not know they are what they are while I know I am what I am. 😉
While taking neo’s point the NYT is being partisan in making a big deal about Trump’s 1995 return, I do assume Trump won’t release his current returns because they provide smoking guns or at least smoldering ones that contradict Trump’s narrative — most likely that he is not as rich and successful as he claims.
Democrats are often perplexed that Hillary won’t come clean on the email server and the Clinton Foundation. Why is she being so paranoid, they ask.
On our side of the fence, Hillary’s reluctance is transparent. She is hiding important stuff for good cynical reasons.
I’m sure the same is true of Trump with his tax returns.
If the past twenty years of American political life have proved anything, they have proved the Watergate maxim “It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup,” to be false — at least for Democrats.
Bill, Hillary, and Obama have done quite well with covering up, stonewalling and slow-walking. They have paid some minor prices, but they weren’t forced out of the game like Nixon.
huxley, 2:07 am — “Bill, Hillary, and Obama have done quite well with covering up, stonewalling and slow-walking. They have paid some minor prices, but they weren’t forced out of the game like Nixon.”
I think it’s significant that it was the congressional Republicans, represented by a prestigious delegation, who finally stood up to Nixon and told him enough is enough, get your sorry butt out of Washington and stay there. (The delegation was Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, House Minority Leader John Rhodes, and elder statesman Barry Goldwater.)
Can anyone imagine Democrats doing that with respect to any Democrat incumbent president — no matter how egregious the transgressions? I sure can’t. [They wouldn’t do that today and they wouldn’t ever have done that in 1974; on the other hand, the Republican side would do that even today.]
And therein lies a very, *very* serious problem.
“May I suggest you forgot one — Ted Cruz. He was poised to get that recognition.” [geokst @ 3:45]
I would agree. Yet, as you point out, “he was poised . . . .” The fact that he seems to have all but disappeared in this election, however, says something. Overshadowed by Trump? No doubt, but somehow Gingrich seems to have continued an active presence.
Remember, I was a Cruz supporter, but that fact that he has allowed himself to fade into the background in all of this mess prompts one to question just how effective he would have been. Not dissing the guy, just asking the question.
T:
Cruz just recently got a bit of the foreground treatment when he endorsed Trump. Touching the tar baby has its downsides. IMO
“Touching the tar baby has its downsides. IMO.” [OM @ 8:59]
Yes, but so does refusing to run with the herd.
T:
In my opinion, Cruz is doing the smartest thing by laying relatively low. He can’t in all conscience go on the stump for Trump, nor can he go on the stump against him. He’s certainly still been active in the Senate. And it’s not as though his activities are going to be front-page news on every paper at this point. They’ll only cover him if they think they can say something to hurt him.
The same things happened with mitt Romney an his finances so trump has no excuse for not being forwarned. But unlike mitt, Donald’s deals are on the more than shady side so it’s tougher to be up front.
T:
Sometimes herds stampede into bad places and situations. 🙂
Hilary attacks Trump for being a bad businessman. But what about this?
“Hillary Clinton attacked Donald Trump on Monday for losing nearly a billion dollars of HIS MONEY in a single year. “What kind of genius loses $1 billion in a single year?” Hillary Clinton lost $ 6 billion of tax payer dollars while she was head of the State Department. Which loss hurt you more? Hypocrite Hillary Clinton also used the same tax avoidance law as Trump to save money on her taxes.”
http://megynkelly.org/177284/hillary-who-lost-6-billion-of-your-money-at-state-dept-bashes-trump-for-losing-1-billion-of-his-money-in-business/
Here’s an even better report about Hillary’s competence as Secretary of State.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/justinholcomb/2016/10/03/remember-when-the-state-department-misplaced-6-billion-under-hillary-clinton-n2227198
Neo and OM,
No disagreement with either of you. Sometimes it’s wise to run with th eheard, sometimes not, sometimes it’s wise to lie low (discretion before valor) sometimes it’s the surest way to lose. This election cycle is so bizarre there is no handwriting on the wall this time. The polls may be right, the polls may be wrong. We’ll find out on Nov 9th.
Frankly, I’ve about had it and I really can’t wait for this election to be over. It’s been one of the least exciting in my lifetime. What truly saddens me is that the U.S. has been the last redoubt of Western Civilization in a mostly unpleasant and mediocre world. It seems that this, too is ending for the worse.
*run with the herd
sorry!