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China Is Pumping Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Into New Renewable Energy Projects by 2020

by TeodoroAAQ Posted on January 5, 2017

Mother Jones

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President-elect Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax created by the Chinese. The Chinese disagree—and are pumping billions of dollars’ worth of investments into green energy over the next three years.

On Thursday, Reuters published details of the latest installment of China’s plans to break its deadly use of coal, an addiction that makes it the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitter.

The funds—$361 billion by 2020—are designed to create 13 million green jobs, according to the country’s National Energy Administration. New projects such as solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear power will form half of all new electricity generation by 2020 and will create the energy equivalent to 580 metric tons of coal.

The announcement matches China’s past pledges to kick its coal habit—the fuel that dominates its electricity production and creates heartburn for the country’s leaders, as the public’s angry reaction to foul air becomes a major political threat. Despite China’s so-called “war on pollution,” this week brought yet another toxic “airpolcalypse” to Beijing’s skies. Watch this incredible time-lapse video of the smog rolling into town:

China has been pulling out all stops to create a clean-tech revolution. Last year, a Chinese firm topped a reputable global ranking for wind energy production for the first time, beating America’s General Electric. China already leads the world in solar. (Go inside a massive Chinese solar factory with me, here.) China is also on track to peak and then begin to taper its greenhouse gas emissions around 2025—five years ahead of a promise made by its leader, Xi Jinping, in November 2014, as part of China’s historic deal with the United States. This year, China will launch the world’s biggest national carbon trading market.

But China is on the verge of losing its major global partner in these endeavors. Trump has promised to end America’s role in the Paris climate agreement and cancel contributions to UN climate programs. He has also tapped pro-fossil-fuel and anti-regulation types, including some unapologetic climate change deniers, for top positions in the new administration. For example, as Oklahoma attorney general, Scott Pruitt has repeatedly sued the Environmental Protection Agency—which Trump wants him to lead.

There are also Trump’s new anti-China trade hawks, including outspoken China critic Peter Navarro, who advocates a much more adversarial approach, including a controversial 40-plus percent tariff on Chinese imports, potentially ratcheting up tension between the two global giants even before Inauguration Day on January 20.

China has issued unusually blunt warnings to Trump and US leaders if they abandon international efforts to combat climate change—while saying they’ll act alone if necessary. “If they resist this trend, I don’t think they’ll win the support of their people,” said China’s longtime climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua before the November election. “And their country’s economic and social progress will also be affected.”

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China Is Pumping Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Into New Renewable Energy Projects by 2020

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The Link Between Road Pollution and Dementia Just Got Stronger

by deneseschilling Posted on January 4, 2017

Mother Jones

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Most of us associate car pollution with coughing and wheezing, but mounting evidence is linking air pollution to a less obvious health effect: Dementia.

People who live near a major road are up to 12 percent more likely to develop dementia—a group of memory-loss disorders including Alzheimer’s disease—than those who live further away, according to study published Wednesday in medical journal in The Lancet.

The study, led by scientists at Public Health Ontario, found that the risk of dementia increased the closer residents lived to a major road, and the longer they lived there. The authors tracked all the adults living in Ontario, Canada—about 6.6 million people—over the course of a decade from 2001 to 2012. Using postal codes and medical records, they determined how close a given resident lived to a major road—including freeways, highways, or congested roads with two or more lanes—and if they went on to develop dementia.

Residents living within 50 meters (55 yards) of a major road were between 7 and 12 percent more likely to develop dementia, depending on how long they had lived there and whether they lived in an urban or rural area. With distance from the road, the risk dissipated until, 200 meters away from a major road, residents were at no more risk than those who lived further away.

The numbers are particularly alarming considering how many people live close to traffic sources: Nearly half of adults in Ontario lived within 200 meters (219 yards) of a major roadway, and Copes estimates similar numbers for the United States.

This isn’t the first study to suggest that air pollution can change the brain. As journalist Aaron Reuben reported in a 2015 Mother Jones feature, several studies have found that people exposed to high pollution rates over time show more cognitive decline and pre-dementia symptoms than those who breathe cleaner air, even when controlling for things like income, ethnicity, and other environmental factors. Scientists are still pinpointing exactly how air pollution changes the brain, but as Reuben noted, fine particulate matter found in car exhaust is small enough to travel throughout our bodies—including to our brains. Once in the brain, pollution particles lead to inflammation that could contribute to cognitive decline over time.

Public health advocates have long recommended limiting exposure to major roads to the extent possible—whether that means living farther from major roads or choosing to exercise or commute on less congested streets. For now, this option isn’t available to all: Multiple studies have found that people of color and low-income populations are be exposed to air pollution at far higher rates than white people.

“The challenge is to look at different ways of laying out of communities so that we have a higher percentage of our population who are located or residing more than 200 meters away from major traffic arteries,” says Ray Copes, the director of environmental and occupational health at Public Health Ontario and a co-author on the Lancet study. That could mean building new homes, schools, and hospitals farther from major roads, or planning cities with more dispersed traffic.

The end goal, according to Copes: create “a greater degree of separation between traffic and noses.”

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The Link Between Road Pollution and Dementia Just Got Stronger

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Obamacare Was Not Passed Via Reconciliation

by ATGElida32606 Posted on January 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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David French:

Remember when the Democrats passed ObamaCare through reconciliation, using procedural gimmickry to pass major social legislation over the unanimous objection of the majority party? So do congressional Republicans, and it looks like payback might be imminent.

I know this is an easy mistake to make, but I’m pretty sure Obamacare was passed over the unanimous objection of the minority party, the Democrats having won a massive, landslide victory in 2008. They figured this gave them a mandate to carry out the promises made during the campaign—silly, I know, since only Republicans have mandates—and they proceeded to do just that.

Less excusable is French’s contention that Obamacare was passed via reconciliation. It wasn’t. It was passed in the Senate under regular order, by a vote of 60-39 on December 24, 2009. Later, after Democrats lost their supermajority in the Senate, the House passed the Senate bill and then passed a second bill that implemented a few modest increases to subsidy levels and taxes. None of them were critical to the overall bill, but the Senate agreed to support these changes. These small, nonessential adjustments are the only part of Obamacare that was passed via reconciliation.

Everything else—the individual mandate, the pre-existing conditions ban, the subsidies, the Medicaid expansion, the medical loss ratios, the donut hole, the cost improvements, the taxes to pay for it all—in other words, everything that mattered, was passed via regular order.

As for the unanimous opposition of Republicans, that’s perfectly true. Democrats in the Senate tried mightily to put together a plan that might attract some GOP votes, but Republicans were adamantine. They pretended to negotiate, but by October it was clear they were just playing delaying games and had no intention of ever supporting anything that would expand access to health care. This strategy of blind obstruction, which applied to every part of Obama’s agenda, not just Obamacare, is a huge blot not on Democrats, but on the congressional Republicans who decided on it before Obama ever set foot in the Oval Office. It was only in the face of this unconditional obstruction that Democrats went ahead and passed something on their own.

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Obamacare Was Not Passed Via Reconciliation

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Here’s How Obama Is Trump-Proofing His Legacy

by ShannonZaleski Posted on December 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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So what has President Obama done over the past month to get a few last-minute liberal priorities in place before Donald Trump takes over? Obama has moved forward on eight substantial executive actions so far:

Enacted a permanent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in areas of the Arctic and the Atlantic Seaboard.
Refused to veto a UN resolution condemning Israel’s settlements in the West Bank.
Designated two new national monuments totalling more than 1.6 million acres: Bears Ears Buttes in southeastern Utah and Gold Butte in Nevada.
Instructed the Department of Homeland Security to formally end the long-disused NSEERs database, which Trump could have revived as the backbone of a new Muslim registry.
Instructed the Army Corps of Engineers to deny final permits for the Dakota Access Pipeline where it crosses the Missouri River near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.
Issued a final rule that bans the practice among some red states of withholding federal family-planning funds from Planned Parenthood and other health clinics that provide abortions.
Finalized rules to determine whether schools were succeeding or failing under the Every Student Succeeds Act.
Began an investigation into charges of Russian hacking during the presidential campaign.

This last-minute flurry of activity is actually fairly normal, but Trump is annoyed anyway, saying he’s doing his best to “disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks.” Too bad, Donald: there’s more to come. According to Politico, “As many as 98 final regulations under review at the White House as of Nov. 15 could be implemented before Trump takes office. Seventeen regulations awaiting final approval are considered “economically significant,” with an estimated economic impact of at least $100 million a year.” Here are fifteen of the most important ones:

A new policy making it easier to hire and retain highly skilled immigrants.
A new rule forcing state regulators to tighten oversight of for-profit colleges that operate online courses in their state.
New energy efficiency standards.
Regulations designed to discourage speculation on commodities trading.
A new rule that would regulate air pollution from the oil industry.
A change in the way Medicare drug payments are administered.
Reform of Medicare payments to doctors, moving toward a system that better evaluates the quality of care they provide.
Finishing up an investment treaty with China (though it would require Senate approval in 2017).
Speeding through a backlog of debt relief claims from students at ITT Tech and Corinthian Colleges, two for-profit colleges that went out of business under pressure from the Obama administration.
A ban on cellphone calls on commercial flights.
A rule requiring that most freight trains have at least two crew members on duty.
Rules for the 2018 version of the Obamacare state insurance marketplaces.
Regulation of methane releases from oil and natural gas wells.
A major rule on leases for wind and solar projects on federal land.
A rule that aims to ensure poor and minority students get their fair share of state and local education funding.

Some of these actions could be overturned either by Trump or by Congress, but not all of them. Congress is restrained by the fact that it has limited floor time to review new rules. Trump is restrained because agency rules go through a lengthy rulemaking process before they’re finalized, and he would have to start up this entire process all over again to repeal them.

Of course, all of these actions are also susceptible to court fights, just as they always are. There’s no telling how that might turn out.

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Here’s How Obama Is Trump-Proofing His Legacy

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Did Ryan Zinke Defraud the Government?

by KristinMickens3 Posted on December 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Matthew Cole at the Intercept reports that Rep. Ryan Zinke, Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of the interior, submitted several bogus travel vouchers back in the ’90s, when he was an officer at SEAL Team 6. It turns out he was traveling to Montana not to “scout for training locations,” but to renovate a house he planned to live in after he retired. He was warned to knock it off.

So far this seems pretty minor. It was nearly 20 years ago, and hardly amounted to a major felony. But then there’s this:

After Zinke was caught and warned, he continued to travel home and submit the expenses to the Navy. The offense would normally have been serious enough to have ended Zinke’s career, but senior officers at SEAL Team 6 did not formally punish him…Instead he was told he would not be allowed to return to the elite unit for future assignments, according to the sources. Zinke continued his career, and he was eventually promoted to Navy commander, the rank he retired at in 2008.

So the guy was caught, confessed, warned to stop, and then went right on doing it? If that’s really how it happened, it demonstrates a dedication to corruption a little more serious than the odd bit of expense account twiddling. I guess that makes him perfect for the Trump administration.

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Did Ryan Zinke Defraud the Government?

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Watch This Guy Try to Flatter His Way to Becoming Trump’s Ag Secretary

by ElizbethMendez9 Posted on December 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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President-elect Donald Trump has made some mind-bending Cabinet picks, tapping a Big Oil CEO to lead foreign policy, a former pro wrestling magnate as head of the Small Business Administration, and a raunchy burger tycoon from a company with a history of worker wage disputes as head of the Labor Department. But one Cabinet slot remains open: secretary of the US Department of Agriculture, a sprawling agency with more than a $150 billion budget that directs farm and hunger policy.

Last last week, I posted an update about the chaos surrounding Trump’s USDA transition. Since I filed that piece, some fascinating new information has emerged. Here’s a rundown of why another wild-card pick might be on the way:

• During his campaign, Trump assembled a 60-plus-person band of right-wing farm state pols, agribiz flacks, and donors to serve on what he called his Agricultural Advisory Committee. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is one its highest-profile members. On the national scene, he’s most famous for (1) unapologetically sharing fake news stories on his office’s Facebook page; (2) calling Hillary Clinton a “cunt” on on Twitter; and (3) trying to bill his state’s taxpayers for a trip to take a medical procedure called a “Jesus shot.”

In what Politico described as a “Hail Mary attempt” to assert himself as a candidate to take the USDA helm, Miller released a fulsome love letter to Trump Friday in the form of an op-ed piece. “The focus is now the golden lobby of Trump Tower, the new symbolic representation of power in America: an edifice built by sharp-edged business acumen and cold American cash rather than taxpayer dollars and political pork,” Miller opines.

At the start of the piece, Miller predicts that “not only will Donald Trump defy his critics, befuddle his opponents and become one of our greatest presidents, but he will fulfill his promise to Make America Great Again.” By the end, Miller is ready to go further: “In just over one month Donald Trump has already kept the pledge written on thousands of red caps across the America: He has already Made America Great Again.”

• Just a little over a week ago, Trump seemed close to choosing a centrist Democrat from a farm state as USDA chief—a surprisingly tame pick for this crew. It would also have been diabolically smart, because if Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) could have been persuaded to take the post, it would quite likely have meant increasing the GOP majority in the Senate by one seat, since a Republican would likely have won a special election to replace her. But then Politico reported last Monday that “Trump’s closest rural advisers are trying to torpedo efforts” to appoint Heitkamp, and the post has been in limbo ever since.

Since then, the San Antonio Express News‘ Lynn Brezosky has added some excellent perspective on what happened. She got a hold of an email from one of Trump’s ag advisers, high-powered DC attorney Gary Baise. (Baise confirmed the authenticity of the email, Brezosky reports.) Baise is a significant figure in Trump World—he’s the man who takes credit for putting together the Agricultural Advisory Committee on which the above-mentioned Miller sits. Baise represents Big Ag interests for the law firm and lobbying house Olsson Frank Weeda Terman Matz, and serves as policy expert for the Heartland Institute, an oil industry-funded think tank that denies man-made climate change.

In his email, which went out to the transition team as well as members of the ag advisory group, Baise declares:

Politico just put this story out regarding the delay in selecting a USDA Secretary. All of you need to know that I have been advised that a person on the Trump transition team believes “I” have been causing problems regarding the USDA Secretary selection. I have been told indirectly to “back off”!!!! Rest assured I will not. I am speaking and reflecting you, Mr. Trump and agriculture’s best interests not some politically correct solution. President–Elect Trump did not win by being politically correct!

The “politically correct solution” he’s referring to appears to be choosing Heitkamp. Baise goes on to call for a USDA chief who “supported Mr. Trump and did not oppose him or offer lukewarm support,” and who is “not a Tom Vilsack type” (a reference to the current USDA secretary).

• San Antonio Express News‘ Brezosky goes on to report that members of Trump’s advisory committee “say they had been promised a seat at the table on agricultural policy,” and Baise’s email represents their effort to promote themselves. Meanwhile, Politico reports that Charles Herbster, chairman of that committee, remains a contender to become Trump’s USDA pick. Citing a a “source close to the transition,” Politico reports that Herbster “managed to stay under the radar as he made his way to New York last week to meet with Trump transition officials,” though “he doesn’t appear to have spoken directly to the president-elect.” The news site adds:

Still, the fact Herbster was summoned to NYC suggests he remains very much in the mix. In many ways, Herbster would make sense: He’s a businessman from one of the country’s biggest farm states who was a key rural backer for the loyalty-loving Trump during the campaign. His dearth of government experience, which would likely be a detriment in any other administration, could fit into Trump’s swamp-draining pledge.

Herbster would be a fascinating drain-the-swamp pick. As I reported in August, he is a major funder of a super-PAC called Ag America, and he even sits on its steering committee. According to the money-in-politics tracker Open Secrets, he donated $60,000 to it in 2015. Other recent contributors include Monsanto, DuPont, Archer Daniels Midland, and several other agribusiness giants. He also runs a multilevel marketing operation—one of those companies like Avon, Amway, or Herbalife that sell their products to the public through a network of individual “distributors” who make money not just based on their own sales, but also from the sales of others they’ve managed to recruit. More here.

Meanwhile, as Christmas approaches, we all anxiously await word of whom our Great Leader will choose to oversee ag and hunger policy.

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Watch This Guy Try to Flatter His Way to Becoming Trump’s Ag Secretary

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Donald Trump Doesn’t Trust the Secret Service, Will Keep His Own Security Force

by Phyllis6404 Posted on December 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Eric Levitz writes about the strange habits of President-elect Donald Trump:

Donald Trump won’t content himself with the standard-issue presidency—he’s going to have his customized. Daily intelligence briefings are out, along with the norms that prohibit the appearance of corruption. “Victory rallies” are in—as is the private security force that policed dissent at Trump’s events throughout his campaign.

Wait. What? I knew about this other stuff, but Trump is keeping his private security force? Isn’t that what the Secret Service is for? Ken Vogel explains what’s happening:

The arrangement represents a major break from tradition…But Trump—who puts a premium on loyalty and has demonstrated great interest in having forceful security at his events—has opted to maintain an aggressive and unprecedented private security force, led by Keith Schiller, a retired New York City cop and Navy veteran.

…In interviews with about a dozen people who interact with Trump, they said even as the president-elect’s Secret Service detail has expanded significantly since the election, he remains most comfortable with Schiller and his team…The Trump associates say Schiller is expected to become a personal White House aide who would serve as the incoming president’s full-time physical gatekeeper.

Every time we learn more about Trump, we learn what a total whack job he is. He’s like a walking encyclopedia of neuroses. But maybe that’s not so bad. Maybe this means he’s perfect for America, since we seem to be a national encyclopedia of neuroses these days. I predict a land office business in Xanax over the next four years.

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Donald Trump Doesn’t Trust the Secret Service, Will Keep His Own Security Force

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North Carolina Statehouse in Chaos as Republicans Act to Maintain Grip on Power

by DemetriLabarber Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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The North Carolina statehouse descended into chaos on Friday as Republican legislators scrambled to pass measures to limit the power of the incoming Democratic governor and protesters were removed from the chambers and arrested.

North Carolina Republicans are seeking to entrench their political power after Democrat Roy Cooper defeated Republican incumbent Pat McCrory in the governor’s race last month. The GOP-dominated state Legislature passed a measure Friday that was quickly signed by McCrory and will effectively give Republicans permanent control of the State Board of Elections during major election years. The Legislature is also considering bills that would drastically reduce the number of political appointees the governor can make and give the state Senate veto power over the governor’s Cabinet picks.

Protesters descended on the statehouse to call on lawmakers to respect the will of the voters. More than a dozen of them have been arrested and kicked out of both the House and Senate chambers during Friday’s special session. General Assembly Police Chief Martin Brock, speaking outside the chambers, said the protests are disrupting lawmakers, and he’ll arrest anyone “leading songs, chants, or cheers.” Even so, protesters continue to speak out and to burst into chants such as “All political power comes from the people!” and “Whose house? Our house!”

Tensions were just as high inside the chamber, where procedural disagreements between Democrats and Republicans led to a shouting match between legislators. Several legislators also complained that the protesters outside prevented them from hearing their colleagues’ remarks. But the noise did not stop the legislators from passing Senate Bill 4, the bill to overhaul the State Board of Elections and reduce the influence of the governor’s party. Democratic legislators have argued that the bill is overly broad and that the special session does not allow enough time to discuss it.

Democratic members of the House continued to debate the purpose of the special session and the lack of notice given to Democrats before it began. “I think we are doing great harm to our body when we don’t give members equal access,” one legislator said. Throughout the session, Democrats have argued that the session is a blatant attempt to curb the powers of the governor-elect. On Thursday, Cooper threatened to sue the Legislature over any new laws he deems unconstitutional.

On a call with reporters, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a leading candidate for Democratic National Committee chair, said that North Carolina Republicans were “undermining the democratic prerogatives of the people of North Carolina” and that the bills passed during the special session “would lead to unprecedented partisan gridlock” in the state. North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Robin Hayes released a statement calling the protesters a “small mob” that violated “the rights of over nine million citizens.”

The News and Observer has a livestream of the commotion in the statehouse:

Update 4:45 p.m.: The state House and Senate passed the bill stripping the governor of power over his own Cabinet and subjecting these appointments to state Senate confirmation. McCrory has yet to sign the bill.

This story has been updated to reflect McCrory’s signing of Senate Bill 4 and the comments from Ellison and Hayes.

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North Carolina Statehouse in Chaos as Republicans Act to Maintain Grip on Power

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“If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite.”

by dylanmalloy8335 Posted on December 15, 2016

Oregon’s largest city became the first in the nation to ban the building of major fossil fuel terminals and the expansion of existing ones after a unanimous city council vote on Wednesday.

The city council used zoning codes to enact the ban, which will go into effect in January, and will prevent the construction of any new terminals for transporting or storing coal, methanol, natural gas, and oil. Other West Coast cities made similar moves earlier this year: Vancouver, Washington, banned new oil terminals and Oakland, California, banned coal terminals.

In the wake of the Trump election, it’s clear that the federal government won’t be taking climate action, so environmentalists are increasingly looking to cities to adopt climate change–fighting policies — and those cities might want to follow Portland’s lead.

“What we’ve done in Portland is replicable now in other cities,” Portland Mayor Charlie Hales told InsideClimate News. “Everybody has a zoning code.”

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also encouraging cities to take action. “Mayors and local leaders around the country are determined to keep pushing ahead on climate change,” he wrote recently, “because it is in their interest to do so.” It’s also in all of ours.

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“If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite.”

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A Guide To Donald Trump’s Huge Debts—and the Conflicts They Present

by ShellyCqnrzoy Posted on December 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump has announced that on December 15 he will hold a press conference to reveal to the world his plan to address the many conflicts of interest between his vast business empire and his new role as president. Trump has indicated that he will remove himself from the daily “business operations” of the Trump Organization—but not sell off his holdings or create a truly blind trust.

Ethics experts have criticized this approach because Trump would continue to own his properties, benefiting from their success and suffering from their losses. He would know when his policy decisions and actions—or those of others (including corporations and foreign governments)—could affect his assets. Consequently, he would not be separating his presidential decision-making from his own personal financial circumstances. Yet, arguably, the biggest conflicts he faces aren’t related to what he owns. Rather, they relate to what he owes.

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All of Trump’s top properties—including Trump Tower, the Trump National Doral golf course, and his brand new luxury hotel in Washington, DC—are heavily mortgaged. That means Trump maintains critical financial relationships with his creditors. These interactions pose a significant set of potential conflicts, for his creditors are large financial institutions (domestic and foreign) with their own interests and policy needs. Each one could be greatly affected by presidential decisions, and Trump certainly has a financial interest in their well-being.

Below is a list of all the financial players that Trump owes money to and how much Trump directly has borrowed from each one. This roster is based on publicly available loan documents. According to his own public disclosure, Trump, as of May, was on the hook for 16 loans worth at least $713 million. This list does not include an estimated $2 billion in debt amassed by real estate partnerships that include Trump. One of those loans is a $950 million deal that was cobbled together by Goldman Sachs and the state-owned Bank of China—an arrangement that ethics experts believe violates the Constitution’s emolument clause, which prohibits foreign governments from providing financial benefits to federal officials.

Deutsche Bank: $364 million

The troubled German bank is Trump’s top lender and has been for years. When the rest of Wall Street essentially abandoned Trump years ago, apparently frustrated by his business tactics, Deutsche Bank stuck by the celebrity developer. Well, not all of Deutsche Bank. In 2005, Trump borrowed $640 million from a group of banks, including Deutsche Bank, to build his Chicago tower. But by 2008, the real estate market had gone bad, and Trump was in financial trouble. Shortly before he was due to pay Deutsche Bank $40 million for a portion of the loan he had personally guaranteed, Trump filed a lawsuit against the German bank, demanding $3 billion to compensate him for the international economic turmoil that Trump claimed the bank had helped cause and that Trump now said was hurting his investment in Chicago.

The dispute was eventually settled, but Trump’s relationship with the division of the bank handling big commercial loans was done. Instead, he began working with what’s known as the “private bank” side of Deutsche Bank—the division that caters to high-net-worth individuals and which has significantly more leeway to lend money. His various corporations now have four outstanding loans from that part of Deutsche Bank, worth a combined $364 million.

Trump’s Deutsche Bank loans include:

$125 million for two mortgages on his Trump National Doral golf course in Miami. Both were taken out in 2012.
$69 million for a 2014 loan tied to the Chicago tower that Trump and Deutsche previously bickered over. This loan is listed within Cook County property records. Trump’s personal financial disclosure form lists a loan that appears similar but doesn’t match the official record. That document notes he has a 2012 loan for the Chicago tower valued at between $25 million and $50 million.
$170 million for a loan related to the Trump’s hotel in the Old Post Office in Washington, DC. Trump doesn’t own the building—he leases it from the federal government—but he borrowed the money to finance the building’s extensive renovation. It’s not clear when Trump borrowed the money, but it was likely after he announced his bid for the presidency.

Trump has an enormous conflict of interest on his hands with Deutsche Bank. As Trump himself noted in his 2008 lawsuit against the bank, Deutsche played a prominent role in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. The Obama administration has targeted Deutsche Bank and other banks for creating and repackaging bad mortgage products, and earlier this fall the Justice Department announced it was seeking to settle claims against the bank for about $14 billion. That was much more than Deutsche Bank was expecting to pay, and the news sent the bank into a tailspin. Its stock price plummeted amid speculation that it could not remain afloat if the Justice Department pressed the bank for such a big settlement.

Negotiations between the bank and the Justice Department over the size of the settlement are underway. But if they are not resolved by January 20, Trump’s administration will be in charge of handling this case. So a federal government run by Trump will have to decide how hard to push the bank that Trump owes so much to and that has been critical to Trump’s personal fortunes.

Ladder Capital: $282 million

Ladder Capital is not a traditional bank or a big name on Wall Street, but in the last several years it has joined Deutsche Bank as a main source of financing for Trump. In fact, since 2012, these two outfits have been the only ones to lend Trump money. Ladder Capital is a small Wall Street firm that specializes in loaning money for commercial real estate projects and, with the help of the big Wall Street banks, combining pieces of these loans into bigger packages that it then sells to investors.

One big issue with Trump’s loans from Ladder Capital is that he appears to be personally liable for at least $26 million of the debt. So if a problem with the loan emerges, Ladder Capital could ask Trump, not his business, to cover this amount personally. Even if Trump does remove himself from the operations of the Trump Organization and lets his adult children run the business, this conflict of interest would not be addressed. The man in the Oval Office would still be in hock to this financial institution.

There’s another major issue with the Ladder Capital loans. As was reported last week, Ladder Capital has hired Citibank to help organize a possible sale. Sources at the firm told Reuters that new federal regulations covering the repackaging of loans were making the company’s core business more complicated.

It’s possible then that if the firm does go on the block, Trump’s loans could end up being bought by another party. It could be an investor or a financial institution based in the United States or overseas. Imagine, say, a Russian bank owning the debt of an American president. In any event, another troubling conflict of interest could exist—and the public might not even know about this at first, for Trump would be under no obligation to update the personal financial disclosure until it was time to file his annual disclosure report.

Trump’s loans with Ladder Capital include:

$160 million for a loan related to Trump’s 40 Wall Street office tower. Trump took out the mortgage in 2015 to replace a similar loan he had from Capital One with a higher interest rate.
$100 million for a mortgage on Trump Tower. This is Trump’s most prized possession and the possible “White House North,” but he only owns a small portion of the property. (Most of the condo units were sold years ago.) This mortgage provides Trump a line of credit secured by the building.
$7 million for a mortgage on several commercial condo units in the Trump International Hotel Tower on New York City’s Columbus Circle. This loan doesn’t appear on Trump’s most recent personal financial disclosure. He filed that document in May, and he borrowed this money in July. The loan replaced an earlier one of the same amount that Trump had obtained from Swiss bank UBS Capital.
$15 million for a mortgage on three condo units in the Trump Plaza apartment building on New York’s upper East Side.

Investors Savings Bank: $23 million

In 2010, Trump combined an earlier mortgage on his Westchester County golf course into a much larger $23 million mortgage that also leveraged his ownership of condo units in the Trump Park Avenue building in New York City.

Amboy Bank: $16 million

In 2010, Trump took out a mortgage on his Trump National Golf Club-Colts Neck in Monmouth County, New Jersey, for $16 million from Amboy Bank, a tiny New Jersey bank.

Chevy Chase Trust Holdings: $10 million

In 2009, Trump purchased a golf course in Loudon County, Virginia, for $13 million. To make the deal happen, he borrowed $10 million from the land development company that previously owned the property.

Bank of New York Mellon Trust: $9.25 million

Trump’s personal financial disclosure lists bonds, first issued in 1996, against a commercial property on New York’s East 56th Street. Paperwork filed with the State of New York shows the due date on the bonds has been extended to 2020.

Royal Bank of Pennsylvania: $8 million

In 1995, Trump purchased a lavish estate in Westchester County, New York, and in 2000 he refinanced that purchase with an $8 million mortgage from the Royal Bank of Pennsylvania. Trump originally planned to turn the large estate into a golf course, but opposition from local residents blocked the project. The property has been used as a family retreat and a playground for Trump’s two oldest sons. Trump has long had a personal relationship with the bank’s founder, and he allowed the banker’s 10-year-old grandson to perform magic tricks at Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City.

Merrill Lynch: Less than $750,000

In the early 1990s, Trump purchased two houses next to his Mar-A-Lago estate, borrowing about $2 million from Merrill Lynch for these purchases. The loans, which were taken out in 1993 and 1994 and come due in 2019, are now worth between $350,000 and $750,000.

Originally posted here: 

A Guide To Donald Trump’s Huge Debts—and the Conflicts They Present

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