Death and Taxes Meet Fake News and The Hoax
Death and taxes is a common reference to the famous quotation:
“Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
— Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, 1789
However, Franklin’s letter is not the origin of the phrase, which appeared earlier in Daniel Defoe’s “The Political History of the Devil”:
“Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believ’d.”
— Daniel Defoe, “The Political History of the Devil”, 1726.
Donald Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes the year he ran for president and in his first year in the White House, according to a report Sunday in The New York Times.
IRS figures indicate that the average tax filer paid roughly $12,200 in 2017, about 16 times more than what the president paid.
In 2010, Trump claimed and received an income tax refund that totaled $72.9 million, which the Times said was at the core of an ongoing audit by the IRS. The Times said a ruling against Trump could cost him $100 million or more.
Money he apparently doesn’t or won’t have unless he liquidates some or all of his assets.
Tax records show Trump is carrying a total of $421 million in unsecured loans and debt, for which he is personally liable to undisclosed parties, all of which become due and payable within the next four years.
This personal liability makes Trump a national security risk of the first order.
The reporting of these facts are certain to seal Trump’s fate as a one term President and as the defendant in a number of state and federal criminal prosecutions once he is out of office.
Trump’s entire presidency has been a destructive and lethal ‘hoax’ perpetrated against the American people.
Trump himself is a ‘hoax’ which is predicated on the ‘fake news’ of his ‘brand’.
The mystique and myth of his prowess and success as a businessman are couched in the decades of his deceitfulness and the lies that he has told about who and what he is…
” ’Tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes.”
From ‘The Cobbler of Preston’ by Christopher Bullock (1716)
09/28/2020 @ 11:36 am
I like the post. I don’t like the Peanuts quote. If it were true, years ago it would have been right to out everyone gay we knew. It would have been right to out Trevor Noah’s parents to the South African authorities, being as their being together was illegal. For that matter, It would have been right to disclose the location of every Jew hiding from the Nazis. An overly simplistic maxim.
09/28/2020 @ 12:24 pm
I disagree in that this frame must be carefully and accurately placed and read in a proper and relatively narrow context….
It’s a meme with limited scope…
Even though Shultz’s. signature is in the frame containing his ‘Peanuts’ art, the copy in the balloon might not be his at all…
Be that as it may, none of your examples “deserve to be destroyed”…
09/28/2020 @ 7:41 pm
Excellent point. Concealing the truth can be the most moral act.
09/28/2020 @ 11:44 am
Thanks for this. It’s brief and to the point.
I hope he is headed for the same fate as Al Capone.
09/28/2020 @ 12:26 pm
And Bill Barr headed for the fate of John Mitchell…
09/28/2020 @ 2:52 pm
The plot thickens. From the Washington Post, talking about the NYTimes article:
“The Times reported that Trump earned about $73 million in foreign revenue in his first two years as president. He also in 2017 paid significantly more in taxes to the governments of Panama ($15,598), India ($145,500) and the Philippines ($156,824) than to the United States ($750).”
I think those far larger payments to foreign governments will play just great.
09/28/2020 @ 3:48 pm
Biden and the Dems need to distill the salient info into a 30 second talking point and hammer away at it until it becomes household or kitchen table conversation….
The Dems should see this as ‘close the deal’ material that Trump can’t brush off or explain away…
The Lincoln Project will likely do a better job of bringing it home to white blue collar voters who have been scammed by the ‘huckster-in-cheif’ into believing that he’s one of them…
09/28/2020 @ 4:46 pm
Not a difficult script to write.
“In 2017, Donald Trump paid $750 in federal taxes.
Well, in American federal taxes. How much did he pay in taxes to foreign governments that year?
“$317,922.
“Why would the President of the United States pay foreign governments more than four hundred times what he paid our government that year?
“Whose President is he?”
09/28/2020 @ 7:46 pm
All of the people who love Trump will just believe that objective reality is picking on him. We are talking about people who believe in Q-Anon. I dearly hope that I am wrong, but processing the message from an analysis of tax information is entirely too rational for ‘True Believers’ to care about.
09/28/2020 @ 10:00 pm
@Bitey;
It’s not purely or solely about the analysis of his tax returns. It’s about the narrative(s) that can be derived from the materials that have been disclosed.
For instance:
The tax materials establish that Trump has either been lying to the IRS re his massive multi-million dollar ‘losses’ or he’s been lying to investors, financial institutions, and the public about the magnitude of his wealth and his ‘success’ in amassing a multi-billion dollar fortune.
He can’t have it both ways…His “true believers” can’t either…
On the other hand the Trump loyalists that are also Q-Anon adherents will remain in Never Never Land…
They are lost to the vagaries of the real world and will remain so beyond the bitter end…
Therein lies the danger they pose to society…
Whether they acknowledge it or not, they’ve been had…big time….
09/29/2020 @ 6:40 am
Ron, I agree with you, but that is precisely what I mean by analysis. If the information requires a certain segment to say…’if this…therefore that…’, nothing is likely to happen. I think millions of his followers think no more deeply than relieving biological functions. This is a chasm of cognitive disconnect.
09/29/2020 @ 10:43 am
@Bitey;
Analysis is one thing, narrative is quite another…
Re my example, the Q-Anon wing nuts will be saddled with their own gullibility and like it or not, admit it or not, resent the fact that they’ve been conned….
Their denial may cause them to look for a scapegoat, and in so doing, subject themselves to further ridicule ,and their ideas to more intense rejection and continued relegation to the fringes and margins of civil discourse…
In short they will remain accurately labeled and characterized as the country’s “village idiots”.
09/29/2020 @ 12:29 pm
Village Idiots Vote
09/29/2020 @ 2:45 pm
@Koshersalaami;
Some of them are stupid enough to take Trump’s advice and try to vote twice…