{"id":8754,"date":"2018-10-30T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T16:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/?p=8754"},"modified":"2018-10-30T12:00:42","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T16:00:42","slug":"kavanaugh-trumps-taxes-and-amazon-what-you-missed-this-month-october-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/2018\/10\/30\/kavanaugh-trumps-taxes-and-amazon-what-you-missed-this-month-october-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"What You Missed This Month, October 2018: Kavanaugh, Trump’s Taxes, and Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"

We can all agree: sometimes the news can be overwhelming. Due to the sensationalism of today\u2019s media, it can be difficult to parce through stories and tell which are important and which aren\u2019t. So, I\u2019ve handpicked three of the most important stories you may have missed this month:<\/span><\/p>\n

Kavanaugh Confirmed:<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After a long and scandal-ridden confirmation battle, Brett Kavanaugh has been confirmed and sworn in to the United States Supreme Court. <\/span><\/p>\n

Kavanaugh’s initial nomination was rather innocuous. There were cries on both sides of the aisle; the left proclaimed that Kavanaugh was unfit to sit on the court due to his negative views of unions and a woman\u2019s right to choose, and the right defended him, citing his years of experience and extensive resume. However, as the weeks passed, there were numerous concerns raised about Kavanaugh from the left. <\/span><\/p>\n

First and foremost, Kavanaugh\u2019s emails and records from the Bush White House, where he served as an aide, were largely being kept under wraps.<\/a> Even now, thousands of emails remain sealed, and there are still concerns about the emails that were<\/em> released. Many of the concerns revolved about the next controversy Kavanaugh faced: accusations of perjury. <\/span><\/p>\n

Democrats pointed to a number of occasions in which Kavanaugh twisted or concealed the truth. For example, <\/span>Kavanaugh claimed no involvement with the nomination of an appeals court judge, William Pryor<\/span><\/a>, saying \u201cI am familiar generally with Mr. Pryor, but that was not one that I worked on personally.\u201d However, emails of his revealed that he may have had a hand in the nomination, as he was asked by a fellow White House aide, \u201cHow did the Pryor interview go?\u201d and he responded: \u201ccall me.\u201d Additionally, he was accused of bending the truth about his beliefs on Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case affirming a woman\u2019s right to choose. In an email from the Bush era, Kavanaugh wrote (as a lawyer) \u201cI am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level…\u201d During his confirmation hearing though, Kavanaugh stated that Roe was \u201csettled as a precedent of the Supreme Court.\u201d However, these accusations pale in comparison to the scandal that dominated the latter portion of his confirmation battle: three accusations of sexual assault. <\/span><\/p>\n

Without going into incredible detail, these allegations can be summed up as thus: Christine Blasey-Ford, a psychologist from California, confided in her Congresswoman,\u00a0Anna Eshoo, and later Senator Dianne Feinstein (before Kavanaugh was nominated), telling her that Kavanaugh had attempted to rape her in high school. She wanted to remain anonymous, but her letter was leaked nonetheless. Her accusations were followed by two others: one by Deborah Ramirez, and another by Julie Swetnick.\u00a0<\/span>Their\u00a0significance can be understood through this linked article<\/a> by The New York Times<\/em>. After impassioned testimonies by both Ford and Kavanaugh at a Judiciary Hearing, and an FBI investigation (that some claimed was a farce), Kavanaugh managed to be confirmed in a 50-48 vote, the slimmest margin of any Supreme Court Justice.<\/p>\n

The New York Times Exposes President Trump\u2019s Tax Fraud: <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In a scathing expos\u00e9, The New York Times<\/em> laid out an incredibly detailed and meticulous list of the Trump Family\u2019s tax schemes, and in some cases, their blatant fraud. <\/span><\/p>\n

The articles\u2019 most relevant revelations revolve around the manner in which large sums of money were received by Donald Trump from his father, Fred Trump. The first, and most provable of which, was the gross misrepresentation of how much money he received from his father to start his business. In a moment that has become incredibly well known around the country, Trump boasted that his father only gave him <\/span>\u201ca small loan of a million dollars,\u201d<\/span><\/a> to start his business, which he turned into a billion dollar real estate empire. However, this is simply untrue. The Times<\/em> states, \u201cMr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father\u2019s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.\u201d So, while Mr. Trump claimed that he received <\/span>one<\/span><\/i> million dollars from his father, he instead received <\/span>hundreds of millions<\/span><\/i> more. This proves Trump\u2019s facetious self-designated status as a self-made billionaire is categorically untrue. <\/span><\/p>\n

The next, and perhaps most important fact uncovered by The Times,<\/em> is tied to Mr. Trump\u2019s \u201csmall loan of a million dollars.\u201d In the clip, he explicitly states he paid his father back, with interest. However, The New York Times<\/em> found that, in a majority of instances in which Fred Trump loaned Donald Trump money, he failed to pay it back. This, in and <\/span>of itself, is an evasion of tax, specifically of the \u201cgift tax.\u201d When a gift of more than $15,000 is given, there is a tax placed on that gift. However, when Fred Trump categorized this exchange as a \u201cloan,\u201d he avoided paying out possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes.<\/p>\n

In addition, without going into extreme detail, Trump assisted his family in setting up sham corporations to further disguise parental gifts, and furthermore, Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions. This means that for years, the collective Trump family was avoiding paying <\/span>millions<\/span><\/i> of dollars in taxes, perhaps illegally.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is an incredible amount of detail in this article, and it addresses a number of individual instances in which Mr. Trump and his family may have broken the law. It is important to note that, in order for a prestigious institution such as The New York Times<\/em> to accuse someone–never mind a sitting president–of a crime, an incredible burden must be met. And if that burden has indeed been met, and the accusations in the article are true, then our current president may be a criminal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amazon Raises Its Minimum Wage to $15 An Hour:<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After facing blistering criticism, Amazon raised its <\/span>minimum wage to $15 an hour. Many consider this a reaction to the junior senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders\u2019 continued assault against Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon. <\/span><\/p>\n

Sanders\u2019 message has been clear since his dark horse run for president in 2016: the 1% are slowly edging out the 99% in The United States. This message echoes early 2010\u2019s protests and movements, the most notable of which, Occupy Wall Street. Bezos, in particular, has become a hobby-horse of Sanders\u2019 as of late <\/span>(his previous being Disney)<\/span><\/a>, with his populist message increasing in volume and vim. Even in his statement praising Bezos for raising Amazon\u2019s minimum wage, he still criticized the billionaire: <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been my view that the middle class and working families of this country should not have to subsidize Mr. Bezos, the wealthiest person on Earth, because many of his Amazon employees earned wages that were so low that they were forced to go on government programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and subsidized housing.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In addition to his combative legislation, Sanders went as far as to introduce the <\/span>\u201cStop BEZOS (Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies) Act,\u201d<\/span><\/a> a direct call-out to Bezos himself. <\/span><\/p>\n

Now that Amazon has bent to the will of his employees and the senator, Sanders is now <\/span>placing McDonald\u2019s in his sights.<\/span><\/a> In a letter to the president and CEO of McDonald’s, Steve Easterbrook, Sanders wrote: \u201cIf McDonald’s can afford to give its shareholders $7.7 billion, it can afford to pay all of its workers $15 an hour.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Only time will tell whether this attempt to reign McDonald\u2019s in will be successful, and whether Sanders\u2019 crusade for a $15 minimum wage will ultimately be fruitful.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We can all agree: sometimes the news can be overwhelming. Due to the sensationalism of today\u2019s media, it can be difficult to parce through stories and tell which are important and which aren\u2019t. So, I\u2019ve handpicked three of the most important stories you may have missed this month: Kavanaugh Confirmed: After a long and scandal-ridden…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":703,"featured_media":8917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[137,264,269,1168,2153,2294,2407],"class_list":["post-8754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nation-and-world","tag-amazon","tag-bernie-sanders","tag-bezos","tag-kavanaugh","tag-taxes","tag-trump","tag-what-you-missed-this-month"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}