Reasons I cannot vote for Trump

[no_such_reality]

[quote=SK in CV][quote=flu][quote=no_such_reality]Great article link Rich!

I’d guess as a starting place to look would be Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts established in 1995 and BK’d in 2004 at about $1.8B in debt.

Which then renamed Trump Entertainment … that BK’d again in 2009 at another $1.2B.

If the business entity held the parked debt and failed to collect in nine years, an then another 5 would it still be enforceable?

Madoff debt parking ponzi scheme? Capone-esque tax avoidance?

Honestly, a true expose on this would be wonderful just to educate people.[/quote]

Just out of curiosity for those with tax background, why would the IRS not have ruled on this over the past years? Is it he keeps rolling it into one entity, after another?[/quote]

They have. He’s said all years are closed I think prior to 2010. Any rulings are confidential unless subject to a court decision, which there haven’t been any. So we have no way of knowing whether this $900 million deduction withstood scrutiny.[/quote]

Actually you can go one step further. The only way Trump used it to ‘not pay taxes for 18 years’ like the NY Times implied is if the IRS looked at it and basically said, it’s Legit.

Or they said it wasn’t, backed it out and settled it like with any other audit.

Or he got whacked in a later year with debt forgiveness (like some homeowers post bubble)

Or, IMHO most likely, the BK debt passing game has been going on for a long time.

[FlyerInHi]

The NYT based its article on that one year that was available. If trump was such genius he should show how smart he was and how he intends close the loopholes.

Any good businessman would rather have income over loss, notwithstanding the tax benefits of loss.

[zk]

[quote=The Atlantic]
The breadth of Trump’s controversies is truly yuge, ranging from allegations of mafia ties to unscrupulous business dealings, and from racial discrimination to alleged marital rape. They stretch over more than four decades, from the mid-1970s to the present day. To catalogue the full sweep of allegations would require thousands of words and lump together the trivial with the truly scandalous. Including business deals that have simply failed, without any hint of impropriety, would require thousands more. This is a snapshot of some of the most interesting and largest of those scandals.
[/quote]

The italics are mine. Even The Atlantic doesn’t have room to list all the “Reasons I cannot vote for Trump.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/donald-trump-scandals/474726/

The guy is a liar and a cheat. This is extremely well documented by many respected journalists. And judges. He’s also a buffoon, a narcissist (not using the colloquial definition, but rather the medical one), thin-skinned, vengeful, and a bully. Also all well documented.

You hear people who want to vote for him say, “He’s a businessman. That’s what we need.” But he’s a terrible business man. He has to cheat people to only lose 916 million dollars. He’s filed bankruptcy 4 times and had many other businesses completely fail. Maybe we need a business man, maybe we don’t. But we certainly don’t need a lying, cheating, failing business man.

You hear who want to vote for him say, “He’s not a politician. Politicians get nothing done.” Actually, politicians get a lot done. We live in an extremely prosperous and strong nation. A large nation with a lot of moving parts. And politicians are political for a reason. Diplomacy is required when people interact with each other. Trump is not a politician. That might not be a bad thing all by itself. Trump has zero diplomatic skills. That is a very bad thing all by itself.

You hear people say, “He tells it like it is.” WTF? He doesn’t tell it like it is. He lies freely. And hugely. And when there’s clear evidence that he’s lying. If you know he lies frequently (and if you don’t, check yourself into a hospital before you hurt yourself), then how can you say he tells it like it is? Just because he’s not afraid to say controversial things doesn’t mean he tells it like it is. There’s a huge difference between the two, and if you think he tells it like it is, I believe you’ve conflated the two.

You hear people say, “Hillary is worse.” The only possible way any reasonable person can believe that Hillary is worse is if they’ve believe what they hear on fox news and breitbart and their ilk. If they believe that the mainstream media is extremely biased. And if they believe everything they hear on fox and breitbart, they also probably believe that the msm is extremely biased.

A guy I work with is a right-winger. Voting for Trump. Says he’ll be great. I asked him what news he listened to. He said he listened to all of it, even though the msm was biases. I asked him why he thought the msm was biased. He said, “well, you sure get a different story when you listen to them (as opposed to fox, etc.)”

Well, of course you do. As I’ve said several times before on this forum, this belief that the msm is hugely biased towards liberals is the greatest master stroke in the history of American politics. Now fox controls the narrative for the gullible among us who want to believe that everything right wing is good and everything left wing is bad. And, now that the right-wing noise machine is so loud, powerful, and pervasive, its views are moving toward the mainstream. Many politically centrist people think Hillary is dishonest in a way, and to a degree, that there is no evidence for. And even many on the left are less enthusiastic about her than they might be without the 25+ years of attacks on her by the noise machine.

Donald Trump is aware of many Americans’ willingness to accept whatever is on fox news and disregard anything in the New York Times, and is taking full advantage of it. he knows fox will spin things his way, and that it won’t matter if he lies. It won’t matter if he doesn’t release his tax returns. It won’t matter that he’s a liar, a cheat, a bully, a misogynist, a racist, and a narcissist. None of this matters, because people will believe the fox news spin, and disregard the reporting of the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Trump voters seem to want to give the nuclear codes to a man who responds to every insult with an attack. Wake up and take a look at reality. As good as it might feel to be on the side of someone you see as strong, and who you feel will make this country strong, consider this:

Trump is not strong, he’s weak. As are all true narcissists, he’s extremely insecure. He’s unable to accept any hint that there’s anything wrong with him. That’s a very serious weakness and one that – all by itself, forget about all the other massive flaws that he has – is big enough to cause his presidency to be disastrous. Not just for you and me, but for our children. Not just for America, but for the world.

[SK in CV]

The undecided voter:

Imagine yourself on an airplane, and the flight attendant offers you a choice of two meals. “We have chicken or shit with bits of broken glass”. And you hesitate. And ask how the chicken is prepared.

[FlyerInHi]

ZK, I think people who even consider voting for Trump are hopeless.
We are listing the reasons not to vote for Trump here for fun, but I don’t think those people can be educated. I believe nativist xenophobia is mainly what is driving the support for Trump, the other stuff doesn’t matter.

Don’t you think politics this year will cause a rift between friends and family? Thankfully I don’t have family voting for Trump. But I have totally lost respect for some friends. I don’t care to have friends who are Trump supporters. They say they want to tell it like it is, but they are so thin-skinned and get upset so easily.. So stupid… don’t even understand the basic of tax writeoffs giving the filer a savings of deduction times the tax rate.

[zk]

[quote=FlyerInHi]ZK, I think people who even consider voting for Trump are hopeless.
We are listing the reasons not to vote for Trump here for fun, but I don’t think those people can be educated. I believe nativist xenophobia is mainly what is driving the support for Trump, the other stuff doesn’t matter.

Don’t you think politics this year will cause a rift between friends and family? Thankfully I don’t have family voting for Trump. But I have totally lost respect for some friends. I don’t care to have friends who are Trump supporters. They say they want to tell it like it is, but they are so thin-skinned and get upset so easily.. So stupid… don’t even understand the basic of tax writeoffs giving the filer a savings of deduction times the tax rate.[/quote]

I must admit I’m struggling not to lose respect for some friends who are trump voters. I knew they were voting for Bush, and I thought, well, we’ll agree to disagree. I’ve thought Bush was an idiot since before 2000, but I could, with some effort, see things from their perspective. But it’s very hard for me to see trump from their perspective and not think that it’s a willfully ignorant perspective.

Sure, they’ve been manipulated for decades by fox et al. But even despite that, surely they can see that trump is a disaster waiting to happen. Right? How could they not see that?

Maybe they can see now that they’ve been bamboozled all these years. Maybe because trump is sooo bad, but the right wing noise machine is still painting him as good, maybe the contrast between reality and right-wing “news” is finally so massive that even they at last can see it. But they don’t want to admit it to themselves, so now they’re just sliding down the rapids toward disaster without even putting up a fight. “We’re not giving up now!” I don’t know. Just a theory. I really don’t understand it.

In any case, while I’m struggling to maintain respect, I’m succeeding. I’m not losing any friends over it. Think about this: Whatever trump’s appeal is, it appeals to over 40% of registered voters, so therefore probably at least that percentage of adult Americans. So you can’t really say that a friend who is a trump voter is flawed to a reject-them-as-a-friend degree without saying that same thing about more than 40% of people. The point I’m struggling to make is that whatever his appeal is, it appeals to something basic in human nature. Trump voters are human. Whatever their flaws are are flaws in human nature in general. It’s not like, say, being a true, diagnosable narcissist. A narcissist would have flaws that go beyond basic human nature. A severe narcissist is definitely, in my opinion, flawed to a reject-them-as-a-friend degree. But a guy who is drawn to somebody, no matter how outrageously bad, that over 40% of the population is drawn to? Whatever his flaw is has to be a basic flaw in human nature. And you can’t really blame a guy for that.

I’m honestly not sure if that last paragraph makes any sense. (And it certainly could’ve been written better, but I’m in a hurry.) But I like my friends, and that’s all I’ve got.

[svelte]

[quote=zk][quote=FlyerInHi]ZK, I think people who even consider voting for Trump are hopeless.
We are listing the reasons not to vote for Trump here for fun, but I don’t think those people can be educated. I believe nativist xenophobia is mainly what is driving the support for Trump, the other stuff doesn’t matter.

Don’t you think politics this year will cause a rift between friends and family? Thankfully I don’t have family voting for Trump. But I have totally lost respect for some friends. I don’t care to have friends who are Trump supporters. They say they want to tell it like it is, but they are so thin-skinned and get upset so easily.. So stupid… don’t even understand the basic of tax writeoffs giving the filer a savings of deduction times the tax rate.[/quote]

I must admit I’m struggling not to lose respect for some friends who are trump voters. I knew they were voting for Bush, and I thought, well, we’ll agree to disagree. I’ve thought Bush was an idiot since before 2000, but I could, with some effort, see things from their perspective. But it’s very hard for me to see trump from their perspective and not think that it’s a willfully ignorant perspective.

Sure, they’ve been manipulated for decades by fox et al. But even despite that, surely they can see that trump is a disaster waiting to happen. Right? How could they not see that?

Maybe they can see now that they’ve been bamboozled all these years. Maybe because trump is sooo bad, but the right wing noise machine is still painting him as good, maybe the contrast between reality and right-wing “news” is finally so massive that even they at last can see it. But they don’t want to admit it to themselves, so now they’re just sliding down the rapids toward disaster without even putting up a fight. “We’re not giving up now!” I don’t know. Just a theory. I really don’t understand it.
[/quote]

I guess I gave up on a large part of the public being able to do logical reasoning in an acceptable manner when I realized over half the population believed there is an all-knowing being in the sky who controls everything. If they’ll believe that, they’ll believe anything. Believing what Trump says is small potatoes compared to the Bible.

[an]

[quote=SK in CV]The undecided voter:

Imagine yourself on an airplane, and the flight attendant offers you a choice of two meals. “We have chicken or shit with bits of broken glass”. And you hesitate. And ask how the chicken is prepared.[/quote]
That’s what Trump supporter say too. Except it’s probably fillet mignon instead chicken.

[Anonymous]

Trump’s support is of course mainly due to negative perceptions of Hillary created by three decades of relentless propaganda against her.

But there’s more to it. We all see it and it seems impossible to understand.

It’s quite simple, really. Much of Trump’s support is about hope. A hope that he really is different, a hope that he really does have some unique business skills that can make a difference, a hope that he won’t play be the rules that constrain the insiders…

Many of his negatives actually feed this hope. He doesn’t pay taxes? We’ll maybe he’ll find a way for my takes to go away also…

It’s a desperate hope. One not grounded in any reason. One that any wise person knows would be nothing but a disappointment. But there’s just enough about him to cling to.

[an]

[quote=flu]Because I never thought I would vote for Hillary, lol. Ok, let me correct that. I’m probably not a California Democrat. More like a Bible state democrat. lol.[/quote]
What does that even mean? So you’re OK with higher taxes, bigger government, just as long as they don’t touch college acceptance?

[an]

[quote=harvey]Trump’s support is of course mainly due to negative perceptions of Hillary created by three decades of relentless propaganda against her.

But there’s more to it. We all see it and it seems impossible to understand.

It’s quite simple, really. Much of Trump’s support is about hope. A hope that he really is different, a hope that he really does have some unique business skills that can make a difference, a hope that he won’t play be the rules that constrain the insiders…

Many of his negatives actually feed this hope. He doesn’t pay taxes? We’ll maybe he’ll find a way for my takes to go away also…

It’s a desperate hope. One not grounded in any reason. One that any wise person knows would be nothing but a disappointment. But there’s just enough about him to cling to.[/quote]
That reminds me of a slogan not too long ago… What was it??? Oh yeah, Hope and Change. LoL. This time, it just got turn up a couple of notches.

[SK in CV]

[quote=AN][quote=SK in CV]The undecided voter:

Imagine yourself on an airplane, and the flight attendant offers you a choice of two meals. “We have chicken or shit with bits of broken glass”. And you hesitate. And ask how the chicken is prepared.[/quote]
That’s what Trump supporter say too. Except it’s probably fillet mignon instead chicken.[/quote]

Yeah, except Trump is objectively shit with bits of broken glass. Clinton is chicken.

[an]

[quote=SK in CV][quote=AN][quote=SK in CV]The undecided voter:

Imagine yourself on an airplane, and the flight attendant offers you a choice of two meals. “We have chicken or shit with bits of broken glass”. And you hesitate. And ask how the chicken is prepared.[/quote]
That’s what Trump supporter say too. Except it’s probably fillet mignon instead chicken.[/quote]

Yeah, except Trump is objectively shit with bits of broken glass. Clinton is chicken.[/quote]More like, one is shit with razor blade and the other is shit with broken glass.

[zk]

[quote=svelte]

I guess I gave up on a large part of the public being able to do logical reasoning in an acceptable manner when I realized over half the population believed there is an all-knowing being in the sky who controls everything. If they’ll believe that, they’ll believe anything. Believing what Trump says is small potatoes compared to the Bible.[/quote]

Yeah, there is that. I’ve kind of dealt with that the same way. It’s human nature that most people will believe in a god of some sort.

I might’ve mentioned this here previously, but I read the other day some guy said, “the human brain didn’t evolve to ascertain the truth. It evolved to survive.” That makes a lot of sense and explains a lot of things. But it seems to me we should be able to use reason, science, logic, etc. to ascertain something closer to the truth than what our instincts tell us.

[Coronita]

[quote=AN][quote=flu]Because I never thought I would vote for Hillary, lol. Ok, let me correct that. I’m probably not a California Democrat. More like a Bible state democrat. lol.[/quote]

What does that even mean? So you’re OK with higher taxes, bigger government, just as long as they don’t touch college acceptance?[/quote]

AN you know me pretty well. And you know that I would never be Ok with higher taxes and bigger government.

BUT, at this point, I’m more concerned with a longer term damage Trump does to this country than a shorter term damage that Hillary might do to my taxes.

He represents everything wrong about this country, every sorry excuse people make for themselves on why they can’t get ahead. He’s an enabler for people who hate just for the sake of hating, latino, muslims, blacks, and later indians, asians, jews. Maybe not all Trump supporters are like that, but there’s enough of them to make it a problem. And enough of them that I believe if he wins, it could be a problem for not me, but my kids and your kids, especially if they don’t plan on growing up in CA.

I can’t for the life of me explain to my kid how a Trump “President” behaves and acts the way he does as acceptable behavior. Now extrapolate his demeanor and his behavior to the parents and family that think what he is doing is nothing wrong, and pretty soon you have a bunch of little punks that also will end up saying shit to your kid like “Trump is going to send you colored people home”. Shit that was a really bad memory when I was growing up and people like us really were a minority in CA. People always say, things can’t get “that bad” in California. And that’s true. But why must I or my kid be forced to stay in California in order to feel safe or protected? That’s bullshit. My kid has so much more to lose. Neither I or my kid has the luxury to afford a Trump fvckup and his extreme followers in charge. Neither my kid or I are white. We don’t have the privilege of “experimenting” with Trump screwing around with his talk of a theoretical border wall built to keep latinos, or profiling muslims because all of them are terrorists, or his tough talk against chinese who are all hackers and spies and stealing “our jobs”, and on and on and on. These are luxuries a (for a lack of the better word) white family and white kids have, because no matter what Trump does, or how outrageous he casts his “blame net” on, it is very unlikely to ever impact a “white family”. Sure, it’s very easy for some of his supporters to say “Trump is being honest, and I’m so glad he’s not PC”. Again, they are white, and no matter what he does, yes they are correct, their life won’t change significantly no matter what he does. You, me, your kid, my kid, we’re not so lucky. Maybe we aren’t going be a target first, maybe we won’t ever be a target. You want to take a chance? I don’t. While as I don’t give a flying fvck about me, I do care a lot about my kid and the world that my kid will have to grow up in.

No, I’m not a big fan of bigger government, more spending, and a higher tax bill. And had the GOP presidential candidates stuck to those issues, and left off all the other social issues/racial issues/ women’s rights issue aside, they would have been a much more appealing and aligned to what would be good for me. But of course, Trump didn’t do that, and his most extreme right base didn’t want to back any of the moderate candidates that tried to do that. So what choice do I have? Johnson? who has over the past month demonstrate he is out of touch with the world?

If that means that my tax rate goes up for the next 4 years, fine. Hopefully, this won’t be a landslide election, hopefully the GOP maintains control in at least one branch of Congress to act as a counter balance. I’ll back the local republicans that didn’t endorse Trump,. In CA, republicans here are mostly moderates anyway, more so than most Democrats in Rustbelt states.

Trump’s tax plan isn’t really going to help either of us. His elimination of estate taxes (which benefits people like him) is really useless for people like us. The current estate tax laws allows families to shelter up to $10million in net worth, using an A-B Trust, I believe. Above which, there are additional ways to shelter some of that amount. This is nothing more than a handout to the extreme wealthy. It was a ploy to draw out all the 0.1% in this country that probably couldn’t back Trump because of his unsavory view on minorities and women, but appeals to that 0.1% that don’t mind overlooking basic human decency if means saving themselves on taxes, so they can afford an extra Bugatti….. Because obviously, an extra Bugatti is much more important for them than the well being “of a bunch of colored people” and women….. Trump is also proposing an increasing in capital gains taxes, so yes your tax and my tax is going to go up anyway. He is for expanding the child tax credit. But here’s the rub, your “tax credit” for a child most likely is less than additional taxes you are now going to pay for capital gains… At least it certainly would be for me. So again, this is Trump’s nice little plan to wealth transfer money from those in the upper-middle class, while simultaneously leaving the 0.1% alone. See the common theme here? We get hit by both parties.

Hillary is proposing limiting estate tax exemption to 7 million. She is also proposing to increase capital gains taxes, and having the long term capital gains tax rate over a much longer period (5-6 years I think). Does this make that much of difference for us? Probably not that much… Most of our trading in after tax accounts are short term trades taxed as ordinary income already and all the trades in retirement accounts are either tax deferred or tax exempt. And for accounts holding index funds, chances are those are already long term from holding onto them all these years.

The biggest tax issue is step-up cost basis she is proposing to eliminate.. I believe Hillary’s team is still “working out the details”. What was unclear is whether this would be eliminated for everyone or just for people that make $2million+/year. That would have consequences for us holding on to real estate and equity trying to pass it on to our kids, big time. But I’ll reserve judgement until the plan is laid out. It depends on how Hillary defines the cutoff of “wealthy”.

In any case, taxes are going to go up eventually for everyone anyway, simply because this country is bleeding financially. Any politician telling you that taxes aren’t going up is lying and/or only talking to the bottom 1% who never paid taxes or top 0.1% who will always have their tax shelters.

As far as the rest of Hillary is concerned, I don’t give a flying fvck about all the “other issues” that the extreme right wing noise machine continues to make. I don’t care about Bill, I don’t care about Benghazi, about the email, nor do I really give a flying fvck about the Clinton Foundation. All these issues are of no concern to me, relative to the bigger issue that a Trump presidency presents for my kid.

[Author]

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