David Cay Johnston explains Trump’s tax schemes

It has become a cliché that the real scandal in the US is not what is illegal but what is legal and this is amply demonstrated in the way that the real estate industry has obtained massive loopholes that benefit themselves and that Donald Trump has then exploited for his own benefit.

David Cay Johnston is a veteran reporter whose beats are economics and taxes. I have read a couple of his books and have linked to him frequently because he knows his stuff. As a bonus, he has also been following Trump’s career for several decades and this combination makes him the perfect person to explain what might be going on with Trump’s massive tax loss in 1995 that has been in the news this week.
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Reflections on the vice-presidential debate

For those like me who expected a boring debate between the two running mates Tim Kaine and Mike Pence, each so low-key that wags called the event ‘The Battle of the Blands’, were surprised. It was quite lively though not very informative. The latter feature is not unexpected, since campaigns now put all their substantive positions on their websites and simply refer viewers to them and use the debates to paint broad-brush pictures of themselves and their opponents.
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Tom Wolfe, failed would-be giant slayer

In the August 2016 issue of Harper’s magazine (subscription required) there was a long article by Tom Wolfe titled The Origins of Speech that discussed the challenge raised to the currently dominant theories of linguistics that have been associated with Noam Chomsky. I read the article because I am interested in the subject and was aware of the challenge that Daniel Everett had purportedly made, based on his fieldwork among the Pirahã community who live in the Amazon rain forests.
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Donald Trump is the second coming of Jesus

Charles Krauthammer is a prominent neoconservative commentator who has been reliably Republican for as long as I can remember. But he is also one of the few Republicans who have been critical of Donald Trump. In his latest column, he points out some examples of Trump’s ridiculously grandiose claims that I and other commentators have missed, and how his supporters simply lap it up.
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Ted Cruz kicks off the 2020 presidential campaign

I have said that I am sick of this election and can’t wait for it to be over. But who am I kidding? In the US, we are now in the stage of permanent campaign mode, where the process for the next election starts before the current one even ends. This can be traced to the fact that unlike in most countries where only the maximum duration of a person’s or government’s term is fixed and elections can be, and often are, held before the end of it often with very short notice, in America the date is pretty much written in stone and so ambitious people can plan their strategy well in advance.
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Donald Trump’s surrogates

I do not have time (or the stomach) to follow the appearances and antics of Donald Trump’s surrogates on the various TV talk shows. I see news headlines of this or that surrogate tying themselves up in knots trying to explain away Trump’s statements or poor performance in the debate but I rarely follow up on them because I don’t think they matter. Who cares what surrogates say? Surrogates are useful for filling up the time on the 24/7 cable talk shows but for little else. Does anyone’s choice of who to vote for ever get swayed but what a surrogate says or does?
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Trump’s problem is squirrels and not his debating skills

The Guardian reports that Nigel Farage, the one-time leader of Britain’s xenophobic, pro-Brexit party UKIP, may coach Donald Trump before the next debate. As usual, there have been mixed signals from the Trump camp. The message from Trump himself is that he won handily and that implies that he does not need any debating advice. But others in the party and his camp are worried that he may repeat his widely panned performance and want to try and steer him away from another poor showing.
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