Frank's Musings

Donald Trump and his family are in the real estate development business.  I suspect that it is not unusual for those developers to pay minimal income taxes on the property they own.  They realize their income only when they dispose of those properties, as capital gains. Those capital gains, of course, are taxed at a very favorable rate.   In the meantime, they find ways to expense all their living coats, as well; so they don’t need to have steady taxable ordinary income; this is the way we have written our tax laws.

It would be unwise, therefore, for Mr. Biden to question his opponent with regard to his taxes during the Presidential Debates.  There surely will be many other weaknesses in Trump’s behavior and Presidential record that can be exploited.

Apparently, Bahrain, the U.A.E., Jordan and Egypt now regard the Palestinians as desperate and uncompromising. Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab League will probably join them.  They have concluded that working with Israel is more likely to yield benefits for them than stubbornly insisting on reparation. It’s certainly cheaper and potentially more rewarding than merely subsidizing the economic development of a Palestinian state. 

Israel is a wildly successful economic entity. Moreover, with the recent loss of revenue from oil and gas production, the Arab states realize that their own welfare will be more dependent on entrepreneurship and innovation in their own societies than on the serendipity of hydrocarbon deposits. 

It is uncertain how successful Israeli politicians and business leaders will be in suppressing the territorial expansionist ambitions of ultra-orthodox Jews.  They have a lot to learn from the strategies that Arab politicians and business leaders have followed in compartmentalizing the influence of their fundamentalist religious leaders.  The same may be true for the Palestinian leaders who need to recognize that their future prosperity is more likely if they guarantee the security of a Hasidic religious minority in their own multicultural society.

A key to defeating Trump is alerting his base to the contemptuous manner in which he feeds their self-delusions, I. e. lies to them.  Nancy Peolosi was right to excoriate him for it today.  The tactic is like how the tobacco companies seduced the public to smoke for reasons of self-aggrandizement or sexual attractiveness in order to sneak in a nicotine addiction that assured them of compulsive demand.

Of course, this is also the strategy of Zox News.  Their interpretation of daily political events begins by determining the spin that will be most easily accepted by their target audience.  They and the Donald are masters at accomodating the prejudices of people who prefer not to think for themselves.

The challenge facing the Biden/Harris campaign is to moiivate anough thinking citizens to come to the polls in November to outweigh that bloc's turnout, if not also to convince some of the Fox/Trump bloc that reelecting the Donald will mean continued abuse of their and everybody else's welfare.