RIGGED: the SUSPICIOUS SURPRISE!

This election of Donald Trump is not only a huge nightmarish surprise; it is a suspicious surprise!  Before I tell you why, allow me to put forth a thought that bears on my suspicions.

Have you noticed that the Donald has a habit (an established pattern) of projecting his own short-comings onto the candidate he happens to be running against?  Almost from the beginning of his Campaign against Hillary, he has labeled her a crook, supposedly because

--of the “scrubbing” of personal emails by her team after she received a government subpoena

-- she solicited money from foreign governments for the Clinton Foundation while she was Secretary of State, possibly putting foreign entities in a favorable position

--a bevy of charges of (supposed) criminal activity, ranging from Ben Ghazi to lying or giving false information to the FBI

What I think the Donald was saying is: “look at Hillary – she’s worse than I am; she’s worse than anybody, so I must be OK!” What he was doing is taking his own past full of criminal behavior and criminal charges and projecting it upon Hillary.  A list of some of the charges against him would have to include:

a.       Ties to the Mafia/Cosa Nostra/the Mob, and to some Russian mobsters as well

b.       Sexual harassment and assault upon women

c.       Racial discrimination against African-American renters

d.       Use of undocumented aliens in his workforce

e.       Trump University fraud – charges & trial pending

f.        Trump Foundation questionable practices

g.       Owning Beauty Pageants that led to harassment of contestants

h.       Non-payment of money owed to workers, developers, lawyers, and others

i.         Use of the courts to sue and intimidate others 

The Donald doesn’t mince words: he’s called Hillary Clinton the 'worst Secretary of State' ever (and Barack Obama our worst President) – reckless and of poor judgment; divisive and someone who has done nothing in 30 years to help the middle or working class.  He has said that the Ben Ghazi deaths are her fault.  He says her other failures include a mess in Syria, a horrendous Agreement with Iran, and the growth of ISIS which he said she created! 

What Donald doesn’t tell us is that he hasn’t had a lot of success overseas himself.  His meeting with the Mexican President produced a denunciation of Trump for even considering the notion that Mexico would pay for an American wall built in opposition to Mexican immigrants.  At meetings with the Prime Minister of England and Mayor of London, Trump couldn’t avoid controversy and negative results because of his big, undiplomatic mouth.

Trump has belittled, smeared and excoriated every candidate he has come up against, including all the Republicans who vied for the GOP nomination.  Every time he levels a charge, one only needs to know that he has projected his own short-comings onto his opponents.  Why? Either he rids himself of feelings of inferiority because he can pretend that “they are worse than he is.”   Or, he is projecting upon others what he so despises in himself – perhaps what others have thrown at him.  Enough said at this point (but if you want to read a lot more about his worst charges and epithets against all manner of people and organizations, check out:  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html?_r=0 )

 In the last weeks of the presidential campaign, when Clinton had taken a more prominent lead, Trump basically accused her of somehow “rigging” the election, although he made it quite general in terms of “the system is rigged” or “they are rigging the election.”  Looking back at my point that Trump has a pattern of projecting his own failings and flaws onto others, I wonder if this “rigging” charge is a clue to something he was projecting onto Hillary to protect himself; to divert attention from the real scheme being hatched?  This leads me to the main concern of this posting:

Did the Donald know something about his own campaign that he immediately projected onto the establishment, represented in his mind by Hillary Clinton?  Was the election rigged, not by Clinton, but by the Trump Team in concert with the Russians?  To me, it has looked very suspicious from the moment that the momentum on election night began to shift in Trump’s favor.  The more I have thought about it, the more suspicious I am that foul play has occurred here, but very few  watchdogs seem to be questioning the circumstances. 

We have somewhat ignored, or underestimated, the incidents of Cyber hacking that took place leading up to Election Day.  Were those incidents completely separate incidents, or were they related to the election in a way that we have not investigated (according to CNN, there is an FBI investigation underway)?  I admit I do not know the answer, but I suspect they did not stand alone, but were “dry runs” “rehearsals” or tests for what was (and may still be) to come. 

So, let’s review a few of those circumstances as possible clues to what may have happened on election night.

a)       Back in August, it was reported by NBC NEWS that U.S. Intelligence officials had determined that “hackers based in Russia were behind two attempts to breach state voter registration databases, fueling concerns the Russian government might be trying to interfere in the U.S. presidential election.”  Although the intelligence agencies did not reveal the names of the states, “officials” told NBC that the theft of data included 200,000 voter records in Illinois, and a separate use of malicious software in Arizona, but the latter attempt to breach that state’s online voter registration database was unsuccessful. 

Nonetheless, local Boards of Elections and state election officials across the country were notified to secure their voter systems.  However, NBC reported that “voting systems have not been considered “critical infrastructure” by the Department of Homeland Security, “so they are not subject to federal government protections.” 

NBC NEWS concluded: “Independent assessments have found that many state and local voting systems are extremely vulnerable to hacking.”

b)      Before the latter two incidents occurred, U.S. intelligence officials reported that Russian intelligence agencies were behind hacks into the Democratic National Committee records and those of related organizations like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, as well as the campaign records of Hillary Clinton made public on WikiLeaks.  Some emails belonging to Clinton Campaign Director, John Podesta, were harsh and embarrassing, while some of those attributed to DNC Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, were devastating to her chairmanship since there were revelations of the supposedly neutral DNC backing Hillary and denouncing any similar backing of Bernie Sanders’ campaign. 

c)       Unfortunately, Russia’s involvement in our electoral process seems to go much beyond what we have already heard.  Although the Russian government denies any state involvement in hacking or trying to undermine the US voting process, per CNN, “hacking groups linked with different wings of the Russian intelligence services – code-named ‘Cozy Bear’ and ‘Fancy Bear’ – were detected inside a Democratic Party server earlier this year, according to CrowdStrike, the US internet security firm hired to investigate the DNC theft of thousands of emails.”

CNN again: “allegations have surfaced of Russian hackers attempting to access US voter records, to sabotage the physical ballot, and of unleashing its troll army – internet bloggers paid by the Kremlin – to spread false information online – in support of Donald Trump.”

The question remains:  just how deep does this Russian intervention and penetration go?  Allow me to present some findings from an article titled “RUSSIAN ‘DUKES’ OF HACKERS POUNCE ON TRUMP WIN” from securitynewspaper.com.

“Less than six hours after Donald Trump became the presumptive president-elect of the United States, a Russian hacker gang perhaps best known for breaking into computer networks at the Democratic National Committee, launched a volley of targeted phishing campaigns against American political think-tanks and non-government organizations (NGOs).  That’s according to a new report from Washington, DC-based cyber incident response firm Volexity.”  That firm has been closely monitoring the activities of a well-established Russian malware development gang known variously as Cozy Bear, APT29, and The Dukes.

Volexity CEO Steven Adair said The Dukes have launched “at least five sorties of email-based malware phishing attacks since Trump’s acceptance speech, and that the malware campaigns are on-going.  The last attack claimed to be a link to a PDF download on ‘Why American Elections are Flawed’.”

Adair also said that the “more typical attacks from The Dukes come in the form of slightly less targeted email blasts that include booby-trapped Microsoft Office documents…that hackers can use to automatically download and run malicious code on a Windows system, that then provides a powerful foothold for the attacker.”

NOW, let us briefly add to this preliminary groundwork, another set of happenings that may bear on this case:

• Trump’s admiration and praise of Putin; Putin’s praise and support for Trump for President of the US.  In addition, the tightly controlled-by-government Russian media have made it quite clear that Russia supports the candidacy of Donald Trump.
• A broader story has also been put forward by some media of Trump’s relationship (and that of others on his team) to Russia and their leadership.  There is also a rumor of Trump’s probable obligation to high-level donors from Russia’s millionaire class, from whom he has allegedly borrowed or received money.  Just what might be requested of him from such lenders?
• And lest we forget, Donald Trump did call upon Vladimir Putin and his army of hackers (after the DNC incident) to aid in finding the missing 30,000 personal emails from Clinton’s private server!
• Polls from 15 polling organizations/individual pollsters at the 270towin.com website indicated a consensus on Nov. 8th that the night would belong to Hillary Clinton by a small but fairly comfortable margin.  Only Nate Silver’s polling (FiveThirtyEight) gave as much as a 30% chance of winning to Trump.
• Then on Oct. 24^th came a letter from the FBI Director, James Comey, to the committee heads and Party Leaders in the Senate, explaining the find of more Clinton personal emails on former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s laptop.  This probably set off a trend toward Trump among undecided voters that was not seen in the polls.  Another letter from Comey on Sunday Oct. 30^th said there was nothing new in the emails and that the FBI’s stance of “no charges” taken in July would stand.  But the damage was done by the first letter, and the Trump camp jumped all over it.
• Now recall the extraordinary Trump visits at the end of the campaign to the states that were traditionally Democrat blue, like Michigan and Wisconsin.  Did the polls suggest that Clinton’s lead was vulnerable enough in those states to warrant these visits, or was there some other reason, like providing a cover for hacking into the vote count on Tuesday night making a Trump comeback and lead look like a trend rather than a hack?  Although Clinton was still seemingly leading in each state, perhaps Trump camp data showed what Silver was seeing: that there were far “more undecided and third party voters than in recent past elections: About 12 percent of the electorate wasn’t committed to either Trump or Clinton in final national polls, as compared with just 3 percent in 2012."
• On Election night, a surge in Trump fortunes in certain traditionally blue states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin) threatened to change those Democratic states to Republican states (blue to red).  The lead seemed to shift back & forth between the candidates as the votes came in from different areas of each state
• Indeed, late-deciding voters broke toward Trump, according to exit polls of most swing states. Or at least, that was the case in states where Trump outperformed his polls, such as in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
• Throw in New Hampshire (where the Democratic candidate for the Senate was leading the incumbent Republican) and the last-minute change in the lead in states like Georgia, Florida and North Carolina in the evening hours, and you begin to wonder what was really happening? 
• Were those earlier hacks into voter records in Illinois and Arizona dry runs to help develop their voter record-hacking capabilities?  Were hacks against the DNC and DCCC part of a broader plan, and maybe a dry run of a modified and improved cyber-attack software?  Were they rehearsals for the big event of hacking into the actual presidential vote?  Why haven’t more media outlets researched this possibility?   Probably because it is very difficult to obtain information on such activity.

One question must be asked:  was it even possible for the Russians to have hacked into polling machines on or before Election night to change the momentum of the election in Rust Belt states so that Trump could count on winning the magic number of 270 electoral college votes?  Could a chip with a certain software have been inserted into unwatched machines locally?  Again, let’s take a closer look:

TIME magazine: “In August, the FBI’s Cyber Division issued a “flash” alert to election officials warning that states must take new steps to enhance the security of their computer systems.  As to probability: “It’s a threat we take very, very seriously,” Tom Hicks, a Commissioner at the EAC told TIME.  “But,” he added, ”from a cyber perspective, this election may actually be less vulnerable to cyber mischief than the elections in 2008 and 2012.”  That rather optimistic viewpoint was then challenged by the next expert cited:

“The real problem, said Lawrence Norden, the deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice Democracy Program, lies with the nearly 40 million Americans who won’t be voting on paper, again based on 2012 figures.  Those voters will instead be saddled with electronic voting machines, many of which are more than a decade old, lack basic cybersecurity protections, and utilize software no more sophisticated than a stripped-down, Bush-era laptop.  In 42 states, electronic voting machines are more than a decade old, according to Norden’s research.”

N.Y. TIMES:  On Nov. 3^rd published an article on “Five Hacks To Worry About on Election Day." The good news is that it is not something that you can easily do from Russia… But the bad news is that it really is possible to do locally." For our purposes, two methods stand out:

Manipulating the count reported to news organizations (A significant risk, but detectable)

“Consider this possibility: It is Tuesday evening, and the networks and other news organizations are clamoring for “unofficial” results so they can call the races in swing states. The precincts report returns to regional centers, and that data flows to The Associated Press, the clearinghouse for unverified returns. If hackers could flip such “data in motion,” they could alter the first call, even if it is an unofficial one.

“Sound far-fetched? It happened recently in Ukraine, in an attack organized by Russia, experts believe. As Ben Buchanan and Michael Sulmeyer note in a Harvard Cyber Security Project report, investigations revealed that “offenders were trying by means of previously installed software to fake election results.” The effort was discovered 40 minutes before the results were scheduled for announcement.

Tinkering with voting machines (Unlikely, but possible)

At every opportunity, federal and state officials have reminded everyone that voting differs from state to state, or even county to county. That makes it hard to hack.  “The voting machines themselves are offline, and we think the system is so diversified it is secure,” said Suzanne E. Spaulding, the under- secretary of Homeland Security who oversees cybersecurity efforts.

Outside election experts fear, however, that this nothing-to-see-here confidence fails to consider known vulnerabilities. “While most voting machines are not connected to the internet while voting is underway, they are often connected before Election Day, to update their ballots and software.

Some machines, like the DS200, an optical scanning model used in many districts, comes with an optional wireless ability. The good news: They can report results automatically. The bad news: Any wireless connection is a vulnerability.”

There are other worries. Six states (Texas, New Jersey, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina) do not have paper backups to create an audit trail if the electronic ballots are questioned. Pennsylvania, a swing state, has paper backups in only some communities.

TheFederalist.com reminds us of something that has occurred before: complaints of current software on the voting machines changing votes. In early voting this year in Texas, for example, “Voters, after selecting an “all-Republican ticket,” reviewed their ballot when they finished only to find that their presidential selection was not Republican at all, but instead Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.”  Similar complaints had also been reported in Nevada and North Carolina.  Apparently, the software company responsible for the Texas incidents, known as ES&S, is “a rapidly growing software programing company based in Omaha, Nebraska, with voting machines in 90 percent of the states. They have counted roughly 50 percent of the votes cast in the major elections within the last 10 years.  This is also not the first time that an ES&S system malfunction was reported to have switched votes, with complaints in the 2008, 2010, and 2012 elections. This software has been in use for several previous elections, and still reports errors in its reliability.”  Of course, 10-year-old voting machines are not helpful for the efficient operation of software, either.

FOX NEWS:  "If you replace the computer program in a voting machine, then it will add up the votes in a different way," said Princeton University Professor Andrew Appel.  Appel, who is the Eugene Higgins professor of computer science, focuses on computer security and voting systems -- and says he needs just "seven minutes alone" with a voting machine to tamper with it. "[Replacing the program] could shift votes around from one candidate to another, before the polls close ... There is the potential for fraud in touch-screen voting machines that are still used in six to ten states," he said. 

“Appel in 2008 first conducted a demonstration on how to hack a touch-screen voting machine, as part of a lawsuit against New Jersey officials. His test… recently has gained renewed attention in the wake of the hacks of Democratic National Committee emails, and the suspected hacking of state election systems in Arizona and Illinois this summer.

While Appel notes there has been no documented case of a voting machine being hacked in the manner that he did, he warns it could happen simply by replacing the machine's computer chip -- which costs about $4 -- with one that is pre-programmed to change the votes. "I figured out how to make a slightly different computer program that just before the close of the polls shifts some votes around from one candidate to another, and I wrote that computer program onto a memory chip ... and now to hack the voting machine, you have to get seven minutes alone with it with a screwdriver."

Appel's video shows that while voters cast ballots for the candidate of their choice, the machine allotted different results when the votes were counted. John Brzozowski, the deputy superintendent of elections in Hudson County, N.J., insists that in real-life, such chip-switching cannot really be done.  The good news is that it is not something that you can easily do from Russia," Appel said. "But the bad news is that it really is possible to do locally."

So, just what might we have learned from this foray into cyber attacks on our political system?  I’ll suggest a few items, briefly:

ü  there has been, and continues to be, an on-going campaign of cyber activity, called ‘hacking’ involving groups connected with the Russian government, since July for sure, (reported by more than one source as being years in the making).

ü  state voting records had already been hacked in Illinois in July; DNC records and member emails at the DNC, the DCCC, and the Clinton Campaign in August which prompted a response from our intelligence community

ü  DNC and DCCC records and emails have been hacked by one of the Russian operative groups known as The DUKES, who are also responsible for hacking of records and emails of other government and non-government organizations; along with the possibility of altering or destroying individual political Blogs if they so choose. 

ü  The Russian hackers were back intervening in our post-election process by hacking into the records and contents of prominent Think-tanks and NGOs just six hours after Trump’s acceptance speech; a remarkable show of on-going interest in another country’s election. 

ü  Changing votes on a voting machine is not all that difficult, as demonstrated by faulty software in old machines, and by newly-created software able to be installed in a voting machine in about seven minutes.

Russian interference in our election process is not just a fling at changing votes to favor Donald Trump, because there is one egotistic, self-aggrandizing world leader who may outshine Trump as a narcissist, and that is Vladimir Putin.  As one article on NDTV put it: “Russian Hacking (is) A Question of Revenge and Respect.”  One must understand this whole attempt at interference and disruption of our most cherished democratic process in the context of Putin’s response to years of “what he sees as U.S. efforts to weaken and embarrass him on the world stage and with his own people.  Moscow appears to be looking to demonstrate its importance as a dominant regional player and world leader… Russia also seeks to counter U.S. leadership and influence in the international system.”

According to one senior U.S. intelligence officer, “Russia is using the same playbook it has used in Europe to try to destabilize public trust in government, weaken support for the NATO military alliance and sway voters to candidates more amenable to Putin’s views and goals.”

 It is therefore important to realize that this Blog post is not simply to blame Russian hacking for the election of our own narcissistic President.  More importantly, it is meant to be a call for greater diligence on the part of our intelligence community, heightened awareness from our voting public, and deeper investigation by our media and our government into the cyber warfare that is now making lasting and destructive inroads into our democratic processes.

 Living with this unfortunate, nightmarish electoral result is shocking enough, but living with the consequences of a Trump presidency, a Republican Congress and an ultra-right Supreme Court, acting together to produce a potential police-state ruled by oligarchs and hate groups, is more than anyone with progressive values can tolerate.

Let the protests and counter-measures accelerate because fair debate and compromise have been eliminated by this flawed electoral process! 

UPDATE: 12/13/2016 --NBC NEWS: 
"The CIA has concluded that Russia mounted a covert intelligence operation to influence the U.S. election in an effort to help Donald Trump win, a congressional official knowledgeable on the matter told NBC News.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper briefed senators on the latest intelligence in a closed-door meeting last week, and he described the latest findings on the intentions of the Russian government with regard to the hacks and other interference in the U.S. presidential election, according to the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the intelligence.

A Washington Post report published online Friday night first described how the intelligence community has reached a "consensus" that Russia intervened in the presidential election to help Trump win — not just try to sow chaos and undermine the electoral process. The New York Times confirmed the story, as has NBC News.
Related: U.S. Intel Agencies Preparing Dossier to Prove Russian Hacks

Trump not only said he didn't believe the intelligence community's assessment — he suggested that the CIA was not to be believed in general, issuing a statement Friday night noting that "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."
Related: U.S. Publicly Blames Russia for Hacking

Several intelligence officials told NBC News they were deeply disturbed by that statement. There is no historical precedent for a president-elect publicly maligning the intelligence agencies he is about to lead. One big question now is how Trump's pick as CIA director, Mike Pompeo, will bridge the acrimonious gap between his boss and the agency he leads.

President Barack Obama...has ordered that a dossier be assembled on the evidence about the Russian covert operation. A senior Obama administration official told NBC News that portions of that will be made public before January 20th.
Related: Hackers Target Election Systems in 20 States

Emails, Impeachment & Pre-Election Polls

Before the Election on November 8th, I wanted to explore three more topics that still seem to be generating some “buzz” as we approach one full day until Election Day.  Since I just posted a piece three days ago on Obamacare in relation to the Trump evisceration of it, I am doing what is unusual here just because it is so close to E- Day.  Not that my opinion will change many votes, but perhaps some thoughts will emerge here that should at least be considered.
 

Hillary’s Emails

I have written about this before, sometime ago before things had heated up (see posting for (3/8/2015 and 8/23/2015).  Here is some of what I said from that latter post:   

“While I believe that it was not a good idea for Hillary to use a private server for her State Department-related email, I also recognize… that (it was not) unusual for high-ranking officials in State and other departments to do so.  There were protocols established in the State Department (and other departments) as to what could be used or discussed while using such servers, and what could not, but those protocols were not strictly enforced nor entirely clear.  There were even disagreements as to what should and should not be 'classified.' 

The point: there is no such thing as one unqualified definition across all of government that is determinant of what is considered "secret" or "classified" because it is difficult to determine the meaning of vague terms in those definitions.  But the Republicans continue to flail away hoping you will believe this fiction.”

Wikipedia has some helpful information in summary form regarding levels of classification.
"The United States government classifies information according to the degree which the unauthorized disclosure would damage national security.”

Top Secret
"Top Secret shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe." 
Secret
This is the second-highest classification. Information is classified Secret when its unauthorized disclosure would cause "serious damage" to national security.  Most information that is classified is held at the secret sensitivity level.
Confidential
This is the lowest classification level of information obtained by the government. It is defined as information that would "damage" national security if publicly disclosed, again, without the proper authorization.

Those now 'hyping' the situation are focused on what might in retrospect be classified as 'secret' but may not have been so classified at the time the emails were written.  What is being missed in this whole issue is of major importance:

Who determines if something in Hillary's emails might have been "reasonably expected to cause serious damage to national security" at the time they were written?  Not the Congress, although they can investigate and criticize all they want.  Not the President, although his State Department can determine if any of their rules were violated.  Certainly not the Republican candidate for President.  Not even the FBI – they only get to make the decision as to whether their investigation is conclusive enough to request that charges be brought against the perpetrator.

In the final analysis, the Courts get to decide whether there was a reasonable expectation that exposure of certain information in those emails at the time could have caused 'serious damage' to national security (except in the case of impeachment which is discussed below).

It is obvious from the reporting engaged in so far, there is nothing but hype, innuendo and inference governing this situation to attract voter attention and to make this story seem like something huge in implication, but to date, nothing substantiates that judgment or claim.  Let us now view Director Comey’s first letter to Congressional leaders in the context of the definitions from Wikipedia, leaving aside the names of committees to whom it was addressed:

October 28, 2016:

 Dear Messrs. Chairmen:
In previous congressional testimony, l referred to the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had completed its investigation of former Secretary Clinton's personal email server. Due to recent developments, I am writing to supplement my previous testimony.
In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.
Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committees about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.

Sincerely yours,
James B. Comey
Director

 “The ACLU released a statement noting that “As the second-highest ranked Justice Department official under John Ashcroft, Comey approved some of the worst abuses committed by the Bush administration. Specifically, the publicly available evidence indicates Comey signed off on enhanced interrogation techniques that constitute torture, including waterboarding.  
A Republican, Comey has donated about $10,000 to Republican candidates and organizations over the years, including $2,300 to John McCain in 2008 and $5,000 to Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign.”

I will leave the full-out conspiracy theories to Dr. Paul Krugman, who has tweeted some remarkable speculations about Comey’s motives.  For me, it is enough to know that Comey is a Republican who has been involved in the G.W. Bush administration, has donated to Republican candidates, and was appointed to the FBI Directorship by President Obama who has appointed other Republicans to prestigious positions (Gates at Defense) when he believed that such a display of bi-partisanship would help to produce good outcomes for the nation.  It has not done so.

I concur with the words of Eric Holder, immediate former Attorney General, who said just days ago that this was a serious breach of principles and policies that are currently in place at the Justice Department (which oversees the FBI as its investigatory arm).  He said this, in part:
 

“I am deeply concerned about FBI Director James B. Comey’s decision to write a vague letter to Congress about emails potentially connected to a matter of public, and political, interest. That decision was incorrect. It violated long-standing Justice Department policies and tradition. And it ran counter to guidance that I put in place four years ago laying out the proper way to conduct investigations during an election season. That guidance, which reinforced established policy, is still in effect and applies to the entire Justice Department — including the FBI.

“The department has a practice of not commenting on ongoing investigations. Indeed, except in exceptional circumstances, the department will not even acknowledge the existence of an investigation. The department also has a policy of not taking unnecessary action close in time to Election Day that might influence an election’s outcome. These rules have been followed during Republican and Democratic administrations. They aren’t designed to help any particular individual or to serve any political interest. Instead, they are intended to ensure that every investigation proceeds fairly and judiciously; to maintain the public trust in the department’s ability to do its job free of political influence; and to prevent investigations from unfairly or unintentionally casting public suspicion on public officials who have done nothing wrong.  Director Comey broke with these fundamental principles.”

And recently, MSN.com reported that “A bipartisan group of nearly 100 former federal prosecutors and senior Department of Justice officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder, signed a letter expressing concerns over FBI Director James Comey’s decision to inform Congress of new emails that may or may not be relevant to Hillary Clinton’s private email server.  ‘… his unprecedented decision to publicly comment on evidence in what may be an ongoing inquiry just eleven days before a presidential election leaves us both astonished and perplexed,’ said the signatories. 
“We cannot recall a prior instance where a senior Justice Department official — Republican or Democrat — has, on the eve of a major election, issued a public statement where the mere disclosure of information may impact the election’s outcome, yet the official acknowledges the information to be examined may not be significant or new’.”
 

Here is my main point about the latest attempts by Trump and his followers to denigrate and bring down Hillary Clinton with the help of this misuse of FBI investigatory power (in much the same vein as Director J. Edgar Hoover used to do, especially regarding the Kennedys whom he despised).

There are several very important principles involved in accusing people of crimes (‘Hillary is a Crook -- ‘Throw her in Jail’, which Trump promised to do if elected!)  This whole trumped-up charge that something crooked has occurred with her Emails is entirely unsubstantiated, to the extent that the FB I and Comey refused to recommend to the Justice Department that formal charges be brought against Clinton in a Court of Law.  Why? Because they knew they would have no “standing” before the Court. 
 
In his October 28^th letter to congressional leaders, Comey admits that the “FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant.”  If that is so, he had no justification for writing that letter because there is no substantive evidence for re-opening the investigation, only speculation, and therefore an effect on the closed investigation does not exist.  That being the case, it is no wonder that Senate Minority Leader Reid and many congressional Democrats, as well as over a hundred federal prosecutors and members of the Justice Department (including Republicans) called for full disclosure of facts, and the possibility of charges against Comey of violating the Hatch Act that prohibits Public officials from influencing elections by using the powers of their office to do so.
Here is my take on the matter in relation to “standing” in the Courts:  nothing has been found in Hillary’s Emails to prove:

• malicious intent
• that harm has come to the nation because of any of these emails
• that any of the criteria for classification of secrets has been substantially violated
• No exceptionally grave damage to the national security has been caused by any of those emails
• No serious grave damage to the national security has ever been proven to exist because of any of her emails
• No damage whatsoever, even at the lowest levels of classification, has ever been proven to have occurred.
• Finally, regarding any kind of civil suit, there has been nothing to indicate that any personal harm has ever occurred to any individual because of her emails existing on a private server.
• Add to those criteria the fact that every citizen is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law and that every person has the right to a (speedy) trial by jury, and Donald Trump is caught on his own petard.

Now, of course, we have the inevitable second Comey letter to Congress as of Sunday, Nov. 6^th (with just one full day remaining before Election Day) that indicates, after thorough examination of those Emails on Weiner’s laptop, there is no evidence which would change the stance of the FB I in July:  they will not initiate charges against Hillary Clinton obviously because nothing of substance – nothing criminal – was found in those latest emails.  "Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton," he wrote.

Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said the campaign never doubted that the new investigation would come to the same determination as the first did. "We were always confident nothing would cause the July decision to be revisited," Fallon tweeted. "Now Director Comey has confirmed it."

Sources told ABC News tonight that the new batch of emails contained duplicates the FBI had already reviewed and therefore did not contain new information that altered their initial findings. Agents were aided by computer programs that sorted through thousands of emails found on the laptop shared by Abedin and Weiner.
 

In my opinion, we have here not only an admission that the July stance is still operative, we have the second letter, by its very existence, confirming that the first letter was truly  interference by a federal agency in a Presidential election.  Nothing of substance that needed reporting to anyone was in the first letter, and the second letter simply confirmed that fact.  Interference is thus the only viable motive for the letter. Moreover, there was no reason for the FBI to have reported to Congress on a closed investigation until the moment when they uncovered new evidence, and had determined that charges would be advanced!  The mere existence of the new emails was not in any way an expansion of Comey’s testimony.  In light of the second letter, the first letter can only be seen as interference in this election.

Unfortunately, from much of the reporting on this incident, there appears to be a faction within the FBI that supports Trump while despising Hillary Clinton.  That small cabal may have pressured Comey to act as he did; we may never know for sure, although a (hopefully) Democratic Senate might want to hold some hearings of its own on this violation of protocol and policy by the FBI Director!

It is Donald Trump who is the larger problem here, just as he was with the “birther” allegations against Barak Obama.  He is a perverse liar and a user of innuendo, gossip, made up stories, and distorted principles of business.  His absolute need to belittle and besmirch all opponents -- to best and beat those he cannot fairly confront in debate, or those with whom he cannot compete in the realms of intellectual or business acumen.  This is a dangerous man, and an even more dangerous politician, because he is not above using the law to flout the laws and standards of justice in our democracy.  He is the epitome of a destroyer of democratic principles.

Equally striking, is his ability to rail against someone else’s flaws and mistakes, and negligence or even crookedness when he is doing or has done the same exact thing.  Take the example of Emails that are destroyed after an official notice has been served to gain access to them.  Now we learn that Trump and his company have done the exact same thing when he was being investigated for alleged wrong-doing in his business.  And, it has happened more than once (revealed in a recent story in NEWSWEEK)!  Such duplicity and hypocrisy are stock-in-trade for this man.

From my humble Blog, I challenge this faker, this con man, this duplicitous hypocrite to arrange for a suit against Hillary Clinton for whatever he believes is criminal behavior; to do any less is tantamount to neglecting his civic duty and abetting criminal behavior by not acting.  In fact, if he knows of any evidence that would prove criminality, he is committing an unlawful act of withholding evidence.  He should figure some way to take her to court now and prove to the American people that he is not just a bag of wind; that he will act on his word.  Do it now, on a fast track before the election, so that the Court can tell you what I hope the intelligent voters will tell you on November 8^th: 

YOUR UNSUBSTANTIATED WORDS HAVE NO STANDING IN A COURT OF LAW and HOPEFULLY NO STANDING WITH MOST OF THE ELECTORATE AND CERTAINLY NOT WITH THE ELECTORS of the ELECTORAL COLLEGE!

IMPEACHMENT? 

Donald Trump has called for Hillary’s impeachment, and even predicted that it would happen when the Department of Justice finally indicts her for crimes involving her Emails, or Ben Ghazi, or something yet to be discovered.

First, no impeachable offense has been found that even fits the definition of “conviction of Treason, Bribery, or other high crimes and Misdemeanors.”  It might well be possible to convince a radical Right-ruled House to impeach; that is, to form a bill of charges for whatever they think President Hillary Clinton has done that is impeachable in their eyes.  But conviction on any of those listed charges in the Senate is another whole story.  Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson were both impeached by the House, but not convicted by the Senate.  Revenge and political “gotcha” are apparently not good enough reasons for a conviction.  However, the hateful climate created by Donald Trump could well infect a Republican-retained Senate and result in a poorly conceived conviction. 

BUT wait just a minute:  isn’t there still a question to be raised about timing?  Has that issue ever been entirely settled?  Can a sitting President have charges brought against him/her because of some wrong-doing performed before they held the office of President?  I would argue in the negative: the charges would have no relation to the office of President since whatever “crime” was committed before the oath of office was taken, means that the person was not President.  Secondly, I would argue that, in such an instance, the articles of impeachment formulated by the House of Representatives would constitute a legislative act, and the Constitution specifically states: “No … ex-post facto Law shall be passed.” An ex post facto law is defined in the legal freeddictionary.com as:

“Latin, "After-the-fact" laws.] Laws that provide for the infliction of punishment upon a person for some prior act that, at the time it was committed, was not illegal.  Ex post facto laws (also) retroactively change the rules of evidence in a criminal case, retroactively alter the definition of a crime, retroactively increase the punishment for a criminal act, or punish conduct that was legal when committed. They are prohibited by Article I, Section 10, Clause 1, of the U.S. Constitution. An ex post facto law is considered a hallmark of tyranny because it deprives people of a sense of what behavior will or will not be punished and allows for random punishment at the whim of those in power.” 

Since there are several definitions that fit numerous circumstances, I would depend on the definitions that imply punishment that does not fit the crime or that brings a punishment for something that was not illegal at the time committed; in this sense – the punishment of impeachment and loss of office as well as prohibition from ever holding civil office again could be argued to be an increase of punishment for certain questionable crimes such as deleting private Emails.  Or, it could be argued that many of the Emails in question, now thought to contain “classified information” were not so designated at the time of their sending.   

At any rate, bringing an act of impeachment by the House and subsequent conviction by the Senate of crimes and misdemeanors said to be committed before Secretary Clinton took the oath of office of President is fraught with restrictions on the “whims” of those in power, and in those seeking power and revenge.

AND WHAT ABOUT THOSE POLLS? 

Let us not mince words here:  Polls are always somewhat inaccurate because no polling sample is perfectly representative of the larger constituency for whom they supposedly speak.  If they were accurate, there would be no need for an acknowledgement of “margin of error.”

Polls are always faulty in terms of how questions are asked, and because of different interpretations of those questions by those being surveyed.  That is, every person brings his or her own biases and experiences to the words and to the questions themselves.   Thus, the answers given have true meaning only to the answerer.

Polls are always inaccurate because no subject or issue, with all its facets, implications and meanings can ever be thoroughly plumbed by any poll, no matter how sophisticated its methodology.

In terms of polls that are taken to determine who leads in the race for the White House, all of them are built on a false premise:  they attempt to measure the popular vote instead of the Electoral College Vote, which is the only vote that counts under our Constitution. As far as I know, no polling methodology exists which can accurately measure the electoral college vote mainly because states have different rules for how that vote is apportioned.  In most states the winner of the popular vote wins all of the electoral votes apportioned to that state.  In Maine and Nebraska, the popular vote is apportioned by districts. 

 So, one can translate the results of the pre-election polls to this extent: one can know from the polls what state’s electoral votes may be won by each candidate if their popular vote projections are accurate.  One thing we do know -- not only from the Florida vote in 2000 where the Supreme Court decided the outcome, but from votes earlier in our 18^th century history when two undecided elections were thrown into the House of Representatives -  polls cannot be relied upon to accurately measure unforeseen circumstances.  One of those circumstances, which may occur in this election is the rare occurrence where one candidate wins the popular vote (as Al Gore did in 2000) and the other wins the electoral college vote (as George Bush did after the SCOTUS decision about Florida).  Guess who becomes President?

The only polls that matter are the ones where you cast your ballot on Election Day, and the one where the official Electors cast their votes in their own states and send certification of their vote sometime before Jan. 6th of the new year, when traditionally the Congress meets in joint session to reveal the electoral vote count, and the victorious candidates for President and Vice President.

 So, beware of putting too much trust in pre-election polls that cannot tell you with deadly accuracy who will win the Presidency.  Instead, make sure YOU VOTE, and that everyone around you does as well.  Polls are inherently inaccurate – YOUR VOTE represents the only answer that matters!

"OBAMACARE" -- October Surprise or Trump's Bamboozle?

Well, wouldn’t you know… Donald Trump is trying desperately to make “Obamacare” the “October Surprise.”  But then, along comes the real October Surprise:  FBI Director, James Comey, brings forth a letter to Congress in which he indicates that some more e-mails have been discovered while agents were investigating former Rep. Anthony Weiner.  And, on top of all that, there are on-going surprises generated by the innumerable polls out there that claim to predict the electoral preference of voters.

It might be important, and even ‘fun,’ to present some facts and inevitable opinions on each of these matters, but time is short.  As a first step toward that goal, I shall concentrate today on health care plan cost hikes, and more broadly on the ACA (Obamacare), since Donald Trump seems somewhat possessed by the subject!

The Rate Hikes:

The AP reported over a week ago:

“Premiums will go up sharply next year under President Barack Obama’s health care law, and many consumers will be down to just one insurer, the administration confirmed Monday.

Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25 percent across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services. Some states will see much bigger jumps, others less.

Moreover, about 1 in 5 consumers will only have plans from a single insurer to pick from, after major national carriers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna scaled back their roles.

Administration officials are stressing that subsidies provided under the law, which are designed to rise along with premiums, will insulate most customers from sticker shock. They add that consumers who are willing to switch to cheaper plans will still be able to find bargains.

‘Headline rates are generally rising faster than in previous years,’ acknowledged HHS spokesman Kevin Griffis. But he added that for most consumers, ‘headline rates are not what they pay’.”

Now, let’s take a moment to consider some of the basic aspects of Obamacare that the article does not make clear and which many politicians use to distort the picture of rising rates.

1. Obamacare does not affect all health insurance rates and plans.  The ACA is, after all, limited in its applicability.  It does not affect rates charged to those not on Obamacare, which is the clear majority of insured citizens. The private insurance that you purchase directly, or the company policy that you have from work, or any policy that is not offered on the state and federal health exchanges, their rates are not directly influenced or controlled by the ACA (Obamacare).  Rising rates seen in them come not from Obamacare but from your insurance provider trying to keep up with the generally rising costs associated with healthcare, pure and simple.  Paul Krugman reminds us: “The spike in premiums…only applies to one piece of the health care system — the “exchanges,” the insurance markets Obamacare established for people who aren’t covered either by their employers or by government programs, mainly Medicare and Medicaid.”  So, the first paragraph of the AP story tends to distort the true picture, as do many Republicans, including Donald Trump, who want you to believe that Obamacare rates determine the rates of all health insurance plans. They do not.
2.  The ACA has two basic goals that are essentially being met.

Paul Krugman again:
“Health reform had two big goals: to cover the uninsured and to rein in the overall growth of health care costs — to “bend the curve,” in the jargon of health policy wonks. Sure enough, the fraction of Americans without health insurance has declined to its lowest level in history, while health cost growth has plunged: since Obamacare passed Congress, private insurance costs have risen less than half as fast as they did in the previous decade, and Medicare costs have risen less than a fifth as fast.” 

“The law has more-or-less hit its target for covering Americans. Almost 20 million people had coverage in 2015 — close to what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had forecast in early 2013.” (Politico)

The reining in of health care costs is much trickier than enrolling consumers.  There has been an overall success in reducing the percentage of health cost growth, but in some states, like North Carolina and Texas, insurers have had to increase premiums substantially to prevent losses of revenue.

3. The larger premium increases are not a surprise.

Despite Republican rhetoric to the contrary, there are several cogent reasons why the rise in rates is not surprising.  Why?

a.       The insurers initially guessed wrong as to how much their new customers’ health care was going to cost in the long run.  After two and one-half years of operation and data-collection, it is now quite clear that the ratio of premiums charged to costs paid out is in dire need of adjustment, especially in states where initial estimates were far off the mark, like Texas and North Carolina, and at least 10 others.  A POLITICO review of 2015 filings from nearly 100 health plans across a dozen geographically and politically diverse states found that less than a quarter of them hit the standard break-even point for insurers at which payouts are kept to about 85% of premiums taken in.  Many of those insurers lost “tens of millions of dollars on their Obamacare policies last year.”

b.       The “risk pool” is unbalanced.  As with most insurance, profit for the provider depends on having “shared risk.”  The one question influencing provider participation in Obamacare from the start has been the question of just who will sign up for Obamacare and how sick will they be?  In the language used by insurance companies, the “risk pool” of Obamacare customers has turned out to be “riskier” than they anticipated.  It is now clear that in several states, fewer people signed up than expected and many turned out to be sicker and thus more costly than anticipated. 

Before ACA, the insurers had several ways to balance their ‘risk pool.’  They used filters like ‘pre-existing conditions,’ monthly or lifetime caps,’ and “benefit reductions” to avoid covering the people who would most likely have higher medical costs and thus be a drain on their profit margin.  But Obamacare, thank goodness, made those tactics illegal. 

Other factors have played into this imbalance of the risk pool.

·         Fewer people got shut out of employer plans than anticipated and didn’t end up on Obamacare. 

·         One of the most popular provisions in the law allows young people (mostly healthy and representing small costs for health care) to remain on parent policies until age 26. Unfortunately, that one provision keeps many younger healthy potential customers for other plans out of the risk pool.

·         The decision by the administration to extend to 2017 the time when old plans that didn’t comply with the ACA would have to be cancelled may also have cut off a flow of new sign-ups of less costly consumers. 

·         Instead of sticking to one enrollment period for all, special enrollment periods have tended, in some cases, to produce sign-ons who are looking for immediate care and thus run up larger medical bills quite quickly.

·         The tax penalty for not having health insurance may be too low and thus a viable means for younger people to avoid signing up because they believe paying the penalty is cheaper than paying premiums on health care they don’t need.

·         Republican recalcitrance and attempts to restrict if not repeal ACA.  Another interesting aspect that the AP article didn’t discuss at all is a fact that POLITICO reports in its study:  those states that supported ACA and set up their own exchanges were roughly twice as high in enrollment as those states that refused to promote enrollment, and that relied on the federal exchange.

For insurance markets to be sustainable under Obamacare, “experts estimate that 35 percent of customers should be between the ages of 18 and 34.  In reality, right now, just 28% of customers fall into that group” under Obamacare. (POLITICO)

4. A big part of this story is the importance of mandated subsidies to keep costs low for those who enroll under Obamacare.

What the AP story tells you is that in most cases, where there are substantial rate hikes, there are also similar raises in the subsidies granted.  Thus, the net cost to the consumer of the rising premiums may end up being, at most, between 4- 8%, not 25%.  Subsidies are available only to those below 400 percent of the poverty level, which in 2016 was less than $97,000 for a family of four.  Subsidy amounts vary based on state, income, and number in family, of course.

According to an analysis done by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) even if all premium rates were to rise by double digits next year, the vast majority of Americans who buy coverage through the Obamacare exchanges will still have affordable options.  If all rates increased 25 percent, nearly three-quarters of people who use the exchanges would still be able to purchase coverage for less than $75 a month. Under Obamacare, low-income consumers are shielded from the impact of rate increases by tax credits that rise along with the premiums, along with their ability to shop for the best plan.

5. Republicans in Congress must share the blame for higher rates and loss of insurers.

What the AP bulletin doesn’t tell you is that provisions in ACA known as the “three R’s” were placed in the ACA to protect insurance providers, designed to alleviate expected losses in the first two years of Obamacare operation.  Two of those provisions will expire by the end of this year, but while in existence, paid out substantial amounts to help cover the losses to initial providers.  The first “R” was a “reinsurance” provision that paid out federal funds of over $15 billion dollars in the first two years of exchange operations to insurers who attracted individual consumers who racked up particularly high medical bills.  The second “R” – “risk adjustment” – was intended to help small insurers by requiring insurers with low-cost patients to make payments to plans that insured higher cost customers. Small companies complained that bigger companies were favored in this, and that this second “R” was too unpredictable.

But it is the third provision – “Risk Corridors”-that ended up on the trash heap of a Republican Congress’s dedication to the dismemberment of Obamacare.  This action by Republican saboteur-legislators has surely contributed to the current situation of higher premiums and loss of providers in some exchanges.  They won’t admit it, and Donald Trump will never speak truth to you about it if he even knows!

“Risk Corridors” was a provision intended to subsidize health plan providers whose total medical expenses for all their ACA customers exceeded a certain set amount.  With this “insurance for insurers,” many companies were willing to risk trying low premiums at first.  Providers could then submit claims seeking federal payments for expenses that overshot the allowed target.  Insurers submitted claims for $2.9 billion under this provision of the Law, but ended up getting only 12.6 cents for each dollar they had counted on because once Congress passed a spending restriction, there was just $400 million available to make good on some of those payments.  What happened?

“in December of 2014, the Republican Congress voted to prohibit the Obama administration from spending any money on the program, decrying it as a bailout for the insurance companies.  Unlike all those symbolic ‘repeal Obamacare’ votes, Congress succeeded in blocking all those risk corridor payments.  The end result: many of the new Obamacare co-op plans that went out-of-business blamed their collapse in part on the fact that they’d been counting on the full (corridor) payments to keep them solvent.” (Politico)

This is one large causal factor for why premium rates are going up and insurers are withdrawing for 2017.  “Across 36 states analyzed by the Council for Affordable Health Coverage, the average requested increase for 2017 is 19.2 percent.  But in some states like Arizona, Oklahoma and Tennessee, proposed average rate hikes exceed 50%: Texas is asking for a 60% premium hike. 

6. Despite all the exaggerated bad news from the Trump camp and from the Congressional Republican saboteurs, there is hope for future stabilization and success.
1. One-time factors. Although somewhat turbulent, this is what new comprehensive programs must go through:  a period of fixing technical problems, ironing out initial errors and stabilization of new and worthwhile provisions. Medicare is an example. Since its inception in 1965, Congress has been amending it, and even now it undergoes needed changes, and remains one of the government programs most approved by the public.  Per the NY Times: “An optimistic view of this year’s price increases is that they represent a one-time market correction, as insurers adjust to the real costs of caring for these customers and to the changes in federal policy.”

 Cynthia Cox, an associate director at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has analyzed similar rate filings for big cities, said that overall “the factors that are driving premiums to increase in 2017 are one-time factors.” Price trends for future years, she said, will depend on how many people sign up.” 

One of the very important points that is well-taken in the AP article is that there are several types of plans, and not all of them have rates rising at terribly steep figures or percentages.  The point is made that “headline plans and their rates will rise much faster than basic plans. That is true and most people who fall under the law will not be as much affected by rates that rise more gradually. The Affordable Care Act requires every state to offer its citizens different level plans, which also differ in cost and benefit coverage. The bronze plan is considered the lowest regular plan offered under the Affordable Care Act and will generally cover 60% of the costs associated with a claim. 

2. None of the current problems are insurmountable.

In fact, several solutions or paths to corrections have already been proposed.  Here are some we have already alluded to, and some we haven’t mentioned.

o   Obama administration has already taken steps to improve the stability of the marketplaces by tightening enrollment rules, reaching out to young people to sign-up, contacting people who paid the tax penalty rather than sign-up.  They have also raised an option from the past:

o   A government-run health plan that would compete against other insurers in the exchanges – a second look at the “public option” being proposed by both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama

o   Increase the tax penalty for non-coverage

o   Make good on the original ‘risk corridor’ payments to cover a portion of insurer losses

o   Most crucial to the health of the ACA is who is elected President.  Hillary has the experience to guide changes and amendments; in fact, she has a plan focused on affordability.

o   The new Congress must stop repeal talk, and get about executing fix-it compromises with the new administration

o   The rest of the states need to accept the Medicaid expansion under ACA and stop leaving uncovered those that are now eligible for Medicaid under the new guidelines

o   Those consumers dissatisfied with the rates of their plan can always switch to another plan.  Last year, (and probably again this year) a substantial number – around 43% - did switch plans to find greater affordability. 

o   There are still numerous states that do not utilize the federal enrollment site, thereby limiting their residents to whatever health insurance providers are on their state list.  

A clear majority of people who are enrolled in the ACA programs are very satisfied with their plans – they finally have something that gives them the possibility to have coverage of their health needs. Those like Donald Trump who seize on a few rate hikes and call Obamacare a “dead issue”, do not have any understanding of what has taken place, of just what ACA requirements consist, nor what the successes are of this program.

 The ACA – “Obamacare” – is not on its last legs by any means.  In fact, it has begun to do what it was supposed to do: cut the number of uninsured and underinsured people by a substantial number.  The total of those covered by insurance has now risen closer to 87% covered and under President Hillary Rodham Clinton’s leadership, it will cover even more people because it will be improved upon where it needs reform or change.  Hillary has more than enough experience with health care reform to get this done, and in a bi-partisan manner with those across the aisle who care more about country than Party. But Trump (and his followers) because of his ineptness and inability to deal with facts and with people’s needs, will continue to be a major problem regarding health care. 

To the 20 million people now covered by Obamacare, he offers nothing but repeal and loss of coverage  because he has no solutions for technical problems, no strategies for preservation of best practices, and no plan for future advancement and sustainability of the ACA.  Others will also suffer the consequences of Trump’s inordinate negativity and lack of solutions, because those who buy their own insurance shall once again be paying much higher premiums to make up for all those who have no coverage and must use emergency rooms, acute care centers and every means possible to find someone to attend to their critical needs.  As usual, “TRUMP” spells disaster.