{"id":359013,"date":"2018-04-30T03:15:55","date_gmt":"2018-04-30T02:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/can-bean-counters-save-the-world-from-trump\/"},"modified":"2018-04-30T03:15:55","modified_gmt":"2018-04-30T02:15:55","slug":"can-bean-counters-save-the-world-from-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/can-bean-counters-save-the-world-from-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Bean Counters Save the World From Trump?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n

They call people like us \u201cbean counters\u201d\u2014the soulless ones beavering away in some windowless accounting department, the living calculators who don\u2019t care about desperation or aspirations, who just want you to turn in your expense report on time and explain those perfectly legitimate charges on the company credit card. We\u2019re the ones whose demands are mere distractions from any organization\u2019s or government agency\u2019s true mission.<\/p>\n

But maybe bookkeepers and accountants deserve a little more respect. They\u2019re often the ones who actually bring down corrupt officials through dogged attention to those \u201cirrelevant\u201d distractions. It wasn\u2019t for nothing that Washington Post<\/em> reporters Woodward and Bernstein<\/a> decided to \u201cfollow the money\u201d when they were trying to unravel the mystery of the\u00a0Watergate scandal<\/a>. By following that infamous money trail, the two journalists were indeed able to discover secret campaign funds used to pay off the people who had burglarized Democratic Party offices in the Watergate building, along with the men who later covered it up. Eventually that money trail led all the way to Richard Nixon\u2019s reelection campaign, and uncovering it brought down a corrupt president.<\/p>\n

If, one of these days, Donald Trump is taken down, it may well be the bean counters who ultimately do it. When it comes to draining the Trumpian swamp, they\u2019ve already done a pretty good job on several of his appointees. Think, for instance of Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt\u2019s$43,000 soundproof booth<\/a>and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson\u2019s\u00a0$31,000 customized<\/a>\u00a0dining room set.<\/p>\n

The Keys to the Kingdom<\/h4>\n

I\u2019m old, as I like to tell the students I now teach, so I\u2019ve done a lot of things in my life. For some years, almost by accident, I made my living as a bookkeeper and accountant. (The difference between the two isn\u2019t actually a legal one; often it\u2019s more a question of gender than anything else, with a bookkeeper more likely to be a woman and an accountant a man. A certified public accountant is a licensed professional who has the authority to audit an organization\u2019s books. A regular accountant is anyone who understands debits and credits.)<\/p>\n

When I was young, there were generally three career paths open to a woman with a bachelor\u2019s degree: teacher, nurse, and secretary. As a college student in those ancient days before computers took over, I\u2019d refused to learn touch-typing because I was determined never to be a secretary. However, after a stint packing ice cream cones in a factory and a few years as a clerk in Oregon\u2019s state-run liquor stores, I found myself at a temp agency looking for something that might pay a little better. As it turned out, there was a 25-cents-per-hour differential in pay between a \u201cgeneral office worker\u201d and an \u201caccounting clerk.\u201d The latter, however, had to know how to run a 10-key calculator by touch. I admit it: I lied and swore that I could. Eventually, after clicking those keys often enough, I learned how to do it pretty well.<\/p>\n

Later, a friend initiated me into the mysteries of double-entry bookkeeping. I learned why debits (and expenses) are positive and credits (and income) negative, and how at any given moment the whole system should total up to a beautiful zero. I worked by hand in those days, making entries in journals with actual pages. The company\u2019s general ledger was an actual ledger: a big, leather-bound book. When it came time to transfer my skills to computerized systems, I counted myself lucky to have a physical, kinesthetic understanding of accounting.<\/p>\n

Eventually, I used those skills to give nonprofits a hand in grasping one of the keys to power: understandingtheir own money. I helped them stay out of trouble with the IRS and avoid fines from the California\u00a0Fair Political Practices Commission<\/a>. I showed them that their much-coveted 501(c)(3) status did not mean that they had to eschew all political work\u2014that they could, for example, focus on ballot initiatives. I taught immigrant women how to control their own organization\u2019s budget and understand what their financial statements could tell them about where their money came from and how they were spending it.<\/p>\n

Who invented this brilliant system of debits and credits? Arguments over this still rage\u2014albeit in dusty corners of the academic world. It seems clear that a fifteenth-century Italian mathematician,\u00a0Luca Pacioli<\/a>, wrote the first formal treatise on the subject of accounting, laying out the system pretty much in its modern form. But claims have been made for earlier origins in disparate parts of the medieval world, including India, the Islamic empire in northern Africa and the Iberian Peninsula (today\u2019s Spain and Portugal), and imperial China.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear at least that, without Arabic numerals (courtesy of the medieval Arab mathematicians, who also gave us algebra), double-entry bookkeeping would have been impossible. Without systematic double-entry bookkeeping\u2014to accurately record not only what an enterprise receives and spends but what it is owed and owes\u2014capitalism itself would have been almost inconceivable. Today, understanding how money is counted and accounted for offers those of us who seek to expose capitalism\u2019s plundering and exploitation a powerful tool for laying bare\u00a0thieves of state<\/a>\u00a0like Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Counting Beans<\/h4>\n

Maybe accountants and all the rest of us should stop thinking of the epithet \u201cbean counter\u201d as an insult. What could be more important, after all, than keeping track of humanity\u2019s most basic needs? We need to count the foods we eat, the stuff we drink, the clothes that cover us, and the plants and\u00a0animals<\/a>\u00a0they come from. We need to know if we have enough and to make decisions about how to use any surplus our labors generate. Do we invest it in projects that serve the common good (healthcare, education, libraries, parks, renewable energy, infrastructure) or do we transfer that surplus into the hands of a very few, creating a global gilded ageofplutocrats<\/a>on a planet in danger of\u00a0becoming uninhabitable<\/a>?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only by such accounting that we can grasp what expressions like \u201cwealth disparity\u201d and \u201cincome inequality<\/a>\u201d actually mean in people\u2019s lives. If you\u2019ve been poor, you know what it is to be cold or hungry, to feel anxiety about tomorrow\u2019s meals and where they\u2019ll come from. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Agriculture\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that this anxiety, called \u201cfood insecurity\u201d by the experts, affected at least one in eight Americans. That\u2019s 42 million people, 13 million of them children. And that was before House Agriculture Committee Chairman\u00a0Michael Conaway\u00a0proposed<\/a>\u00a0to slash the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP (formerly the food stamp program), over the next 10 years, by more than $20 billion. Such vicious cuts constitutea minor \u201cfix\u201d in response to the staggering federal deficit\u2014expected to increase\u00a0$1 trillion<\/a>\u00a0by 2020 and\u00a0$1.9 trillion<\/a>\u00a0by 2028\u2014thanks to President Trump\u2019s tax \u201creform<\/a>\u201d bill. The proposed SNAP reductions are to be accompanied by punitive new work requirements\u2014despite the fact that, as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)\u00a0explains<\/a>, most recipients are already working\u2014even if at precarious, unstable jobs.<\/p>\n

CBPP<\/a>, by the way, is an excellent example of the contributions to human well-being of people who know how to count beans\u2014and dollars. The members of that group\u00a0dig deep<\/a>\u00a0into every federal budget to reveal the often-hidden national priorities it represents. They work ceaselessly to present a vision of national security based on the actual security and well-being of the people of this country, rather than on using our military forces to destroy the\u00a0security<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0well-being<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0people<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0other nations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not only has such bean counting helped keep us food-secure for much of human history, history itself\u2014as defined by written records of human activity\u2014began with the need to count beans, or more generally to keep track of things people needed for food, drink, and clothing. The earliest Mesopotamian writings are enumerations on clay tablets of wheat, sheep, and importantly,\u00a0beer<\/a>. From this written method of counting and recording things emerged the first writing systems. And writing in turn, allowed us to preserve for the future our species\u2019 history and all the great literature of the world, from the\u00a0Hindu Vedas<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Sappho\u2019s lyrics<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Kendrick Lamar\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0hip-hop rhymes.<\/p>\n

Follow the Money<\/h4>\n

But how, to return to the present, are the bean counters supposed to bring down Donald Trump? By following the money to reveal the international morass of gangsterism and corruption that is the Trump Organization. First, they\u2019ll have to pick off his venal appointees like EPA director\u00a0Scott Pruitt<\/a>, with his penchant for\u00a0first-class flights<\/a>, $100,000\u00a0SUVs with bullet-resistant seats<\/a>, and frequent\u00a0flights home<\/a>\u00a0to Oklahoma at taxpayer expense. Interior Secretary\u00a0Ryan Zinke\u00a0has taken airborne luxury a step farther, preferring to charter private planes for his travel\u2014like the $12,375\u00a0taxpayers spent<\/a>\u00a0to fly him the thousand miles from Las Vegas to his hometown of Whitefish, Montana.<\/p>\n

Then there are the people who worked on Trump\u2019s campaign. Special counsel Robert Mueller has already indicted former Trump campaign director Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates for\u00a0laundering $18.5 million<\/a>\u00a0earned for lobbying work they did in Ukraine and this country. Following the bean trail also led prosecutors to uncover Manafort\u2019s and Gates\u2019s $2 million payments to a Washington lobbying firm working for Ukraine’s former president, Viktor Yanukovych, and his pro-Russia party\u2014although the two Trump campaign workers had never registered as agents for this foreign client. You may recall that Michael Flynn, briefly Trump\u2019s national security adviser, found himself\u00a0in similar trouble<\/a>\u00a0for failing to register as an agent of the Turkish government.<\/p>\n

Closer to home, there\u2019s Jared Kushner, Trump\u2019s son-in-law and\u00a0security-clearance-less<\/a>\u00a0adviser on all things\u00a0Mexican<\/a>\u00a0and on\u00a0bringing peace<\/a>\u00a0to the Middle East. Following the money trail allowed\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0journalists to\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0that Kushner\u2019s real estate business got startlingly large loans from Apollo Global Management, one of the world\u2019s biggest private equity firms. That was after he had several meetings at the White House with one of the company\u2019s founders, Joshua Harris, who was reportedly under consideration for a White House job, although, as the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0indicates, \u201cthe job never materialized.\u201d The Apollo loan refinanced an already-mortgaged Kushner family \u201cChicago skyscraper\u201d and \u201cwas triple the size of the average property loan made by Apollo\u2019s real estate lending arm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there was the under-reported Deutsche Bank-Trump-Kushner connection, which Congresswoman\u00a0Maxine Waters\u00a0has\u00a0doggedly pursued<\/a>\u00a0and Mueller is now investigating. The bank, suspected of using so-called mirror trading to launder money for Russian oligarchs, has loans with\u00a0Trump’s<\/a>\u00a0real estate business totaling as much as\u00a0$364 million<\/a>; Deutsche has also extended lines of credit in the\u00a0millions of dollars<\/a>\u00a0to the Kushners. Some might consider that a possible significant conflict of interest for a U.S. president. CNN<\/em>\u00a0has also\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that Mueller interviewed \u201cat least two Russian oligarchs\u201d about possible contributions to the 2016 Trump campaign.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just Deutsche Bank that has occasionally bailed out the Trump and Kushner operations with mega-loans. As the\u00a0Nation<\/em>\u00a0magazine\u00a0reported<\/a>, both operations have long relied on the kindness of Russian bankers:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe Trump and Kushner families, a marriage (via Ivanka) between two of New York\u2019s leading real-estate dynasties, are multiply connected to Russian real-estate deals. \u2018We don\u2019t rely on American banks,\u2019\u00a0said Eric Trump<\/a>\u00a0back in 2014. \u2018We have all the funding we need out of Russia.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

None of this should be too surprising, given what is apparently a long association with Russian gangsters and their oligarch bosses. As former\u00a0Wall Street Journal\u00a0<\/em>reporter Glenn Simpson\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0a congressional committee, Trump \u201cbuilt relationships with Russian gangsters who were themselves tied to the Russian government.\u201d Those ties were related to\u00a0money-losing golf courses<\/a>\u00a0in Ireland and Scotland. Simpson testified that Trump\u2019s gangster ties go back decades to his association with the Italian mafia, whose loans may well have kept some of his businesses afloat. But wait, there\u2019s more! In Panama, the Trump Organization\u00a0lent its name<\/a>\u00a0to the Trump Ocean Club Panama, a high-rise condo where Russian and other organized-crime figures evidently used the purchase and sale of units to launder millions.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s that potential firestorm of a subject: Did the Trump Organization use real estate deals to launder money from global criminal activities of various sorts? The\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0describes<\/a>\u00a0a number of possible deals involving shady characters in countries from Azerbaijan to Panama, not to mention the U.S. Such deals may well have allowed government officials and other thieves to\u00a0turn<\/a>\u00a0ill-gotten gains into clean money by parking it in shell corporations, which then invested in real estate. When condos or shares in a building are sold to another party, hey presto, the dirty money is now clean.<\/p>\n

Suspicions have long been rife that Trump & Co. were neck deep in the dismal swamp of pay-to-play money laundering and other I\u2019ll-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine corruption schemes. But no one will be sure until the bean counters get their hands on the appropriate documents and lay out that money trail, dollar by ruble by hryvnia by peso, for Robert Mueller and others to follow. And when that happens, we can thank the women and men clicking their calculators and filling their spreadsheets in the accounting department.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Via Common Dreams<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They call people like us \u201cbean counters\u201d\u2014the soulless ones beavering away in some windowless accounting department, the living calculators who don\u2019t care about desperation or aspirations, who just want you to turn in your expense report on time and explain those perfectly legitimate charges on the company credit card. We\u2019re the ones whose demands are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":359014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-359013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}