Posts by Delaware Dem

Josh Marshall thinks there is more, much more on the horizon with Donald and his taxes (or lack thereof).

After thinking over the Times revelation, I wonder whether there's a much, much bigger story here that the Times didn't put together or more likely did see but couldn't prove. In any case, here's what I'm thinking. We've known for years that the collapse of Trump's debt ridden casino empire in Atlantic City almost destroyed him more than two decades ago. He was able to wriggle through by a number of angles and connivances. But one of the biggest was that he was able to convince his lenders that they'd be even worse off if he was cleaned out and removed from the picture entirely. Convincing them that he was in essence too big or too important to fail, they took major 'haircuts' (losses) that allowed him to survive. He got others to absorb the impact of the losses, repackaged other parts and put them through bankruptcy, etc. The key question is how much of the Atlantic City losses did Trump absorb in real terms? How much of those losses were forgiven or written off formally? And perhaps most importantly, how much of those losses were squirreled away or 'parked' in places which effectively put them in a sort of limbo or suspended animation - neither truly absorbed nor forgiven? Here's where the Times revelation comes into play. If you sustain real capital losses, you can apply those losses to cancel out future income/profits and reduce your tax liability. But if your losses are canceled out by debt forgiveness, the debt forgiveness is counted as income. That cancels out the losses that would provide you with the tax benefit. In other words, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

At the end of this campaign, more likely than not, Donald Trump will be arrested for tax evasion on hundreds of millions of dollars of income. And then he will be locked up.

Donald Trump “declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years,” records obtained by the New York Times show. “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.”

Jason gets his wish. “As the last full month of this presidential contest begins, Hillary Clinton is shifting toward a pure base-turnout strategy, inching away from her all-out effort to lure disaffected Republicans in favor of a traditional get-Democrats-to-the-polls effort that mirrors Barack Obama’s 2012 game-plan,” Politico reports. “Gone are Clinton’s regular references to winning over moderate conservatives and her sly allusions to GOP leaders meant to give defecting Republicans a framework for abandoning their nominee. With 39 days to go, Brooklyn headquarters and battleground state operatives are activating the massive surrogate machinery, a heavy early voting push, and a large-scale registration offensive they think they need to secure a win in November.”

Christine O'Donnell, the Delaware manifestation of the nationwide Tea Bagger Freakout over having a black President in 2010, was found guilty of federal election law violations last week in the case the FEC brought against her for using campaign contributions to pay her rent in her Greenville Place apartment home. The FEC is seeking a $25,000 penalty. Yesterday, in an unofficial capacity (i.e. not an official settlement offer in writing), O'Donnell and her campaign committee offered to settle the matter for $10,000. My back of the envelope reveals the following: Her apartment home was used as an "campaign office" for approximately a year, from early 2010 to March 2011. Her rent was $1410 a month. That is $16,920 for twelve months. She supposedly reimbursed her campaign committee $770 a quarter for the premises, or four payments of $770, or a total of $3080. I don't know the rules here about using a residence as a campaign office, like are the campaign and candidate in her personal capacity supposed to split the rent during the relevant time period? Or if the office space is a residence, is the candidate on the hook for the whole thing? From these questions, the she could owe in terms of rent anywhere between $5,380 (assuming a split in rent between the campaign and O'Donnell minus the $3080) or $13,840 (assuming that the campaign is fully on the hook minus $3080). In other words, I think the $10k offer is reasonable, the government should just take it and be done with her (assuming of course my reasoning and math is correct, and it may not be).

According to the News Journal and the Department of Elections, as of September 1, there are 36,518 more voters registered now than there was on Election Day in 2012.

The number of registered voters on Sept. 1 already has surpassed the 2012 totals, with 671,043 registered voters, according to the Department of Elections. The total in 2012 on Election Day was 634,525.

Of that 36,518 number, 17,408 are new registered Democrats. Republicans only registered 6,000 new voters. And those voters who are either unaffiliated or are "Others" increased by 12,687.

As of Sept. 1, there were 318,991 voters registered as Democrats (compared with a total of 301,583 in 2012) and 188,491 voters registered as Republicans (182,491 in 2012). The number of registered voters under “others” has grown significantly – from 150,874 in 2012 to 163,561.

Rick Klein: “Among the ways Donald Trump is breaking with conventional politics? He’s not even really pretending that he won the debate. He is insisting that he won, of course – but he’s also complaining about the moderator, the questions, and even the microphone he used at Hofstra. (As his opponent pointed out, winners don’t complain about the equipment.) And in the debate’s aftermath, he is also adding fuel to a two-decade-old feud with a former Miss Universe whom he attacked for gaining weight. This is the Trump that the Trump campaign had been trying to disappear – and the Trump that Hillary Clinton’s campaign insists is the only true Trump to exist.” “That’s what’s behind Clinton’s masterful strategy from Monday night: She set traps for Trump to fall into – or, rather, she pressed a whole bunch of buttons knowing that something would set him off. Clinton got the result she wanted. Trump’s reaction, meanwhile, took would could have been a partial victory or a split decision and turned it into a solid loss. The Clinton camp got a debate win, and then a parting gift.” First Read: “Trump’s ill-advised feud with Machado fits into a pattern we’ve noticed throughout the campaign: When Trump is in a bad period like this, he makes it worse for himself by refusing to back down. Particularly in the face of poor reviews (remember the Khan fight after his convention message was panned by pundits?), Trump has a tendency to spiral downward for a few days until he’s convinced to stop lashing out or punching down. Our question is: how long does bad stretch for Trump last?”