Sunday, October 18, 2020

Coronavirus News (286)

Who Was ‘El Padrino,’ Godfather to Drug Cartel? Mexico’s Defense Chief, U.S. Says Drug enforcement agents had long tried to solve the mystery of “El Padrino,” a shadowy, powerful force. They’ve now identified him as Salvador Cienfuegos, Mexico’s defense chief from 2012 to 2018. 

$421 Million in Debt: Trump Calls It ‘a Peanut,’ but Challenges Lie Ahead The president on Thursday played down big loans he guaranteed for his struggling businesses. But much of that debt is soon to come due in the midst of declining revenue and an I.R.S. audit that could cost him over $100 million. ......... nearly all the money he borrowed in the last decade came from only two institutions. .......... His main source of income in recent decades — a total of more than $427 million from entertainment and licensing deals that were fueled by his fame — has all but dried up. ............ Mr. Trump’s finances were under stress, with losses that allowed him to pay just $750 in federal income taxes for 2016 and 2017, and nothing at all in 10 of the previous 15 years. ......... Mr. Trump’s reputation among lenders was sealed over the decades that his Atlantic City casinos repeatedly filed for bankruptcy. ......... banks got “an expensive education” ......... “They lent on the aura of success,” he said. “And things went really wrong.” ......... Mr. Trump’s businesses reported cash on hand of $34.7 million in 2018, down 40 percent from five years earlier.   

THE FOREIGN POLICY THAT WASN’T  and the Department of Defense noted — again — that it does not respond to commands over Twitter. ............. To his supporters, his diplomatic incompetence must be a source of frustration — Why aren’t the troops home? Where’s the wall? Yet his critics take no solace in his vandalism of alliances built up at the cost of many lives and the expenditure of much hard-earned treasure over the course of many generations. ............  (before meeting Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Helsinki he reportedly asked aides whether Finland was part of Russia) ......... his disdain for diplomacy, intelligence and experience (“My primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff”) ........... Mr. Kim, arguably the nastiest despot on earth, made a striking metamorphosis from “little rocket man” to writer of “love letters” in Mr. Trump’s universe after two summit meetings that achieved nothing. 


WHY THEY LOVED HIM  The mess the nation faces is bigger than Donald Trump. If he is voted out in November, the people who cast ballots for him will remain, pining for the policies he promoted. About 40 percent of American voters want tariffs and a border wall. More than half say it’s important to deport more undocumented immigrants. ...........  Much ink has been spilled about whether Trump supporters voted for him out of economic anxiety or racial anxiety, with plenty of studies concluding the latter. But spend time at a dying factory and you might see how difficult it can be to disentangle the two. ..........  By the time I met Tim, he loathed the Clintons and the Democratic Party. Democrats had gotten in bed with the corporations, while no one was looking. Tim felt betrayed, and politically abandoned — until Mr. Trump came along. ..........  But even false hope is a form of hope, perhaps the most ubiquitous kind. .......... About 55 percent of voters who expected to support Mr. Trump during the 2016 primaries identified as working class ............   Fewer than a third who backed other Republican candidates identified as such. ..........  saw alarming increases in child poverty, single motherhood, deaths from alcohol and drugs and reliance on public assistance. ............  Free trade and globalization have undoubtedly made the country richer. But those riches have flowed disproportionately to the few with capital and education, while globalization’s downsides have piled on the shoulders of the most vulnerable Americans. .........................  The rebellion against free trade and globalization has largely taken the left by surprise. ........... They revere him for tearing up NAFTA (even if the new version looks an awful lot like the old one) and slapping tariffs on Chinese imports and Korean washing machines (even if his unpredictable trade war forced the deepest contraction in the manufacturing sector in a decade). .............   The Trump administration’s interim trade deal with China focuses far more on opening up the Chinese banking and insurance sectors than on creating blue-collar jobs. ................   He’s either incompetent or he’s a Trojan horse who used blue-collar workers to get into the White House, only to hand over the keys to the one percent. 


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