marble

Tuesday September 29, 2020

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) 

 

Saturday February 11, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Saturday February 11, 2012

Board trustees want to hear Hamilton’s Education Centre plan

The public school board hasn’t closed the door on keeping its headquarters downtown.

Several trustees said Thursday they are open to hearing a plan that would allow its Education Centre to remain in the core. But it’s still too soon to know if the city can bring a feasible — and financially realistic — option to the table.

“We’re still waiting to hear from the city with regard to the motion that was brought forward by Jason Farr last night, so we have no idea what the intent is or how they would help us out,” said board chair Tim Simmons. “It’s really too early to go there.”

City council backed a motion Wednesday night to officially petition the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board to locate its new headquarters in a second tower to the south of City Hall.

Farr, the downtown councillor behind the motion, acknowledged the pitch is coming late in the game, with the board having already decided on the former Crestwood school grounds on the Mountain as the preferred site for its new home.

Nonetheless, “now is better than never.”

“Things do happen last minute and better deals do come along. This very well might be one,” he said. “I still think there’s an opportunity.”

Farr is hopeful city staff can come up with a plan that would allow the board to build the new tower within its $31-million budget. The partnership would also include an “extremely cheap” long-term land lease.

In order to boost the downtown economy and keep the board’s 400 workers in the core, “we’re willing to make adjustments and concessions,” Farr said. (Source: Hamilton Spectator) 

 

Saturday March 28, 2009

March 28, 2009

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday March 28, 2009

City Hall’s marble: A short history

Glorious architecture gallery

* There are 3,000 marble slabs totalling 30,000 square feet covering City Hall. They measure approximately 60 centimetres by 120 cm.

* The gold-veined Cherokee marble used at City Hall was quarried in Pickens County, Georgia, the same county that produced the marble for the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial.

* In 1958, architect Stanley Roscoe caused an uproar when he chose Georgia marble instead of stone from Ontario or Quebec. He said the design at City Hall was predicated on the use of the white marble. After much debate about whether local stone should be used, city council approved the use of Georgia marble by a 13-6 vote.

* The first shipment of the Georgia marble was deemed “unsatisfactory” because it was the wrong colour. Roscoe paid a visit to the quarry in late 1958 to ensure the rest of the marble was up to standard.

* On May 16, 1960, the day City Hall opened to the public, two marble slabs fell from the building. One, which weighed 275 kilograms, crashed onto the roof of the second floor. The other landed on the second-floor canopy. The problem was blamed on “faulty craftsmanship.”

* On Feb. 6, 1963, two more slabs fell after water seeped behind the marble and rusted the metal hooks supporting the slabs.

* In 1969, when council allotted $136,000 for repairs to the marble, city architect Alex German suggested taking down each marble slab, “making them into coffee tables and selling them.  (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Letters to the editor: 

I’ve said in past blog entries that often the only feedback I ever get on any of my cartoons is whenever somebody has taken great offense to whatever I’ve drawn and feel the need to convey their anger to me.

My most recent cartoon focusing on the sad saga of Hamilton’s City Hall reno drew the ire of a close relative to the architect of the building, Stanley Roscoe, who phoned to ask what gives me “the nerve to be an architectural critique”.

What gives anyone the right to be an architectual critic? Are only learned experts of the field entitled to pass judgement on architecture in high brow periodicals? Can’t the unwashed masses who can’t tell a cupola from a corbel air their own feelings about the concrete monsters they have to share this planet with?

Anyway, I’ve posted the original sketch I was going to go with and tempered the farting base ass imagery with a giant toilet. My apologies for the loooong gap between blog entries. I’ll keep trying to keep this thing up to date.