Chuck Schwartz
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Posts posted by Chuck Schwartz
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Back in the mid 1970's , I remember reading an essay by Professor Peter Dale Scott where the Professor was able to show that Jack Ruby worked with Trafficante to run guns to Castro in 1959. Obviously, this was before Castro opted for the Communist route.
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more on Russia bounty gate that fatboy claims to never heard of..By Ellen Nakashima ,Missy Ryan andJune 28 at 8:00 PM
Russian bounties offered to Taliban-linked militants to kill coalition forces in Afghanistan are believed to have resulted in the deaths of several U.S. service members, according to intelligence gleaned from U.S. military interrogations of captured militants in recent months.
Several people familiar with the matter said it was unclear exactly how many Americans or coalition troops from other countries may have been killed or targeted under the program. U.S. forces in Afghanistan suffered a total of 10 deaths from hostile gunfire or improvised bombs in 2018, and 16 in 2019. Two have been killed this year. In each of those years, several service members were also killed by what are known as “green on blue” hostile incidents by members of Afghan security forces, which are sometimes believed to have been infiltrated by the Taliban.
The intelligence was passed up from the U.S. Special Operations forces based in Afghanistan and led to a restricted high-level White House meeting in late March, the people said.
The meeting led to broader discussions about possible responses to the Russian action, ranging from diplomatic expressions of disapproval and warnings, to sanctions, according to two of the people. These people and others who discussed the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity because of its sensitivity.
The disturbing intelligence — which the CIA was tasked with reviewing, and later confirmed — generated disagreement about the appropriate path forward, a senior U.S. official said. The administration’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, preferred confronting the Russians directly about the matter, while some National Security Council officials in charge of Russia were more dismissive of taking immediate action, the official said.
It remained unclear where those discussions have led to date. Verifying such intelligence is a process that can take weeks, typically involving the CIA and the National Security Agency, which captures foreign cellphone and radio communications. Final drafting of any policy options in response would be the responsibility of national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien.
The CIA assessment took some time, and coincided with the scaling back and slowing down of a number of government functions as the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold, two people said.
Asked to comment, John Ullyot, an NSC spokesman, said that “the veracity of the underlying allegations continue to be evaluated.” The CIA and the Defense and State departments declined to comment.
Russia and the Taliban have denied the existence of the program.
Among the coalition of NATO forces in Afghanistan, the British were briefed late last week on the intelligence assessment, although other alliance governments were not formally informed. The New York Times first reported the existence of the bounty program on Friday evening.
But as more details have unfolded, the primary controversy in Washington over the weekend revolved around denials by President Trump and his aides that the president was ever briefed on the intelligence
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By Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt and Michael Schwirtz
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June 26, 2020Updated 4:35 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there, according to officials briefed on the matter.
The United States concluded months ago that the Russian unit, which has been linked to assassination attempts and other covert operations in Europe intended to destabilize the West or take revenge on turncoats, had covertly offered rewards for successful attacks last year.
Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected some bounty money, the officials said. Twenty Americans were killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2019, but it was not clear which killings were under suspicion.
The intelligence finding was briefed to President Trump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, the officials said. Officials developed a menu of potential options — starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step, the officials said.
An operation to incentivize the killing of American and other NATO troops would be a significant and provocative escalation of what American and Afghan officials have said is Russian support for the Taliban, and it would be the first time the Russian spy unit was known to have orchestrated attacks on Western troops.
Any involvement with the Taliban that resulted in the deaths of American troops would also be a huge escalation of Russia’s so-called hybrid war against the United States, a strategy of destabilizing adversaries through a combination of such tactics as cyberattacks, the spread of fake news and covert and deniable military operations.
The Kremlin had not been made aware of the accusations, said Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “If someone makes them, we’ll respond,” Mr. Peskov said. A Taliban spokesman did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Spokespeople at the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the State Department and the C.I.A. declined to comment.
The officials familiar with the intelligence did not explain the White House delay in deciding how to respond to the intelligence about Russia.
While some of his closest advisers, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have counseled more hawkish policies toward Russia, Mr. Trump has adopted an accommodating stance toward Moscow.
At a summit in 2018 in Helsinki, Finland, Mr. Trump strongly suggested that he believed Mr. Putin’s denial that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 presidential election, despite broad agreement within the American intelligence establishment that it did. Mr. Trump criticized a bill imposing sanctions on Russia when he signed it into law after Congress passed it by veto-proof majorities. And he has repeatedly made statements that undermined the NATO alliance as a bulwark against Russian aggression in Europe.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the delicate intelligence and internal deliberations. They said the intelligence had been treated as a closely held secret, but the administration expanded briefings about it this week — including sharing information about it with the British government, whose forces are among those said to have been targeted.
ImagePresident Trump has suggested he believed a denial by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia of Kremlin interference in the 2016 election.Credit...Kirill Kallinikov/Host Photo Agency, via Getty ImagesThe intelligence assessment is said to be based at least in part on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals. The officials did not describe the mechanics of the Russian operation, such as how targets were picked or how money changed hands. It is also not clear whether Russian operatives had deployed inside Afghanistan or met with their Taliban counterparts elsewhere.
The revelations came into focus inside the Trump administration at a delicate and distracted time. Although officials collected the intelligence earlier in the year, the interagency meeting at the White House took place as the coronavirus pandemic was becoming a crisis and parts of the country were shutting down.
Moreover, as Mr. Trump seeks re-election in November, he wants to strike a peace deal with the Taliban to end the Afghanistan war.
Both American and Afghan officials have previously accused Russia of providing small arms and other support to the Taliban that amounts to destabilizing activity, although Russian government officials have dismissed such claims as “idle gossip” and baseless.
“We share some interests with Russia in Afghanistan, and clearly they’re acting to undermine our interests as well,” Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the commander of American forces in Afghanistan at the time, said in a 2018 interview with the BBC.
Though coalition troops suffered a spate of combat casualties last summer and early fall, only a few have since been killed. Four Americans were killed in combat in early 2020, but the Taliban have not attacked American positions since a February agreement.
American troops have also sharply reduced their movement outside military bases because of the coronavirus, reducing their exposure to attack.
While officials were said to be confident about the intelligence that Russian operatives offered and paid bounties to Afghan militants for killing Americans, they have greater uncertainty about how high in the Russian government the covert operation was authorized and what its aim may be.
Some officials have theorized that the Russians may be seeking revenge on NATO forces for a 2018 battle in Syria in which the American military killed several hundred pro-Syrian forces, including numerous Russian mercenaries, as they advanced on an American outpost. Officials have also suggested that the Russians may have been trying to derail peace talks to keep the United States bogged down in Afghanistan. But the motivation remains murky.
The officials briefed on the matter said the government had assessed the operation to be the handiwork of Unit 29155, an arm of Russia’s military intelligence agency, known widely as the G.R.U. The unit is linked to the March 2018 nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury, England, of Sergei Skripal, a former G.R.U. officer who had worked for British intelligence and then defected, and his daughter.
Western intelligence officials say the unit, which has operated for more than a decade, has been charged by the Kremlin with carrying out a campaign to destabilize the West through subversion, sabotage and assassination. In addition to the 2018 poisoning, the unit was behind an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016 and the poisoning of an arms manufacturer in Bulgaria a year earlier.
American intelligence officials say the G.R.U. was at the center of Moscow’s covert efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In the months before that election, American officials say, two G.R.U. cyberunits, known as 26165 and 74455, hacked into Democratic Party servers and then used WikiLeaks to publish embarrassing internal communications.
In part because those efforts were aimed at helping tilt the election in Mr. Trump’s favor, his handling of issues related to Russia and Mr. Putin has come under particular scrutiny. The special counsel investigation found that the Trump campaign welcomed Russia’s intervention and expected to benefit from it, but found insufficient evidence to establish that his associates had engaged in any criminal conspiracy with Moscow.
Operations involving Unit 29155 tend to be much more violent than those involving the cyberunits. Its officers are often decorated military veterans with years of service, in some cases dating to the Soviet Union’s failed war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Never before has the unit been accused of orchestrating attacks on Western soldiers, but officials briefed on its operations say it has been active in Afghanistan for many years.
Though Russia declared the Taliban a terrorist organization in 2003, relations between them have been warming in recent years. Taliban officials have traveled to Moscow for peace talks with other prominent Afghans, including the former president, Hamid Karzai. The talks have excluded representatives from the current Afghan government as well as anyone from the United States, and at times they have seemed to work at crosscurrents with American efforts to bring an end to the conflict.
The disclosure comes at a time when Mr. Trump has said he would invite Mr. Putin to an expanded meeting of the Group of 7 nations, but tensions between American and Russian militaries are running high.
In several recent episodes, in international territory and airspace from off the coast of Alaska to the Black and Mediterranean Seas, combat planes from each country have scrambled to intercept military aircraft from the other.
Mujib Mashal contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.
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Dylan very recently gave an interview. Within that interview , he said: "
Was “Murder Most Foul” written as a nostalgic eulogy for a long-lost time?
To me it’s not nostalgic. I don’t think of “Murder Most Foul” as a glorification of the past or some kind of send-off to a lost age. It speaks to me in the moment. It always did, especially when I was writing the lyrics out."
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Yes they do, Steve. And, funny thing about that , they were all in Dallas around Nov. 22-23. Maybe they were there to discuss the upcoming Army-Navy football game, which was the only game my Dad watched all year. He served in the Army/Air Force (Radar Tech) and saw action in Guadacanal, Iwo Jima, Solomon Islands, Okinawa, and then occupied Japan in 1946. Needless to say , he rooted for Army. In 1963, my Mom did not want the game to be played in honor of JFK. So , she was angry when the game was played anyway.
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Note that Storey served with C. Cabell, who was fired by JFK for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. And whose brother (Earle) was the Mayor of Dallas at the time of the Big Event. And, we have since learned that , at that time , Earle was a CIA Asset.
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Very good post, Robert. And this came from Bill Kelly's JFKCountercoup site:Colonel Robert G. Story – Dallas attorney
From Maj. Ralph Ganis – The Skorzeny Papers (2018, Skyhorse)Director of the Documentation Division and Executive Trail Counsel in Nuremberg (p. 81)– “The senior officer at the heart of all document handling for the Nuremberg Trials was a USAF Intelligence officer and OSS veteran, Colonel Robert G. Storey, who hailed from Dallas, Texas. Colonel Storey was also one of the very few officer in the entire U.S. military privy to ULTRA. Years later, Storey would play a very prominent role as an independent attorney working with the Warren Commission after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy… (p. 30)“Storey had served with General Charles Cabell during the war,…In Dallas, Col. Storey was president of the Republic National Bank and head of the American Bar Association,…Director of the State Bar of Texas and Chairman of the Board of the Southwest Legal Foundation. From 1949-1959, Storey served as the Dean of the Southern Methodist University School of Law….” (p. 181)– Storey “special counsel to the attorney general of Texas,…liaison to the Warren Commission. Colonel Storey was present in the Dallas jail cell when Chief Justice Earl Warren met with Jack Ruby….”“Colonel Storey served on a number of boards and committees with……Algur H. Meadows and Judge Gordon Simpson, Skorzeny’s principal Dallas oil business associates. One of Colonel Storey’s intimate friends was Leonidas (Leon) Jaworski,..... (p. 314-315) -
Though this thread ended in early 2015, it now seems relevant again (re: DAP / Alpha 66) discussion).
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Rob C., in regards to the DAP / Alpha 66 connection, this is on Sparticus.."
Gaeton Fonzi was unconvinced by this evidence. He found it difficult to believe Phillips would not have known the leader of Alpha 66. Especially as Phillips had been in charge of covert action in Cuba when Alpha 66 was established. Other information also emerged to undermine Phillips. CIA agent, Ron Crozier, who worked in Cuba during this period, claimed that Phillips sometimes used the code name, Maurice Bishop.
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According to Larry Hancock, the author of Someone Would Have Talked, just before his death Phillips told Kevin Walsh, an investigator with the House Select Committee on Assassinations: "My final take on the assassination is there was a conspiracy, likely including American intelligence officers." (Some books wrongly quote Phillips as saying: "My private opinion is that JFK was done in by a conspiracy, likely including rogue American intelligence people.")
David Atlee Phillips died of cancer on 7th July, 1988. He left behind an unpublished manuscript. The novel is about a CIA officer who lived in Mexico City. In the novel the character states: "I was one of those officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald... We gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba... I don't know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the president's assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt."
In January 2004, E. Howard Hunt gave a taped interview with his son, Saint John Hunt, claiming that Lyndon Baines Johnson was the instigator of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and that it was organised by Phillips, Cord Meyer, Frank Sturgis and David Sanchez Morales."
On that last sentence, was that taped interview disinformation or real- I am not sure.
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John Newman, in his last sentence of chapter 11 of "Into the Storm" says " I will have much more to say about these events and rest of Veciana's story in Volumes 4 and 5." So, John has not closed out the book on Veciana. I am not sure where he will land on this topic.
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Later Years
LeMay continued to be a strong advocate for use of nuclear weapons. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, LeMay tried to goad President Kennedy into bombing the missile sites in Cuba. LeMay believed that a massive display of US force would force the Soviets into capitulation. Kennedy was more cautious; the blockade worked and the crisis passed. Early in the Vietnam War, he advocated widespread bombing of key North Vietnamese industrial and military targets; President Johnson thought that this would draw the USSR and China into the war. LeMay wanted to threaten to North Vietnam that they stop aggression or “We’ll bomb them back into the Stone Age.” Outspoken and unpopular, he retired in 1965.
During the 1968 election, LeMay joined Alabama Governor and infamous segregationist George Wallace as vice-presidential running mate. Wallace and LeMay ran as part of the newly-established American Independent Party. Both were controversial candidates: Wallace opposed federally-enforced desegregation, while LeMay called for use of nuclear weapons on North Vietnam. They won 13.5% of the popular vote and won five states in the Deep South--a strong showing for a third party.
Hypothesis: the offspring of that 13.5% now form the Trump base-CS
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From the current issue of Forbes..
The Internal Revenue Service watchdog TIGTA says the IRS is ignoring hundreds of thousands of delinquent high-income taxpayers who owe billions of dollars in total. That’s sobering news as millions of Americans still are gathering documents to file their 2019 tax returns by the July 15, 2020 deadline—pushed back from the normal April 15 deadline because of Covid-19. The American tax system is voluntary: You file an annual return and pay your share. Most taxpayers (84%) pay their taxes in full and on time.
However, the Treasury Inspector General For Tax Administration identified 879,415 high-income nonfilers for tax years 2014 through 2016 with an estimated tax due of $45.7 billion. The top 100 high-income nonfilers during that time period that the IRS did not address or resolve had estimated taxes due totaling $9.9 billion. TIGTA says that the IRS failed to send out delinquency notices and shelved cases, missing the opportunity to bring these taxpayers back into compliance at a huge cost to the Treasury.
Here’s the damning evidence from the TIGTA report, High-Income Nonfilers Owing Billions Of Dollars Are Not Being Worked By The Internal Revenue Service:
The IRS did not work 369,180 high-income nonfilers, with estimated tax due of $20.8 billion. Of the 369,180 high-income nonfilers, 326,579 were not placed in inventory to be selected for work and 42,601 were closed out of the inventory without ever being worked. In addition, the remaining 510,235 high-income nonfilers, totaling estimated tax due of $24.9 billion, are sitting in one of the Collection function’s inventory streams and will likely not be pursued as resources decline.
Most Popular In: Personal Finance
High-income nonfilers, a small percentage of the nonfiler population, reflect a higher noncompliance risk than other nonfilers, so resolving these cases generates a greater return on investment, TIGTA says. The IRS used to pursue most nonfiler cases, but with some exceptions, that no longer appears to be the case, and the number of nonfilers has been growing.
Declining IRS resources are to blame. From fiscal year 2013 through fiscal year 2018, there was a 19% decline in staff resources within the IRS’s collection function. As the number of tax collectors has been declining, the nonfiler component of the tax gap has gone up.
How does the IRS track down nonfilers in the first place? There’s third party reporting—those are forms sent to both the IRS and the taxpayer, including Form W-2 for wages, Form 1099-Misc. for self-employment income, and Form 1099-B for stock sales. The IRS also looks at past filers who later fail to file.
Are nonfilers always on the hook for back taxes due? There is no statute of limitations to pursue nonfilers civilly, but the IRS has a policy of only pursuing six years back. The criminal nonfiler statute of limitations is six years.
The IRS agrees that high-income nonfilers constitute a problem, and it is piloting programs to crack down, including compliance sweeps. In one pilot, it found that letters get more results than postcard notices. In another pilot, the IRS reached more nonfilers by pursuing just one year’s unfiled return, but that meant less revenue collected. High-income taxpayers with multiple years of unfiled returns may not be deterred from future nonfiling if the IRS only asks for one year’s tax return, TIGTA notes.
TIGTA calls for more resources for the IRS (that’s up to Congress). It recommends an IRS team that specifically focuses on high-income nonfiler cases, a nonfiler strategy that ensures that delinquency notices are issued to all high-income nonfilers, and says that, at a minimum, the IRS should pursue the 100 folks with the biggest potential bills.
“If high-income taxpayers believe the IRS’s effort in this area is temporary or intermittent, it is unlikely to have a long-term benefit on voluntary tax compliance,” the report says.”
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Another good post, Robert.
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Micah, no , I Believe it is not true- here is Wikipedia on the good Doctor..
After forty-five years on the faculty at Southwestern Medical Center, McClelland retired in August 2007. In September 2007, he was appointed Professor Emeritus of Surgery at the UT Southwestern Medical Center, remaining involved in medical student education.[5](HE ALWAYS HAD HIS LICENSES-cs)
Assassination of John F. Kennedy and aftermath[edit]
On November 22, 1963, McClelland was working at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas, when President John F. Kennedy was brought in grievously injured. Despite the efforts of the three attending surgeons (McClelland, Malcolm Perry and Charles R. Baxter),[6] he died shortly after arriving.[2] McClelland was the only member of Kennedy's surgical team who supported the idea that Kennedy had been shot from the front, thus the idea that there was a second gunman.[6] Two days later, McClelland saw on the news that Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had been shot; McClelland immediately went back to the hospital. Along with George Shires, McClelland worked unsuccessfully to save Oswald's life, as he was pronounced dead two hours after being shot.[2] McClelland preserved his blood-stained shirt from attempting to save President Kennedy for the rest of his life.[6]
Personal life and death[edit]
McClelland married Connie Logan in May 1958. She was the head nurse at Parkland Memorial Hospital, and the two also attended the same church.[6] They had two daughters and a son.[1] McClelland enjoyed reading, and insisted on having a bookcase in every room of his house.[6]
McClelland died from kidney failure on September 10, 2019, at an assisted living facility in Dallas. He was 89.[1]
Honors[edit]
In 1990, McClelland became the namesake for the Parkland Surgical Society's Robert N. McClelland Lectureship.[7]
References[edit]
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d Sandomir, Richard (September 24, 2019). "Dr. Robert McClelland, Who Tried to Save President Kennedy, Dies at 89". The New York Times. Retrieved September 24, 2019.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d "In memoriam: Professor Emeritus of Surgery Dr. Robert McClelland, provided emergency care to President John F. Kennedy". News Wise. September 16, 2019. Retrieved September 24, 2019.
- ^ Jump up to: a b "To save a life: Obituary, Robert McClelland". The Economist. London. September 28, 2019. p. 102. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
- ^ "Selected Readings in General Surgery". American College of Surgeons. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
- ^ "JFK Surgeon Dr. Robert N. McClelland Interviewed". Baylor University. October 25, 2013. Retrieved September 24, 2019.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Ramirez, Marc (September 14, 2019). "Robert McClelland, surgeon who tried to save JFK and believed there was a second shooter, dies at 89". The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved September 24, 2019.
- ^ "The Robert N. McClelland Lectureship". Parkland Surgical Society. Retrieved September 24, 2019.
<img src="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAutoLogin/start?type=1x1" alt="" title="" width="1" height="1" style="border: none; position: absolute;" /> -
Yes, it just about says it all- we have a very sick and demented president who only likes sick and demented people working for him.
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David, from the NY Times.'"
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Mr. Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos here thrived, Mr. Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
All the while, Mr. Trump received copious amounts for himself, with the help of a compliant board. In one instance, The Times found, Mr. Trump pulled more than $1 million from his failing public company, describing the transaction in securities filings in ways that may have been illegal, according to legal experts.
Mr. Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. The record, however, shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role.
There are those here who fondly remember Mr. Trump’s showmanship, the thousands he employed in a struggling city, and the tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue his casinos generated.
“He was a great person for the company,” said Scott C. Butera, the president of Mr. Trump’s company at the time of its 2004 bankruptcy. “With his oversight, his brand and marketing, he’s really adept.”
Many others were glad to see him go.
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the hell out of here?’”
Mr. Trump “put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business,” said Steven P. Perskie, New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s.Credit...Mark Makela for The New York Times‘It’s truly going to be an incredible place’ — 1990
Donald Trump darted beneath the 70 gold-tipped minarets and nine carved elephants that lined the roof, through the lobby and across the casino floor, seemingly oblivious to the spectators’ cries of “Donald, Donald,” and the gamblers clutching bricks of $100 bills at the blackjack tables.
It was April 1990, and Mr. Trump was officially opening his third gambling resort in Atlantic City, the biggest project of his career: the $1 billion Trump Taj Mahal.
“It’s truly going to be an incredible place,” he told reporters. “We’re calling it the eighth wonder of the world.”
The Taj was certainly of outsize proportions: Its 42-story tower was New Jersey’s tallest building, and the casino was the world’s largest.
In a remarkably short time, Mr. Trump had become a commanding figure in Atlantic City, with his casinos accounting for nearly a third of its gambling revenues and employing more than 8,000 people.
Trump Plaza came first. In the early 1980s, Mr. Trump gained control of a prime spot on the boardwalk. Unable to get financing to build a casino, he forged a partnership with Harrah’s Entertainment, a national gambling operator.
Harrah’s agreed to provide Mr. Trump, who did not put any additional money into the deal, with $220 million in financing to build the project, to pay him a $24 million construction management fee and to give him half the profits.
The 39-story Harrah’s at Trump Plaza opened in 1984.
From the start, the partners were at odds over its marketing and whose name should be paramount.
“It wasn’t a well-designed partnership,” said Philip G. Satre, the retired chairman of Harrah’s. “We were a big company with an institutional approach to running a business, and he was a real estate entrepreneur who kind of shot from the hip.”
Then Mr. Trump bought Hilton’s nearly completed casino in the marina district for $320 million, calling it Trump Castle. His company issued $352 million in bonds to finish construction and open the casino, and tacked on an additional $32 million. That casino opened in 1985 and competed directly against his partner’s first casino, Harrah’s Marina.
The following year, Harrah’s scuttled its partnership with Mr. Trump and sold him its stake in Trump Plaza for more than $220 million.
Next Mr. Trump went after the biggest casino of all, the Taj Mahal, which Resorts International, builder of Atlantic City’s first casino, was erecting. After buying a controlling interest in Resorts from the estate of its founder, Mr. Trump battled the talk show host Merv Griffin for control of the company.
In the end, Mr. Griffin got the company, while Mr. Trump won the still-unfinished Taj Mahal.
Even before the Taj opened, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission was concerned about the casino’s viability given its rapidly escalating costs and considered revoking its operating license. Regulators closely monitored the financial performance of the Trump casinos and the developer’s empire.
Mr. Trump told the commission in 1988 that he could rein in expenses, because conventional lenders were lining up to give him money at low interest rates. He said he abhorred junk bonds, which were then popular, because they carried a bigger risk of default and thus came with higher interest rates.
Within months, he reversed course, issuing $675 million worth of junk bonds, with a 14 percent interest rate, to finish construction and get the Taj open. In recent interviews, Mr. Trump has said that with each financing he routinely took money out of the casinos to invest in Manhattan real estate. Total debt on the Taj exceeded $820 million.
Less than two weeks before the casino opened, Marvin B. Roffman, a casino analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott, an investment firm based in Philadelphia, told The Wall Street Journal that the Taj would need to reap $1.3 million a day just to make its interest payments, a sum no casino had ever achieved.
“The market just isn’t there,” Mr. Roffman told The Journal.
Mr. Trump retaliated, demanding that Janney Montgomery Scott fire Mr. Roffman. It did.
“It was doomed way before the start,” said W. Bucky Howard, who was promoted by Mr. Trump to president of the Taj five days after it opened, in a recent interview. “I told him it was going to fail. The Taj was underfunded.”
Almost immediately, Mr. Trump had trouble making the debt payments on the Taj and his other casinos. It was also clear that the Taj was cannibalizing the Castle and the Plaza, whose combined gambling revenues dropped by $58 million the year it opened.
After more than tripling as new casinos opened through the 1980s, gambling revenues in Atlantic City flattened in 1990, rising by just 1.35 percent, as gamblers grew more cautious in light of a national recession. All were hurt, recalled Mr. Perskie, the casino regulator, but none were in the catastrophic financial shape of Mr. Trump’s.
At the same time, Mr. Trump’s real estate empire in Manhattan, where the recession cut property values, was also failing.
In April 1990, Mr. Trump officially opened the $1 billion Trump Taj Mahal.Credit...Mike Derer/Associated PressIn an August 1990 report, New Jersey regulators noted the “sheer volume of debt” on Mr. Trump’s holdings: $3.4 billion, including $1.3 billion on the casinos and $832.5 million in loans personally guaranteed by Mr. Trump. Regulators warned then that “the possibility of a complete financial collapse of the Trump Organization was not out of the question.”
The Taj Mahal missed its November debt payment. The Castle was also late.
By December 1990, when Mr. Trump needed to make an $18.4 million interest payment, his father, Fred C. Trump, sent a lawyer to the Castle to buy $3.3 million in chips, to provide him with an infusion of cash. The younger Mr. Trump made the payment, but the Casino Control Commission fined the Castle $65,000 for what had amounted to an illegal loan.
As all of his ventures neared collapse, Mr. Trump’s lenders insisted that he submit a business plan, appoint a chief financial officer for the Trump Organization and sell, among other things, the Trump Shuttle airline, his yacht and his stake in New York City’s Plaza Hotel, which also filed for bankruptcy protection. They also put him on a $450,000-a-month budget for personal and household expenses.
Just over a year after it opened, the Taj Mahal was in bankruptcy court, followed in 1992 by both the Plaza and the Castle. In the plan that was worked out, Mr. Trump ceded to the lenders a 50 percent stake in the businesses in return for lower interest rates. The lenders agreed to defer certain principal and interest payments and hold off on personal claims against Mr. Trump for five years. But there was little or no reduction in the enormous debts that would plague his gambling empire far into the future.
Mr. Trump now says he looks back on the period as his golden era in the casino business.
“Early on, I took a lot of money out of the casinos with the financings and the things we do,” he said in a recent interview. “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.”
Others were hurt.
“He helped expand Atlantic City, but he just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant and a former casino executive at Resorts International. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Mr. Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on the casino, she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects. He says he’ll make America great again, but his past shows the complete opposite of that.”
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Steve, great post. Trump had to declare bankruptcy 6 times (see below) . I just hope he does not drive America into Bankruptcy.
"Trump’s companies have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which means a company can remain in business while wiping away many of its debts. The bankruptcy court ultimately approves a corporate budget and a plan to repay remaining debts; often shareholders lose much of their equity.
Trump’s Taj Mahal opened in April 1990 in Atlantic City, but six months later, “defaulted on interest payments to bondholders as his finances went into a tailspin,” The Washington Post’s Robert O’Harrow found. In July 1991, Trump’s Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy. He could not keep up with debts on two other Atlantic City casinos, and those two properties declared bankruptcy in 1992. A fourth property, the Plaza Hotel in New York, declared bankruptcy in 1992 after amassing debt.
PolitiFact uncovered two more bankruptcies filed after 1992, totaling six. Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts filed for bankruptcy again in 2004, after accruing about $1.8 billion in debt. Trump Entertainment Resorts also declared bankruptcy in 2009, after being hit hard during the 2008 recession.
Why the discrepancy? Perhaps this will give us an idea: Trump told Washington Post reporters that he counted the first three bankruptcies as just one."
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Congressman Schiff said Trump could face criminal charges after he leaves the oval office. He has had problems with the law prior to his political career....
A federal judge in the Southern District of California on Monday finalized a $25 million settlement to be paid to attendees of the now-defunct real estate seminar called Trump University.
Judge Gonzalo Curiel's decision came after an appeals court rejected arguments from a Florida woman who attended Trump University and said she wanted to pursue a separate lawsuit.
New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman called the settlement a victory for Trump U. "victims."
"Judge Curiel's order finalizing the $25 million Trump University settlement means that victims of Donald Trump's fraudulent university will finally receive the relief they deserve," he said in a statement, adding that the amount surpassed the initial number the class-action suit initially negotiated.
"This settlement marked a stunning reversal by President Trump, who for years refused to compensate the victims of his sham university," the statement added. "My office won't hesitate to hold those who commit fraud accountable, no matter how rich or powerful they may be."
Former employees and students of Trump University, Donald Trump's now-defunct, unaccredited clearinghouse for real estate courses, declared the business a scam in testimony released as part of a class-action lawsuit. In the sworn testimony recently unsealed by U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, two former employees described Trump University as a get-rich-quick scheme orchestrated by the reality TV star at the expense of the financially unsavvy.
The testimony, along with newly released "sales playbooks," shows the aggressive sales tactics Trump's employees were trained to use on the unsuspecting. The pitch began with a free 90-minute seminar designed to coax customers into paying for more courses. The prices of these courses ranged from $1,495 for the "Profit From Real Estate Workshop" to $34,995 for the "Trump Gold Elite" package, a three-day retreat
Federal appeals court rules $25M Trump University settlement can go forwardTrump University was a for-profit series of courses about real estate and entrepreneurship that also pushed people to buy Trump's books.
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Bill, is the Corso you reference above related to the Corso that got in trouble with Mueller for his dealings with Roger Stone?
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The stock market is going up because a company called Moderna is getting good results on a vaccine they are working on for Covid -19.
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If I remember what Robert Montenegro wrote on a post earlier (and then deleted), Connally was hit at least twice.
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Good quote, Peter- it was written in the early 60's , I believe. Then, in '68 , he wrote:
The Wicked MessengerThere was a wicked messenger
From Eli he did come
With a mind that multiplied
The smallest matter
When questioned who had sent for him
He answered with his thumb
For his tongue it could not speak, but only flatter.He stayed behind the assembly hall
It was there he made his bed
Oftentimes he could be seen returning
Until one day he just appeared
With a note in his hand which read
"The soles of my feet, I swear they're burning"Oh, the leaves began to fallin'
And the seas began to part
And the people that confronted him were many
And he was told but these few words
Which opened up his heart
"If ye cannot bring good news, then don't bring any".Source: MusixmatchSongwriters: Bob Dylan / Dylan BobThe Wicked Messenger lyrics © Dwarf Music
The inevitable end result of our last 56 years
in Political Discussions
Posted
From the Feder files: "Federal police, some in complete combat gear, some in plainclothes and without any identifying insignia or badges, arresting people on the streets of Portland... and the state's Attorney General and the Governor and the Mayor all saying it's wrong but acting as if it's out of their control. I guess when the federal government turns lawless, the only remedy is the courts--in this case, the Federal courts---(that's why the appointment of so many conservative/right-wing federal judges is so pernicious).
This scene (which is happening in other cities, too) is right out of Russia or Nazi Germany. We're a hop, skip, and goose-step away from pure fascist dictatorship here. On the "plus" side, when you see these federal cops on the streets of an American city, it should horrify any citizen who has even a trace understanding of why and how the country was formed in the first place--and mabye that will be enough to stimulate some people to vote against Trump who might have considered Biden too pale and centrist to vote for.
On the other hand, you've got protesters in Portland, most of them white, in non-stop demonstrations. And sometimes, it seems to me, that some of this marching and yelling and occasionally provoking the cops to their inevitable response is without any real, passionate substance (maybe it relieves the boredom and is an outlet for the impotent rage caused by ravages of Covid).
I remember people who acted this way in the Sixties-- Ostensibly it was for civil rights or against the war in Vietnam (which brought me out onto the streets many times). I knew a lot of the people who organized and participated in these street protests. Most of them were legitimately aggrieved but some just went out of their way to provoke the cops. They got a thrill out of it; it gave their lives meaning.
What worries me is that every time the country sees videos of these partially gratuitous on-going protests, it's worth x thousands of votes for Trump. And I don't mean his regular cult following--those who will vote for him anyway, I mean people who might not even like Trump but don't want to see complete anarchy and destruction in the country.
Obviously, the cops in most places have been trampling on people's rights forever. The police (and the army in some places) have always served the interests of the rich and powerful and victimized the poor and powerless. Taking to the streets in protest against abuse of authority is the right--almost, you might say, the duty--of any citizen in a Democracy. Even people who live in brutal dictatorships take to the streets when pushed far enough--France in 1789, in Russia in 1917, China in 1989, etc.
But, what do you do if local police are unable to actually control the streets and keep the rest of the citizens safe? Is that what we want? In New York City, the cops have almost always been a law unto themselves--abusing their authority and breaking laws to get their way. BUT--having once been a probation officer in the city for some time in the Sixties and Seventies, I'm here to tell you there are some VERY bad people out there-- They are always out there, and they always have been; a small percentage of the population--no matter what their color or background or national origin--who choose to prey on the rest of us. So, we do need cops to make sure the rest of us are safe. But there's a constant need to keep them under control.
One thing is for sure, though... Once Federal "police" (aka, the Gestapo or the KGB) take over, Democracy is dead as a door-nail."