Just as Brett Kavanaugh is about to become Trump's "made man" on the Supreme court---protecting Trump from such nuisances as Emoluments fraud and fifty shades of tax evasion---it's probably not the best time to be watching the great Italian T.V series, The Octopus, or La Piovra,--- one man's life long fight against the Mafia. With the new revelations of tax fraud and shady dealings by Trump just revealed by the New York Times, and with a Trump boy on the Supreme Court for protection, the morphing of Republicans into the Trump Mafia Party party seems far too real. 

In the third season of La Piovra the novitiate, a grand daughter, is being trained in the black arts of International finance to prepare her for management, grand dad having just sold out the bank to the Mafia as a way to salvage the family institution. 

Grand dad shows the young woman a plethora of stock market sales of various securities---sales and purchases by the bank, followed by resales by European bank affiliates, fairly complex, and then asks her, "....so what do you think is going on here?"  Without missing a beat she says, '..you're exporting capital without paying taxes on it"----and apparently, the Trump siblings, including Maryanne, a Federal Judge, were not as quick on the uptake in recognizing such questionable capital transfers as the ones orchestrated through All County Building Supply and Maintenance, lowering evaluations and thus lowering taxes elsewhere. It never hurts, here, or in Sicily of prior decades, to have connected accountants, lawyers, N.Y. D.A.'s and judges to take the fall for shoddy transactions. 

The Trump family scheme of buying boilers from a Bronx manufacturer, for example, through a shell company, and reselling the boilers to their real estate property companies at inflated prices is worthy of a T.V series--- perhaps with deNiro playing the role of Fred Trump. The Times investigation, richly enough, began over a  year ago when All County's name appeared in Senate financial disclosures of $1 Million in income---from All County to Trump's sister, and Federal Judge, Maryanne. So began the unwinding of the Donald Trump "self-made man" story.

Selling boilers to affiliates at inflated prices was ultimately, among other things, a gift of capital to Trump siblings, untethered to estate and gift taxes. There was of course income, and other taxes incurred. But in the grand scheme (note to the chumps who have regular paychecks---the idea is to lower income and increase capital gains) the various property companies who purchased the boilers over-paid----thus reducing property income, which in real estate investments reduces value, which, as is shown in the Times expose, for example, was eventually recouped when the siblings liquidated Fred's estate at low values and thus lower taxes. Fred's properties were eventually sold at 16 times the value inherent in the estate filings--self evidently fishy, but who cares.

To add insult to the scheme, the receiving properties, by showing higher expenses, used the reduced profitability as a method to increase rents on tenants.  Gotta love it.  La Piovra is filled with great lines, like the Mafia boss who says, about corrupt officials,  "When money starts to sing, the music stops playing."

No doubt when tax evasion lawsuits reach the Supreme Court, the son whom Trump is most proud of, Brett Kavanaugh, will find a way to screw the plaintiffs---perhaps through original intent---to wit, those left wing estate taxes, in effect at the time of the tax frauds, were in themselves, unconstitutional.

La Piovra is recently available through MHz on Amazon Prime. In the twilight hours up here in the wilds of North Texas, I have watched and re-watched Wallander, Maigret, Spiral---and if you haven't watched Murders at Barlume, you've missed a great comedy.  I use old T.V. at night to escape the reality of this Trump world and the balance of La Piovra episodes will carry me through the next month as Trump's boy joins the Supreme Court---protecting Trump and this great Christian country from the Clintons and the Deep State. I await the new deNiro series---All County Building Supply---chronicling the times in which the U.S. is transformed into the Trump Mafia state.