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Benjamin Franklin

Tuesday September 29, 2020

October 6, 2020 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday September 29, 2020

Long-Concealed Records Show Trump’s Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance

Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

October 4, 2016

He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.

As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.

March 26, 2019

The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.

June 2, 2020

The New York Times has obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office. It does not include his personal returns for 2018 or 2019.

The COVID-19 Pandemic

The returns are some of the most sought-after, and speculated-about, records in recent memory. In Mr. Trump’s nearly four years in office — and across his endlessly hyped decades in the public eye — journalists, prosecutors, opposition politicians and conspiracists have, with limited success, sought to excavate the enigmas of his finances. By their very nature, the filings will leave many questions unanswered, many questioners unfulfilled. They comprise information that Mr. Trump has disclosed to the I.R.S., not the findings of an independent financial examination. They report that Mr. Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia. (Continued: New York Times) 

 

Posted in: USA Tagged: 2020-32, Benjamin Franklin, cliche, death, Donald Trump, marble, Mark Twain, quote, sharpie, taxes, USA

May 9, 2008

May 9, 2008 by Graeme MacKay

I’m such a nerd. It seems I’m the only one in the editorial department who can compare the rowdy Flambrarians enraged over a recent hike in property taxes to a famous cartoon drawn in the lead up to the American Revolution:

Nobody seemed to know about the cartoon I was talking about, even though I’ve seen it replicated all over the place, in t-shirts, wood carvings and tacky tapestries – the kind you see being hawked at U.S. state fairs. A really great HBO miniseries on the life of John Adams just wrapped up opened each segment with panning closeups of this cartoon accompanied by stirring drumbeat. The above cartoon is based on one which appeared in Ben Franklin’s newspaper The Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754, according to Early America.com. It appeared as part of an editorial by Franklin commenting on ‘the present disunited state of the British Colonies.’

The woodcut drawing entitled ‘Join or Die’ pictures a divided snake in eight pieces representing as many colonial governments. The drawing was based on the popular superstition that a snake that had been cut in two would come to life if the pieces were joined before sunset. The drawing immediately caught the public’s fancy and was reproduced in other newspapers.

In my strange view of the world it made for a natural application to the situation in Flamborough. It follows a gathering of a thousand or so angry citizens who packed a hockey arena to vent about the City’s decision to take the revenues of a Flamborough casino. It didn’t run. It appears as though the Join or Die part might only make matters worse. If people around this aren’t going to know what I’m talking about then it’s hardly going to prevent the Flam-bumpkis from wondering out loud.

Posted in: Cartooning, Hamilton Tagged: Benjamin Franklin, commentary, Flamborough, history, John Adams, Join or Die

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Please note…

This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

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