Fidel Castro's 1994 Characterization of U.S. Political System Revisited

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro and supporters in 1994

In a January 28, 1994 speech in Havana--which the U.S. corporate media wasn't too interested in broadcasting--then-Cuban President Fidel Castro described the U.S. Power Elite's two-party political system in the following way:

"The United States also has one party, because the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are more alike than two drops of water.

"The empire is a single-party structure...The empire's role of world police is determined by a single-party structure. Just look at what's happening now, in 1994, now that the cold war is over and there's no socialist bloc, the Pentagon's funds haven't been touched, its budget hasn't been cut by so much as a red cent. Why else would it need such enormous armed forces if not to act as a world police force, if not to intervene worldwide. It's crystal-clear; the U.S. government cuts everything but the defense budget. It is truly incredible, completely bereft of logic, and after it has said the cold war is over. It looks like it is getting ready for a hot war against the Third World countries. That's why it wants military bases all over the place, because it wants to intervene everywhere..."

In the same speech, Castro also asserted that "because Cuba stands firm, because Cuba defends its sovereignty, because Cuba defends its independence, Cuba must be punished, blockaded, starved into surrender, blown up from within, so as to wipe out even the memory of Cuba because the U.S. government won't forgive Cuba for the way our heroic people have stood firm for the last 35 years." Castro also complained in 1994 that "they invade us through their mass media, they make us see not what we are interested in seeing but what they want us to see" and "through the transnational news agencies they control almost all the news and they give their self-interested versions of what is happening in the world." 

Donald Trump's Democratic Party Campaign Contributions Revisited

In 2016, billionaire real estate dealmaker and television celebrity Donald Trump is campaigning for the 2016 presidential nomination of a Republican Party whose candidates for federal office have historically received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Trump since 1990, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' Open Secrets websitedata.

For example:

1. On August 19, 2012, Donald Trump gave a $100,000 campaign contribution to the GOP's Congressional Leadership Fund political action committee [PAC];

2. On October 6, 2010, Donald Trump gave a $50,000 campaign contribution to the GOP's American Crossroads PAC;

3. On May 21, 2013, Donald Trump gave a $50,000 campaign contribution to the GOP's Kentuckians for Strong Leadership PAC;

4. On December 24, 1999, Donald Trump gave a $50,000 campaign to the GOP's Donald J. Trump New York Delegate Committee PAC;

5. Between March 29, 2013 and June 9, 2014, Donald Trump gave 2 campaign contributions, totaling $64,800, to the Republican National Committee [RNC];

6. Between April 6, 2011 and April 9, 2014, Donald Trump gave 4 campaign contributions, totaling $126,400, to the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee;

7. Between May 29, 2008 and July 26, 2012, Donald Trump gave 2 campaign contributions, totaling $59,200, to the Republican National Committee [RNC]; and

8. On August 23, 2010, Donald Trump gave a $30,400 campaign contribution to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Yet 2016 Republican Party presidential candidateTrump has, historically, also contributed--and Democratic Party politicians, campaign committees and PACs have, historically, accepted--hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to the campaign committees and PACs of Democratic Partycandidates for federal office.

For example:

1. Between October 8, 2002 and November 3, 2008, the Democratic Party's Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee accepted 7 campaign contributions, totaling $97,000, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

2. Between June 17, 2000 and December 31, 2007, the Democratic Party's Democratic Congressional Committee accepted 6 campaign contributions, totaling $43,050, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

3.  On April 13, 2005, the Democratic Party's New Jersey First PAC accepted a $5,000 campaign contribution from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

4. On September 20, 2010, the Democratic Party's Democratic Committee of New York State accepted a $10,000 campaign contribution from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

5. Between November 2 1994 and September 25, 1998, the Democratic National Committee [DNC] accepted 2 campaign contributions, totaling$15,000, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

6. Between October 26, 1993 and April 24, 1998, the Democratic Party's Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee accepted 4 campaign contributions, totaling $21,000, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

7. Between March 5, 1990 and October 29, 1999, the Democratic Party's Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee accepted 5 campaign contributions, totaling $18,600, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

8. On April 30, 2008 Democratic Party politician Robert Andrews accepted a $6,900 campaign contribution from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

9. Between August 26, 1998 and March 1, 2006 the Democratic Party's National Leadership PAC accepted 5 campaign contributions, totaling $9,000, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

10. Between May 1, 2002 and November 12, 2007,2016 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accepted 8 campaign contributions, totaling $10,660, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

11. Between March 21, 1989 and June 24, 2003, 2004 Democratic Party presidential candidate John Kerry accepted 4 campaign contributions, totaling $4,000, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

12. On December 31, 2001, 2012 Democratic Party vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden accepted a$1,000 campaign contribution from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

13. Between June 14, 1989 and March 26, 2009,Democratic Senator Harry Reid accepted 6 campaign contributions, totaling $9,400, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

14. Between February 25, 1999 and April 7, 2010,Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer accepted 8 campaign contributions, totaling $9,250, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

15. Between April 25, 1990 and August 27, 2007,Democratic Congressional Representative Charles Rangel accepted 12 campaign contributions, totaling $18,600, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump; and

16. Between June 14, 1993 and December 19, 2003, now-deceased Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy accepted 5 campaign contributions, totaling $5,000, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Donald Trump's Funding of Ex-NYC Democratic Mayor Dinkins' 1980's Campaign Revisited

In 2016, billionaire real estate dealmaker and tv celebrity Donald Trump is campaigning for the 2016 Republican Party presidential nomination.  Yet during the 1980's, Trump apparently contributed a lot of money to help fund the election campaigns of Democratic Party politicians in New York City like former Democratic New York City Mayor David Dinkins. As the 1992 book by former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, noted:

"...Though Trump was the largest individual giver in city and state elections from the mid-seventies on, he had voted only three times, routinely skipping even presidential elections...

"When David Dinkins...ran for Manhattan borough president in 1985...Donald [Trump] wanted to help Dinkins without surfacing...So Nick Ribis and several other Trump aides, particularly unknown casino brass from Atlantic City, dumped thousands into the Dinkins coffers without getting noticed. Trump's partner [real estate developer Abe] Hirschfield hosted Dinkins's headquarters in his midtown hotel while simultaneously financing the entry into the race of a second white candidate who had no chance to win but could only help Dinkins, who is Black...Donald [Trump]...did raise $20,000 for GOP candidate [for NYC Mayor] Rudy Giuliani [in 1989), co-chairing one fund-raiser at the Waldorf-Astoria in the spring...Even while he endorsed Giuliani he had Tony Gliedman, as an old tennis buddy of David Dinkins, heading a real estate fund-raising committee for the Dinkins campaign...".

And in its December 7, 1988 issue, the New York Times reported that "Donald Trump" was "prepared to spend $2 million of his money on anti-Koch television commercials in next year's mayoral race," in which Dinkins subsequently defeated former New York City Mayor Koch in the Democratic Party's mayoralty primary.

Donald Trump's Historical Cuomo Dynasty-NY Democratic Party Connection Revisited--Part 1

The son of 20th-century millionaire real estate dealmaker Fred Trump [II]--celebrity real estate dealmaker and billionaire Donald Trump--wants to be nominated by the Republican Party National Convention to be the Republican Party candidate for U.S. president in the November 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Yet, ironically, members of the Trump family were apparently business associates, campaign contributors/fund-raisers, or political allies of current Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Andrew Cuomo's father, former Democratic New York Governor Mario Cuomo, historically. And the Trump family's private real estate dealmaking firm apparently profited, historically from Fred Trump [II] and Donald Trump's 20th-century connection to the Cuomo Dynasty and New York State's Democratic Party. As the 1992 book by former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and The Downfallrevealed:

"...Donald [Trump]'s penetration of the Cuomo inner circle was a textbook case in seduction, and his compromising relationship with the administration would last...Trump knew he had a bit of history going for him. In 1958, Mario Cuomo had joined his first law firm--Brooklyn's Corner, Weisbrod, Froeb and Charles. Senior partner Richard Charles, who became [Mario] Cuomo's mentor at the small firm, had already been representing Fred Trump [II] for decades, and [Mario] Cuomo was assigned as a young associate...[Mario] Cuomo['s]...counsel as governor...remembers their travels out to Fred Trump's headquarters on Avenue Z for business lunches at which [Fred] Trump dished out the cheese sandwiches himself...

"When [Mario] Cuomo became [former Democratic New York Governor Hugh] Carey's running mate in 1978 and was elected lieutenant governor [of New York], [Donald] Trump contributed $4,000 to his...campaign committee...In the 1982 race [for New York governor[...he'd called [Mario] Cuomo's old friend and finance chairman, Bill Stern, on October 11, 1982, and made a $3,500 donation for the general election.

"...Several Trump business entities combined [on November 13, 1984]...to give the Friends of Mario Cuomo $15,000--making Trump one of the top donors at [Mario] Cuomo's annual fund-raiser.[Mario] Cuomo had personally approved Trump's invitation that August [in 1984] to serve on the campaign committee's board of advisers. The board was formed as `a permanent finance committee' of 30 to 50...individuals from every major region and industry in the state to raise a minimum of $30,000 each...Trump's role on the advisory board meant he was charged with raising at least as much as he directly donated...

"...In 1983...Lucille Falcone, a [then-] 33-year-old lawyer...was seen as merely an appendage of the governor's office...In 1983 ...news stories described her as the girlfriend of [Mario] Cuomo's 25-year-old son, [now current Democratic New York Governor]Andrew. She then scurried back to her law firm and took over the Friends committee. It was Falcone who recommended that Trump be named to the board of advisers in a letter to [Mario] Cuomo.

"Falcone was the only person to have worked at both of Mario Cuomo's law firms. She was a young associate at the Charles firm in Brooklyn, recruited from law school in 1976 by [Mario] Cuomo's close friend, Pete Dwyer, the treasurer of his [losing] 1977 mayoral campaign [for NYC mayor]. In early 1981, she was asked to join a new firm that had just been formed at [Mario] Cuomo's request by Jerry Weiss, who had been [Mario] Cuomo's special counsel as lieutenant governor...

"The small firm that the [then-] 38-year-old Weiss assembled was intimately connected with [Mario] Cuomo from the beginning--[then-] law studentAndrew [Cuomo] worked summers there, the campaign finance committee met there, and the firm's biggest client became the campaign's most generous donor.

"Shortly after [Mario] Cuomo won his astonishing victory [in the 1982 gubernatorial election], the firm was recast with two new partners as Weiss, Blutrich, Falcone and Miller and began to prosper, quietly, though everyone of its partners was [then] only `30 something.' Andrew [Cuomo] joined the [Mario] Cuomo administration as...special assistant and soon became the second most powerful state official...He'd begun dating Falcone in 1982 and worked closely with her on the annual dinner dances in 1983 and 1984...Andrew [Cuomo] joined the {Weiss, Blutrich, Falcone and Miller law] firm in May of 1985...

"Shortly before [then-] 25-year-old Andrew [Cuomo]became the firm's youngest partner, [Donald] Trump quietly retained it...His relationship with the firm would last for almost 2 years, though it did not surface publicly until August of 1986. The legal work it did for [Donald] Trump remains unclear, apart from Andrew [Cuomo]'s concession that it represented [Donald] Trump in lease negotiations...When Trump's retention of the firm did hit the newspaper in 1986, Trump's response was: `They are now representing us in a very significant transaction.'

"Though Andrew [Cuomo] insisted in later interviews that the firm did not interact with [New York State] officials on behalf of clients, Falcone did just that for Trump. She arranged and attended a July 21, 1985 lunch at the World Trade Center with Trump and Sandy Frucher, the president of the state's Battery Park City Authority. During the lunch, Trump expressed an interest in being designated for a choice hotel site on the Battery Park site, just off Wall Street..."

(end of part 1)

Donald Trump's Historical Exploitation of Polish Immigrant Workers Revisited

In recent months, billionaire television celebrity and real estate dealmaker, plutocrat and 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump has been scapegoating immigrants and claiming that immigrants are somehow responsible for the loss of union wage jobs for U.S.-born citizen workers during the last 40 years.

Yet, when Donald Trump built his Trump Tower in Manhattan in the late 20th-century, much of the construction and demolition-related work was apparently done by exploited, undocumented, low-wage immigrant workers from Poland. As the 1992 book by former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett,Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, recalled:

"...Though Trump Tower was to be Donald [Trump]'s most lavish project, he decided at the very outset to try to cut costs in clearing the site, selecting a demolition contractor with no heavy demolition experience simply because it had agreed to do the job at Trump's suggested $775,000 price.

"The contractor, William Kaszycki, was able to submit so low a bid because most of his workers were illegal Polish aliens working at rates one-half to one-third those of union scale. Kaszycki's wife recruited the workers in Poland...On Trump's job 200 of them worked 12 to 18-hour shifts with no days off or overtime and slept in groups of eight in a slum apartment or motel room...

"...Kaszycki and Trump were jointly sued...by labor lawyers seeking the welfare fund payments for the Polish workers that were never paid...U.S. District Court Judge Charles Stewart finally found that theTrump Organization and the president of the union...had `a tacit agreement to employ the Polish workers and deprive them' of union benefits, concluding that `the Trump defendants knowingly participated in the fiduciary breach.' Stewart determined that $325,000 in welfare payments had been improperly withheld--and fined the Trump Towercorporate entity over a million dollars...'

Donald Trump's Late 1970's Hotel Commodore Tax Break and Democratic Party Connections Revisited

2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump, ironically, was apparently aligned politically with Brooklyn's Democratic Party machine organization during the same period when he was given a big tax break for his Hotel Commodore real estate project by New York City's local government; which was then managed by local Democratic Party politicians on behalf of special real estate interests (like the Trump family firm) and special corporate and Wall Street interests. As the 1992 book by formerVillage Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, observed:

"With Stanley Steingut as [NY State] assembly speaker and [Abraham] Beame as [NYC] mayor, the ancient and insular wing of the Brooklyn [Democratic] party long identified with the Trump family was now the most powerful Democratic faction in state and city politics...

"On May 20, 1976, the [New York City] board [of estimate], which met in the upper floor of {new York's] City Hall, unanimously passed the [Hotel] Commodore deal...The private parties hadn't put a dime on the table, while the public sector had delivered a gigantic and exclusive tax break...Trump had been handpicked by bureaucrats and politicians to become the solitary recipient of an unprecedented give away, stretched so far into the future that it was statistically likely to outlive even its [then-] 30-year-old beneficiary...No other Manhattan hotel would ever receive so selective and grand a subsidy...

"...Without the guarantee Fred [Trump II] wound up giving his son, Donald [Trump] would have had no Commodore mortgage...Fred [Trump II] was his silent partner in the Commodore project...

"Donald [Trump]...went from paying $42,386 in taxes in 1977 to paying none in 1978 and 1979. He escaped tax liability in 1979 on at least $3.4 million in earnings with a carefully structured package of real estate losses and interest payments..." 

Donald Trump Company's Racially Discriminatory Rental Policy Revisited

During the 1970's a major racial discrimination suit was brought by the U.S. Justice Department against the family business, coincidentally, of 2016 Republican party presidential candidate Donald Trump and his father--because it apparently refused to rent apartments to African-American tenant applicants in some of the housing developments it owned and managed. As the 1992 book by former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, noted:

"...The Justice Department...brought a major racial discrimination suit against the [Trump] company, contending that the Trumps had systematically refused to rent to Blacks. Four superintendents or rental agents working for [Donald and Fred] Trump confirmed to federal authorities that applications for apartments were coded by race. Doormen were told to discourage applications from Blacks by telling them that there were no vacancies or by jacking up the rent...One staffer said that his instructions came straight from Fred [Trump II] and the company went so far as to try to figure out how `to decrease the number of Black tenants' already in one development `by encouraging them to locate housing elsewhere.'

"The government was willing...to sign a consent decree with the Trumps, compelling them to take certain affirmative steps to integrate their estimated 14,000 unites in the New York area, but Donald [Trump] and [Roy] Cohn agreed that they'd much rather fight...

"The litigation dragged on for a year and a half...Finally, Donald [Trump] signed the consent decree. The government called the decree--which required advertisements in minority papers, minority employment promotions, and a preferential vacancy listing with the Urban League--`one of the most far reaching ever negotiated.'...

"...Four years later, in the summer of 1978, the Justice Department found the Trumps in contempt of the decree and called them back into court...It all remained irrelevant to Donald [Trump]. The bottom line was that two government discrimination lawsuits had had no effect on the company's ability to make development deals, usually with the government's help..." 

Donald Trump's Roy Cohn-McCarthyism Historical Connection Revisited

During the 1970's, 2016 Republican party presidential candidate Donald Trump, coincidentally, apparently retained the former right-wing chief counsel to U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy and McCarthy's U.S. Senate investigative committee that violated the civil liberties of many U.S. citizens during the 1950's McCarthy Era,Roy Cohn, to be his lawyer. And, coincidentally,Donald Trump's lawyer during the 1970's, Roy Cohn, was also apparently an adviser, historically, to both former Democratic New York City Comptroller and former Democratic New York City Mayor Abe Beame and former Brooklyn Democratic Party Boss and machine-politician Meade Esposito. As the 1992 book by former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett,Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, recalled:

"...In Manhattan, he [Donald Trump]...met the man who, after Fred [Trump II], would become the most important influence on his early career, Roy Cohn. Infamous for his 1950's role as chief counsel to Senator Joe McCarthy,...Cohn was by the early seventies a walking advertisement for every form of graft, the best-known fixer in New York...

"The son of a Bronx judge, Cohn was reared in the clubhouse culture of the city, attending dinner parties as a teenager with Carmine DeSapio, Ed Flynn, and the other Democratic bosses who ruled New York. He had also met Abe Beame in his father's house, and over the years became an adviser to both Beame and new Brooklyn Democratic Chairman Meade Esposito...

"In the spring of 1974, soon after [former Democratic NYC Mayor] Beame's inaugural, both Cohn and theTrumps had tables at the Brooklyn Democratic Party's annual dinner at the Waldorf--a ballroom filled with a dozen indicted, soon-to-be-indicted, or convicted public and party officials...

"It was only a few months after Beame won the mayoral runoff that Donald [Trump] first retainedCohn...

"...Roy Cohn...became Donald [Trump]'s mentor, his constant adviser on every significant aspect of his business and personal life...Many of those with public and private power who met young Donald [Trump]...were introduced to him byCohn...Cohn...literally adopted Donald [Trump]. He began to see Trump as potentially his most successful protege' and instrument...Cohn would ultimately be disbarred for stealing from other clients..."

Donald Trump's Rent-Stabilized Apartment Revisited

Although 2016 Republican party presidential candidate Donald Trump has apparently been against  regulating the rents landlords may charge New York City tenants who live in residential apartment buildings that contain 6 units or more--in order to prevent overcharging and rent-gouging of tenants by New York City landlords--for many years, Trump, himself, apparently once, ironically, lived in a rent-stabilized apartment in Manhattan. As the 1992 book by formerVillage Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, observed:

"...Though Donald [Trump] would spend years railing against New York's rent regulation system, his first apartment [a studio off Third Avenue at 196 East 75th Street] was rent stabilized, limiting rent increases...

"...He hired an Irish maid and quickly developed a reputation among the building's workers as a cheap tipper...

"Yet,, in January 1975, he was pictured...assailing the `ridiculous' rent stabilization system..."

Donald Trump's Prep School Educational Background and Vietnam War Draft Avoidance Revisited

Unlike most voters in the United States, ultra-rich celebrity deal-maker and 2016 Republican party presidential candidate Donald Trump didn't graduate from a high school in a U.S. public school system; and unlike many elderly right-wing Republican party voters, Trump apparently was able to avoid being drafted into the U.S. military during the Vietnam War era of the 1960's. As the 1992 book by former Village Voicereporter Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, recalled:

"...Donald [Trump]...went to Kew Forest, a small private Queens institution...located just a few miles from the Trump home...He was...pulled out by Fred [Trump II] at the end of seventh grade and sent to...New York Military Academy...

"He went to college at Fordham...in his red Auburn-Healey 3000...After his sophomore year, he suddenly transferred to Wharton [Business School of University of Pennsylvania]...Everyone was surprised that he had been admitted since he was hardly a star student at Fordham and Wharton was a highly selective school. There he...stayed far away from the anti-war tumult that hit Penn's campus in the late sixties. He graduated in 1968...

"Somehow, with 5 years of military training and a string of cadet honors at New York Military Academy [NYMA], the baseball-tennis-squash star qualified for a medical deferment, classified 1Y after a physical exam at the Armed Forces Center in New York on September 17, 1968...In 1969, the same year Richard Nixon became President, Donald [Trump] registered as a Republican...."

Donald Trump Father's 1966 NY State Investigations Commission Hearing Testimony Revisited

In January 1966, the father of celebrity deal-maker-turned 2016 Republican party presidential candidateDonald Trump--Fred Trump [II]-- was, coincidentally, called by New York's State Investigations Commission to testify about how he made a lot of money from theTrump family business. And in 1992, former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett's book, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, recalled what happened at the hearing and what was revealed at the hearing:

"In January of 1966, Fred Trump suffered the worst public humiliation of his career. Hauled again before the State Investigations Commission--this time at a public hearing--and hounded by television cameras, he testified for several hours about such an array of abuses in Trump Village that the commission chairman, Jacob Grumet, blasted him...and asked state housing officials: `Is there any way of preventing a man who does business in that way from getting another contract with the state?'...Fred Trump was finished.

"He was grilled about an equipment-rental company he incorporated for this job, and the outlandish charges he was billing the state for secondhand trucks and back hoes. He charged $21,000 to lease a dump truck valued at $3,600. He billed $8,280 for two tile scrappers valued at $500 apiece, a ploy the commission cited as an example of Trump's `talent for getting every ounce of profit out of his housing project.'Fred [Trump] hid his ownership of the equipment company from the state, and state inspectors observed him using much of the equipment to build the adjacent shopping center, which certainly wasn't part of the state-subsidized project...

"...Only when faced with the threat of the hearings hadFred [Trump] returned to the state the $1.2 million he'd kept by overestimating his land costs. He'd banked the first land advances for over two years. He also had used the state excess to pay for the land he needed for his own shopping center and two other parcels covered in the city's description of the total site, but unused in the Trump Village development. [Then-State Division of Housing Auditor Leo] Silverman testified that Trump purchased these three large sections of the site for his own commercial development `without putting up a nickel of his own money'...Trump had overestimated his construction costs by $6.6 million [equivalent to over $48 million in 2015 dollars]. Since his builder's fee was based on a percentage of the estimated, not actual costs, he took what the commission called a $600,000 [equivalent to over $4.4 million in 2015 dollars] `windfall,' his additional fee based on the patently hyped cost predictions. When Silverman testified about this padding, tacked onto a $3.2 million fee Trump had alreadly collected as a percent of real costs, the commission was stunned..."

Donald Trump Father's Profitable Brooklyn/NYC Democratic Administration Connections Revisited

The father of 2016 Republican party presidential candidate Donald Trump--Fred Trump [II]--apparently made a lot of money during the 1950's from his friendship with the Democratic Borough President of Brooklyn between 1940 and 1961,John Cashmore, to get the Democratic City government in NYC to purchase for a public housing project a parcel of Luna Park/Coney Island land in Brooklyn that Trump's father had previously purchased. As former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett's 1992 book, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, recalled:

"...Fred [Trump II] was one of a select number of [then- Democratic Brooklyn Borough President John] Cashmore friends to visit him periodically at his Park Slope home. When [then-Democratic NYC Mayor Robert] Wagner's Housing Authority chief, Warren Moscow, went to see Cashmore in 1955 to get him to support Authority projects on various Brooklyn sites, Cashmore had only one condition. `You've got to take care of my friend Fred Trump,' the borough president said. `I want you to talk about his site in Luna Park.' 

"In the end, the City paid Trump $1.7 million for the parcel, giving him a $300,000 [equivalent to over $2.3 million in 2015 dollars] profit. Then Trump bought back a commercially zoned slice of the site, paying the City almost precisely the profit he'd taken on the overall deal. Fred [Trump] effectively got this prime property for nothing, and the 9-store shopping center he built there was an immediate gold mine, serving the 1,576-unit project that the Housing Authority soon opened next to it..." 

Donald Trump Father's Senate Banking Committee Subpoena and FHA Scandal Revisited

The father of 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump--Fred Trump [II]--was, coincidentally, subpoenaed to testify before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee in 1954, when that committee was investigating how Federal Housing Administration [FHA]-financed builders and real estate developers apparently made windfall profits from FHA mortgage gouging during the 1940's and early 1950's. As former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett's 1992 book, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, recalled:

"...By the time the...Federal Housing Administration [FHA[ Scandal finally receded in 1956, the Senate Banking Committee had likened it to Teapot Dome...The description proved apt when $51 million [equivalent to around $450 million in 2015 dollars] in mortgage gouging was identified during an FBI random survey of 285 projects.

"Fred Trump was subpoenaed before the [U.S. Senate] Banking Committee in July of 1954 and grilled about the millions in profit he had expropriated from Beach Haven...Questioned by the committee's counsel, William Simon, Trump conceded he'd paid only $180,000 underlying Beach Haven, but got the FHA to put an appraised value without improvement, of $1.5 million on it. He then gave the land to a trust in his children's name and, using the inflated value, charged the Beach Haven project $60,000 a year rent for the land for 99 years...

"Simon moved on to the windfall Trump took on the mortgage proceeds. The committee had established that Fred [Trump] had loaned $729,000 of the excess proceeds from the mortgage to affiliated corporations and kept another $3 million in the bank. This excess, which Trump acknowledged was actually over $4 million on a $16 million mortgage, was the difference between the amount he originally obtained through FHA, based on his pre-construction estimates, and the actual cost of construction. Trump conceded that he'd paid no taxes on the proceeds he was keeping and that he'd invested some of them already...

"...The [U.S. Senate] Banking Committee and FHA findings assailed the inflated cost estimates that had enriched Fred [Trump] and dozens of other builders as `outright misrepresentation.' The final report charged that the developers had `saddled tenants with the burden of meeting not only legitimate costs' but paying rents to cover the unexpended portion of the federal loans that the builders had pocketed. The investigators also condemned the `fictional division of single projects into two or more projects' to sidestep the $5 million limit on insurable mortgages, a tactic Fred [Trump] employed at both Shore Haven and Beach Haven...

"...Fred [Trump] was...threatened with a federal takeover of Shore Haven, where the Beach Haven mortgage scams exposed at the hearings had been tried first..."

Donald Trump Father's Post-1945 Wealth, Robert Moses and Cuomo Connections Revisited

Following the end of World War II in 1945, 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump [II], apparently increased his personal wealth a lot and developed more personal, political or business connections to politically influential people, such as former New York City Construction Coordinator Robert Moses and future Democratic New York Governor Mario Cuomo--the father of current Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. As former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett's 1992 book, Trump: The Deals and the Downfall, noted:

"It was in this immediate postwar period that Fred Trump became...a truly wealthy man...Fred began construction on a mansion...The family moved into the 9-room mansion at 85-14 Midland Parkway in 1948...Donald [Trump] was born at the...moment that Fred was making his career change...to big-time New York apartment developer...

"...His name was...mentioned in gossip columns as a possible candidate for Queens borough president, an idea he toyed with in conversations with influential friends...

"Beyond...[political] clubhouse ties [Fred] Trump also took advantage of a very special connection that transcended machine politics: a path of access to...[then New York City Construction Coordinator] Robert Moses...By the late 1950's and early 1960's...Mario Cuomo...would trek out for luncheon business meetings to Fred [Trump]'s Coney Island office, where [Fred] Trump would serve them all cheese sandwiches..." 

Donald Trump Family's FHA-financed Housing Construction Firm Revisited

Much of the wealth that ultra-rich celebrity deal-maker and 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump inherited from his father, Fred Trump {II}, was apparently obtained during the late 1930's and 1940's from a Trump housing construction firm that was financed by the public funds of the U.S. government's Federal Housing Administration [FHA]. As former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett's 1992 book, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, recalled:

"The financing of Trump's Depression-era housing came from the...Federal Housing Administration [FHA]...By the beginning of 1941...Fred Trump...was beginning to move his base of operations out toward the eastern shore of Brooklyn, buying up valuable tracts in Brighton Beach and Bensonhurst. He announced the development of 200 homes a block from the beach in Brighton and the purchase of a pivotal 50-acre track near Bensonhurst Park right off the Belt Parkway, where he planned another 700 houses...

"The war...brought a shutdown of FHA funding for housing in Brooklyn, forcing Trump to suspend his...Bensonhurst project and sending him off to Norfolk, Virginia, and Chester, Pennsylvania, to build FHA-backed housing hear shipyards for naval officers and related uses...He moved his base of operations to Virginia...In addition to the project Fred built...he became an investor in other Norfolk ventures and bought some outright over the years. He would remain active in the Norfolk area into the seventies, accumulating an estimated 2,400 units at his peak, traveling back and forth from New York on a regular basis...Though Fred prospered in Virginia, he shifted his focus back to Brooklyn by late 1944...

"...Between late 1944 and January of 1945, he bought 3 vast plots of land, putting together a 40-acre site. He got one parcel directly from the City. The other two were in tax arrears, and he snatched them before the City could take them, getting them cheaply and assuming the tax bill. His political connections helped keep him one step ahead of the tax man...

"...Trump's plan called for 1,344 apartments...right off the Belt Parkway and overlooking the bay...The FHA commitment to the plan of $9.1 million was divided into 3 equal parts to avoid the $5 million legal limits on project financing...

"Shore Haven was a dramatic change for the 2-story neighborhood, requiring all sorts of City zoning, sewer and street support...By the time Shore Haven was completed Trump's FHA mortgage was increased to $10.4 million, and his own claimed construction cost was raised to $9.5 million...In addition to his fee as a builder, Fred [Trump] managed to take a $1.6 million profit out of the mortgage proceeds..."

Donald Trump and Fred Trump's Historic Brooklyn Democratic Party Machine Connection Revisited

Ultra-rich celebrity deal-maker Donald Trump has been campaigning for the 2016 Republican Party presidential nomination in recent months. Yet, ironically, during most of the 20th century, Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump II, apparently enriched himself and the Trump family by developing a decades-long political and business alliance with Brooklyn Democratic Party machine politicians. As former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett's 1992 book Trump: The Deals and The Downfall recalled:

"...[Charlie] Kriger came from the Seneca Democratic Club, then ruled by a major power in Brooklyn politics, Frank V. Kelly...By September of 1934,Kelly would...begin a ten-year reign as the ironfisted, solitary boss of Brooklyn. Though up to then just a small-time Queens builder, Fred Trump had already apparently managed to open lines of communication with Frank Kelly's Brooklyn boys...He was seen lunching with Kelly at the Moutauk, a social club where the bachelor boss lived...

"Fred Trump discovered...in 1934...that he was up against...competition in the hunt to take over the right to service [the jailed] Lehrenkrauss's mortgages...Kriger...announced that the Trump bid was...favored by...John Curtin, a lawyer who was a personal adviser to boss Frank Kelly and had been chosen...to manage the...solvent wings of the Lehrenkrauss empire. Referee Stott was faced with a thoroughly stacked deck of support for Trump...

"...Fred Trump was back in the housing business. For the next 30 years, he would build principally in Brooklyn, attaching himself to a variety of powerful party leaders...The vigorous support he received from the Democratic Party players suggests that he was their designated winner...for an alliance between Trump and the Brooklyn organization that would last a lifetime...

"...Trump became the sole stock holder of Metropolitan Investors, the company he formed to take over the Lehrenkrauss mortgage list...Trump would also form a partnership with Charles A. O'Malley, the appraiser selected by Frank Kelly's...friends to put a value on over 1,000 Lehrenkrauss properties. In 1935 O'Malley and Fred Trump began to build...hundreds of new houses in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn..." 

Donald Trump's 1980's U.S. Presidential Ambition Revisited

The 2016 Republican presidential candidate for "U.S. Business Deal-Maker-In-Chief"--Donald Trump--apparently first indicated during the 1980's that he wanted to seek the U.S. presidency and eventually occupy the White House oval office. As former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett's 1992 book, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, recalled:

"...Tom Fitzsimmons...a sometimes bodyguard and driver for Trump, had known Donald since the early seventies...Fitzsimmons...believed that Donald would become President. It was a notion the golden boy himself had begun toying with at least as early as 1985, when New York state Republican chairman George Clark visited with him at Trump Tower to try to talk him into running for governor.

"`Have you ever thought about running for high public office?' Clark asked. 

"Donald replied without a smile: `Yes. President of the United States.'

"By the end of 1987, he'd advanced this almost eerie ambition with a well-timed appearance in New Hampshire and the formation of a nascent Trump-for-President committee.

"`This is a serious test of the political waters,' his top casino executive, Steve Hyde, said at the time. `If things shake out, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he decided to do it.'

"Donald continued conscientiously planting the seeds, talking about the presidency quite seriously in wide-ranging interviews and buying full-page ads on national political issues..."

Donald Trump's German Immigrant Grandfather and Father's Inherited Wealth Revisited Family

Ultra-rich television celebrity deal-maker turned 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump has apparently been scapegoating immigrants in recent months for the failure of the current U.S.corporate capitalist economic system to bring back prosperity and affluence for working-class and middle-class people in the United States in 2015.

Yet, ironically, Donald Trump's grandfather, Fred Trump I, was apparently a white real estate business deal-maker who was a late 19th-century immigrant from Germany. And when Donald Trump's grandfather died in 1918, Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump II, apparently inherited a lot of real estate property and money from Donald Trump's white German immigrant grandfather. As the 1992 book Trump: The Deals and The Downfall by Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett observed:

"...Trump mythology--promulgated first in Fred Trump [II] interviews in the forties and fifties, and later embellished by Donald [Trump]--would depict Fred as a struggling carpenter's helper who miraculously lifted himself by his teenaged bootstraps into a leading role in Queens home building. In fact, Fred's father, also named Fred, who had emigrated from Germany...in 1885, already had substantial real estate holdings before he died of pneumonia in May 1918, only 49-years-old.

"The senior Trump held 14 mortgages at the time of his death, valued at over $20,000 [in early 20th-century money]; owned outright 6 pieces of property, including several buildable lots; had deposits totaling over $3,500 in three different bank accounts; and owned 50 shares of preferred stock valued at $3,662. With life insurance policies and loans due him, the total value of Trump's estate exceeded $36,000 [equivalent to over $840,000 in 2015 dollars], a small fortune at the time. While Trump legend would describe him as the operator of `a moderately successful restaurant,' his death certificate accurately listed his occupation as `the real estate business.'...

"This was hardly the only misconception in the biography of Donald's father, Fred {Trump II], sewn together over time by the family. He would be described...as born in New York to Swedish parents, when in fact he was born in the Bronx to German parents (his mother, Elizabeth, was born in Germany in 1880)..."

Donald Trump's Inherited Wealth and Family Background Revisited

The ultra-rich deal-maker and television celebrity (whose campaign for the 2016 Republican Party presidential nomination has been given a lot of Big Media television news coverage in recent months), Donald Trump, apparently received a lot of help, historically, from his multi-millionaire father, Fred Trump, in becoming an extremely wealthy business deal-maker. As former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett's 1992 book, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, observed:

"...Recognizing how dependent Donald [Trump]'s early career was on his father's resources and guile, I rummaged through half-a-century of Fred Trump history, finding haunting parallels between the machinations of the father and son....

"His father, Fred Trump, was more than a friend to him, more than a parent...He had grown up under Fred's stern watch...He liked to pretend he'd done it on his own, announcing that `the working man likes me because he knows I didn't inherit what I've built'...The Trump legend--invented by Donald himself--never acknowledged the defining imprint of Fred's money...on the...early deals that were the foundation of his success....

"...The bankers sifting through Donald's assets had begun asking about Fred [Trump]'s...They sensed that his steady rental and co-op empire, thousands of middle-class apartments largely unencumbered by debt, might become Donald's...They concluded that Fred had a minimum of $150 million `that could be drawn on,' according to one involved banker..."

Donald Trump's Democratic Party Campaign Contributions Revisited

In 2016, billionaire real estate dealmaker and television celebrity Donald Trump is campaigning for the 2016 presidential nomination of a Republican Party whose candidates for federal office have historically received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Trump since 1990, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' Open Secrets website data.

For example:

1. On August 19, 2012, Donald Trump gave a $100,000 campaign contribution to the GOP's Congressional Leadership Fund political action committee [PAC];

2. On October 6, 2010, Donald Trump gave a $50,000 campaign contribution to the GOP's American Crossroads PAC;

3. On May 21, 2013, Donald Trump gave a $50,000 campaign contribution to the GOP's Kentuckians for Strong Leadership PAC;

4. On December 24, 1999, Donald Trump gave a $50,000 campaign to the GOP's Donald J. Trump New York Delegate Committee PAC;

5. Between March 29, 2013 and June 9, 2014, Donald Trump gave 2 campaign contributions, totaling $64,800, to the Republican National Committee [RNC];

6. Between April 6, 2011 and April 9, 2014, Donald Trump gave 4 campaign contributions, totaling $126,400, to the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee;

7. Between May 29, 2008 and July 26, 2012, Donald Trump gave 2 campaign contributions, totaling $59,200, to the Republican National Committee [RNC]; and

8. On August 23, 2010, Donald Trump gave a $30,400 campaign contribution to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Yet 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Trump has, historically, also contributed--and Democratic Party politicians, campaign committees and PACs have, historically, accepted--hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to the campaign committees and PACs of Democratic Party candidates for federal office.

For example:

1. Between October 8, 2002 and November 3, 2008, the Democratic Party's Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee accepted 7 campaign contributions, totaling $97,000, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

2. Between June 17, 2000 and December 31, 2007, the Democratic Party's Democratic Congressional Committee accepted 6 campaign contributions, totaling $43,050, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

3.  On April 13, 2005, the Democratic Party's New Jersey First PAC accepted a $5,000 campaign contribution from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

4. On September 20, 2010, the Democratic Party's Democratic Committee of New York State accepted a $10,000 campaign contribution from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

5. Between November 2 1994 and September 25, 1998, the Democratic National Committee [DNC] accepted 2 campaign contributions, totaling $15,000, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

6. Between October 26, 1993 and April 24, 1998, the Democratic Party's Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee accepted 4 campaign contributions, totaling $21,000, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

7. Between March 5, 1990 and October 29, 1999, the Democratic Party's Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee accepted 5 campaign contributions, totaling $18,600, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

8. On April 30, 2008 Democratic Party politician Robert Andrews accepted a $6,900 campaign contribution from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

9. Between August 26, 1998 and March 1, 2006 the Democratic Party's National Leadership PAC accepted 5 campaign contributions, totaling $9,000, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

10. Between May 1, 2002 and November 12, 2007, 2016 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accepted 8 campaign contributions, totaling $10,660, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

11. Between March 21, 1989 and June 24, 2003, 2004 Democratic Party presidential candidate John Kerry accepted 4 campaign contributions, totaling $4,000, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

12. On December 31, 2001, 2012 Democratic Party vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden accepted a $1,000 campaign contribution from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

13. Between June 14, 1989 and March 26, 2009, Democratic Senator Harry Reid accepted 6 campaign contributions, totaling $9,400, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

14. Between February 25, 1999 and April 7, 2010, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer accepted 8 campaign contributions, totaling $9,250, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump;

15. Between April 25, 1990 and August 27, 2007, Democratic Congressional Representative Charles Rangel accepted 12 campaign contributions, totaling $18,600, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump; and

16. Between June 14, 1993 and December 19, 2003, now-deceased Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy accepted 5 campaign contributions, totaling $5,000, from 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump.