12/22/22: Mr.
Blogger is often reminded of something General George Washington said. The
man who watched his troops shiver and suffer at Valley Forge, knew more than he
ever wanted to know about how armies fared when lacking food and equipment. “In modern wars,” he said, “the longest purse
must chiefly determine the event.”
Today,
let’s see what the U.S. military could buy with all the federal income taxes paid by then-President Trump in 2020.
How many privates in the U.S. Army could we afford?
For
example, how many privates, with less than two years’
experience in the U.S. Army, could we afford?
Cost per
private: $21,999.60 annually. Trump is a billionaire. I’m thinking at least a hundred.
You have
to cloth the privates’ private parts. We
don’t want any Valley Forge scenarios playing out. That would cost
extra.
And they’d need weapons. You can’t fight wars with spatulas. Or ball
point pens. (I was a clerk in the Marines. So I know
that.)
An M16
rifle for Private Smith would be $749.
A
five-ton cargo truck would set the Pentagon back $67,139; but Private Smith and
his comrades need those supplies delivered. So I think we can put Donald down
for two cargo trucks and a few cases of Meals Ready to Eat.
And might
I say that whatever psycho decided, during the late 60s and early 70s, when I
was in the Marines, that a case of twelve C-rations should always include a
meal of ham and lima beans should have been court martialed.
Then he should
have been sent to the brig and fed only meals of ham and lima beans for
the duration of his service.
But I
digress.
The blogger on duty - 1969.
That toilet bowl brush and that urinal cost money.
How
about an experienced major to help lead Smith’s battalion? A major with eight
years of service will cost $88.635.60.
Suppose
Private Smith were to be shot. Besides bandages, you could use a Humvee, set up
for ambulance service – to whisk him or her or they (did you know hundreds of transgender troops are currently serving) out
of danger. The vehicle alone would cost $96,466. And I think we can all agree
that President Trump – who used to talk endlessly about how much he loved the
troops – not counting trans soldiers, who he wanted to ban – would want the
wounded soldier to ride in comfort to the hospital.
(I guess
the transgender soldier could be carried on a stretcher. Or walk, if not
bleeding too profusely.)
As of
October 2022, Forbes estimates that Trump is worth $3.2 billion. So you
figure he’s going to be paying his fair share to support the military of this
great nation. In fact, I remember when he insisted that the U.S. military didn’t have money for bullets when he took over
as president.
Let’s
figure the Commander-in-Chief would want to pay for a few bullets. Did you know the Army worries
about lead bullets, because lead can be harmful in the environment, and cleanup
can be expensive on firing ranges. That means the
military guys are trying to change over to 5.56 mm rounds for the M16, with
tungsten replacing lead. It’s complicated. For example, on just one firing
range, over a ten-year period, it is estimated that 1,890,000 rounds will be
fired, and the Army will have to clean up 4.3 tons of lead.
Like
George Washington said, the “longest purse” wins.
It costs money to shoot at people, even when you miss.
It costs
money to shoot at people, even when you miss. I can’t find a price for the U.S.
Army, but at one gun store, I could buy a case of ammo for an M16, a thousand rounds,
at 39.5 cents each. I’m going to be lazy, and figure the military buys bullets
at the store. A case would cost $395. And let’s hope Private Smith is a marksman
and won’t be wasting the tax dollars.
Let’s
figure a guy like Trump, who brags about being super rich, is going to pay for
some gunfire. We can assume his taxes will also go to the purchase of a Black
Hawk helicopter for $21 million.
That
means it’s time for the math. If former President Trump paid…WTF!!! He paid
what in 2020???
Zero dollars
in federal income taxes! That won’t buy Private Smith one box of
bullets! That won’t buy a single round.
No way
we’re getting a helicopter.
Private Smith will be lucky to get new underwear!
Two retired educators – and we paid more than the
billionaire.
Sonofabitch.
My wife and I are retired educators – not billionaires. Or millionaires.
We paid $22,034 in federal income taxes in 2020. That’s enough for one private
and close to a case of M16 ammunition.
President
Trump managed to claim he lost $4.7 million in 2020. So he paid nothing
to the government he was running. He didn’t even cover the cost of all the Diet
Cokes he was swigging.
Adjusted gross incomeFinal
tax bill after credits, etc.
2020-4,795,7570
2019$4,380,717$133,455
2018$24,339,696$999,466
2017-12,916,948$750
2016-32,409,674$750
That
means my wife and I paid more in taxes three of five years for which we now
have the billionaire’s taxes. In Trump’s “worst” year, 2018, he paid 4.1% of his
income to the federal government.
In 2018
he got by on 3%.
Here’s
irony for you. In 2018, my wife and I paid 15.57%, with our final tax bill coming
in at $23,977. We had a good year in 2019. Our income was higher, and that
meant we paid $27,004. That year we paid 15.53%.
Trump talks
a good game when it comes to patriotism, but no one in his family ever serves
in uniform. We know he didn’t serve because he claimed crippling bone spurs.
Now we know his wallet is crippled and his bank account can’t serve
either.
When fat cats like Donald get all kinds of tax breaks, which ordinary
schlubs like us never can, you figure the U.S. military is going to have to cut
back on the bullets, the bombs, the planes, and the privates.
President
Donald J. Trump, and his theory of checks and balances
__________
For seven long years, I have
chronicled the egregious criminal acts, the comical ineptitude, and the gross
incompetence of President Trump in more detail than has been good for my
health.
What I have discovered is
that no matter how bad you thought he was, the more you delved into details the
worse he looked.
Mockery faded and fear
flourished. I came to believe, based on overwhelming evidence, that Donald J.
Trump was the greatest threat to America in my lifetime, and likely the
greatest domestic threat to our free and fair system of government ever.
I have often been reminded
of a great biography of George Washington, called the Indispensable Man. James Thomas Flexner, the author, makes the
case that if George Washington is erased from the historical record, this great
nation can never become what it is – flaws and all. We likely lose the American
Revolution, and if we do win, the government created under the U.S.
Constitution will not prosper.
Now comes Donald J. Trump.
If Flexner were still alive,
Trump would merit a new volume titled: The Irredeemable
Man.
An Appalling
Human Being: Donald J. Trump
Watching the presidential campaign unfold in 2015 and 2016,
many Americans feared it might end badly. Bernie supporters were fuming.
Hillary had excellent qualifications and plenty of baggage.
The Republican field, some said the greatest array of
political talent ever assembled, proved inept in the face of the noxious
assaults of Donald J. Trump. And Trump appeared to be nuts.
In a stunning upset on Election Day the nut won.
*
TOO CHEAP to pay for therapy, I decided to assuage my anguish
by mocking President Pussy Grabber at every turn. Perhaps, I reasoned, my
efforts might offer solace to others who considered Trump unfit to lead this
country, or any other, from Zimbabwe to Azerbaijan.
It proved stunningly easy to ridicule the man. As the days piled up like crumpled cars and trucks in
a chain-reaction crash on Interstate 75, however, it became clear. Laughter
would not suffice. The clown morphed.
He proved less a clown and more a threat to American values.
PREAMBLE
TO DISASTER
6/9/16: We won’t know this until July
2017; but on this date three leaders of the Trump campaign meet with Russian
agents who offer dirt on Hillary Clinton. Those three are: Campaign chair
Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka Trump.
Donald Jr. will later claim the purpose of the gathering was
to talk about the adoption of Russian children by American families. That is a
bald-faced lie. And there will be countless others.
___
7/27/16: By late July, both Clinton’s campaign email system and the
email system of the Democratic National Committee have been hacked. A flood of
damaging information has followed.
An
F.B.I. investigation continues into Mrs. Clinton’s possible misuse of a private
email server, and an estimated 33,000 missing emails.
“A
total sign of disrespect for our country.”
On
this day, Candidate Trump holds a press conference and famously asks: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re
able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be
rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens. That will be next.
Yes, sir.”
Reporters
ask Trump if he believes Russia is responsible for the hacking. “Nobody even
knows this, it’s probably China, or it could be somebody sitting in his
bed,” he replies.
But it shows how weak we are, it shows
how disrespected we are. Total – assuming it’s Russia or China or one of the
major countries and competitors, it’s a total sign of disrespect for our
country. Putin and the leaders throughout the world have no respect for our
country anymore, and they certainly have no respect for our leader.
Mr.
Trump also signals that he would be open to recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. The
Obama administration and the European Union consider the seizure illegal
and have imposed heavy sanctions.
“We’ll
be looking at that,” Mr. Trump said when asked if he would, as president,
recognize Crimea as Russian land and lift sanctions that had been imposed after
the annexation. “Yeah, we’ll be looking.”
This
would be music to Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian ears.
___
11/10/16: Just
two days after Trump’s surprise victory, spokeswoman Hope Hicks told reporters,
“There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during
the campaign.”
The short list of those who knew at that instant this
was a bold, brazen, shameless lie would include, but not be limited to:
Michael Caputo
Michael Cohen
General Michael T. Flynn
Rick Gates
Jared Kushner
Paul Manafort
Carter Page
George Papadopoulos
Roger Stone
Donald Trump Jr.
All of the above would later admit having met with
Russians or helped set up meetings with Russians.
One might imagine that Ms. Hicks has been kept in the dark
and does not realize she has just told a lie. We don’t know for sure, what
Donald J. Trump Sr. knows at that moment. But it would boggle the mind to
imagine that the man set to become President of the United States did not know
Hicks had just uttered an incredible untruth.
This, then, is the Ur-lie of the Trump administration, the founding untruth on which so much else will be built. (President
Trump will repeat that same lie, in slightly different formulation. See: 5/18/17.)
___
1/5/17: F.B.I. Director James Comey
attends a meeting with top White House officials and President Obama.
He’s worried about Russian contacts with Gen. Michael T.
Flynn, slotted to be the next president’s National Security Advisor. Current
NSA head Susan Rice sends out this email after the meeting:
Director
Comey affirmed that he is proceeding “by the book” as it relates to law
enforcement. From a national security perspective, Comey said he does have some
concerns that incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador
Kislyak. Comey said that could be an issue as it relates to sharing sensitive
information. President Obama asked if Comey was saying that the NSC [National
Security Council] should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to
Flynn. Comey replied “potentially.” He added that he has no indication thus far
that Flynn has passed classified information to Kislyak, but he noted that “the
level of communication is unusual.”
Also in attendance that day: VP Joe Biden and Deputy Attorney
General Sally Yates, who will soon warn President-Elect Trump that Flynn has
been lying about having had no contact with Russians.
This previously classified email is not released until May 2019, possibly as part of an effort
to fan the fires of right-wing outrage, with the idea that Obama’s people were
“spying” on Team Trump. I read it, by contrast, as the previous administration
having serious concerns about Flynn, not to mention wondering about Hope Hicks’
blatantly untrue statement on November 10.
Why would members of Team Trump already be trying to cover up
contacts they had with Russians?
___
1/11/17: President-Elect Donald J.
Trump holds a press conference and reporters get to ask questions.
__________
“To demonize the press, to characterize it as not just
mistaken but malign, is to lay the groundwork for repression.”
Time
magazine
__________
His respect for the First Amendment is clear. Jim Acosta, a correspondent for CNN, raises a
hand. Trump points at him and says, “Your organization is terrible,” and
refuses to call on him.
“You’re attacking us, can you give us a question?” Acosta
asks.
“Don’t be rude,” the rudest man ever elected President of the
United States sneers. “No, I’m not going to give you a question. You are fake
news.” Trump turns instead to take a question from a Breitbart reporter.
Trump
learns about the Steele dossier.
What has made Trump so angry? Why is CNN so “fake?” The
network has reported that intelligence officials have briefed the
president-elect on a mysterious dossier compiled by Christopher Steele.
CNN has not claimed that potentially damaging information in
the “Steele dossier” is true, only that the dossier exists.
The Hill,
another media outlet, explains:
The 35-page document – made up
of a collection of memos filled with explosive claims about the billionaire’s
relationship to Russia – has reportedly been circulating among journalists and
officials for at least a few weeks.
But the sourcing on the document
is unclear and likely unverifiable. CNN reported that it is based primarily on
memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative that were intended as
opposition research into Trump.
The president-elect on Tuesday
night immediately blasted the report, tweeting, “FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL
WITCH HUNT!”
During the press conference,
Trump specifically called out CNN for pushing the story, saying it was
“disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned
out to be so false and fake out.”
“I think it’s a disgrace, and I
say that, and that’s something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do,”
he said.
“I think it’s a disgrace that
information that was false and fake and never happened got released to the
public. As far as BuzzFeed [which
released the dossier before CNN picked up the story], which is a failing pile
of garbage, writing it, I think they’re going to suffer the consequences.”
With that, the battle lines are drawn. Breitbart, where reporters fawn over Trump, is real news.
CNN, which questions Trump when it can and reports that a
dossier does exist – because a dossier does exist – is fake news.
In his first year in office, Trump will give just one solo press conference, open to reporters’
questions. It will not go well.
By comparison, past presidents faced the free press with some
regularity. George W. Bush braved the fire four times in his first year in
office, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, six, Barack Obama, seven. Bill Clinton
took questions eleven times. Jimmy Carter stood before the free press 22 times
and George H. W. Bush 27 times.
Time has
this to say, in February 2017, at the very dawn of the Trump era:
Nearly every President has found
much to dislike in news coverage – Harry Truman referred to press clippings as
“the daily poison” – but seldom have reporters been the target of such
relentless hostility as we are seeing from the current administration
[emphasis added, unless otherwise note]. Barely a day in office, President
Trump declared his “running war” with the media; top adviser Stephen Bannon
calls the press “the opposition party” that should “keep its mouth shut,” and
Kellyanne Conway suggests that if journalism were a “real business,” 20% of the
media would have been fired for all the things they got wrong.
To demonize the press, to
characterize it as not just mistaken but malign, is to lay the groundwork for repression.
Time editor
Nancy Gibbs promises:
We are committed to independent
inquiry, defending the possibility of progress, holding the powerful to account
and providing an arena where diverse voices and visions compete…
The enemy in any democracy is
not dissent, from either within or without. Dissent, in fact, is essential. The enemy is dishonesty, ignorance,
indifference, intolerance.
___
1/15/17: Five days before taking
office, in one of the worst predictions ever, Trump tweets: “For many
years our country has been divided, angry and untrusting [emphasis
added]. Many say it will never change, the hatred is too deep. IT
WILL CHANGE!!!!”
It’s the first of his many terrible predictions as president.
And then…oath of office taken…he’s president. The sorry saga
of a terrible man at the helm of a great nation begins.
A FEW
HINTS AS TO WHY A FREE PRESS IS NECESSARY
“The basis of our
governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to
keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a
government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not
hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”Thomas Jefferson
“Freedom of the
press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of achieving a free
society.” Felix Frankfurter
The
Nazis held regular book burnings.
The name of the
government newspaper in the Soviet Union was Pravda, or, in Russian: “Truth.”
Internet censorship is
rampant in Communist China.
Under Kim Jong-un, the
government of North Korea tightly controls radio and television.
When the journalist Jamal
Khashoggi criticized the royal family of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman had him executed.
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