David A Johnston Quotes

Corporations have grown so powerful that they have inverted the Roman equation: rather than corporations existing to serve the state, the state serves them.

To disagree with Trump is to be wrong. To portray Trump in a way that does not fit with his image of himself is to be a loser. It is an approach to life that may work in business (where Trump can walk out and not deal with people who displease him), but government leaders do not enjoy that luxury, especially the president of the United States. If

You will even read about an insurance company owned by one of America’s most admired billionaires that asked a paralyzed man to die because the cost of keeping him alive was cutting into the insurer’s profits.

Donald Trump’s mottos, “Always get even” and “Hit back harder than you were hit,

Sixteen pages of Think Big are devoted to revenge. All of them run directly contrary to this basic biblical teaching. Trump leaves no room for doubt that revenge is a guiding principle of his life—“My motto is: Always get even.

Trump often threatens to sue journalists, ensuring caution from publishers and broadcasters who want to avoid a costly lawsuit—even one Trump cannot win. This tends to discourage investigation beyond the official talking points.

Trump distorts information, contradicts himself, and blocks inquiries into his conduct by journalists, law enforcement, business regulators, and other people’s lawyers. Again, the record shows decades of Trump’s skill in pursuing this strategy successfully.

No person, I think, ever saw a herd of buffalo, of which a few were fat and the great majority lean. No person ever saw a flock of birds, of which two or three were swimming in grease, and the others all skin and bone.” —Henry George, American reformer, 1839–1897

To disagree with Trump is to be wrong. To portray Trump in a way that does not fit with his image of himself is to be a loser. It

For years, Trump used fake identities to mislead journalists—and at least once to menace someone who was just doing their duty.

Trump had a history of firing experts like Tracy and replacing them with less-experienced yes men.

That is, of course, the kind of perspective we expect from mobsters, dictators, and others whose primary regard is for unflinching support, not for allegiance to truth or facts.

Many reporters accurately quote what they are told, but don’t know much about the underlying issues. For Trump and others like him, this makes it easy to manipulate most of the press.

How the promise of cheap, competitive and unlimited telecommunications service has been turned into a reality of expensive, monopolistic and limited service is just one part of the larger transformation in the American economy since the late 1970s.

Why do I have to repent or seek God’s forgiveness if I am not making mistakes?” Trump asked an Iowa audience of evangelicals in 2015. The report on this in the Christian Post quoted his words, then referred to Trump’s “alleged Christian faith.” Trump

Halliburton’s is a more extreme example, one in which a powerful and wealthy company transcends national borders so thoroughly that it is not an American company but a truly global enterprise with no allegiance to anything or anyone except the bottom line and the investors and executives who gain from its profits.

Trump spent two years suing author Tim O’Brien and his publisher for writing that his net worth was probably not in the billions, but rather the hundreds of millions. After a court dismissed the case, Trump made it clear that he merely wanted to harass O’Brien, not necessarily win damages. “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about,” Trump bragged. It was a comment that fit cozily within his philosophy of revenge. In

whenever Trump saw an opportunity to collect more money or to cut his costs by not paying people what they had earned, he did.

Judge Stewart ruled that Trump had engaged in a conspiracy to cheat the workers of their pay. At

Donald Trump is not a man who tries to understand how others perceive him. Rather, he dismisses those who do not see him as he sees himself. In

Trump has often boasted (in the past and on the campaign trail) that he buys the friendship of politicians so they “do what I want.” The

The worst of these are laws in nineteen states that let companies pocket the state income taxes withheld from their workers’ paychecks for up to twenty-five years.

You’ll learn in this book how other courts, including the United States Supreme Court, have diminished the rights of consumers, voters and workers while enhancing corporate power.

No other modern country gives corporations the unfettered power found in America to gouge customers, shortchange workers and erect barriers to fair play. A big reason is that so little of the news, which informs us about the world around us, addresses the private, government-approved mechanisms by which price gouging is employed to redistribute income upward.

The DGE prepared its own 111-page report. It noted that Trump owed (not owned, but owed) $3.2 billion. Of that, he had personally guaranteed $833.5 million. Absent an agreement by all creditors, Trump would face an uncontrolled, domino-effect chain of bankruptcies. If just one creditor moved against one Trump property, the others would follow, creating chaos. More

Donald would run for president after failing to vote in the 2002 general election and, as records indicate, in any Republican primary from 1989 until he voted for himself in 2016. Friedrich

At Trump University, we teach success,” Trump said, looking into the camera in a 2005 promotional video. “That’s what it’s all about—success. It’s going to happen to you. We’re going to have professors and adjunct professors that are absolutely terrific—terrific people, terrific brains, successful. We are going to have the best of the best. These are all people that are handpicked by me.” None of those statements were true. First,

This philosophy was ignored by the many pastors who endorsed Trump and accepted his statement that he is a Christian. That is worth pondering because revenge is explicitly rejected by Jesus and runs counter to the whole theme of the New Testament.

I love getting even when I get screwed by someone—yes, it is true … Always get even. When you are in business you need to get even with people who screw you. You need to screw them back fifteen times harder … go for the jugular, attack them in spades!” Trump

All this was done under the guise of “deregulation,” but the harsh truth is that there’s really no such thing. Everything has rules. Deregulation is just a disingenuous name for new regulation, too often under rules that favor corporations over their customers.

The faux university also did not have professors, not even part-time adjunct professors, and the “faculty” (as they were called) were certainly not “the best of the best.” They were commissioned sales people, many with no experience in real estate. One managed a fast food joint, as Senator Marco Rubio would point out during the March 3 Republican primary debate in 2016. Two other instructors were in personal bankruptcy while collecting fees from would-be Trump University graduates eager to learn how to get rich. Trump

Guthrie is best known for “This Land Is Your Land,” his ballad about the Dust Bowl, which gave farmers in his native Oklahoma an extra kick in the pants during the Great Depression. He set his thoughts about Trump’s rental policies to a song he titled “Old Man Trump.” The lyrics continue with this: Beach Haven ain’t my home! No, I just can’t pay this rent! My money’s down the drain, And my soul is badly bent! Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower Where no black folks come to roam, No, no, Old Man Trump! Old Beach Haven ain’t my home! More

In effect, Wisconsin politicians forced the owners of these 8,000 small, family-owned and taxpaying businesses to turn over a month’s profits so the money could be given to one of the biggest companies in the world, General Electric, and its partners to make a film glamorizing violent theft.

Taking wildly different positions on the value of assets and using his emotional state to justify those valuations helps explain something else Trump has done repeatedly. Congress requires all presidential candidates to file a financial disclosure statement listing their assets, liabilities, and income. Trump’s ninety-two-page disclosure report valued one of his best-known properties at more than $50 million. But he told tax authorities the same property was worth only about $1 million. He valued another signature Trump property at zero—and demanded the return of the property taxes he had already paid.

The fact that Trump paid no tax came to light when casino regulators issued a public report on his fitness to own a casino. Trump’s tax returns showed negative income. That’s because Congress lets big real estate investors offset their income from salaries, stock market gains, consulting fees, and other income with losses from depreciation in the value of their buildings. If these paper losses for the declining value of their buildings are greater than their cash income from other sources, real estate investors can legally tell the IRS that their income is less than zero and no federal income tax is due. Trump

The documentary also includes Trump summarizing his thoughts years after the USFL fold: “It was a nice experience,” he says. “It was fun. We had a great lawsuit.” Tollin extended Trump a courtesy in 2009 by sending him a rough cut of the film before it aired on ESPN. Trump was not happy with what he saw. In what had long before become a pattern when he was displeased, Trump took a thick, felt-tip pen to Tollin’s letter before mailing it back: “A third rate documentary and extremely dishonest—as you know. Best wishes,” Trump wrote, adding his distinctive, jaws-like signature. “P.S.—You are a loser.” Trump underlined the last word. To

thanks to the ease of Internet communications, and laws in most states permitting people to walk around carrying assault rifles and other weapons of war, the current crop of neo-Nazis, skinheads, and various hard-core hatemongers can easily recruit their niche audiences while putting fear into the hearts of other Americans.

For all his dealings with Trump, Sullivan was repeatedly astonished by the businessman’s lack of prudence. He said that whenever Trump saw an opportunity to collect more money or to cut his costs by not paying people what they had earned, he did. “Common sense just never took hold” when Trump had money on his mind, Sullivan told me several times. To

In The Art of the Deal, Trump boasts that when he applied for a casino owner’s license in 1981, he persuaded the New Jersey attorney general to limit the investigation of his background. It was perhaps the most lucrative negotiation of Trump’s life, one that would embarrass state officials a decade later when Trump’s involvement with mobsters, mob associates, and swindlers became clearer. New

The Hart focus group reminded us of what every con artist knows: people see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, believe what they want to believe, and let their hopes and wishes vanquish their skepticism. Unless and until some fact they cannot reconcile slaps them hard in the face, the con’s marks will keep seeing the world through the credulous and distorted lens they fashioned for themselves.

Since none of the banks trusted Trump, the objective Leventhal evaluation was central to understanding the actual state of Trump’s finances. The Leventhal report showed that Trump was no billionaire: he had a net worth of minus $295 million. My story on that report ran across the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer with the headline: “Bankers Say Trump May Be Worth Less Than Zero.” The lead sentence was, “You may well be worth more than Donald Trump.” Trump

In many of these subsidy programs, no jobs are created. Instead the state income taxes are given to companies that agree to move jobs from one state across the border to another, as AMC Theatres agreed to do in moving its headquarters from Kansas City, Missouri, to Leawood, Kansas, just ten miles away. AMC will get to pocket $47 million withheld from its workers, a boon to its major owners: J. P. Morgan, Apollo Management, the Carlyle Group and the firm Mitt Romney cofounded in 1984, Bain Capital Management.

As soon as Trump announced in 2015, I immediately set out to report what the mainstream news media were not. I wrote an early piece that posed twenty-one questions I thought reporters should ask on the campaign trail. Not one of them did. Late in the primaries, Senator Marco Rubio brought up my question about Trump University and Senator Ted Cruz posed my question about Trump’s dealings with the Genovese and Gambino crime families, matters explored in this book. I will always wonder what might have happened had journalists and some of the sixteen candidates vying with Trump for the Republican nomination started asking my questions months earlier. This

By 2012 the average income of the vast majority had shrunk to the equivalent of 45 weeks of 1973 income—a 13 percent decline to $30,997 from $35,584 in 1973, expressed in 2012 dollars.

The top 1 percent made almost thirteen times the average of the 90 percent in 1973, but by 2012 the ratio was 41 to 1.

Pope Francis I, denouncing “an economy of exclusion,” has made inequality a centerpiece of his reign: Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?

No natural forces determine income, wealth, and the quality of human life. We make the decisions about who will prosper and who will not—or we let other people make them for us. In societies with democratically elected governments, we are the captains of our fate, because when we elect politicians we choose their policies as carried out by presidents and governors, Congress and legislatures, and those they appoint as judges and regulators. For now, what we have chosen is extreme inequality, the worst by far of any nation with a modern economy.

The real income reported on federal tax returns by the vast majority of Americans, the 90 percent, doubled between the end of the war and 1973.

The most immediate is that our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically driven our economic growth.

the hollowing out of the middle class since the 1970s, a phenomenon interrupted only briefly in the 1990s, means that those families are unable to invest in their future, by educating themselves and their children and by starting or improving businesses.

the weakness of the middle class is holding back tax receipts, especially because those at the top are so adroit in avoiding taxes and in getting Washington to give them tax breaks.

inequality is associated with more frequent and more severe boom-and-bust cycles that make our economy more volatile and vulnerable.

I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight. —Malcolm X

The anthropologist Elliot Liebow observed it in the men he chronicled in Tally’s Corner, his insightful 1967 book on the lives and attitudes of poor black men who hung out on a sidewalk in the nation’s capital: “Convinced of their inadequacies, not only do they not seek out those few better-paying jobs which test their resources, but they actively avoid them, gravitating in a mass to the menial, routine jobs which offer no challenge—and therefore pose no threat—to the already diminished images they have of themselves.

Economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings. —Franklin D. Roosevelt

The Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who was the chief economist of the World Bank at the time, called the food riots in Indonesia “the IMF Riots.” “When a nation is down and out,” Stiglitz told the London newspaper the Observer, “the IMF takes advantage and squeezes the last pound of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until finally the whole cauldron blows

Equality works. Extreme inequality does not. Out of the grotesque opportunism that we’ve seen among owners of great wealth in the past ten years has come a colossal waste of financial capital and human energy.

Two scholars who served on the staff of President Reagan’s 1982 National Commission on Social Security Reform explain that Social Security does more to reduce income inequality and prevent poverty among the old in the United States than any other program, public or private, while providing crucial protection for orphans and the disabled. And, contrary to widely circulated claims, they show it does not add one dollar to the federal government’s budget deficits and can remain financially sound as long as our government exists.

Generations of Americans built our Social Security system to provide basic and widespread protection against loss of earnings arising from the death, disability, or retirement of working Americans—for themselves, their families, and those who follow.

Social Security gives concrete expression to widely held and time-honored American commitments. Grounded in values of shared responsibility and concern for all members of society, it reflects an understanding that, as citizens and human beings, we all share certain risks and vulnerabilities; and we all have a stake in advancing practical mechanisms of self- and mutual support. It is based on the belief that government—which is simply all of us acting collectively—can and should uphold these values by providing practical, dignified, secure, and efficient means to protect Americans and their families against risks they all face.

Social Security runs seamlessly and efficiently—less than 1 percent of its expenditures are for administration.

Although Social Security’s benefits are modest, they are extremely important for the vast majority of beneficiaries, especially those with low and moderate incomes.

Without Social Security, the official U.S. poverty rate among the aged would jump from 9 percent to nearly 50 percent—about the same rate as in the 1920s and early 1930s, prior to the enactment of Social Security.

One change we believe should be made is increasing the maximum amount of wages on which Social Security’s contributions are assessed. Contributions are assessed only on the wages that are insured against loss.

The worst proposals are to radically transform Social Security by privatizing, which would put people at the mercy of the stock and bonds markets as well as cost much more to administer or to add means-testing which would deny benefits to higher-income workers. Either of these ideas would destroy the fundamental features that have made Social Security so successful, and wildly popular, which is what opponents of Social Security want to destroy so they can end the program.

The reality is that Social Security is not a government handout. It is a benefit that is earned and paid for through hard work.

Wage insurance works best when all workers are covered under the same plan and the coverage starts at the beginning of their working lives. The only entity that can mandate this kind of universal program is the federal government and it has.

It is no coincidence that pollution so often accompanies poverty. Imagine a cost-benefit analysis of siting an undesirable facility, such as a landfill or incinerator. Benefits are often measured by willingness to pay for environmental improvement. Wealthy communities are able and willing to pay more for the benefit of not having the facility in their backyards; thus when measured this way the net benefits to society as a whole will be maximized by putting the facility in a low-income area.

Having described the unprecedented scale of imprisonment in America, we may still ask: is America’s use of imprisonment really a justifiable (and effective) solution to an epidemic of crime? Indeed, with crime rates at historic lows, one might even conclude that all this imprisonment is a good thing. Or is it a problem in its own right? How can we assess the significance of mass incarceration in America?

Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot all employed mass imprisonment, each presiding over a process that arrested and incarcerated millions. Such systems are often part of massive programs of slave labor or forced resettlement, in which high death rates are a typical by-product. And some examples of mass incarceration are explicitly part of a program of ethnic cleansing or genocide—a tool of policy that intends the extermination of entire populations. But now, for the first time, we see mass incarceration in a democratic society.

The judicial mechanisms that states employ to accomplish programs of mass incarceration include laws and strategies of enforcement explicitly designed to imprison large populations. Methods include expansion of the list of criminal offenses punishable by prison terms, as well as harsher sentencing practices that impose long prison terms for crimes not previously prosecuted at all: being Jewish in Nazi Germany, or being an enemy of the state in Stalin’s Russia.

the rapid growth of a larger prison system creates an expanded and more powerful system of “correctional” administration, which tends to have self-perpetuating features.

Today, the United States has the highest rate of imprisonment of any nation in the world—possibly the highest rate in the history of any nation.

Part of this is related to the vast apparatus created to administer the criminal-justice system; part is related to the new laws that mandate longer sentences and keep the prisons full of older inmates for longer periods; part is due to the rules governing release and reentry—parole policies that lower the threshold for violations and ensure recidivism; and part is the result of lasting damage done to the families and the social fabric of the communities from which most prisoners are drawn.

Not surprisingly, this huge American “industry” has huge political clout—with the expansion of prosecutorial and correctional workers’ power, the growing number of lobbyists for these groups, and the many vendors who build and service prisons.

Longer sentences also build incarceration rates and create a chronic condition of social incapacitation for those imprisoned, as they face severe restrictions on their rights and opportunities after release from prison. Individuals who enter prison and become a case in the criminal-justice system today have a 50 percent or more chance of remaining under the system’s control for life with recurrent arrests and periods of incarceration.

In 2008, one in a hundred American adults was behind bars. Just what manner of people does our prison policy reveal us to be?

a massive, malign indifference to people of color is at work.

In America, criminal justice policies have become a second line of defense, if you will, against individuals whose development has not been adequately fostered by other societal institutions, like welfare, education, employment and job training, mental-health programs, and other social initiatives.

We should also remember that punishment and inequality are intimately linked—that the causality runs in both directions. Disparities in punishment reflect socioeconomic inequalities, but they also help produce and reinforce them.

Before Ms. magazine was a gleam in Gloria Steinem’s eye, men had quite a deal. Married middle-class men often controlled the purse while enjoying the pleasures of a full-time homemaker, who might work a few hours here and there for “pin money” they could spend on themselves. Mothers of small children seldom worked full-time.

Women run a majority of nonprofit organizations with budgets under $1 million. But as budgets grow, the ranks of women shrink.

Millions of Americans instinctively associate “poverty” with “black.

it shouldn’t be the case that the only route out of poverty is to get married to someone who also has a job.

The Trump family’s deep roots in Germany stretch back to the war-ravaged seventeenth century, when the family name was Drumpf. In 1648, they simplified the name to one that would prove to be a powerful brand for their latter-day descendants. Looking

Trump, who presents himself as a modern Midas even when much of what he touches turns to dross, has studied the conventions of journalists and displays more genius at exploiting them to his advantage than anyone else I have ever known. More

In 1990, I broke the story that, instead of being worth billions, as he’d claimed, Trump actually had a negative net worth and escaped a chaotic collapse into personal bankruptcy only when the government took his side over the bank’s, as you will read. Before

What makes it possible for a dictator or totalitarian to come to power is that people lose the capacity to remain informed.

Trump

Ideally, major windows should face within 30° of true (not magnetic) south. The deviation between true and magnetic south varies depending on where you build.

successful passive solar designs need many fewer windows—the equivalent of between 8 percent and 12 percent of the floor area in rooms with south-facing windows. That

Donald no doubt enjoys the bridge player’s definition of trump: a winning play by a card that outranks all others. But other definitions include “a thing of small value, a trifle” and “to deceive or cheat” as well as “to blow or sound a trumpet.” As a verb, trump means “to devise in an unscrupulous way” and “to forge, fabricate or invent,” as in “trumped-up” charges. Donald

Some people argue with the question posed to them, as Bill Clinton infamously did when he said under oath: “It depends on what your definition of is is.” Others veer off on verbal tangents, hoping to steer the conversation in another direction. Some celebrities arrange to talk to the cameras outside a hearing room just as the main witness against them is about to speak. Some say they need to check their records before answering. And many people use the one catchall that usually cannot be disproved: I don’t recall. That last option would seem unavailable to Trump, since he declared in October that he enjoys “the world’s greatest memory.” Trump

classic public relations strategy is to confront damaging information by getting it out fully and fast so you can put it behind you.

A classic public relations strategy is to confront damaging information by getting it out fully and fast so you can put it behind you.

Whatever your views, become deeply informed. The Founders believed that knowledge and reason must be the cornerstones of our representative democracy if we are to govern ourselves. So spend time learning and then do your duty as a citizen. Vote. David

Trump says NBC paid him $65 million for Celebrity Apprentice in both 2011 and 2012 (NBC, in a written statement, said that figure was wildly inflated). If

Erecting gaudy buildings did not bring Donald Trump the national attention he craved. It was football that made him famous. Hiring a new general manager for his real estate firm drew little media attention, but “I hire a coach for a football team and there are sixty or seventy reporters calling to interview me.” Trump’s foray into professional football provides an early example of a business career built on breaking, ignoring, or making up rules. In

In 1988, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals explicitly rejected the theory Trump had sold to the other owners—that a lawsuit was an appropriate way to force the NFL to merge with the USFL. The court, in the formal language of legal opinions, chastised both Trump and the owners who went along with him. Judge Ralph K. Winter Jr. wrote that “what the USFL seeks is essentially a judicial restructuring of major-league professional football to allow it to enter” into a merger with the NFL. Calling the NFL “a highly successful entertainment product,” Judge Winter observed that “new sports leagues must be prepared to make the investment of time, effort and money that develops interest and fan loyalty and results in an attractive product for the media. The jury in the present case obviously found that patient development of a loyal following among fans and an adherence to an original plan that offered long-run gains were lacking … The jury found that the failure of the USFL was not the result of the NFL’s television contracts but of its own decision to seek entry into the NFL on the cheap.” The appeals court decision, which the United States Supreme Court let stand, was a stinging rebuke of Trump’s effort to use litigation to obtain what he was unwilling to achieve by patiently devoting time, money, and effort in the market. Years

Philadelphia Inquirer with the headline: “Bankers Say Trump May Be Worth Less Than Zero.” The lead sentence was, “You may well be worth more than Donald Trump.