Tag Archives: Mafia

The Don.

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That’s a title that has long been used to refer to the head of a mafia family – someone who is ruthless, obsessed with power and willing to use any means to obtain it, including violence.

And it can, quite rightly, be used to describe the felon in the White House.

Not only has he been found guilty of 34 felony counts, as well as sexual assault and defamation. His family organization was found guilty of running a fraudulent charity and a fraudulent university. Further, he was almost certainly saved from conviction of mishandling the nation’s secrets and of inciting an insurrection only through delay and his reelection.

This is a man whose parents were members of the KKK and who was mentored by Roy Cohn, chief counsel for the disgraced Sen. Joseph McCarthy and mob lawyer for mafia figures like Tony Salerno, Carmine Galante, John Gotti and Mario Gigante. He long palled around with crime figures, not the least of which were Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. He also worked with the mafia to build many of his projects in New York and New Jersey.

So, he clearly knows how mob bosses work, and he has embraced those habits in both his business and political lives. And now that he has again taken up residence in the White House, he is operating the government as his own personal crime syndicate.

Think the tariffs are intended to balance trade deficits? Think again. They are merely part of a mafioso-style shakedown of foreign countries in exchange for personal profits and gifts. Almost before the Capitol staff cleaned the grounds following his inauguration, he and his ethically challenged sons were in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE to close trade deals initiated by the Biden administration. But the real reason for their visit was personal – to cash in on multimillion deals for Trump hotels, Trump golf resorts and Trump bitcoin. As a side deal, he even accepted the gift of a $40 million jet from Qatar.

And that was only the start.

By threatening and imposing draconian tariffs on every other nation in the world, Trump began what amounts to a protection racket. (“That’s a nice little economy you have going there. It would be a shame to see something happen to it.”) The idea is to force other nations into submitting to a contract for Trump hotels or Trump golf resorts. A prime example is the Don’s deal with Vietnam. After imposing a 46 percent tariff on Vietnamese goods, he lowered the tariff to 20 percent in exchange for a $1.5 billion Trump golf resort.

Sure, the deal is in violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. Sure, it means that you will pay 20 percent more for Vietnamese made goods. But you are only collateral damage. America…er…Trump first.

The Don is eagerly awaiting similar deals with other countries, which will almost certainly result in rising inflation and higher costs for you. But the Don is not working for you. As always, he only cares about himself. The New Yorker estimates that Trump and his family will collect more than $3.4 billion in such ill-gotten gains by the end of his second term. (I believe that to be a highly conservative estimate.)

Meanwhile, it’s you who will pay for the Don’s largess. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the economy is already dramatically slowing – a fact the Don doesn’t want you to know – and recent reports show that the producer price index, which measures the cost for wholesalers, rose nearly one percent last month. And, compared to a year ago, wholesale prices are up 3.3 percent!

Most of those price increases have yet to be passed on to consumers like you and me.

There’s more. Like every other crime boss, the Don is all about gaining and exerting power. He has already made Congress subservient to his whims. He already controls the majority of seats on the Supreme Court and a number of Appeals Courts. He controls a vast propaganda network. His cult also controls governorships and legislatures throughout the South and other portions of the no-longer-United-States. And he’s trying to exert that power to redistrict congressional seats and change voting laws to ensure that MAGA will control future elections.

The Don is also using his consiglieres and their soldiers in a blatant attempt to take over the streets of our cities to intimidate ordinary citizens and suppress dissent. He even has the world’s most powerful military at his disposal. A fact that must make all of the world’s other Dons envious.

Part John Gotti. Part Vladimir Putin.

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That is the takeaway from Donald Trump’s hour-long call with the Georgia Secretary of State, in which he begged and bullied Brad Raffensperger, telling him he was “taking a big risk” unless he is able to “find” 11,800 votes that would give Georgia’s electoral votes to Trump.

The message was clear. Trump wanted Raffensberger to rig the election for his benefit.

Indeed, the whole tone of the recorded conversation was what you’d expect from a mafia boss speaking to a member of his mob. It’s also what you might expect from dictators such as Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, Bashar al-Assad, Nicolas Maduro, Kim Jong-un, Abdullah Aziz al Saud, or the late Saddam Hussein.

The call was not unlike the “perfect” call Trump made to the newly elected president of Ukraine in which he threatened to withhold US foreign aid unless Zelensky agreed to announce an investigation of Hunter Biden to help Trump win the 2020 election.

If you are familiar with Trump’s background, his attempts to defraud American voters should come as no surprise. As a developer in New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Nevada, Trump long played footsie with the Mafia. He was schooled in the ways of the mob by his late attorney, Ray Cohn. (Cohn’s clients also included Joseph Gambino along with other Mafia figures and the infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy.) With Cohn’s mentorship, Trump was able to perfect the art of the con, which helped him defraud those who were enthralled by Trump’s “celebrity” to enroll in Trump University, to donate to Trump Charities, and to purchase overpriced Trump real estate. Ultimately, it’s what put him in the Oval Office.

Cohn taught Trump to exaggerate and lie. (On average, Trump has lied more than 23 times a day while in office.) Cohn and his successors helped Trump cheat at every turn, which may explain why Trump’s name appears 3,450 times in the Panama Papers, a database of those who avoid taxes by investing in offshore tax shelters. And, under Cohn’s tutelage, Trump learned to never admit failure or a mistake. Instead of apologizing or facing the consequences of his actions, Trump learned to bully, threaten, and sue to get what he wants. That’s why Trump has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits.

Like a mob boss, Trump has surrounded himself with loyalists to do his unconstitutional bidding. When they have been caught, he has used his pardon power to keep them quiet. While following the tyrant’s playbook, he has used every lever available in his efforts to stay in power. And, in doing so, he has created more damage to our democracy than any of our external enemies could hope to do, which must make his current mentor, Vladimir Putin, very proud.

Will he ever pay for his cons and for the harm he has done to our nation?

At this point that’s unclear. He will likely try to pardon himself from his federal crimes. But that won’t save him from state crimes. And, given that the Southern District of New York is investigating his businesses for potential bank fraud and tax fraud, he may well end up like another crime boss – Al Capone.

JFK RIP.

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Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, yet after all of these years, there are still many questions about his death. Did Oswald act alone? How could one man fire three bullets from the bolt-action rifle in such a short time when no other marksman has been able to duplicate that feat? How could the so-called “magic” bullet do so much damage and not be fragmented or even misshapen? Why did so many observers turn to the grassy knoll following the shots? Why did those in front of the rail yard hit the ground, convinced that shots were fired from behind them? Who were the people behind the fence in the rail yard? How could a portion of Kennedy’s skull fly backwards from a shot that entered the back of his skull? How was a visitor to the Dallas Police station allowed to shoot and kill Oswald?

The Warren Commission that investigated the assassination did not have answers to many of the questions, and many of the answers it did have stretched credulity. Is it any wonder that so many people still question the Commission’s conclusions so many years later?

As a senior in high school, I was sitting in math class when Kennedy was shot. When the teacher announced the news, I reacted badly because I thought he was joking. After learning that he wasn’t, I followed the unfolding story as closely as I could. I read most of the reports and books that were spawned by the assassination, including the report by Warren Commission. The most interesting of them was Rush To Judgment by Mark Lane. Lane detailed much of the key testimony from the Warren Commission. He pointed out the flaws in the Commission’s conclusions. More interestingly, he detailed testimony of witnesses who were not interviewed. And he chronicled the overwhelming number of suspicious deaths of witnesses and others involved in the months following the assassinations.

Some of the information in the book may have been flawed, but it convinced me that there is far more to the story than we were told.

In the ensuing years, there have been many attempts to debunk any and every conspiracy theory. Forensic scientists have tried to explain the “magic” bullet. They have tried to explain the contradiction that is the Zapruder film and the questions surrounding Kennedy’s autopsy. Government authorities have dismissed Oswald’s and Ruby’s mafia ties. They have dismissed Oswald’s apparent ties to the CIA. They have dismissed Oswald’s denial of guilt. They never fully explained Ruby’s motives.

There have been numerous official investigations into the assassination over the years. A number of those involved, such as former Senator and presidential candidate, Gary Hart, were unconvinced that Oswald acted alone. Indeed, Hart who served as a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Agencies said that the Warren Commission failed to follow numerous leads; that the Warren Commission failed to fully investigate the CIA-Mafia connection.The Warren Commission’s failure to do so is nothing less than astounding.

To understand why, you have to realize that, just a few years before Kennedy’s election, Fidel Castro led a revolution to overthrow the Cuban dictator and to rid the island of the mafia which had long controlled Cuba’s casino business and other criminal enterprises. The mafia was determined to get their island back. At the same time, the CIA was threatened by a communist government so close to our shores. There was a belief that communism was like a spreading plague that would infect every capitalistic government…the so-called “Domino” theory.

Moreover, the CIA, under Allen Dulles, had a long history of orchestrating coups to remove world leaders it considered a threat. The CIA had conducted several attempts on Castro’s life that involved the mafia. Yet the Warren investigation essentially ignored the connections between Oswald and the CIA, the connections between Ruby and Oswald, and the connections between Ruby, Oswald and the mafia. The failure to do so left a lot of gaps in the Warren Report…especially since JFK’s policies had made powerful enemies within the CIA, the mafia, even the military.

Following the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy had developed a relationship with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. This made him unpopular with both the CIA and US military leaders. Kennedy had also extended an olive branch to Castro. (At the time of his assassination, an envoy from Kennedy was meeting with Castro.) Further, the mafia felt betrayed when JFK and his brother, Robert, embarked on an initiative to destroy organized crime. As a result, Carlos Marcello, the Louisiana mafia boss who controlled much of the crime in the Southeast, made several threats against JFK. He later took credit for having Kennedy killed while serving time in prison.

Add to this Gary Hart’s revelations that, while his Senate committee was investigating the assassination, two of the key witnesses from the mafia were murdered and there is even more reason to suspect a conspiracy. Indeed, Hart told the Huffington Post, “You don’t have to be a genius to believe that they knew something about the coincidence of events — Cuba, Mafia, CIA and Kennedy — that somebody didn’t want that out in the public 12 years later.”

We likely will never know the whole story of the Kennedy assassination. And, unfortunately, we’ll never know what the world would be like had JFK and RFK been allowed to finish their service to our country and to live out their lives. I, for one, believe that the world would be a much better place. In his short time as president, JFK inspired many young people to service. He inspired us to literally reach for the moon. And he reassured our faith in government by leading us through the Cuban missile, working to end the Cold War and beginning the process to end racial discrimination.

Ironically, the failures of the Warren Commission and the government agencies investigating his death, have caused many who were alive at that time to distrust the government. That’s one legacy that Kennedy and his family would abhor.