While those of us in the Bos-Wash corridor are agog over the New York Times story about President Trump’s tax returns, a true disaster is occurring in California wine country.
For what may be the first time, a fire, the “Glass Fire,” has “apparently ran straight through irrigated vineyards in Northern California. It’s increasing clear that under sufficiently dry/windy conditions, there will not always act as interent firebreaks as had usually occurred historically.”
That’s Daniel Swain, a climate scientist, at UCLA talking. Last night, around 6 p.m. Eastern, the fire had burned 11,000 acres of California’s wine vineyards in Napa and Sonoma Counties. The Chateau Boswell Winery in St. Helena was destroyed, as this video from KGO-TV shows.
And the 11,000-acre fire has damaged Sterling Vineyards in Calistoga, as this video from the San Francisco Chronicle shows. But “thanks to the heroic efforts” of firefighters, Duckhorn Vineyards escaped untouched. Castello di Amorosa, the famous Italian castle in Napa Valley and one of USA Today’s best wineries for 2020, suffered structure loss.
The fire has produced all sorts of sad scenes with historic wineries and inns reduced to ashes but also strange and heroic ones such as workers at Ledson Winery pumping water into the winery’s underground drainage system which was on fire in an attempt to prevent the blaze heading up into the main building.
The Glass Fire erupted Sunday, burned about 2,000 acres in a matter of hours. What makes this one so significant is that the fire apparently ran straight through irrigated vineyards in Northern California. If it can happen in St. Helena or Calistoga, it can happened anywhere.
We should all keep the folks in California — and Washington State and Oregon — in our thoughts and prayers.
About the President’s Tax Returns:
Remember your Mother telling you to be nice to the people you pass on the way up because you’ll meet them again on the way down? That’s what’s happening here. Mary Trump, one of the President’s nieces, is the source of the lot of information in the Times story. And she provided the first set of returns to the Times, or so she suggests in her book, Too Much and Never Enough. It’s revenge, pure and simple. She blames the President, other Trump family members for destroying her father. So she tells all in a fascinating gossip read, and she gives the Times the keys to the tax returns.
That having been said, we’ve read the story, and we don’t think Trump did anything wrong, at least in terms of tax law. One of the beauties of being a real estate investor has been depreciation: One can deduct paper losses against real income, then when the building is sold, have the resulting profit taxed at capital gains rates.
We have no problem with capital gains. But we think the depreciations thing is a serious case of “figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” The story won’t stop Trump’s re-election (we think he will barely win the Electoral College), but it should trigger tax reform. If we were writing the law, it would be strictly cash based: No depreciation, period. But you could deduct every penny you spend on interest plus principal payments on loans. So if the Trumps bought a new hotel or golf course, their monthly payments to the bank could be deducted, 100%. We would also let business set aside cash into an account similar to an IRA to pay for new equipment, property or repair of existing property. This sort of reform will occur in 2284. We’re looking forward to 2284.
About News Judgment:
ABC World News Tonight devoted 13 minutes to the Times’s story on Trump’s tax returns. About 2 minutes on the Glass Fire and the implications for other fire situations out West.