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Excerpt: ‘Trump: The Greatest Show On Earth — The Deals, The Downfall, The Reinvention’

Excerpt: ‘Trump: The Greatest Show On Earth — The Deals, The Downfall, The Reinvention’

On Twitter there’s a profane character who calls himself @realDonaldTrump — and then there’s the all-too-real Donald Trump: reality star, casino mogul, political toxin, and conman extraordinaire. Nobody has written as many informed and perceptive stories about Trump as investigative reporter Wayne Barrett, whose Brooklyn basement full of Trump-related files is now a top destination for every serious journalist covering the Republican presidential front-runner. Barrett’s landmark 1992 book Trump: The Deals and the Downfall is now a cherished out-of-print rarity, but Regan Arts recently published a Kindle edition titled Trump: The Greatest Show On Earth — The Deals, The Downfall, The Reinvention. What follows is an exclusive excerpt from its new foreword:

 

Two days after his 69th birthday, Donald Trump became the first presidential candidate to launch his campaign aboard an escalator, descending on a continuous loop of steel against a backdrop of continuously looping waterfalls, all in front of the very cameras that have so often made his story a spinning reel of autoerotic autobiography. Everyone else in the movie that Donald is making with his life—that morning and beyond—is just an extra.

As much attention as that particular escalator ride garnered, the Trump history leading up to that moment went unnoticed: more than a century earlier, the first escalator was built on the Old Iron Pier in Coney Island, a precursor to Steeplechase, the landmark amusement park that Fred Trump, Donald’s father, tore down in the 1960s, ending the Brooklyn beachfront’s run as one of the world’s most famous playgrounds.

The stage-managing of that escalator entrance at his signature Trump Tower was just one of the anomalies at Trump’s mid-June announcement.

His bid for the presidency came 25 years, nearly to the day, after Donald produced a birthday extravaganza—at Trump’s Castle in Atlantic City—the day after he first defaulted on a casino bond in the thick of a financial meltdown. On stage in the confetti-covered Crystal Ballroom, a George H.W. Bush impersonator declared that Trump should be president, a joke on its way now to possible prophecy.

Melania, Donald’s third wife, joined him on his journey down the gold-railed escalator, just as she did in a 2013 Celebrity Apprentice episode when she and Donald introduced her line of caviar skincare. But it was first wife Ivana who had overruled the architects 35 years earlier to insist on a 60-foot waterfall, and who had trekked across an Italian quarry to pick the finest rosy-beige Breccia Perniche marble for the five-story atrium—the same marble that matched the peachy orange hue of Donald’s hair on the morning of his press conference.

The lights illuminating the waterfall were installed by a contractor whose brother-in-law, Donald Manes, voted for the tower’s zoning variance as a member of the city’s reigning Board of Estimate, a few years before he plunged a kitchen knife into his chest just as US Attorney Rudy Giuliani was about to indict him. Trump’s lawyer on the Trump Tower tax abatement, Stanley Friedman, was Manes’ partner in crime, who delivered a second Board of Estimate vote for the tower and was later convicted by Giuliani on unrelated racketeering charges. Giuliani once opened a probe into Trump’s sale of a Trump Tower apartment to the head of one of the city’s largest gambling rings, who brought a briefcase of cash to a closing Donald personally attended. Giuliani is now an informal campaign advisor to his onetime donor Trump.

Trump Tower itself is a monument to the mob. Sweetheart deals with a mob Teamsters local that delivered the concrete, and mob contractors that supplied and built the tallest reinforced concrete job in the country, were choices Donald made, provoking the interest of federal prosecutors at the time. Now, as he lays claim to the White House, he is announcing an even larger concrete project, a thousand-mile wall to protect us from drug and trafficking cartels.

The Trump Tower apartments, and some of the offices above the atrium, had long been magnets for criminals. A half dozen felons, including the head of the Gambino-tied concrete-drivers union, owned part or all of over two dozen units in the tower in its first decade. Trump’s cluelessness on foreign policy, apparent even in his opening speech, extended to the tower’s apartment and office occupants—a disturbing collection of international rogues.

Baby Doc Duvalier bought a $2.5 million apartment there before the tower opened and before the president-for-life was driven from power in Haiti. Chuck Blazer, the 450-pound, now-convicted, wheeler-dealer at the center of the vast FIFA soccer scandal, wallowed between two different tower apartments and a tower office where his branch of the soccer federation was headquartered. Another FIFA potentate, Brazilian Jose Maria Marin, who was once caught on videotape pocketing a gold medal that was supposed to be presented to a member of a championship team, is under house arrest on racketeering charges in his $3.5 million Trump Tower apartment.

Bayrock, a developer that joined Trump in New York and Fort Lauderdale projects, was headquartered at the Tower and one of its partners, Tamir Sapir, a Russian billionaire who Trump called “a great friend,” had a $5 million apartment there. Sapir’s top aide pled guilty to participating in a 13-year racketeering conspiracy with the Gambino crime family, with some of those years overlapping with his involvement in running Sapir’s construction operations. Felix Sater, who owned a 50 percent “executive membership” in the Bayrock entities set up for the Trump projects, pled guilty in a $40 million mob stock swindle and cooperated with federal prosecutors. Sater, the son of a Russian mobster, appeared in photos with Trump and was identified as a senior adviser on a Trump Organization card. Sater also did prison time for plunging the stem of a wine glass into a commodity broker’s face.

While Candidate Trump contends that Saudi Arabia was behind the 9/11 attacks, a top Saudi government minister at the time of the attack, Prince Mutaib bin Abdulaziz, owns a full floor in the tower. In fact, although Trump would soon argue that “we should stop supporting the Saudi dictatorship,” as well as stop buying their oil, he said in his announcement, “I love the Saudis; many are in this building.”

Two other Trump Towers, one in Istanbul and one in Philadelphia, involved convicted cocaine traffickers, but not as residents. Trump’s initial partner in the twin towers in Istanbul—one residential and one office/commercial building—was Engin Yesil, who was sentenced to six years in prison for trafficking 20 years earlier. He later said that he assigned his earnings on the Trump project to Dogan Holdings, a giant Turkish developer that was fined $2.5 billion by the Turkish government for dodging corporate taxes for years. The Dogan firm was alarmed when Candidate Trump made his strongest anti-Muslim statements a few months after his announcement and threatened publicly to separate Trump from the project.

The Philadelphia tower was never built after Trump’s local partner Raoul Goldberg disappeared and the development firm went bankrupt. Sentenced to 46 months in prison in 2000 on cocaine charges, Goldberg was on probation when he brought the deal to Trump in 2005. Under a licensing and management contract with Goldberg’s firm, Trump was so involved he did the video pitch for it, and his company got the permits and cut the spa and restaurant deals, with daughter Ivanka and son Donald Jr. working on the ground.

***

The Trump Tower lobby where Trump made his presidential announcement wasn’t exactly his property alone, either. The lobby is privately owned public space. The zoning variance that Manes and other Trump insiders on the Board of Estimate approved gave Trump 20 extra floors if he ran the shops and atrium as space open to public use, where visitors could relax without shopping at Gucci or eating at Trump Grill, where 45-dollar Trump steaks sell a floor below the lobby.

A 22-foot black marble bench near the entrance made it so easy to relax that Trump tried to discourage visitors by covering it with planters soon after the tower opened, a violation so blatant that the city cracked down, forcing Trump himself to huff and puff in the office of a City Planning Commission deputy and to write a letter complaining about “drug addicts” who apparently couldn’t resist gilded Fifth Avenue rest stops. He lost that battle but never gave up, eventually replacing the bench and other public space with two Trump Stores, 40-foot mahogany counters where everything Trump—from books to bling—was sold at prices no vagrant could afford. The city fined him $2,500 in 2008, but sales, including those of Melania’s timepieces and fashion jewelry, may have topped that every hour. So, they continued on for years, well after the presidential debut, until the city levied a $4,000 fine in February 2016 and finally shut the counters down.

In exchange for this atrium access, Trump even built his own three-story, $100 million, Louis XIV facsimile penthouse, where he issues tweets and devours Twinkies in his pajamas; yet he’s broken the deal again and again, contemptuous of commitments to a public he now wants to represent.

 

Adapted from Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth–The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention by Wayne Barrett. Copyright Wayne Barrett. Available now as an ebook from Regan Arts.

Feds Ponder Shafting Retirees In Pension Crisis

Feds Ponder Shafting Retirees In Pension Crisis

Is hard work, sacrifice and delayed gratification rewarded anymore in America?

Don’t ask a Teamster.

In cities across the country recently, they’ve filled auditoriums to air their grievances over a pending federal pension agreement that would spell hardship — and in many cases financial disaster — for an estimated two-thirds of the 407,000 Teamsters whose pensions are managed by the Central States Pension Fund.

Like several other so-called multiemployer pension funds, commonly set up by unions and employers with whom they have collective bargaining agreements, Central States is in deep trouble. It’s paying out $3.46 for every dollar taken in through employee contributions. If it fails, it could wipe out the multiemployer fund of the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), which insures pensions against bankruptcy.

To avert its impending demise, Central States applied to the Treasury Department, the PBGC and the Department of Labor for permission to cut pension payments to the fund’s beneficiaries.

If the plan goes through, many would face cuts of up to 60 percent in the monthly retirement payment they spent their lives working for, believing it was guaranteed. They worked for that check. They believed it would be there to pay for mortgages, groceries, grandchildren’s schooling and medical costs as they aged. Now they’re being told to give a big chunk of it back.

Is that fair? Start by considering that it wasn’t even legal until December 2014. That’s when the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act was attached at the last minute to a must-pass omnibus spending bill. It allowed pension funds to apply to the Treasury Department for permission to decrease employee pension benefits.

No hearings were held. No impact studies were conducted. No debate occurred. The lack of process is damning. Many Congress members didn’t realize what had been tucked into the bill before they voted on it. It was speedily passed, and President Obama signed it into law.

Now, as required under the law, the Treasury Department is reviewing Central States’ application to slash benefits. Attorney Kenneth Feinberg, an acclaimed federal mediator who is acting as special master in the review, is attending town-hall forums to hear out Teamsters whose pensions are on the chopping block. In city after city, he has watched rooms fill with hundreds of Teamsters — retired truck drivers, dock workers, freight loaders — many gray-haired and often assisted by canes.

The Treasury has until May to decide whether to approve the application.

Bills have been introduced in Congress to undo the damage — including one cosponsored by presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders that would close tax loopholes for the rich and redirect the money backstop multiemployer pensions — but they have little chance of passing, given the partisan stalemate in Washington.

Central States is a canary in the mineshaft for many multiemployer funds. There are fewer union members paying into Central States. Some worked for companies that went bankrupt and no longer exist. Some of those firms quit paying into the fund when they went under.

The PBGC, too, is in danger. It guarantees pensions for 10 million workers in similar multiemployer funds.

Politicians and pundits love to blame union incompetence and greed for such tragedies, and the Teamsters leadership has not been faultless. But trucking industry deregulation also hobbled the fund, as did anti-union policies that decimated membership. The Wall Street firms that were given oversight of the fund through a consent decree in the early 1980s did a poor job of shepherding the fund through the financial crisis and the recession.

The causes of the debacle are complicated, and the solution will be costly. It’s clear, however, that making rank and file workers pay the price is about the least just outcome imaginable.

Since first writing of this proposed deal in late November, I’ve heard from many affected retirees.

They speak of their loyal service to trucking firms, some now long dissolved. They write of having been young men ready to work hard and provide for their families. They recall agreeing to strenuous shift work and wage concessions in exchange for the promise that their pensions would be there when they were older.

Many are like Elmer Bowen, a retired truck driver in Georgia, who wrote: “Our country was founded on aspects of integrity, honesty, fairness, equality and righteousness. However, I see none of those traits in the decision that has been made with the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014.”

He’s right. An equitable solution needs to be found, one that does right by these American workers.

(Mary Sanchez is an opinion-page columnist for The Kansas City Star. Readers may write to her at: Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, Mo. 64108-1413, or via e-mail at msanchez@kcstar.com.)

(c) 2016, THE KANSAS CITY STAR. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC

Photo: Flickr user John Lloyd.

6 Minutes A Day For Bathroom Breaks? Union Cries Foul

6 Minutes A Day For Bathroom Breaks? Union Cries Foul

By Corilyn Shropshire, Chicago Tribune

A Chicago-area union has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against an employer who they claim is allowing them only 6 minutes a day to use the bathroom.

Members of the Teamsters Local 743 who build sink stations at WaterSaver Faucet Co. and its sister company Guardian Equipment Inc. said that workers have been disciplined for exceeding their allotted bathroom time of 30 minutes per week, or 6 minutes per workday.

“They offered $1 per day for anyone who doesn’t go to the bathroom at all,” said Nick Kreitman, senior business agent for Teamsters Local 743. So far, 19 people have been disciplined, with written or oral warnings, he said.

The union contract currently allows for a 7.5-hour workday, including a 10-minute break in the morning, a 30-minute lunch break, a 15-minute afternoon break, and a 5-minute cleanup period before the shift ends, according to Steven Kersten, owner and president of WaterSaver Faucet Co.

The company installed a bathroom tracking system, in which employees swipe their ID cards to get into the bathroom, earlier this year.

Union members say that last month, managers began routinely disciplining workers who were using the bathroom more than 6 minutes per day.

Workers drink coffee, water, and energy drinks during their shifts, which inevitably leads to nature taking its course, union representatives said. Company representatives say the discipline began only after workers ignored previous pleas to be use bathroom times wisely.

“(The company’s) philosophy is that they feel like people are getting an extra break in the bathroom,” said union representative Kreitman. “It’s a company that doesn’t grant paid sick leave, so it’s more than a coincidence that (the owner) started to discipline workers after we asked for paid sick leave.”

But owner Kersten said there is no bathroom “allotment” beyond scheduled breaks and that workers were only disciplined when the tracking system showed they were taking excessive bathroom breaks. He cited one worker who was tracked using the bathroom six times in one shift, including two minutes before his scheduled morning break.

“Our point of view is that anyone can go to the washroom when they need to but what bothers us is extended periods of time and multiple trips that cause lost productivity,” he said.

The company lost 120 hours of productivity in May due to unscheduled bathroom breaks, Kersten added.

Local 743 staged a demonstration on Wednesday in front of the company’s River West headquarters to protest the working conditions. The union, which represents 140 employees of the companies, is currently negotiating a new contract.

“It creates a lot of job stress,” said Kreitman. “The owner buys your time and [the owner] doesn’t buy your time with bathroom breaks,” he said.

Photo via WikiCommons

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