David Cay Johnston on Life

"Citizens United is to the expansion of corporate power what the big bang is to the beginning of existence..."

"Trump applauded Putin throughout the campaign... paralleled the language in many manuscripts of mob soldiers speaking about their bosses."

"The Golden Rule has no place in the life of Donald Trump."

"Trump has worked hard to make sure few... know about his lifelong entanglements with a major cocaine trafficker... with American and Russian mobsters and many mob associates, and with various con artists and swindlers."

"Business owners who are prudent about making promises and are known for honoring their word often go through life without a single lawsuit. Trump has been a party in more than 4,000 lawsuits, some of them accusing him of civil fraud..."

"n 1968... most journalists were blue collar intellectuals. Today the newsrooms of the major news organizations are full of people who grew up in wealthy households. So... their attitude... is "The world seems to be doing just fine. It's quite just." ...because that's their life's experience."

"Think about someone who's like Donald Trump in that he has... charisma... You've got to give it to Donald, he's a great con man. He's got these audiences wrapped around his finger. People who believe literally... He looks up to the sky. He implies that he's God. Did you see any pastors or rabbis or imams saying that's sacrilegious?"

"And then we get a man who hasn't done a single day of public service in his life, and he has a rabid following. This is a man whose lawyers... in court two weeks ago said that "Yes... if he were to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue no law enforcement agency could investigate. He is immune."

"only determinant of your economic life in 18th century France was how well you picked your parents. ...The functional equivalent of what would happen if we repealed the occurred, in that all capital and all land were tied up. Either the Church or trusts controlled so much that there was no movement..."

"Trump has himself reduced his life philosophy to a single word—revenge. ...Repeatedly he has said in talks and in books that destroying the lives of people he considers disloyal gives him pleasure. That Trump does not recognize ethical limits on conduct... derives from his fundamental character, narcissism."

"The hiring of Manafort and others, specifically, a Russian-born real estate mogul with mob ties whose 2015 emails indicate that he hoped to help secure both a Moscow-based real estate deal and the American presidency for Trump—showed a disturbing pattern of associations with those around Vladimir Putin, head of the in Moscow..."

"He appoints as his commerce secretary one of leadings in America, Wilbur Ross, whose specialty is seizing a company that's run out of cash, recapitalizing it. You don't pay the bills you owe... . You borrow new money then you squeeze the borrowed money out and put it in your own pocket, and you turn the zombie loose until it dies."

"After the Sixteenth Amendment... the federal government... enacted a regime to tax incomes, gifts and estates... with the explicit promise that the basic means of sustaining life would not be taxed. The original tax regime applied only to the economic elite, to... "surplus" incomes. ...ncome from capital was taxed more heavily ...in the belief that it was morally offensive to take more from money earned by the sweat of one's brow ..."

"n 1997... Congress passed what its sponsors promoted as a tax cut for the middle class... Buried in that law were many tax breaks for the rich... notably a sharp reduction... on long term capital gains, the source of two thirds of the incomes of the top 400. ...For years the IRS found big tax evaders by looking into people whose reported income did not seem sufficient to support their lifestyle... But the 1997 law stopped such inquiries. ...Lee Shepherd ...said the law "should be called the mobsters and drug dealers tax relief act of 1997." ...1997 cuts for the rich were not enough ...Under ...President Bush in 2001 ...their income going to taxes would slip further ..."

"hroughout his adult life Trump sought out—and worked closely with—more than a score of criminals, including Mafia associates, Russian mob associates, violent felons, con artists, swindlers, and most significant of all, the embezzler and mob associate Joseph Weichselbaum, a thrice-convicted felon. ...hen Trump was the big man in Atlantic City, he got his helicopters to bring his high-rollers in and out of town through a company formed by Weichselbaum. ...Spy ...reported that Weichselbaum ...personally piloted the Trumps . ...Weichselbaum also had another business: importing drugs from Colombia..."