The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Cliff Varnell]

46 minutes ago, Robert Wheeler said:

Tool

Gavin Newsom made Healthy San Francisco happen — I enjoyed very inexpensive public health care for 5 years.

What have you ever done for anyone, Robert?

[David Andrews]

The Cuomo takedown begins in the tangential MSM:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/20/andrew-cuomo-new-york-coronavirus-catastrophe

[Steve Thomas]

This is a direct quote from Donald Trump:

"We're going after Virginia, with your crazy governor. We're going after Virginia.

They want to take your Second Amendment away. You'll have nobody guarding your potatoes."

The Governor told him to stop taking the hydroxychloroquine.

 

Steve Thomas

[Chuck Schwartz]

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."

 

[David Andrews]

5 minutes ago, Chuck Schwartz said:

"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.

 

So how did the Mob make money on these deals?  Serious replies appreciated.

[W. Niederhut]

15 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Otto von Bisquick.

Otto von Bisquick?   🤥

Wasn't he the guy who once said that people should never see how laws, sausages, and biscuits are made?

[Douglas Caddy]

Supreme Court for now stops House Democrats from seeing secret Mueller material

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-for-now-stops-house-democrats-from-seeing-secret-mueller-material/2020/05/20/091ac208-9ad6-11ea-a282-386f56d579e6_story.html?itid=hp_no-name_hp-breaking-news%3Apage%2Fbreaking-news-bar

 

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, Robert Wheeler said:

Separate subject - Since you are an Oakland/SF guy, is their anything interesting you know about Jonestown that maybe the rest of us have never read? I know the MSM story and the Mae Brussel / Dave Emory / John Judge versions, just wondering if you have some local insights. 

 No insights, alas. Not my scene. &I was living in Reno at the time.

In 1991 I wrote Jim Jones up for a set of collector trading cards called The World’s Most Hated People.  Papa Doc Duvalier and Donald Trump made the set as well (it was a big hit in NYC, btw).

One night I came home from work with a couple of library books under my arm — biographies of Jones and Duvalier for research — to find out that 5 hours earlier the roof of my apartment building had caught on fire.

That’s all I got...

[David Andrews]

2 hours ago, Robert Wheeler said:

It usually just depends where the Mob was taking their cut.

If they were overcharging on concrete deliveries during construction, or skimming from the plumbers union pension fund, then they made their money when the buildings were going up.

Even if they were taking a cut when the Hotels were up and running, (for example, taking a small percent on beer/liquor deliveries, or the parking garage receipts), they get paid up front (there is no formal invoice.)

The Chapter 11 process is designed to allow the company to operate. For the most part, managers, workers, utilities, essential suppliers (beer/liquor, food, for a hotel in this case) even marketing, get paid first (actually lawyers get paid first, but you get it.)

If there is anything left over, the Priority Lenders get paid next (Banks holding the first mortgage) then subordinated lenders then equity owners.The subordinated lenders rarely get 100% back in a Chapt. 11. These are the buyers of the Trump "Junk" bonds, and are mostly hedge funds, mutual funds, (institutional money) that play in that part of the Bond market. They charge 14% interest because they know, going in, if the company files for Chapter 11, they are by contract and Federal Law, at the bottom of the "Waterfall."

Optically you can always blame Trump. That being said, hotels/casinos are usually standalone businesses as far as lenders are concerned. If Trumps AC hotel goes into Chapt. 11, the junk bond holders of that hotel can't go after the cash flow of the solvent Trump Tower, or cash flow positive Golf Course (examples.)

Technically (maybe legally is better) the Junk Bond holders can only blame themselves. They are professional investors and the courts have mostly held that the risks should have been anticipated and the law is very clear about the order of payments. Unforeseen events, like Pennsylvania legalizing gambling, should have been considered by the investor. If fraud is involved on the part of the company or its principals (like a Trump), then maybe the subordinated investor can go after other assets not within the "envelope" of the specific LLC. Even that is tough to do. 

Bruce Springsteen - Atlantic City

Well they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night
Now they blew up his house too
Down on the boardwalk they're gettin' ready for a fight
Gonna see what them racket boys can do

Now there's trouble busin' in from outta state
And the D.A. can't get no relief
Gonna be a rumble out on the promenade
And the gamblin' commission's hangin' on by the skin of its teeth

Everything dies baby, that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
Put your make-up on, fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City

....
 

The Chicken man

Philip Charles Testa (April 21, 1924 – March 15, 1981), also known as "The Chicken Man", was an American mobster known for his brief leadership of the Philadelphia crime family. Testa became boss after Angelo Bruno was murdered by his own consigliere, Antonio Caponigro, who, in turn, was ordered killed by The Commission for acting without permission. Testa's nickname came from his involvement in a poultry business. About a year after Bruno's death, Testa was killed by the blast of a nail bomb allegedly ordered by his underboss, Peter Casella.

 

I know the AC-Philly Mob stories fairly well from my reading -- I even know how Nicky Scarfo had the Chicken Man's son, Salvy Testa, killed, and how Salvy had sold Trump the land for a casino parking lot at ten times the value.  Plus how the Gambinos were allowed to move in on the hotel workers' union and other casino-related unions, and how the Genovese (the Gambinos' construction biz rivals in the New York metro area) were allowed pickings around the edges out of courtesy. 

What I'm wondering is how the Mob got their money laundering done in Trump casinos that went bankrupt so quickly.  What was the angle on the bankruptcy play?  Was it a grand bust-out scheme, and not a money-laundering deal?  the idea was purported to be that Trump was fronting for the Mob because he and his people could pass gaming license standards.

Edited May 20, 2020 by David Andrews

[Kirk Ross]

4 hours ago, Robert Wheeler said:

. . . is their anything interesting you know about Jonestown that maybe the rest of us have never read? I know the MSM story and the Mae Brussel / Dave Emory / John Judge versions

FWIW, have you seen this?  Not exactly the MSM take on  it.

http://jimhougan.com/JimJones.html

[Chuck Schwartz]

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 Press

In 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.”

[David Andrews]

Thanks, Chuck.

[David Andrews]

1 hour ago, Kirk Ross said:

FWIW, have you seen this?  Not exactly the MSM take on  it.

http://jimhougan.com/JimJones.html

Joe Green on Jim Jones, Midnight Writer News:

https://midnightwriternews.com/mwn-episode-080-joseph-green-and-the-deep-truth-of-jonestown/

And you probably know this one, Rob:

https://d-state-research.com/home/would-it-be-all-that-odd-if-it-turned-out-the-coronavirus-plandemic-was-a-nazi-inspired-ft-detrick-experiment-like-the-mass-suicide-at-jonestown/

[Kirk Gallaway]

From what I can see, these whiners  who claim their liberties are infringed are losers who never made any sacrifices for anything greater than themselves anyway.  I'd round them all up and send them to a 6 week DSBC "Deep State Boot Camp" and subject them to hard physical labor and an extreme fitness regimen. Let them at last, see the hard  reality beyond their squawking fears.

 

Anybody who acts up, I'd tie them to a chair. Strap an N 95 mask on them, with mirrors all around them, so they can fully  contemplate the horror of their new pitiful self image, further  exacerbated by multi racial  groups of gawkers filing  by and staring  at them. 

 

Strict social distancing will be practiced, though given their undisciplined nature, I expect the same problems of pirates long out at sea, they will be surveiled by our bunk cam and will be dealt with accordingly. At night, I'd subject them to "sensitivity training" by our strident young, new "PC police" cadets.

 

Actually I'm kidding, I would take the most strident of the left PC  police, like the the people in Berkeley who were protesting Bill Maher and whoever that gay, Greek Breitbart Republican guy,( Thank God, I no longer have to learn to pronounce his name) speaking there  and I'd throw them in the boot camp as well. Though their numbers will be far less. Just the same, At night we'll  have them square off, and employ "Reverse Role Playing" techniques  using  pandemic approved  masks on sticks.

 

After 6 weeks, they'd be released. The hope is, that at that point the only thing that will make them sick is standing on solid ground. Which reflects how ultimately hopeless I think there condition is. But if they relapse, we'll surgically mop them up like the virus itself, and this time it wont be to a boot camp.

 

The left has got it all wrong, instead of the usual tactics of trying to indoctrinate non believers, We take a page from the right and just throw them in  camps. You punish them as they would and have punished others. You enslave them. Screw this Alt left sh-t, we call ourselves the new "Hard Left".

Edited May 21, 2020 by Kirk Gallaway

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

From what I can see, these whiners  who claim their liberties are infringed are losers who never made any sacrifices for anything greater than themselves anyway.  I'd round them all up and send them to a 6 week DSBC "Deep State Boot Camp" and subject them to hard physical labor and an extreme fitness regimen. Let them at last, see the hard  reality beyond their squawking fears.

 

Anybody who acts up, I'd tie them to a chair. Strap an N 95 mask on them, with mirrors all around them, so they can fully  contemplate the horror of their new pitiful self image, further  exacerbated by multi racial  groups of gawkers filing  by and staring  at them. 

 

Strict social distancing will be practiced, though given their undisciplined nature, I expect the same problems of pirates long out at sea, they will be surveiled by our bunk cam and will be dealt with accordingly. At night, I'd subject them to "sensitivity training" by our strident young, new "PC police" cadets.

 

Actually I'm kidding, I would take the most strident of the left PC  police, like the the people in Berkeley who were protesting Bill Maher and whoever that gay, Greek Breitbart Republican guy,( Thank God, I no longer have to learn to pronounce his name) speaking there  and I'd throw them in the boot camp as well. Though their numbers will be far less. Just the same, At night we'll  have them square off, and employ "Reverse Role Playing" techniques  using  pandemic approved  masks on sticks.

 

After 6 weeks, they'd be released. The hope is, that at that point the only thing that will make them sick is standing on solid ground. Which reflects how ultimately hopeless I think there condition is. But if they relapse, we'll surgically mop them up like the virus itself, and this time it wont be to a boot camp.

 

The left has got it all wrong, instead of the usual tactics of trying to indoctrinate non believers, We take a page from the right and just throw them in  camps. You punish them as they would and have punished others. You enslave them. Screw this Alt left sh-t, we call ourselves the new "Hard Left".

...Quit soft peddling this stuff Kirk and tell us what you really think...

I had a similar attitude toward the anti face mask crowd until I had a long conversation with an old friend who has no income now and a pre-teen at home who’s getting super restless. Lives in Michigan. We were involved in the Hard Left punk rock movement in Berkeley in the 80’s.

I tried to talk her down from her new found support for Trump’s Reopen Now agenda. She finds it hard to breathe in a mask, so it’s a problem.

I’m all for the Common Good but remain mindful that lots of folks fall thru the cracks.

I don’t agree with critics of the UC Berkeley students who protested Bill Maher.  The right to free speech does not grant rights to a venue. Does a satanist have a right to free speech at Liberty University to discuss the 11 Rules of Satanism on Earth?

Hell no!

Edited May 21, 2020 by Cliff Varnell