View From Here
By David Mark Greaves

If you were worried about the election before the first Presidential debate, you must be more so afterward. Trump has no respect for rules or constraints of any kind and it is painfully apparent that he has no intention of abiding by the results if he loses. And he wants his neo-fascist “Proud Boys” supporters to “Stand back and stand-by.”
What we saw last night was a man incapable of accepting being challenged. This is what many who have been in private meetings with him have said. He does not want to hear any information that conflicts with what is already in his head. The subtitle of his niece, Mary Trump’s book, “How my family created the world’s most dangerous man,” was not an exaggeration. It was a stark warning.
The country is in deep, deep trouble. Vote as early as you can. It is not up to him to decide the election. That is our decision, not his. He is intent on staying in power, because leaving is beyond his comprehension. And after the NYT reporting on his taxes and financial situation it is even more obvious why: he’s going to be broke and going to jail.
Watching that debate was unlike anything we’ve seen in the past and it is like being in a nuclear facility with all the lights blinking red, sirens blaring and loudspeakers shrieking “Warning! Warning!”
With the rightwing judges he’s placed and with his third pick about to be named to the Supreme Court, he will use whatever he can to subvert the will of the people. We have to be ready for the worst time of our national life, except for the Civil War, but this will come as close to it as we have ever been.
And you cannot blame the moderator, Chris Wallace for the debacle. It is not possible to control someone who cannot control himself. Who has no inner guardrails. Who is all anger and venality.
New York early voting begins October 24th, that’s when to start marching to the polls. Go to findmypollsite.vote.nyc to find your early voting site and hours.

The Tax Code
Okay, we get it. Our president is a con artist and a cheat and so much more. However, what is most distressing about his $750 tax payments for 2016 and 2017, his non-payment of any taxes at all for 10 of 15 years and his $72 million tax refund for when he did pay taxes, is that much of what he did is within the law, or so close to it that the difference between avoidance and evasion, is determined by lawyers and accountants, the higher priced, the better.
After we finish with Trump, it’s the tax code that protects billionaires and non-taxpaying billion-dollar corporations from contributing their fair share to the running of the country that has to be reformed as aggressively as those who work to avoid the payments we all have to make. And if the Democrats do take over congress, we’ll have to raise a clamor that makes reforming the tax code a first-year priority.