I found myself pondering that; I mean, the Trump folks like to yell LOCK HER UP! and all, but between possible tax fraud, a charitable foundation that’s just been shut down and may have to return its funds to donors, and a possible lawsuit for child rape, Trump’s got no shortage of actual, very serious criminal issues floating around. If he had to drop out at this point, what would happen? Would Pence become the default nominee? Would the election be postponed?
5 Likes
Just follow the smell of urine.
10 Likes
He would loudly proclaim that the charges were manufactured so that “Crooked Hillary” could steal the election, his supporters would believe it, and we’d go from politics that resemble the 1850s to events that resemble the 1860s.
4 Likes
I fully expect that to happen even if he simply legitimately loses the election; in no way to I expect Trump to go quietly into the night. But I’d be curious to know what sort of scenarios we’d be looking at. Pretty much everything about this election is unprecedented and I expect it’ll only get wackier.
2 Likes
Yes, but you said it better than I did. If he could calmly get on TV he’d have been in a better spot than he is now. His finances I am sure are suspect at best.
Personally I pay the lowest taxes I can, then I use a significant portion of my money to do things the government is too evil and/or incompetent to do.
Well… as long as you are OK with mandatory sterilization of genetic “inferiors”, such as the poor and the promiscuous. It was the age of eugenics.
I do like The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, though. 
Very punny stuff!
I agree 100% with these two points. Uhm, assuming that the illegally sourced Pentagon Papers or whatever are not forgeries, that is.
2 Likes
We are talking about an income tax. Sometimes even very rich people make horrible investments, and lose money. Being fabulously rich makes that less of a disaster than it would be for the rest of us, but if you lose money instead of making it, you don’t have income to pay income taxes on. That is where property taxes and such come in. The real issue is all the investment income that does not get taxed, and people who hide their income in shell corporations and fake charities. At least from my understanding of such things.
1 Like
But tax laws allow Real Estate professionals to write off those losses differently than the rest of us.
For example, if a doctor makes money on the side renting out a condo and suffers a terrible financial loss on the condo, he can count that loss against his Real Estate income but he can’t count it against the income he makes practicing medicine. Because of the quirks and loopholes designed to benefit people like Trump he can not only count a loss against his 1995 Real Estate income, he can spread that loss across 18 years and apply it to all forms of income, including the years he spent hosting The Apprentice.
6 Likes
Yes, it takes a special kind of genius to figure out how to lose nearly a billion dollars in a single year during a period of spectacular economic growth.
13 Likes
I have to agree that it appears to be a rigged system. I do know that I will likely never benefit from any of these special tax rules and exceptions.
I suspect he gets his accountants from the same place Hollywood studios do.
6 Likes
You are calling into question the accounting practices behind such box office flops as Return of the Jedi, Spider-Man, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix?
Have you no shame, sir?
11 Likes
I briefly had an idea, and searched (via Google) for “Representation without Taxation”
Along with various destinations dealing with the inverse, I found the following:
Wow. I stopped reading after the first page. I don’t even know where to begin.
7 Likes
We’re also talking about years during which Trump earned an income. Bad investments didn’t render him unable to get or keep work.
That undermines your defense considerably.
2 Likes
I am not really defending him. I don’t want to ever find myself defending him.
+1 for the Mencken quote
2 Likes
The only reason I wouldn’t is because you can’t really do any better than the legal path here.
1 Like
I’ve not gotten round to watching it yet either, but I’ve been kinda put off cos my dad said he walked out of the cinema halfway through it he thought it was so bad.
1 Like
It seems pointless to say this now, but Assange only has more of the same documents.
To me it’s extremely obvious that Wikileaks does what it normally does, and dumps papers with absolutely no oversight and let the media sort it out. They just sort of assumed there would be something juicy there. I suspect that Wikileaks is changing the story over and over again on the October surprise because they were hoping to find a mythical document trove their sources have been unable to find.
Now they’re announcing that it was never about the US election and that there will be a lot of other documents mixed in.
4 Likes
As it turns out, he had a several hour self-promoting infomercial to offer. Surely Clinton’s campaign is reeling.
3 Likes
