One Million Dollars is “Very Small” to Donald J. Trump

It’s an election year, and as such, there is mud being slung in our faces again. So, while I abhor that fake slug fest, which is intended to, and does distact us all from any real invesitgation into issues, how a candidate perceives them, how they have acted in the past, and how they will act on issues in the future, or react to a crisis, I have to jump on that bandwagon anyway.

From listening to Donald J. Trump, and President Trump, I’ve come to the conclusion that he is nothing but a “con” man, a confidence man: a person who tricks other people in order to get their money. President Trump turned down the Presidential salary, but he has played 279 games of golf while in office, at a cost to us, the taxpayers, of $141,000,000. That’s one hundred and forty-one MILLION dollars. President Trump’s visits to his own resort Mar-a-Lago have cost us taxpayers at least $60,000,000 – sixty MILLION dollars. That is a confidence game.

As a young adult, Donald J. Trump brags that he only borrowed $1,000,000 (one Million dollars) from his father, calling his loan “a very small amount of money”. Really? And what might many of us have done with that kind of money to invest and gamble with, all the while living a rich, worry-free life? Donald J. Trump is the beneficiary of several trust funds set up by his father and paternal grandmother beginning in 1949 when he was three years old. He was a millionaire by age 8. In 1993, when Trump took two loans totaling $30 million from his siblings, their anticipated shares of Fred’s estate amounted to $3.5 million each. How does Trump get away with things like that? He’s a con man, pure and simple, always has been.

Upon Fred Trump’s death in 1999, his will divided $20 million after taxes among his surviving children. So far, Trump hasn’t done an honest day’s work, but he’s rich. He claims he only borowed one million dollars from his dad, but in 1999 he received at least $425 MILLION (in current year monetary value) from his father’s estate. He dances around the truth.

A lot of money came to Trump over the years, but, in 1982 Trump lied about his wealth in order to appear on the Forbes list of wealthy individuals. Claiming to be worth $100 MILLION dollars, his wealth at the time was $5 million, not enough to be considered one of the wealthiest men alive. Trump is a con man. In 2005, people with direct knowledge of Trump’s finances told reporter Timothy L. O’Brian that Trump’s actual net worth was between $150 and $250 million, but Trump then publicly claimed a net worth of $5 to $6 billion. He sued the reporter and his publishers, lost, and then lost again on appeal, because he refused to release his tax returns, despite every candidate for President for the last 40 years having done so, and depsite his claim that his tax returns supported his case. He’s a con man.

From Trump’s television show “The Apprentice,” beginning in 2004 through 2018 as well as subsequent related licensing and endorsements, Trump received $427.4 million. He paid $70.1 million dollars in federal taxes in 2005, 2006, and 2007. He paid no taxes in 2008. When he filed taxes in 2009, he declared over $700 MILLION in business losses and, on that basis, he asked for, AND GOT, a refund of his federal income taxes paid in 2005–2007, $70.1 MILLION dollars, plus over $2.7 MILLION in interest. He’s a loser, AND a con man.

Trump formed his own charitable foundation in 1988. In the first decade of the 2000s, he gave away $2.8 million through the foundation (though he had pledged three times that amount). He stopped personally contributing to the foundation in 2008, though he accepted donations from others. In 2018, the foundation agreed to shut down. It was facing a civil lawsuit by the New York attorney general that alleged “persistently illegal conduct” including self-dealing and funneling campaign contributions. Furthermore, it had never been properly certified in New York and did not submit to the required annual audit. Do we trust Trump yet?

Trump University (also known as the Trump Wealth Institute and Trump Entrepreneur Initiative LLC) ran a real estate training program from 2005 until 2010. It was owned and operated by The Trump Organization.

The organization was not an accredited university or college. It conducted three- and five-day seminars (often labeled “retreats”) and used high-pressure tactics to sell these to its customers. It did not confer college credit, grant degrees, or grade its students. In 2011, the company became the subject of an inquiry by the New York Attorney General’s office for illegal business practices which resulted in a lawsuit filed in August 2013. An article in the National Review described the organization as a “massive scam”. It ceased operations in 2011. Trump is a proven con artist.

Trump University was also the subject of two class actions in federal court, centering around allegations that Trump University defrauded its students. Despite repeatedly insisting he would not settle, Trump settled all three lawsuits in November 2016 for a total of $25 million after being elected President.

Trump claims to be a genius, a self-made man. Con men always lie.

Why on Earth did we elect such a person?

Once elected, he took immediate credit for a rise in the stock market. Since then the stock market has also hit record lows. Of course, Trump says nothing about that, but he credits any rise in the market to investor confidence in him and his policies. Trump took office in 2017 but has taken credit for an economy that was already on the mend since 2010. He took credit for new jobs, but they were jobs that had been lost during the 2007-2009 economic crash, and unemployment was already down from those turbulent times before Trump took office. The pandemic, however, has changed things.

Trump said he would “build a wall” between the United States of America and the Estados Unidos Mexicanos (United Mexican States), aka the United States of Mexico.

There was already a wall in place before he took office. All of the border land itself was already walled with things such as chain link, bollard fence (steel slats or posts), or vehicle fencing that’s shaped like a roadblock. Of the 700 miles of land barrier, only 275 miles of the pre-existing barriers have been upgraded, and only 5 miles of new wall have been added. Mexico did not, as Trump promised over and over again, “pay for the wall”. We, the taxpayers paid for the upgrades. The prototype that Trump posed in front of was never used – it was demolished. Instead, the sections that were rebuilt used simply a taller version of the bollard fencing (steel slats and posts), some of which have already been knocked over by high winds, and can be breeched by conventional power tools. Trump is a con man.

Jan 29, 2020

Why will people vote for him again?

A Canyon, A Hike, A Plane Crash 65 Years Ago

Early in the morning, before the sun has peeked over the craggy hills of the Sandia Mountains that border Albuquerque, is a great time to be in those mountains.

As the sun started to creep over the edges of those peaks and promontories, a cool wind picked up. Later on, it would be 92°F in the city, but right then it was perfect.

Our goal was the scene of the crash of 1955 TWA flight 260, which utilized a cutting-edge Martin 404, with the capacity to hold forty passengers. The company was headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, where I was born four years & four months earlier. I never dreamed that I would live in Albuquerque, or climb these Sandias. I visited Albuquerque a few months before and then moved here permanently a few months after my 26th birthday. But it took me many years, practically to my retirement from the University of New Mexico, before I began hiking in the mountains. My passion back then was riding a bicycle, and it was what brought me from Baltimore to Albuquerque.

But, enough about me. On February 19, 1955, thirteen passengers and three crew members boarded the TWA Skyliner Binghamton for a short 26-minute flight to Santa Fe, taking off on time, at 7:03 am, before it would head eventually for Baltimore after a series of other stops. But a winter storm blanketed the Sandia Mountains, which top off at 13,678 feet. And, the two gyroscopic fluxgate compasses on the Martin 404 did not register its correct path. The exact details are not known, but the plane failed to clear a pinnacle called the Dragon’s Tooth by 300 feet, smashing full-speed into solid rock at 7:13 am. No one survived.

It is always with the utmost respect, and a feeling of sadness, that people climb to the area below the impact, where the ground is still littered with the wreckage of TWA’s Flight500 260. At the time, there wasn’t any equipment that could remove the wreckage from an area only accessible by hikers. As of 1966, the National Historic Preservation Act provides protection for any historic site that is fifty or more years old. It is illegal to remove any of the wreckage now.

But, about every five years I make the trek, always amazed at the total devastation of that plane, and the loss of those people. There is a memorial plaque fastened to a piece of the fuselage. There are engine parts, tires, and pieces of shredded airplane scattered over a large area of the very steep TWA Canyon. We had to first hike up steep sections of Domingo Baca Canyon to even get there. It is only a few miles to the crash site, but it took five hours to reach it and return. It was a lot hotter by then.

So, here are the photos I took today, and some from earlier hikes to the crash site.

09/26/2020:

12/05/2009:

Ghostly image

02/19/2015:

Some of the information I’ve used here came from a February 2015 article heavily researched and written by Adam R. Baca in Albuquerque the Magazine.

A Fair Evening

It has turned out to be such a good evening. I woke early, made coffee, and drank it as I played solitare and read messages. I had already fed the two cats, and they were reclined on the bed behind me. I was not yet hungry, and decided to nap with them for a bit. After a short while I was up again, surprised that it was still early. I pondered what the day might bring, for I had no great plans: no hike, no ride, no work, no meeting. My kitchen was stocked for the moment, and there was nothing I must clean or clothes to wash. A huge van rumbled into this compound I live in. It seemed out of place with the usual assortment of UPS, Fed-X, postal trucks, or the assorted vehicles of tradesmen. At any rate, the van had turned too soon, near my house, and was backing up and attempting a sharp turn. Nothing happened, but he did overrun the curb a bit. I was worried about the pop-up sprinkler head there, which had recently popped off under the variable water pressure we experience. It had created a geyser thirty feet high and sprayed a large area. I had alerted the proper person, and it had eventually been repaired, but left a large pool of wasted water, which, in a dry climate under a drought, is upsetting.

Be that as it may be, it worried me that it might happen again, and I went out to check. I actually could not find the wayward sprinkler head, as it is flush with the ground when not in use and the grass was thick there, and I discovered, also softer and wetter than the rest of the grass in that area. I will have to notify someone to check it out. However, I noticed that the truck had stopped just slightly past my house, and the driver and a new resident were wrangling some large boxes off of the van. It was not a moving van. It was some kind of delivery service I had never heard of, and I had the impression the boxes were equipment or appliances of some kind – tall, very thick cardboard boxes. Since the virus created a need for space and I did not know the man, I did not go over to satisfy my curiosity.

It was a small diversion from an ordinary day, but on retreating to my house, I decided it was time for breakfast. I sautéd half of an onion, covered it with two beaten eggs and a whole green chili splayed open and covered in cheese. It makes a very satisfying omelet. Hours passed in which I did very little. I finished reading my recent issue of Funny Times, having already read all the cartoons, but not the humor articles. Usually I only have one cup of coffee in the morning, an Americano: two shots of espresso with enough water to fill my coffee cup, but I made another. I was spinning my wheels, aimless, and a bit agitated. Three weeks ago, my motorcycle of nineteen years had been stolen while I slept. It still bothers me. I was able to recover a small bit of money from insurance, and had to take out a small loan to cover the rest, but I replaced the old 1997 motorcycle with a newer one, a 2014. I worry that it will also be stolen, as I have no garage, and nothing to lock it to. The front forks are locked at an angle, so moving the bike will not be easy, and I have put an old U-lock through the rear spokes as well, and put a cover over the bike.

But I feel good, better than I have in weeks, or, really, months. This pandemic, this isolation, the masks hiding our smiles or frowns, the racial tension following even more brutal murders of unarmed citizens by those we hire to protect ourselves — it has taken me further along a downward spiral than I wanted to go. The coming election has the country further divided than ever, with the likelihood of a bitterly contested and ambiguous result, after another month and a half of insults, recriminations, slander, misinformation, and lies.

As writers are known to observe, I digress. As day rolled into late afternoon, I ate a very light meal. I decided I was going to read. My house is choked with piles of books that always accumulate faster than I can read them. I picked another book titled: The Mystery of Dead Lovers, 1951, by an author I’d read before, Maurice Collis. It turned out to be an excellent choice. A traveler comes to a village where he is welcomed with open arms, for it is just past a bountiful harvest time, and all is well. After they have all eaten, there is a play to be presented, and the traveler is entranced into another time and place, which is the story I am reading. The title of the book makes me a little apprehensive, because it is a story of two distanced lovers finding each other, and also great happiness in each other. It is a very enjoyable drama, but with a sword of Damocles hanging over it, so as much as I want to finish it, I also don’t want to, which is why I am taking a long break now.

Tonight I found an old partial bottle of Blue Corn Bourbon in the back of a cupboard, and poured myself a glass to pair with a spicy pork sandwich while I read. The book has taken me to another place, another time, and makes me care about two fictional characters who are like me in some ways, and yet not in other ways. It is a tale, an old and timeless story of two lovers attempting to unite, and finally doing so, but all is not well. Still, I am in a very good mood. I’ve had some wine of late that did not improve my mood, so I am not simply influenced by the alcohol in my whiskey tonight. I am less depressed, able to enjoy the telling of the story, wtih less restlessness. And although I am not certain that I will like the ending, I will not dislike it. It is what it is, I’ve heard it said. Perhaps it is. For tonight, I feel fine, and I can look forward to tomorrow.

Turkey Trot Trails at Mars Court

In a corner of the Manzanita Mountains, a spiderweb of trails and former logging roads winds across meadows and over ridges. Although the trails are accessible from a residential area, and border a U.S. Air Force Base and former bombing range, the views give the illusion of wilderness. My eight-mile hike today. The Manzanitas are sandwiched between the Sandias and the Manzanos in central New Mexico, part of the Cibola National Forest.

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