Exposing How Donald Trump Really Made His Fortune: Inheritance from Dad and the Government's Protection Mostly Did the Trick

Alternet /Berrett-Koehler Publishers / by Brian Miller, Mike Lapham

This excerpt from "The Self-Made Myth: The Truth About How Government Helps Individuals and Businesses Succeed" tells the real story about how Trump got so obscenely rich.

In March 2011 Forbes estimated Donald Trump's net worth to be $2.7 billion, with a $60 million salary. Many praise and analyze his “success” as if it were self-made, and they fail to attribute the proper credit to others in society where it is deserved. Despite what Trump may espouse, his success would have been in no way possible without his father, the general public, and the US government. Unfortunately, Trump decided to forget or selectively ignore these truths while forming his political philosophy, a sentiment made particularly clear during his brief bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. 

Trump was born in New York City in 1946, the son of real estate tycoon Fred Trump. Fred Trump’s business success not only provided Donald Trump with a posh youth of private schools and economic security but eventually blessed him with an inheritance worth an estimated $40 million to $200 million. It is critical to note, however, that his father’s success, which granted Donald Trump such a great advantage, was enabled and buffered by governmental financing programs. In 1934, while struggling during the Great Depression, financing from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) allowed Fred Trump to revive his business and begin building a multitude of homes in Brooklyn, selling at $6,000 apiece.

Furthermore, throughout World War II, Fred Trump constructed FHA-backed housing for US naval personnel near major shipyards along the East Coast.

In 1974 Donald Trump became president of his father’s organization. During the 15 years following his ascension, he expanded and innovated the corporation, buying and branding buildings, golf courses, hotels, casinos, and other recreational facilities. In 1980 he established The Trump Organization to oversee all of his real estate operations. 

Trump eventually found himself in serious financial trouble. In 1990, due to excessive leveraging, The Trump Organization revealed that it was $5 billion in debt ($8.8 billion by some estimates), with $1 billion personally guaranteed by Trump himself. The survival of the company was made possible only by a bailout pact agreed upon in August of that same year by some 70 banks, allowing Trump to defer on nearly $1 billion in debt, as well as to take out second and third mortgages on almost all of his properties. If it were not for the collective effort of all banks and parties involved in that 1990 deal, Trump’s business would have gone bankrupt and failed. 

In 1995 Trump took Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. public and received a substantial financial boost from society and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations that enable the market to function. He initially sold 10 million shares at $14 per share and then in 1996 sold 13.25 million shares at $32.50 a share. This initial public offering granted Trump’s company a stability and legitimacy that would have been impossible without millions of people around the world trusting his organization and investing with the hope of shared success. 

Despite the clear societal and governmental assistance described above, Trump continues to be outspoken in his criticism of government. In his book The America We Deserve, Trump explains that “the greatest threat to the American Dream is the idea that dreamers need close government scrutiny and control. Job one for us is to make sure the public sector does a limited job, and no more.” This quote proves to be particularly ironic when considering Trump’s feelings 

Click here to read the full article.

Not Again! How Our Voting System Is Ripe For Theft and Meltdown in 2012

 Alternet/ by Steven Rosenfeld

The Republican war on voters is only the start of really big problems voters face in the 2012 presidential election.


Voting in America is ripe for a major meltdown in 2012.

The most fundamental of democratic processes has become more barrier-filled and error-prone than at anytime since Florida’s 2000 election, when voter list purges, flawed voting technology and a partisan U.S. Supreme Court majority ended a statewide recount and installed George W. Bush as president.

This fall’s potential problems begin with a new generation of voter suppression laws and aging voting machines in a handful of presidential battleground states. And other important factors are in play, such as election officials curtailing voting options due to fiscal constraints, the increasing age of poll workers—volunteers averaging in their 70s—who must referee an ever more complex process, and the likelihood that close races will end up in post-Election Day legal fights.

Voters tell academics they want consistency in voting. Yet emerging trends are poised to upend that hope in many states . This year’s big questions are: where will the meltdown—or meltdowns—occur, what will go wrong, on what scale, and, when it comes to computer failures or tampering, will we even know about it?

“The arc of American history has always moved toward expanding the electorate,” Attorney General Eric Holder told the NAACP Tuesday, saying the Justice Department was pushing back on new voter suppression laws, calling voter ID rules the modern version of segregationist poll taxes. “We will simply not allow this era to be the beginning of the reversal of that historic progress.”

“We need good technology and we need good laws,” said Barbara Simons. The retired IBM computer scientist and nationally known expert on voting technology is co-author of a new book, Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?  which details America’s history of voting machinery and election administration, and concludes that many states have neither good technology nor good vote count rules.

“We are running elections in this country as if we are still in the 19th century,” she said. “The results are announced and there is no verification. At minimum, we should be doing manual post-election ballot audits for all major elections whether or not the results are close, because there even could be a major problem with an election with a wide margin.”

The More You Look, The More Problems 

What’s alarming in 2012 is that different experts are citing a variety of worst-case scenarios, all of which might involve many states and vast numbers of voters. Some scenarios have been well covered in the media, such as the GOP’s war on Democratic voting blocks, which the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson this week called “a crime.” And some have barely been covered, especially as the focus shifts to election administration or vote counting.

“Those of us who specialize in election law engage in a heart-wrenching task: attempting to make an educated guess about the likelihood that one or another election irregularity will lead to a Bush v. Gore -style meltdown,” wrote Nathaniel Persily, a Columbia Law School professor this past Sunday in the New York Daily News . “My candidate for the honor of the next potential chad to dangle: absentee ballots.”

Persily makes a persuasive case in this corner. In 2010, 18 percent of the country voted by mail-in ballots and another 8 percent voted early, in special polling places set up before Election Day. He suggested that potential problems surrounding absentee ballots may be more troubling than the polling place chaos created by harsh voter ID laws, which could create delays that prompt people to leave without voting, and push poll workers to issue many provisional ballots that have to be verified before they are counted.

Click here to read all 4 pages.


 Alternet/ by Steven Rosenfeld

These Tag Team Acts Are Just a Scam

In a wrestling ring, a tag team can make for some entertaining sport -- at least in some people's eyes -- but in the world of scams it has become a cunning way of conning victims.

Many scams involve an accomplice but a tag team mostly refers to con tricks in which the crooks pretend not to know each other. And in some instances, the term can even refer to one individual pretending to be two different people.

The aim is usually the same -- to generate credibility for the scam by seeming to offer independent confirmation that it's genuine.

Click here to read the full article. 

©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at

http://www.scambusters.org

Passion Trumps Everything

by Jon Olson
Hit Exchange News

I have mentioned this before in numerous seminars and quite a few blogs posts over the years and while it may not be true for everyone, there is a little secret I think the world needs to hear more of in this day and age…

Passion trumps EVERYTHING!

It’s more important that skill. It’s more valuable that knowledge. It’s the BIG reason so many companies and people find success in business and in life…They aren’t driven by money, by fame or by accolades, they are driven by passion.

Unfortunately for most of the internet marketing world, this cannot be bottled and sold to the masses in some kind of ‘One Time Offer’ or downloadable ebook. Nope, this is something that comes from within.

What drives you? What is your reason for being in business for yourself?

Hey, I’m not naive enough to say ‘let’s all work for peanuts and for free’ but there has to be something so much more deeper than just a pay check. And you wanna know a secret…

The passion you put forth, if almost like a downpayment or investment in future earnings. That’s right, you CAN and WILL be paid very well for your passion but it cannot be the driving force.

Find your passion. Live it. Breathe it. And you will be awakened to a new sense of purpose. You will be driven by something that can never hold you back…

The sky is truly the limit! Live your passion!

Have a great weekend!

To your success.

Barb :)

news@dpbiznews.net

http://digitalnews.dpbiznews.net/

Today Is Just A Sign Of Things To Come for Sitizens

by Jon Olson
Hit Exchange News

We are ‘slightly’ excited about the promotions we have been doing for Sitizens this week. As you guys and gals know, we launched the site a few days ago and we’ve been working hard every hour of every day to add new features, new cool trinkets and add a community feel to this site.

Everything has been working perfectly =)

In fact, today we’ve added a kick butt new chat system, and a bunch of new potions and spell to increase your experience in the game. Let’s just say, we’re just getting started…
Here’s the best part, as of writing this it’s 11:30am Eastern time…We’ve already had 262 new players join the game today ALONE and we are on pace for THE most active day the game has ever seen. Kings are being over thrown, new domains are being explored and added.

And Tim had to correct me today in the Sitizens chat…I mentioned that the bulk of these new players were from outside the traffic exchanges, and I made a statement that we were really building this ‘outside’ the industry…Here’s the beautiful part as Tim pointed out…Sitizens is EVERYWHERE!

That’s the real power of this program, it’s everywhere and not limited to any one niche…
P.S. Want some more goodies and expand your kingdom? Login to your ‘Castle‘ and Follow Sitizens on Twitter, Like it on Facebook and promote your referral link. You get +50 Kings for every new person you refer…

Have a great week!

To your success.

 

Barb :)

 

news@dpbiznews.net

http://digitalnews.dpbiznews.net/

Sitizens…The DNA May Be Familiar

by Jon Olson
HitExchange News

So it’s no secret now as well ‘officially’ launched our new baby yesterday. Sitizens was the reason TimTech formed over a year ago. We have been dreaming about this program, working on it, testing things and making what we believe to be the best social game and networking site the world has ever seen…But exactly what is it?



There’s been a lot of discussion about exactly what this is…Here’s my opinion of it.

Sitizens is what I always thought a traffic exchange could become. Years ago, I was hooked on traffic exchange advertising and one thing about the start of these programs was when they first started they were filled with a mosaic of sites. Not every site you viewed was a ‘business opportunity’ or some kind of tripler, HYIP, scheme site…But for what seems like forever, traffic exchanges have been filled with these kind of programs only.

TimTech has always been about trying new things so we thought to ourselves…Let’s take what we love and have a passion for, use the techniques which we have been working with and create something brand new…The result? A social game that has the DNA of a traffic exchange, without the need for ‘business opportunities’ at every turn…But but but, here’s the best part…Wanna see those kind of sites? No problem, simply check off ‘Marketing’ in your preferences and presto…You can view whatever you want!

And that’s just it. Discovering new areas of the internet, having fun while doing it, trying to maintain your kingships and best of all, meeting new awesome sauce people!

Discover cool sites and arrive at them, become a king. Arrive more than 5 times, become a Sitizen….And then open it up and ‘Explore’ the internet while other players add new content…Do you see the massive potential here?

No longer limited to the ‘IM’ world, we’ve INCLUDED the IM world but branched out to the big bad world of the…Entire internet =)

I haven’t even gone over the =game aspect fully which is essentially the most addicting thing ever LOL But you can always keep up to date by checking out the official Sitizens Ledger! I’ll be writing blog posts as will Tim and Patrick Griffin.

Get ready for the evolution of traffic exchanges and social gaming…A bold statement? Yup, it sure is! So traffic exchange world…What do you think?

10 Telltale Signs of a Summer Jobs Scam

The further we get into the summer jobs season, the higher the risk of getting caught in a scam.

Most of them involve tricks to part you with your money, but some set out to steal victims' identities.

Click here to read the full article.

©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at

http://www.scambusters.org

500 Scam Busting Issues and Counting!

Though we didn't set out to break any records, Scambusters today reaches a remarkable milestone in our unceasing campaign to help beat the scam artists.

This is our 500th issue -- a landmark for what has turned out to be possibly the world's longest-running, continuously "published" consumer newsletter about the online fraud and offline con tricks we know as "scams."

Our story goes back almost 18 years, when entrepreneurs Audri and Jim Lanford co-founded Scambusters.

In those days, the Internet was barely a twinkle in most people's eyes but Audri and Jim had spotted what was about to happen.

Click here to read the full article. 

©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at

http://www.scambusters.org

Bogus Invoice Conceals a Trademark Scam

A new surge in patent and trademark scam tricks sets out to fool inventors and businesses into paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars for worthless registrations and reminder services.

The scam artists try to hoodwink victims by sending official looking invoices seeking payments. Oftentimes they stay inside the law by burying a disclaimer in the small print.

But the documents appear so genuinely official that it's easy to see how recipients could be tricked into paying.

Click here to read the full article.

©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at

http://www.scambusters.org

The Only Secret To Success I Know…

by Jon Olson
Hit Exchange News

I’ve been in this business for a lone long long time. It’s going on 15 years now and I guess, it’s been my career of choice. I’ve seen so many people come and go, it’s not even funny. I’ve seen the good, I’ve seen the bad…I’ve seen the struggles and I’ve seen the successes but the stat that shocks people the most is this…

95% of the people reading this blog post today….Will not be in business in the next year or two.

Scary? Maybe…I see it as a huge opportunity for the other 5% that work hard, that struggle, that develop a unique game plan and that WILL at all costs, make this business work for them.

And there you have it, one of the only ‘secrets’ to success I know…Stick with it! Nope this isn’t going to cost you $47 to download the rebrand rights to an ebook. You will not have to ‘get in quick on a JV opportunity’ to be a success. You will not have to kiss the rear ends of any ‘guru’. All you have to do, is stick with it!

Not the sexy answer most people want. They want some kind of magic potion or formula…But from the experience I have seen and lived through myself, the people that stick out and stick with it always win. They always succeed and they always make their online business a reality.

So when it gets tough, will you give up and join the majority? Or will you stick with it, and create your legacy and build your business the right way?

Highly recommend by Jon Olson is Click Track Profit.  Best training online. Simple easy steps to learn.  Live help, coaching and fun! So Easy, even a bird can do it!

Have a great weekend!

To your success.

Barb :)

SUMMERTIME, AND THE MARKETING AIN'T EASY

 by C.J. Hayden

Summer is here in the Northern Hemisphere, but it seems many of your potential clients are not. When you get the response "I'll be on vacation until..." one too many times, it's easy to become discouraged about summertime marketing. But fear not, there's plenty you can do to build your business in the summer months. Here are ten cool ideas for what to do while the weather is hot:

1. Network with colleagues. Many of your colleagues may be experiencing a slow time as well. This is the perfect opportunity to set up lunch, coffee, and phone dates to network with others who serve the same target market and build your referral base.

2. Attend some events. Look for networking opportunities in your local area that will allow you to make contact with folks in your niche. Summer calendars often include awards celebrations, fundraisers, golf tournaments, launch parties, expos, and other events with an element of fun.

3. Take time for projects. Tackle some of the important-but-not-urgent marketing projects you never seem to have time for. Update your ezine, revise your website copy, launch a blog, expand your social media networks, or implement a new contact management system.

4. Book speaking gigs for fall. Associations, networking groups, and brown bag lunch programs are lining up speakers now for their fall meetings. Compose descriptions of two or three topics that capture your expertise and reach out to program chairs, group leaders, and hosts.

5. Write that book. You've always wanted to write a book, right? Two slow months could give you plenty of time to write an ebook, workbook, white paper, case study, or other compilation of your words of wisdom. Not into writing? Record a series of audios or videos instead.

6. Make a special offer. Encourage clients to work with you now by offering an incentive. Discounts aren't always the best choice for professionals, so consider get-acquainted offers like free consultations or demonstrations, and bonuses like extra sessions or add-on services.

7. Reconnect with former clients. It may not be the best time to connect with new prospects or get new projects started, but not everyone is on vacation. Take this opportunity to rekindle old relationships. Contact former clients by phone or email and find out what's new in their world.

8. Schedule now for September. With the always-in-touch state of communications today, your prospects may still be connected even when out of the office or away from home. When you leave a message or send an email or text, suggest making an appointment for when they return.

9. Take a class, read a book, make a plan. Not sure what's the best thing to do about marketing? This may be an excellent time to learn and strategize. Participate in a workshop or coaching group, read a marketing book, or create a customized marketing plan.

10. Take time off yourself. Remember that you deserve a break this summer, too. Be sure to schedule your own vacation time. Reconnect with family and friends, with nature, or with yourself. Building your business is always easier once you're rested and restored.
Copyright © 2012, C.J. Hayden

Read more free articles by C.J. Hayden or subscribe to the GET CLIENTS NOW! E-Letter.