The first rent strike staged by tenants in Norfolk, Virginia was apparently staged, coincidentally, by residents at two of the housing projects owned by the Trump family business of 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's father/family business partner--Fred Trump [II]. As the 1992 book by former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, observed:
"...In Norfolk, Virginia...residents at two of his [Fred Trump II's] projects, the Hague and Pembroke Towers, staged what was called the city's first rent strike against Trump and filed a lawsuit charging `a lack of hot running water, sporadic or nonexistent air conditioning and elevator service, improper swimming facilities, and insect and rodent infestation.' When Fred [Trump II] went to meet with the tenants they almost threw him in the top-floor pool.
"...A waterline burst in Hague Towers--at the time, the tallest residential building in downtown Norfolk--showering the lobby, a laundry room, a beauty shop, a maintenance room, and storage areas..."
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Monday, November 2, 2015
Donald Trump Father's 1976 Arrest In Maryland Revisited
The father and Trump family business partner of 2016 Republican party presidential candidate Donald Trump--Fred Trump [II]--was, coincidentally, finally arrested and fined by Prince George County officials in Maryland in 1976 for failing to comply with a court order to repair housing code violations in the Federal Housing Administration [FHA]-financed Gregory Estates housing project that the Trump family business owned in the 1970's. As the 1992 book by former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, recalled:
"...In Maryland...Fred [Trump II] wound up handcuffed and arrested by Prince George County officials when he appeared at one FHA project that local officials said he was `bleeding' dry. The arrest came in 1976, but it was after at least 4 years of battling Trump to make repairs on the beleaguered 504-unit Gregory Estates, which county officials flatly called `a slum property.'
"With over a hundred vacancies, a series of disregarded code violations, a history of heat and hot water problems, defaulting payments to FHA, hundreds of thousands overdue to the gas and electric companies, and a minuscule local staff that `couldn't buy light-bulbs without authorization from New York,' the project was denied a license to operate. When repeated conversations with Fred [Trump II] proved fruitless, county officials surprised him on a visit to the project and charged with noncompliance with a notice of violation...
"...Fred [Trump II] was first taken to a local precinct...When he reappeared in the district court, the judge levied a heavy fine on Fred [Trump II]'s corporate entity..."
"...In Maryland...Fred [Trump II] wound up handcuffed and arrested by Prince George County officials when he appeared at one FHA project that local officials said he was `bleeding' dry. The arrest came in 1976, but it was after at least 4 years of battling Trump to make repairs on the beleaguered 504-unit Gregory Estates, which county officials flatly called `a slum property.'
"With over a hundred vacancies, a series of disregarded code violations, a history of heat and hot water problems, defaulting payments to FHA, hundreds of thousands overdue to the gas and electric companies, and a minuscule local staff that `couldn't buy light-bulbs without authorization from New York,' the project was denied a license to operate. When repeated conversations with Fred [Trump II] proved fruitless, county officials surprised him on a visit to the project and charged with noncompliance with a notice of violation...
"...Fred [Trump II] was first taken to a local precinct...When he reappeared in the district court, the judge levied a heavy fine on Fred [Trump II]'s corporate entity..."
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Donald Trump's 1968-74 Rent-Collecting Job and Trump Family-McDonald's Deal Lobbying Experience Revisited
Between 1968 and 1974, celebrity deal-maker and 2016 Republican party presidential candidate Donald Trump apparently spent a lot more time collecting rents from tenants in the Brooklyn residential apartments of the Trump family business (that he both inherited and managed) and lobbying local Democratic Party elected officials like then New York City Comptroller [and future New York City Mayor] Abe Beame to approve his family's Trump Village deal with McDonald's--despite local Brooklyn neighborhood opposition to this Trump Village business deal--than he spent studying U.S. domestic and foreign policy issues. As the 1992 book by former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, noted:
"...He [Donald Trump] took on the title of president of an assortment of Trump entities. With Fred [Trump II] as chairman of the boards, Donald [Trump] lay claim to the management of 48 privately held corporations and 15 family partnerships. Between his arrival in 1968 and 1974...his principal job was managing 10,000 to 22,000 apartments...The dollar value of this empire...was said to be as little as $40 million [the equivalent of around $250 million in 2015 dollars] and...as much as $100 million [the equivalent of around $620 million in 2015 dollars]...The job was basically a matter of collecting rent and making repairs...
"...Donald [Trump] and Fred [Trump II] plied their local and citywide political connections, including comptroller Abe Beame, to override neighborhood opposition and open a McDonald's franchise on the extra land the City had sold Fred [Trump II] for Trump Village...With Donald [Trump] doing his first behind-the-scenes lobbying, the Trumps were able to sign a lucrative lease with the fast-food chain...
"...[Then-] City Council President Paul O'Dwyer denounced it as `a windfall' for the Trumps, atop everything else they had already taken out of the Trump Village project..."
.
"...He [Donald Trump] took on the title of president of an assortment of Trump entities. With Fred [Trump II] as chairman of the boards, Donald [Trump] lay claim to the management of 48 privately held corporations and 15 family partnerships. Between his arrival in 1968 and 1974...his principal job was managing 10,000 to 22,000 apartments...The dollar value of this empire...was said to be as little as $40 million [the equivalent of around $250 million in 2015 dollars] and...as much as $100 million [the equivalent of around $620 million in 2015 dollars]...The job was basically a matter of collecting rent and making repairs...
"...Donald [Trump] and Fred [Trump II] plied their local and citywide political connections, including comptroller Abe Beame, to override neighborhood opposition and open a McDonald's franchise on the extra land the City had sold Fred [Trump II] for Trump Village...With Donald [Trump] doing his first behind-the-scenes lobbying, the Trumps were able to sign a lucrative lease with the fast-food chain...
"...[Then-] City Council President Paul O'Dwyer denounced it as `a windfall' for the Trumps, atop everything else they had already taken out of the Trump Village project..."
.
Saturday, October 31, 2015
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 Voice reporter 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]...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...."
Thursday, October 29, 2015
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 candidate Donald 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 the Trump 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 had Fred [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..."
"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 had Fred [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..."
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
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..."
"...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..."
Monday, October 26, 2015
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..."
"...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..."
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