Trump's Leaked Taxes and His Redefining of Poverty

Last night, the New York Times published a BIG SCOOP after somehow acquiring ten years of Donald Trump's tax documents: "Decade in the Red: Trump Tax Figures Show over $1 Billion in Business Losses."

Although access to the actual documents is new, the basic information is not. We already knew that Trump was a terrible businessman who took major losses for many years. Indeed, the fact that he was taking major losses has underwritten the speculation that he was engaged in international money laundering, as taking enormous businesses losses can signal precisely that.

As Olga Lautman notes: "These were the crucial years Trump was forming alliances with the Russian mafia. This covers the KGB-organized Soviet Union trip, a thief in law frequenting Trump's casinos, and many more interesting to say the least criminals in Trump Towers."

Naturally, this information did not get leaked by accident. There's almost certainly something worse in subsequent years, but Trump is hoping that most Americans won't understand the possibilities lurking beneath his huge losses and will merely laugh at what a "shitty businessman" he was, despite his relentless braggadocio to the contrary. And, of course, even a cursory glance at social media shows that most folks are happy to oblige.

As ever, there was a major policy report out last night, too, now thoroughly obscured by the Times' report. [Content Note: Video may autoplay at link.] Via Bloomberg: "Trump May Redefine Poverty, Cutting Americans from Welfare Rolls."

The Trump administration may alter the way it determines the national poverty threshold, putting Americans living on the margins at risk of losing access to welfare programs.

The possible move would involve changing how inflation is calculated in the "official poverty measure," the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a regulatory filing on Monday. ...The figure determines eligibility for a wide swath of federal, state, and non-profit programs, including Medicaid and food stamps.

By changing the index the government uses to calculate how much the cost of living rises or falls, the poverty level could rise at a slower rate.

In other words, Donald Trump wants to redefine poverty in a way that reduces people's access to welfare programs so that he can claim he's reducing poverty and saving taxpayer dollars.

There is a perfect, terrible juxtaposition between these two stories: The billionaire president who could take billions in business losses and still sit pretty in a gilded penthouse in the sky, who acquired the power he's now got through corrupt financial dealings with other democracy-hostile oligarchs, now exploits his office to harm people in poverty.

Malice is the agenda. That could not be more clear.