R&R – Reachout and Rebuild | A collection of writings dealing with current US & Long Island politics

“They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen”

Posted on August 10, 2017 by D. Posnett MD

In regard to the N Korea story…

Submitted to this blog by my friend Rajeev Pillay:

For want of any better options, one has to assume that even Kim Jong Un is rational.

That being the case, one can assume that he has a feeling of isolation and victimisation. Nuclear weaponry levels the field in any eventual negotiation. One has to therefore assume that there is no stopping him. He will accelerate his nuclear program – not slow it down or terminate it. He knows that to do so would be suicidal.

What should the US do? Would security guarantees for Kim’s regime (quite the opposite of Trump’s approach) persuade him to back off? Perhaps.

Next alternative is to allow him to develop his missile program and put in place a series of checks and balances and protocols to control their actual use – ideally with independent verification.

The final option is to take out his missile bases. One has to assume that his nuclear weapons are stored separately from his missiles (because of course he is rational, remember). As a consequence, taking out the missile batteries may not result in an apocalypse.

The problem is that the US has very little intelligence capacity on the ground to take this risky approach, so it is entirely likely that Kim would be able to get a couple of missiles off too. That is probably sufficient to eliminate Guam if not parts of Alaska.

No easy solutions, I’m afraid. Can we live with a nuclear N. Korea? We might have to at this point!

Posted in foreign policy, National Security, Trump, Uncategorized, war, Zeldin | Tagged atomic, north korea, nuclear, Trump, war | 2 Comments

Fight for Funding of Tick-borne Diseases

Posted on August 7, 2017 by D. Posnett MD

Published in the EH Star 8/3/2017

Dear Editor,

To anyone living on the East End it is apparent that tick-borne diseases are a health crisis. We need the federal government to provide funding on both the local and national level for this public health emergency. And yet the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts funding to the National Institutes of Health by 20 percent (nearly $6 billion) and to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by 17 percent ($1.2 billion).

Lee Zeldin, we need you to stand up to your own party and demand that funding be increased to these entities. If we’ve seen anything over the past decades, it’s that diseases can be controlled, and in some cases eradicated, by the dedicated efforts of legislators who care enough to fight for funding so that researchers and physicians have the resources to tackle these problems.

CAROL DEISTLER, Springs

I checked the NIH funding for Lyme disease for CD-1 versus the entire state of NY (in dollars x 1000), see below. * projected numbers are provided by the NIH but are subject to budget changes dictated by Congress.

	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018
NYS	1880	1766	2539	2207	stable*	decrease*
CD1	657	691	767	236
% CD1/NYS	0.34	0.39	0.30	0.10

Note the slippage in the share of NIH research dollars for CD-1 since Zeldin has been in office (2014). We have gone from 39% to 10% of state wide funding for Lyme Disease Research in CD-1. That is nothing to brag about.

Source: https://report.nih.gov/categorical_spending.aspx

David Posnett MD

Posted in East Hampton, Health Care, science, Uncategorized, Zeldin | Tagged disease, lyme, research, tick-borne, ticks | 5 Comments

Typographical Mistakes and Voter Information: Why you Should Worry!

Posted on August 3, 2017 by D. Posnett MD

I just posted two relevant articles from the Patch.com

Anyone who has ever volunteered to do some canvassing (or even phone banking) based on voter information, which ultimately comes from the BoE, knows how a very large number of entries are in error. The errors range from

is no longer at current address
address doesn’t exist
has different party registration than what is stated on the record
has changed their name
name not accurately spelled
recently deceased. etc.

In fact, maintaining accurate records is a “Sisyphus task” as you can easily imagine. Volunteers that go door-to-door have an important role. They report to the BoE that a given voter is no longer at the indicated address, for example. This is done electronically via voter data programs. The BoE should be constantly updating their info, but it takes them a long time…

I know a personal story regarding a mistake by immigration. A Swiss friend applied for citizenship but was denied based on a mistake regarding citizenship. They had confused birth place (in Africa) with citizenship (Swiss). Quotas for immigration, based on citizenship, have existed for a very long time. They differ depending on the country of origin. They are differently enforced depending on the political party in power. My friend, a green card holder in the US for 26 years, waited 10 years after applying for citizenship in part due to the clerical error. Good legal help was required (not available to everyone).

Why should you worry about NYS BoE sharing their voter info with the Trump administration’s task force on “voter fraud”?

Just imagine that you are a registered Republican. BoE however has erred and lists you as a “U” (unaffiliated), or even worse a “D” (Democrat). These are not fictitious examples! Perhaps, because your name sounds foreign or raises a red flag, Trump’s commission now flags you as a potential person having committed voter fraud and your right to vote is placed on hold… Ofcourse this shouldn’t happen to anyone, “R”, “U” or “D”. But voter fraud didn’t happen either. The “voter fraud” commission is all about disenfranchising targeted voters.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander. (please share with your Republican friends)

I checked the lawsuit against the voter fraud commission brought by “Common Cause”.

Here is a quote:

“The Commission’s first project is to assemble a national voter file and compare this information to data sets maintained by other federal agencies (including the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration) in order to discover the names of individuals that it believes are ineligible to vote.

To carry out this review, it initially gave all 50 states and the District of Columbia a deadline of July 14, 2017 to comply with a sweeping request for their residents’ voting and other personal data, including information regarding the quintessentially First Amendment-protected activities of voting history and party affiliation”

So, if you are on the Board of Elections List but for some reason not on the SS list or the Homeland Security list, you are in trouble. Which brings me back to errors! THESE LISTS ARE FULL OF ERRORS. How many errors?

Social security lists the wrong person as dead in numerous cases every year:

That fatal mistake affects about 6,000 people a year, according to the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General. And that figure is actually lower than the estimated 12,000 inaccurately reported as dead in 2011, the last time the inspector general did an audit of the data.

And Homeland Security makes errors too:

“Recent data suggests that in 2010 well over 4,000 US citizens were detained or deported as aliens, raising the total since 2003 to more than 20,000,..”

Posted in Canvassing, Courts, Cuomo, disenfranchisement, first amendment, Uncategorized, Voter Fraud | Tagged disenfranchising, Privacy, Voter Fraud, voter rights | Leave a comment

New York Agrees To Give Voter Info To Trump

Posted on August 3, 2017 by D. Posnett MD

BREAKING: The NY Board of Elections will comply with the feds and hand over the state’s voter database. Here’s what that means for you.

By Simone Wilson (Patch Staff) – Updated August 2, 2017 6:32 pm ET

New York Agrees To Give Voter Info To Trump

ALBANY, NY — Personal information about all New York voters will be released to President Donald Trump’s controversial “election integrity” commission, the state Board of Elections announced Wednesday, despite promises from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that the state would withhold its voter database from the feds.

“We will comply,” a spokesman for the Board of Elections told Patch. “The data will be sent out this afternoon.”

Want more local news from your NYC neighborhood? Sign up here to receive free newsletters and breaking alerts from Patch.

Back in late June, after Trump’s commission requested voter info from all 50 states, Gov. Cuomo said: “New York refuses to perpetuate the myth voter fraud played a role in our election. We will not be complying with this request, and I encourage the Election Commission to work on issues of vital importance to voters, including ballot access, rather than focus on debunked theories of voter fraud.”

However, each state’s decision on whether to share its voter info with the feds — or with anyone else — is ultimately not up to the governor’s office. It’s up to the board of elections. And Wednesday, New York’s board made the choice to comply.

Gov. Cuomo’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

UPDATE: In a statement sent out Wednesday evening, Cuomo clarified that when he said New York wouldn’t hand over its voter rolls back in June, he was responding to the Trump commission’s original request, which demanded “sensitive personal data” like criminal histories and Social Security numbers. Since then, Cuomo said, the federal request has been revised to demand only “publicly available information” about voters — including their names, ages, addresses, political affiliations and voting histories. (Scroll down for more details.) “Our position remains unchanged,” Cuomo said Wednesday, “and we will continue to deny requests for sensitive personal data about New York residents, which is protected under the law. We will never provide private voter information to anyone, especially a politically-motivated organization seeking to perpetuate the myth of voter fraud.”

What The Data Dump Means For You

Social security numbers and driver’s license numbers will not be included in the dump, according to John Conklin, spokesman for the New York State Board of Elections. But voters’ names, ages, addresses, political parties, voting histories and various other details will still be in there.

Here’s a sample layout of the files New York will be handing over.

In short: As of this afternoon, personal details about you and your political views — along with those of nearly 13 million other New York voters — will be sitting on a computer in the White House, waiting to be tapped into at the U.S. government’s discretion.

“It is public information,” Board of Elections spokesman Conklin explained in an email Wednesday, “and the Commission made the specific attestation required under NY Election Law that the information would be used for an elections purpose. We had no lawful reason to deny it under NY Election Law and NY FOIL statute.”

Trump’s 12-member election commission, named the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity and led by Vice President Mike Pence, was formed in May to investigate possible flaws and/or fraud in America’s voting system. (After the president claimed the November 2016 election had been plagued by “serious voter fraud,” and that millions of illegal immigrants had cast ballots, possibly costing him the popular vote.)

To do this effectively, commissioners said, they would need info on each voter in the country.

In response to this unprecedented demand from DC, elections officials in dozens of states announced they either would not comply at all or would only hand over some of the details requested.

Various watchdog groups have also tried to block the data flow in court — so far, to no avail.

It is not entirely uncommon for the New York State Board of Elections, as well as boards in other states, to release voter rolls upon request. Politico has a good explainer up on what is considered a legitimate request and why.

But in this case, privacy advocates are worried about the implications of the White House having easy access to a database of every voter in America.

“A centralized national database of state voter records is contrary to principles of federalism and local control,” NYU law professor Erin Murphy said in a statement released by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Moreover, the collection of personal data is unreasonable and therefore implicates sacred constitutional rights.” (For more, see the center’s list of “51 reasons to end the collection of state voter records by the presidential election commission.”)

Common Cause, a self-described “nonpartisan good government watchdog group,” has also been on the front lines of the resistance.

In a lawsuit filed against Trump’s commission, Common Cause argued that a nationwide roundup of voter data violates the Privacy Act, passed in the wake of Watergate to protect Americans from government surveillance.

“For voters and prospective voters facing political polarization,” the lawsuit says, “the threat that the federal government will monitor their electoral participation and even their party affiliations is deeply troubling and has deterred and will continue to deter the exercise of their First Amendment-protected rights to express their views through the ballot box.”

This story has been updated. Photo by Tara Conry/Patch

Posted in Cuomo, Discrimination, Executive Order, first amendment, immigration/deportation, Trump, Uncategorized, Voter Fraud, Zeldin | Tagged board of election, Cuomo, information, new york state, voters | 1 Comment

Because ICE Made A Typo…

Posted on August 3, 2017 by D. Posnett MD

Because ICE Made A Typo, These Kids Will Lose Their Dad In Just Days

Joel Colindrés, a beloved father of two with no criminal record, is facing imminent deportation to Guatemala.

By RJ Scofield (Patch Staff) – Updated August 2, 2017 2:40 pm ET

Because ICE Made A Typo, These Kids Will Lose Their Dad In Just Days

NEW FAIRFIELD, CT — Samantha Colindrés knows July 20, 2017, will go down in her family’s history as one of the worst days ever. That’s when she learned her husband, Joel, was given less than a month to end life as he knows it, abandon her and their two kids, leave his job and his home, and move back to Guatemala.

Joel Colindrés is not a criminal. He came to this country more than a decade ago. He is employed. He owns a house. He pays taxes. He does not drink alcohol and has never done drugs. He is, to his wife and two young children, the perfect husband, the world’s greatest dad.

That horrible day in July, though, he became one of scores of undocumented workers who had been granted permission to stay in the United States only to suddenly be ordered out as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping roundup of immigrants. That July 20, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told him to be out of the country by Aug. 17.

He had 28 days.

“That was when I collapsed,” Samantha Colindrés said in an interview with Patch. “I started screaming, I started crying, I couldn’t breathe and I was hyperventilating. … I kept screaming that he had two children, two small children.”

That day was only the third time she had seen her husband cry. The other two were when his two children were born. Son Preston is 6 now. Daughter Lila is 2.

Although Joel Colindrés spent years trying to follow the government’s rules to become a citizen, never so much as parking illegally, he now must leave his country of more than a decade because ICE misspelled his name in a court filing, according to his attorney.

Joel Colindrés is not alone. According to statistics reported by the Washington Post, the number of undocumented immigrant arrests rose by roughly one-third in the first months of the Trump administration. Most of those arrested had no criminal record — the type of people Trump, on the campaign trail, said he would not disturb.

“Joel is the epitome of the American dream,” the couple’s attorney, Erin O’Neil Baker, said in an interview with Patch. “He has built such a beautiful and successful life here for himself … but unfortunately he is also the epitome of what the Trump administration is currently doing, which is taking everyone who does not have legal status and grouping them all together.”

What Happened?

According to Joel Colindrés, a number of thoughts raced through his head while he was confined to the same immigration office where he had checked in twice already since May. This time, he was forbidden to leave until he received an ankle bracelet to monitor his whereabouts.

Twenty-eight days to get out, he was told. Twenty-eight days.

“I was totally in shock, and I didn’t know what to do,” he recalled. “It’s very hard knowing you have 28 days to leave the country. I have a lot of people that I love here, especially my kids.”

Joel Colindrés came to the United States 13 years ago from Guatemala through Texas via a legal provisional waiver. His wife and children still in his future, he headed to New York, where some relatives lived, and spent years going through the necessary steps to become a citizen.

The process was moving along. Then ICE officials spelled his name wrong on a document, the family’s attorney told Patch.

Due to the error, the attorney said, Joel Colindrés never received an important letter — and missed a court date as a result. He was then issued a removal order in 2004.

He continued sending necessary documents to ICE over the years, the attorney said, both when he was single and after he married and had his two kids. For years, he checked in regularly with ICE agents, as his waiver required, and everything was deemed fine, every time, for him to continue to stay.

In a response sent to Patch about the case Tuesday, ICE misspelled “Colindrés” as “Calinders.”

Below is ICE’s statement in full.

“Joel Calinders-Guerra, an illegally present citizen of Guatemala, was issued a final order of removal by a federal immigration judge in 2004. Since then he has sought relief from removal via several court actions and has been denied each. On July 20, during a routine check-in, ICE chose not to take Calinders into custody and instead placed him in a GPS monitoring program. He was instructed to report back to ICE with an itinerary as proof he intends to comply with his removal order.”

“We have been doing this process the right way for years,” Samantha Colindrés said.

Baker, the family’s attorney, said these types of mistakes are not uncommon. When an individual enters the United States, they might not have permanent residency, meaning they do not have a long-term address to give when they are first are detained by ICE, she said.

In many of these cases, the attorney said, an immigrant will provide the address where they are currently living, but may eventually move. And even if they give their new address to the court, sometimes there is a cross in the mail, and the court won’t receive the new address before the hearing.

“There are a lot of reasons why a person might not get the right notice for the right time and might not appear,” Baker said in an interview with Patch. “And really, that is a death knell to someone’s immigration history, unfortunately. It is extremely difficult to reopen a removal order and prove to the court that it is the court’s fault they did not get notice. The burden really falls on the individual to prove they have done everything proper in notifying the court.”

Before she took on the family’s case, Baker said the issue of improper notice was already litigated in full, with no success. So she said she will instead be filing a motion to reopen Joel Colindrés’ removal order with the board of immigration appeals on a different basis.

“We are moving forward on a strong argument that Joel cannot return to his country because there has been a systematic targeting of his family members,” Baker said, “and, unbeknownst to Joel, three of his family members were murdered in the last year.”

These murders only recently came to light. Joel’s family had kept it from him, Baker said, because they didn’t want him to be upset. (To sign up for free, local breaking news alerts from more than 100 Connecticut communities click here.)

A number of news stories have popped up this year about immigrants who were facing deportation, but were allowed to stay thanks to last-minute support from government officials. Recently, Norwalk resident Nury Chavarria, a single mother of four, took sanctuary in a New Haven church in an attempt to avoid deportation.

In that case, Chavarria was granted an emergency stay on July 26.

Samantha Colindrés is hoping her husband will be able to join the list of those who made headlines and were eventually permitted to remain with their loved ones in America.

“Their case is very strong in the sense that if Joel didn’t have this removal order, then he would be very easily eligible for residency,” Baker said. “He has an approved marriage petition and a pending waiver. Once that waiver is granted, the removal order is basically expunged. He is following the rules, the laws are in place, the policies are in place, he’s doing the normal process, but it’s this old removal order that is the hindrance, and all he seeks is his time here in [America] for the next six months so these pending applications can be approved.”

In the meantime, the couple is in “fight mode” — protecting the children from their father’s plight while preparing for the worst and working as hard as they can to push back against the order.

Fight Mode

“This was a day that will go down in history for all of our lives,” Samantha Colindrés said of July 20, “and one that I don’t think we will ever forget.”

Right after the couple received the bad news, they shared their story in a lengthy Facebook post.

“I never put stuff on Facebook,” Samantha Colindrés said. “Once in a while I post a cute kid picture or something, but nothing like this.”

They were originally unsure if the post would reach a lot of people. By the end of the weekend, though, it had already been shared 10,000 times. Since gaining traction on social media, the two have not stopped moving.

“We’ve been just go-go for the past week and half,” Samantha Colindrés said. “We just kind of went straight to fight mode, and we’re not going to stop until we get this story out there.”

The two held a rally Thursday in Hartford to #SaveJoelColindres, garnering the support of nearly 100 people.

The rally “was amazing, but it was also sad in a way,” Samantha Colindrés said. “We were seeing all this wonderful support, but for something that should not even be happening. It wasn’t the kind of support you see when someone gets a new job or has a baby; it was like support for somebody having to leave this country that should not have been given this notice in the first place.”

Support has also poured in from local government officials, including Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut who said his office has been in close contact with the family and their attorney. He said his team is actively working with ICE to pursue every possible option for the Colindrés family.

“As a father of two young kids, I can only imagine the pain Joel is going through right now at the thought of having to leave his 6-year-old son Preston and 2-year-old daughter Lila,” Murphy said in an email. “The Trump administration once again is irresponsibly targeting families. I think we all agree that our limited law enforcement resources should instead go to deporting dangerous criminals.”

Samantha Colindrés said the first person she called after receiving the news of her husband’s deportation was Sen. Richard Blumenthal, another Connecticut Democrat with whom she had previously been in contact.

“The fact that ICE would give a father only 28-days’ notice to leave his wife and children,” Blumenthal said in an email, “leaving next to no time to pursue legal remedies, is cold, callous and reprehensible. ICE approved Samantha Colindrés’ application to sponsor her husband’s visa but is now deporting him before he can proceed through the process for obtaining legal status pursuant to that approved sponsorship.”

Blumenthal also said he thinks ICE should allow Joel Colindrés to follow through on that sponsorship rather than permanently upend his family’s life.

“This nightmare is the direct result of the Trump administration’s decision to remove all reason and rationality from its immigration policies,” Blumenthal said, “and I continue to implore the President to end this nightmare and commit to true, bipartisan discussions to reform this broken immigration system in a way that respects our fundamental American values and morals.”

Anger and grief aside, Samantha Colindrés said the huge amount of support her family has received is not going unnoticed.

“That’s really what has been lifting us up through all this,” Colindrés said. “The power of people and social media and strangers. I’m so thankful that in this day and age we have that kind of reach.”

She said she hopes her family’s still-developing story can inspire other people in similar situations to fight back.

“Never give up, and just keep fighting for what you believe is right. Don’t be afraid to share your story,” Samantha Colindrés said. “We’ve had our struggles…but [we] are not going to stop fighting for what we believe is right.”

Father, Friend, Husband

Although Samantha Colindrés and her husband have seen a huge outpouring of support since he received his deportation notice, they have also run into some people who think they might be hiding certain details.

“Some people will say there has to be more to the story,” she said. “That [Joel] must be a criminal or something. My husband has honestly never gotten so much as a parking ticket.”

She said her husband also does not smoke or drink, and has never done a single drug in his life. He is a man of strong faith, she said, who continues to pray every night while wearing his ankle bracelet.

“He’s everything anyone would want in a father, a friend and a husband,” Samantha Colindrés said.

The couple’s 6-year-old son is “very attached” to his father, she said — so much so that he sets his alarm for 6 a.m. every morning just so he can see his dad before he heads to work.

The couple has worked to make sure their kids are not exposed to what they are currently dealing with. Yet regardless of their success, they have had to consider what they’ll tell the kids, should their daddy be forced to leave for Guatemala this month.

“Luckily, with technology, we could FaceTime every day,” Samantha Colindrés said. “But even Joel said he can’t imagine being away from them. He had to meet someone the other day and ended up texting me, ‘I’m away from you guys for one hour and it’s hurting me. I can’t even imagine being away from you all for a day.’”

Although the thought of leaving his family weighs heavily on his mind every moment, Joel Colindrés said he still has much to be comforted by as he and his wife continue to fight.

On July 27, he obtained a delegation letter of support from Blumenthal, Murphy and Rep. Elizabeth Etsy. The letter asks that ICE give a stay of his deportation full and fair consideration.

“ICE has confirmed that Mr. Colindrés has committed no crimes, contributes to his community, is employed, pays taxes and is raising a family,” the letter reads. “He should be granted every consideration possible to remain in the United States and continue his pathway to citizenship.”

Joel Colindrés said he also takes comfort in the strong show of support he has received from neighbors and strangers in America — a nation he loves and will do anything to remain a part of.

“I just want to say thank you for all the support out there. This is an amazing country, and I love this country,” he said. “God bless America.”

Those looking to support the Colindrés family can sign their petition or donate money via a GoFundMe page set up by a friend to cover legal fees and other related financial burdens.

Follow the Save Joel Colindrés Facebook page for more information and updates on the family’s fight to #SaveJoelColindres.

Image courtesy of Samantha Colindrés

Posted in Civil Rights, Courts, Discrimination, immigration/deportation, Judiciary, Uncategorized | Tagged criminal, deportation, guatamala, hate, ICE, spelling mistake | 1 Comment

United Against Hate Rally

Posted on July 31, 2017 by D. Posnett MD

Submitted by Amy Turner:

The #unitedagainsthate rally took place on 7/28/17 across from the entrance to the Suffolk County Community College, Brentwood campus. Unfortunately we never saw Trump’s arrival, but that didn’t dampen the crowd’s spirits. I heard a crowd size estimate of 400, but it could have been larger. Thankfully, the protestors were incredibly diverse in age, race, ethnicity, issue of concern, and hometown, etc. The LGBTQ community had a large presence (motivated no doubt by the trans ban), as did a national group, refusefascism.org, whose members (mostly young people of color at this rally) are dedicated to “driving out the Trump/Pence regime.” The crowd also included a Latino group fighting to keep the temporary worker visa and members of most of CD-1’s anti-Zeldin groups. Pro-Trump protestors numbered from 20 to 90 tops. I must say it was gratifying to chant back at them: “Lock him up!” Of course, the highlight came after the rally, on MSNBC, as Zeldin struggled through an interview with Chris Hayes about Trump’s speech, advocating roughing up of suspects by police and referring to Long Island as “blood-stained killing fields.”.

If you haven’t seen it, you should check it out to remind yourself of Zeldin’s incompetence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N-J6vbQvRk

And this article has a transcript of the most embarrassing LZ pronouncments. http://ijr.com/the-response/2017/07/934190-republican-congressman-invites-tourists-come-enjoy-blood-stained-killing-fields/

Posted in Civil Rights, Discrimination, immigration/deportation, Torture, Trump, Uncategorized, Zeldin | Tagged Chris Hayes, fascism, hate, MS-13, trump protest, Zeldin | Leave a comment

Poison Papers: EPA in bed with Industry

Posted on July 31, 2017 by D. Posnett MD

Transcript From Secret Meeting Illustrates EPA Collusion With the Chemical Industry

Friday, July 28, 2017 By Rebekah Wilce, The Center for Media and Democracy

(Photo: fotografixx / iStock / Getty Images Plus)

The world of independent chemical testing has a shiny veneer. The public is reassured that chemicals they’re exposed to on a daily basis are certified by technicians in spotless white lab coats who carefully conduct scientific studies, including on animals in neat rows of cages.

But a federal grand jury investigation that ended with convictions in the early 1980s discovered that Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT), the largest such lab in the United States, conducted trials with mice that regularly drowned in their feeding troughs. The dead animals would decompose so quickly that “their bodies oozed through wire cage bottoms and lay in purple puddles on the dropping trays.” IBT even invented an acronym “TBD/TDA” for its raw safety data, later discovered to mean “too badly decomposed.”

That was just one of a host of problems uncovered at IBT which conducted an estimated 35 to 40 percent of all the toxicology tests performed in the United States including for FDA regulated products and EPA regulated pesticides and chemicals. Scientists at the FDA were the first to spot the fraud and misconduct and blew the whistle on IBT in Senate hearings in the late 1970s. Soon after, the EPA was forced to deal with the issue and estimated behind the scenes that some 80 percent of the data provided to them for chemical registration from IBT was nonexistent, fraudulent, or invalid.

The IBT scandal presented the EPA with a potentially immense crisis. Knowing that almost every IBT test it had looked at was seriously flawed and presumptively fraudulent, it could order retests and withdraw its approval from every IBT-tested chemical. This course of action would have been fully warranted, scientifically. But it would have had drastic effects on the chemical industry, on public confidence, and on the newly-formed EPA itself.

What the EPA did instead is revealed in a transcript of a meeting that took place at the Howard Johnson Inn in Arlington, Virginia on October 3rd, 1978. This secret meeting was between senior figures at EPA, Canada’s Health Protection Branch, and executives of the chemical industry, and was intended to solve the IBT “problem.”

This transcript is part of more than 20,000 documents, weighing over three tons, just released by the Bioscience Resource Project and the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), on the “Poison Papers.” website. Most of the Poison Papers were collected by author and activist Carol Van Strum, who used documents obtained through public interest lawsuits and open records requests to investigate chemical pollution, and digitized by journalist Peter von Stackelberg. Van Strum’s remarkable story was detailed this week in the Intercept.

A Conversation About Collusion

The Poison Papers represent a vast trove of rediscovered chemical industry and regulatory agency documents and correspondence stretching back to the 1920s. Collectively they shed light on what was known about chemical toxicity, when, and by whom, in the often-incriminating words of the participants themselves.

The Howard Johnson’s transcript is a prime example of the materials in the trove. It allows us to “listen in” on a conversation that took place decades ago, but still has implication for us today.

The transcript “exemplifies as well as any other single document among the Papers the history of everyday regulatory failures and agency complicity that is the unknown story of the EPA and its enduring collusion with the chemical industry, and whose result is a systemic failure to protect the American public from chemical hazards,” says Dr. Jonathan Latham, Director of the Bioscience Resource Project.

“Not One” IBT Study Free of Errors

The Howard Johnson’s meeting was called to discuss the IBT scandal and plan a way forward. No consumer groups, environmental groups or members of the public were present that day in Arlington under HoJo’s cheerful orange roof when the topic of how to deal with the dead animals, the fraudulent, and the corrupt data was discussed.

Near the outset of the meeting, the EPA’s Fred Arnold, Acting Branch Chief of Regulatory Analysis & Lab Audits, assured the chemical company representatives present that no chemicals would be removed from the market, even though the studies supposedly showing their safety had been proven fraudulent:

“We determined that [i]t was neither in EPA’s interest or the public interest or the registrants’ interest [to replace all IBT data] because a large number of studies, which were performed at IBT, were performed satisfactorily,” Arnold said (p. 6).

Yet Arnold’s contention that some of the studies were “satisfactory” was contradicted multiple times in the same meeting. It was later stated, for example, that not one IBT study was free of errors (p. 16). Dr. Arthur Pallotta, Consultant to the Special Pesticide Review Division in the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, stated that “there were few [IBT] studies that did not have discrepancies, errors and omissions” (p. 27). Elsewhere in the transcript, EPA accepted that over 80 percent of the test results from IBT were invalid (p. 123).

But Arnold’s assertion that it wasn’t in anyone’s interest to demand new studies had striking ramifications. It was the grounds for not removing any chemicals from the market, for reassuring the public, and for kicking the IBT mess down the road. By 1983, EPA had determined that over 90 percent of IBT’s studies submitted to them had serious, invalidating problems.

A “Salvage Operation”: Ignoring Scientific Controls

Early in the meeting, EPA made a list of IBT errors that it planned to ignore to make the task of “validating” IBT’s studies manageable.

It planned to ignore whenever animals were missing from (or added to) studies. No statistic existed then – nor does it now – to compensate for such measurement irregularities, but this difficulty was glossed over by the EPA.

Just as bad, many IBT studies appeared to be shorter in time than protocols called for. As David Clegg of Canada’s Health Protection Branch explained to the meeting:

“Now, we have come across the 90-day study where the study started on, let’s say, the 1st of June. The invoice for shipment of the test material from the firm was the 9th of June, and the diet preparation sheets are for the 12th of June.

“In other words, by the time the diet was prepared, according to the raw data, the study has been underway for 12 days for a 90-day study.

“This does not necessarily invalidate the study, of course. You can still get some information from it, but the whole base line, which you are working from, has to be altered to deal with an 88-day [sic] study or whatever length it is and conclusions have to be drawn on this sort of basis” (pp. 34-35).

EPA also noted that IBT had major problems with its controls. It had run a system known as “common controls.” These controls were often in different rooms or carried out at different times, presumably with rats from different batches. EPA proposed cobbling such experiments together and thus making use of these controls. Clegg’s tone was apologetic:

“I can’t say that I am very happy about this on scientific grounds, but we are trying to run this as a salvage operation and, if we can come up with something which gives us a reasonable base line for controls which may be applicable to a number of studies, then, when controls are not available, we’ll compare them against those controls,” he said (p. 41).

EPA Adopts Unsigned Studies

EPA’s Arnold also admitted at the meeting what appeared to be EPA’s own historical fraud. In revisiting original data sent to them by IBT, manufacturers might find that, in the past, EPA had itself examined the tissue samples and determined there to be “no significant finding” when in fact “the truth of the matter is the organ was never examined” (Arnold, p. 102).

By the time the FDA and EPA had taken a strong interest in the testing lab, IBT had begun a “policy not to sign” its own reports, according to the transcript, indicating that staff were unwilling to stand behind the findings.

As Fred Arnold told the attendees, “A number of scientists, who may have been involved in the early states of a test, are no longer there and nobody can state, categorically, that everything reflected in the report, in fact, is borne out by the raw data” (pp. 63-64).

Arnold admitted that EPA had in the past sometimes accepted unsigned studies. So he stated that its remedy to the new signature problem would be to adopt such unsigned studies in order not “to create a double standard now” (p. 64), effectively adopting IBT’s unprecedented practices as its own.

It was later uncovered in court proceedings that IBT also forged signatures.

The Howard Johnson Take-Home

Three IBT officials went to prison, closing a chapter on a massive scientific fraud, but the book was never closed.

“As the Howard Johnson transcript reveals, a majority of the IBT studies were never intended to be redone, and still underlie the U.S. chemical regulatory system,” said Latham.

Author Carol Van Strum commented on the significance of the transcript for CMD:

“The 1978 Howard Johnson transcript records a crucial meeting of EPA, Canadian, and pesticide industry officials to discuss EPA’s response to massive fraud in the safety tests for pesticide registrations. At the meeting, Fred T. Arnold, chief of EPA Regulatory Analysis and Lab Audits, assured industry that EPA’s discovery of fraudulent, invalid, or nonexistent safety tests would ‘not interfere with the ability to control pests and market pesticides.’ This document was the linchpin of my book, A Bitter Fog: Herbicides and Human Rights, documenting the government’s acceptance of phony industry studies while dismissing reports of human illness, death, involuntary abortions, birth defects, and other effects of pesticide exposure.”

Mary Bottari contributed to this article. The Poison Papers website and document trove is a project of the Bioscience Resource Project of Ithaca, New York, and the Center for Media and Democracy of Madison, Wisconsin. You can explore the Poison Papers documents at PoisonPapers.org. You can read the illuminating Howard Johnson’s manuscript here.

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source. Permission for R&R to reproduce was obtained from PoisonPapers.org

Rebekah Wilce is a beginning farmer with a degree in writing from the University of Arizona. She researches and reports for the Center for Media and Democracy, publisher of PRWatch.org, ALECexposed.org, and SourceWatch.org, in between milking cows at a local farm and reporting at Madison’s community radio station, WORT 89.9FM.

Posted in Environment, EPA, Ethics, science, Uncategorized | Tagged chemical industry, collusion, EPA, food, poison, safety, scandal | Leave a comment

Trump’s support falling among swing-state voters who elected him, recent polls find

Posted on July 24, 2017 by bcolbath42

A third of voters remain hardcore, unapologetic fans

STEVEN ROSENFELD, ALTERNET

Posted on Salon.com

Donald Trump during Cabinet Meeting(Credit: AP/Andrew Harnik)

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

Donald Trump is wearing out his welcome among the voters who swung 2016’s presidential swing states in his direction, according to just-released regional polls.

The swing-state surveys are more incisive than national polls that found Trump’s approval ratings were below 40 percent: 39 percent by Monmouth University Polling Institute to 36 percent by the Washington Post/ABC News poll.

“Trump continues to be deeply unpopular. His standing is a mirror opposite of Obama and Bush at this point in their first terms. Each held a 59 percent job approval rating in Post-ABC polling,” the Post wrote. “Half of Americans say Trump is doing a worse job than most past presidents, while just under one-quarter say he is doing better.”

The Post-ABC poll found Trump’s support had fallen since April, including in the important category of political independents, where only 32 percent support him now compared to 38 percent this spring. Independents are not the only swing voters who matter. In many Midwestern states last November, tens of thousands of voters who previously backed Barrack Obama rejected Hillary Clinton and voted for Trump.

That’s where the latest regional polls come in, showing that growing number of voters in counties that flipped from blue in 2012 to red in 2016 were having the political equivalent of buyer’s remorse.

“There are two ways to view our new NBC/WSJ ‘Trump Counties’ poll,” wrote NBC’s news team on Monday. The first way is to see that his overall approval rate in the 429 counties in 16 states they surveyed “stands at 50 percent, which is higher than his 40 percent overall (national) job rating from our June NBC/WSJ poll, or 36 percent that WaPo/ABC had yesterday.”

But the second way, which is more reflective of how swing states and the Electoral College interact, finds “his approval rating in these counties is down from his winning percentage in these areas in November 2016,” NBC’s news team wrote. “In the ‘Flip Counties’—think places like Luzerne, Pa., which Obama carried 52 percent to 47 percent, but which Trump won, 58 percent to 39 percent — Trump’s job rating stands at just 44 percent. Trump won these ‘Flip Counties’ by a combined 51 percent to 43 percent margin a year ago.”

NBC also polled Trump’s standing counties that were won in 2012 by Mitt Romney and where he “surged” and won by larger margins in 2016.

“In the Trump ‘Surge Counties’ — think places like Carbon, Pa., which Trump won, 65 percent to 31 percent (versus Mitt Romney’s 53 percent to 45 percent margin)—56 percent of residents approve of the president’s job performance. But in 2016, Trump won these ‘Surge Counties’ by a combined 65 percent to 29 percent.”

These are big drops among two classes of swing voters in swing counties in swing states. NBC soft-pedals its conclusion, saying, “Bottom line: Even in places that he won in 2016, he’s taken a hit when it comes to his approval ratings.”

We’ll be blunter. If these polls are anywhere near correct, it shows Trump is still ahead in reliably red counties — reliably red in that a majority voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 2012. However, a majority of voters in crossover counties, who previously supported Obama, have abandoned Trump. (Only 44 percent approve.)

The counties polled were in 16 states: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

A closer look in Iowa

Another recent poll by the Des Moines Register drills down into these findings. Overall, it finds Trump’s support has fallen to what appears to be the same level of hardcore enthusiasts seen in the other polls — that he has a base of about one-third of voters.

“In Iowa polls dating back to the Eisenhower era, no president has found himself with a majority disapproval rating as quickly as Trump,” the Register said. “Self-identified independents have turned against Trump, with 59 percent now saying they disapprove of the job he’s doing compared with 35 percent who approve. In an Iowa poll five months ago, his disapproval rating among independents was 50 percent, 9 percentage points lower than now.”

Then, the Register found roughly the same thing as the Washington Post/ABC poll did. That between 24 and 34 percent of voters say Trump has “acted in a way that’s fitting and proper for a president,” “approve of Trump’s use of Twitter,” think “Trump is doing a better job than most,” is “a positive role model for young people,” think “America’s leadership in the world has gotten stronger,” “believe it was appropriate for Trump’s son, Donald Jr., to meet last summer with a Russian lawyer who said she had damaging information about Hillary Clinton,” or “trust Trump to negotiate on America’s behalf.”

“Still, Trump remains popular among the electoral base that won him the election: 90 percent of respondents who say they voted for him continue to approve of his performance, as do 63 percent of Iowans from rural areas,” the Register said. “Fifty-seven percent of self-identified born-again Christians back Trump, as do 51 percent of Protestants and a 47-percent plurality of Catholics.”

The paper gave an excerpt from an interview with a typical Trump supporter.

“Joan Klinger, a Republican retiree from rural Corydon who dabbles in real estate, said she appreciates Trump’s recognition of and devotion to the working class—even as she has low expectations about what he can accomplish in Washington.” It continued, “‘It doesn’t seem like it makes any difference which party gets in there. Whatever they say they’ll do when they get in there, they can’t really do it,’ said Klinger, 67. ‘I just want him to annoy the hell out of everybody, and he’s done that.’”

This mix of buyer’s remorse and defiant defense could be seen in other recent interviews with Trump voters. CNN New Day host Alisyn Camerota sat downwith six Donald Trump voters from Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Florida. Three said they were still supporters. The first to speak, a woman identified only as Jackie, was the most defensive. “I would never say I was a supporter of Donald Trump. I voted against Hillary, basically,” she said. “I had problems with his talk. His rough talk. His ‘grab ’em by the pussy.’ All this stuff. But I decided that’s just talk, and talk isn’t action. But now I feel his words have a lot of power, and cause a lot of ripple effect with our relations with the rest of the world. And his words, they become actions.”

Then came John Montgomery, who’s grown tired of giving Trump the benefit of the doubt. “I had hoped he would grow into the position. That he would surround himself with people who understood how politics works, but he’s his own worst enemy,” he said. “Sometimes you have to have that 30-second filter. Just because you think it, doesn’t mean you have to say it or tweet it.”

But like Iowa’s Joan Klinger, there was Gene Huber, a middle-aged white man in a red T-shirt with a photo printed on it of Huber hugging Trump. “This was at the February 18 Melbourne rally,” he explained, saying Trump called him up to the podium and he gave Trump a man hug. “President Trump has changed my life. And the promises that he’s made, he’s doing them… Let’s think about,” he said, stumbling and then citing the “Paris [climate change] agreement, repeal and replace Obamacare…”

Like Klinger and what the pollsters found, Huber welcomed Trump’s outspokenness, starting with his daily tweets. “Talking about the tweeting, our president told us he’s a modern-day president. There you go… To me, I love his tweets. I think he can tweet every morning. I actually can’t wait to get up in the morning to see them… He talks to us. He’s talking to ‘We the People.’”

The big picture from these polls, all snapshots in time across sections of the electorate, is that Trump’s base has shrunk back to where it more or less was in the primaries — not a clear majority. Democrats uniformly despise him, from his style, his personality and his lack of control to his lies, his lack of knowledge on issues and his policies. And a growing share of independents and crossover voters are losing their faith in him.

Trump versus Nixon

One of the more intriguing findings was in the Monmouth University poll, which found that while only 41 percent of the country favor impeaching Trump now, that figure is almost double what it was at roughly this time in Richard Nixon’s second term, when he resigned rather than face impeachment.

“Currently, 41 percent of the public think that Trump should be impeached and compelled to leave the presidency, while 53 percent disagree,” the poll reported. “The Monmouth University Poll asked the same question used by the Gallup Poll during Nixon’s presidency. In July 1973 as the Watergate scandal started to unfold, just 24 percent of the public supported impeachment and 62 percent were opposed. Support for Nixon’s impeachment was significantly lower six months into his second term as president than it is for the incumbent today. Interestingly, Nixon’s job rating at that point in his tenure — 39 percent approve and 49 percent disapprove — was about the same as Trump’s current rating.”

Posted in Trump | Tagged Approval polls, buyer's remorse, Iowa, Trump approval | Leave a comment

Letter from Former CBO Directors on the Importance of CBO’s Role in the Legislative Process

Posted on July 22, 2017 by bcolbath42

July 21, 2017

Honorable Paul Ryan
Speaker
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Minority Leader
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Honorable Mitch McConnell
Majority Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Honorable Charles Schumer
Minority Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Mr. Speaker, Madam Leader, Mr. Majority Leader, and Mr. Minority Leader:

The undersigned represent every former Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). We write to express our strong objection to recent attacks on the integrity and professionalism of the agency and on the agency’s role in the legislative process.

CBO began serving the Congress in 1975. Over the past 42 years CBO has been firmly committed to providing nonpartisan and high-quality analysis — and that commitment remains as strong and effective today as it has been in the past. Because CBO works for the Congress, and only the Congress, the agency’s analysis addresses the unique needs of legislators.

To meet the standard of nonpartisan objectivity, CBO makes no recommendations about policy, regularly consults with researchers and practitioners with a wide range of views (as can be seen in the agency’s panels of advisers and reviewers for major studies), and enhances its transparency by releasing extensive descriptions of its analytic techniques and forecast record. To produce estimates of high quality, CBO uses its detailed understanding of federal programs and economic conditions, ongoing interactions with government officials and private-sector experts, the best academic research, and the latest available data consistent with the timing of the Congressional budget process.

CBO’s approach produces consistent comparisons of competing legislative proposals and unbiased projections of the impact of policy changes. Unfortunately, even nonpartisan and high-quality analysis cannot always generate accurate estimates. Policy changes are often complex, the economy is dynamic and defies precise prediction, and many policies are modified over time. However, such analysis does generate estimates that are more accurate, on average, than estimates or guesses by people who are not objective and not as well informed as CBO’s analysts.

In sum, relying on CBO’s estimates in the legislative process has served the Congress — and the American people — very well during the past four decades. As the House and Senate consider potential policy changes this year and in the years ahead, we urge you to maintain and respect the Congress’s decades-long reliance on CBO’s estimates in developing and scoring bills.

Sincerely,

Dan L. Crippen
Former Executive Director, National Governors Association (CBO Director, 1999–2003)

Douglas W. Elmendorf
Dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School (CBO Director, 2009–2015)

Douglas Holtz-Eakin
President, American Action Forum (CBO Director, 2003–2005)

June E. O’Neill
Wollman Distinguished Professor Of Economics, The City University of New York (CBO Director, 1995–1999)

Peter R. Orszag
Vice Chairman of Investment Banking and Managing Director, Lazard (CBO Director, 2007–2008)

Rudolph G. Penner
Institute Fellow, Urban Institute (CBO Director, 1983–1987)

Robert D. Reischauer
Distinguished Institute Fellow and President Emeritus, Urban Institute (CBO Director, 1989–1995)

Alice M. Rivlin
Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution (CBO Director, 1975–1983)

Posted in ACA, AHCA, American Health Care Act, Congress | Tagged CBO | Leave a comment

This is How Trump Can Destroy Obamacare

Posted on July 22, 2017 by bcolbath42

From Countable

On Tuesday, the seven-year quest by Republicans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, appeared to come to an end, and President Trump responded to the setback by vowing to “let Obamacare fail.”

“It’ll be a lot easier,” Trump said at the White House.

“We’re not going to own it. I’m not going to own it. I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it. We’ll let Obamacare fail, and then the Democrats are going to come to us.”

With Obamacare entrenched in many states, and numerous governors (and, apparently, senators) supportive of the legislation, what can the Trump Administration actually do to try and tank Obamacare?

END INDIVIDUAL MANDATE

On Wednesday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated what would happen if Obamacare were to be repealed without a replacement. The CBO predicts 32 million people would lose insurance by 2026, including 17 million by next year. The CBO also estimated that, compared to current law, premiums would nearly double by 2026. Medicaid expansion would end in 2020.

Much of this was based on the elimination of the individual mandate, which requires all Americans sign up for health care, regardless of age. By repealing the individual mandate, those who would most likely remain enrolled in health care would be those Americans with an immediate health care need: primarily older and sicker Americans. That demographic is the costliest to cover, so this in turn would cause insurers to have to dramatically raise their rates. The Trump administration needs Congress to repeal the individual mandate, but it can direct the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to soften its enforcement of the mandate.

WITHHOLD PAYMENTS DUE

This is one of the most lethal strategies, and has been referred to as the “Nuclear Option” for killing Obamacare.

Insurance companies are owed billions of dollars in “cost-sharing reduction” payments. Under the ACA, insurance companies reduced the deductibles of low-income customers, with the understanding that the government would reimburse them. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2016 the federal government paid an estimated $7 billion in cost-sharing payments, on behalf of 6.4 million marketplace customers.

For months, President Trump has been threatening to withhold this money. In response, insurers have claimed they’re already raising 2018 premiums. Some insurers have also warned they may pull out of additional counties if they can’t be guaranteed reimbursement. (There are even a handful of counties that have no individual insurers lined up for 2018.)

Anthem, one of the nation’s leading healthcare providers, decided to exit various markets in June because of all these unknowns. In a statement, the company said their concerns include “continual changes in federal operations, rules and guidance” and “an increasing lack of overall predictability.”

FAIL TO PROMOTE OPEN ENROLLMENT PERIOD

With few exceptions, individuals can only change their insurance, or sign up for new insurance, during the marketplace’s open enrollment period. President Obama made it a priority to spread the word about open enrollment and get people signing up. This included commercials, Tweets, and offbeat interviews, including the one on Between Two Ferns.

By refusing to promote the exchanges, or directing people to sign up, the Trump Administration could cause a steep decline in new enrollees. It’s a more roundabout way of attacking the individual mandate, but one that will cause insurers to take a hit nonetheless.

While Obamacare may or may not be the “disaster” Trump has claimed it to be on numerous occasions, it is in a precarious position: if the ACA is a game of Jenga, Trump certainly has ways to remove some key blocks to help it tumble.

Should the GOP preemptively work with the Democrats on the ACA? Or should Republicans, as Trump suggested, “let Obamacare fail, and then the Democrats are going to come to us”? Tell your reps to save our healthcare.

Posted in ACA, AHCA, American Health Care Act, Better Care Reconciliation Act, Congress, Health Care, Medicaid, Trump, trumpcare | Leave a comment

Math not Myths: Democrats Win When their Voters are Inspired to Turn out!

Posted on July 20, 2017 by D. Posnett MD

Great piece in the Nation: July 18, 2017. If there are 7 million Obama-to-Trump voters, why didn’t Trump’s vote total increase by 7 million?

Democrats Are Trying to Win the 2018 Midterms in All the Wrong Ways, By Steve Phillips

It is quite possible that Democrats are going to spend nearly $1 billion trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. By buying into a myth about why they lost in 2016, they are ignoring the underlying math about what really happened—misspending huge amounts of money, while setting themselves up to lose again in the critical contests to come.

Many progressive politicians and pundits have bought into the notion that millions of people who had voted for Barack Obama in 2012 defected from the Democrats and voted for Donald Trump in 2016. The strategic premise flowing from this conclusion—that the Democrats can prevail in the congressional and presidential races to come by winning those voters back—is influencing how tens of millions of dollars are being spent and will continue to shape the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars in the midterm elections next year. But as my colleagues at Democracy in Color and I point out in the new report “Return of the Majority Progress Report: Another Billion Dollar Blunder?,” the premise driving this strategy is ill-founded and incorrect.

The popularity and persistence of the myth was encapsulated in a recent New York Times column by Thomas Edsall, “The Democratic Party Is in Worse Shape Than You Thought.” Edsall devoted considerable attention to “Obama-to-Trump” voters and cited estimates based on exit polls in which voters were asked whom they’d voted for in 2012 and 2016. That polling quantified the ranks of said voters as ranging from 6.7 million to 9.2 million people. The viewpoint has been popularized to the point where it is now accepted as fact and drives major Democratic decisions such as where to hold the Senate Democratic caucus retreat (West Virginia), to whom to feature in the response to the State of the Union (white people in a Kentucky diner), to how to spend $19 million in advertising in the Georgia special election (targeting Republicans rather than rallying Democrats). The primary problem with this approach is that the math underlying the myth is perplexing, at best, and just flat wrong at worst.

The inaccurate arithmetic is most evident when looking at what happened in Wisconsin, one of the three narrowly decided states that led to Clinton’s losing the Electoral College despite prevailing handily in the national popular vote. The conclusion that large numbers of Obama voters switched their allegiance to the Republican is undercut by the fact that Trump got fewer votes in Wisconsin than Mitt Romney did four years earlier. If Trump got a big infusion of previously Democratic votes, why did the Republican vote total go down? But look even more closely, at county-level data. In the 23 counties that flipped from Democratic in 2012 to Republican in 2016, the data show that it is likely that there were just as many Obama-to-third-party voters as there were Obama-to-Trump voters (an increase of 23,117 third-party votes, as compared with 20,662 additional Republican votes in those counties). And the biggest problem in Wisconsin was the fact that 60,000 fewer people voted in heavily black Milwaukee, contributing to Clinton’s losing the state by 23,000 votes.

The myth also lacks mathematical support in a state like Florida, where there was an actual surge for Trump, with him picking up 450,000 more voters than Romney received. That increase, however, didn’t come from disaffected Democrats. Clinton got more votes in 2016 than Obama did in 2012. What happened in Florida is that large numbers of whites who sat out 2012 rallied to Trump’s racial-solidarity appeals and came out in significantly larger numbers.

While the data from Wisconsin and Florida undermine the myth about what happened in specific strategic states, the aggregate data throw the entire premise into question. The most inconvenient fact for the proponents of the Obama-to-Trump migration theory is that Clinton got very nearly the same number of votes as Obama did nationally. It’d be like being told someone has taken 10 percent of the money out of your bank account, but when you check your balance it shows you have the exact same amount of money. If 10 percent of the funds went away, where did the 10 percent come from to backfill the account?

The other problematic point for the 7 million-lost-votes figure is that Trump’s total vote number increased only by 2 million over what Romney secured in 2012. If there are 7 million Obama-to-Trump voters, why didn’t Trump’s vote total increase by 7 million? It’s conceivable that a ton of Romney voters defected from Trump and were replaced by Obama-to-Trump voters, but there has been precious little analysis of that possibility. The focus for most Democrats begins and ends with wooing the Obama-to-Trump voter.

The numbers that aren’t in dispute are the figures for black voters and Stein voters. Recently released Census data shows that African-American voter turnout dropped precipitously, falling below the rate of the 2004 election. In Pennsylvania, according to national exit-poll data, the black turnout dropped by 137,000 people, and Clinton lost by 44,000 votes. In Michigan, the problem was Obama-to-Stein voters, with Stein getting 30,000 more voters than she did in 2012, and the Democrats losing the state by just 11,000 votes.

Certainly some voters did defect from Obama to Trump, and, conversely, some Romney voters moved to either Clinton or Johnson, complicating the calculations all around. Digging into data is important, but, unfortunately, that’s not where Democratic leaders are focusing their analytical attention. Rather than accurately assess the numbers, they have let the myth take on the status of legend, and tens of millions of dollars are being allocated based on faulty data. Perhaps the most pernicious part of the myth is that it reinforces the absolutely incorrect

Perhaps the most pernicious part of the myth is that it reinforces the absolutely incorrect mind-set that progressives are in the minority in America. Democrats won the popular vote—and not by a little, with Clinton’s 3 million vote margin surpassing the largest figure ever recorded by someone who didn’t win the Electoral College. In the critical states that enabled the Electoral College loss—Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida—the progressive vote splintered, allowing Trump to slip through with less than a majority of the votes in each of those states. This minority mindset leads to timid tactics and tepid politics that are no match for the audacity of the right’s racist, xenophobic assault on multiracial America that is occurring every day. Fear of alienating the unicorn of the white swing voter mutes Democratic responses when the only proper response to what is happening in America is unapologetically fighting back by every means available—pushing for impeachment, conducting sit-ins to block the buses deporting people, and issuing full-throated denunciations of a judicial system that sanctions the police murders of unarmed black people. As Obama’s successful elections showed, Democrats win only when their voters are inspired to turn out in large numbers, and a bold, courageous, hopeful platform is essential to generating voter enthusiasm. In order to carry ourselves with the confidence to act with that kind of decisiveness requires the conviction that we are in fact the majority of people in America. If we look at math and not myths, we can straighten our backs, raise our voices, and do what is necessary to bring about the return of the majority in America.

This minority mindset leads to timid tactics and tepid politics that are no match for the audacity of the right’s racist, xenophobic assault on multiracial America that is occurring every day. Fear of alienating the unicorn of the white swing voter mutes Democratic responses when the only proper response to what is happening in America is unapologetically fighting back by every means available—pushing for impeachment, conducting sit-ins to block the buses deporting people, and issuing full-throated denunciations of a judicial system that sanctions the police murders of unarmed black people. As Obama’s successful elections showed, Democrats win only when their voters are inspired to turn out in large numbers, and a bold, courageous, hopeful platform is essential to generating voter enthusiasm. In order to carry ourselves with the confidence to act with that kind of decisiveness requires the conviction that we are in fact the majority of people in America. If we look at math and not myths, we can straighten our backs, raise our voices, and do what is necessary to bring about the return of the majority in America.

Steve Phillips TwitterSteve Phillips is a national political leader, civil-rights lawyer, author, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and the founder and editor in chief of Democracy in Color, a multimedia platform on race and politics. He is the author of the New York Times best seller, Brown Is the New White: How a Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority (New Press). He is a regular contributor to The Nation.

Posted in democrats, GOP, Politics, Trump, Uncategorized, Voter Fraud | Tagged inspiration, myths, turn-out, voting rights | Leave a comment

McConnell’s Unbelievably Reckless Plan B: Repeal ACA With Nothing to Replace It

Posted on July 19, 2017 by bcolbath42

Published on

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Indivisible Guide

Indivisible Project

11 Comments

A repeal-only bill, explains Indivisible, is “the most extreme attempt yet at dismantling people’s healthcare.” (Photo: Amirah Sequeira/TwitPic)

Republicans considered going this same route in January but abandoned that approach after just a few weeks of thinking about it. That’s because the effects of full repeal are devastating, and even Republicans know it:

The Medicaid expansion ends in just two years
Tax credits to help people afford insurance would disappear completely
The wealthy and corporations would get a $631 billion tax cut

And unlike earlier versions of TrumpCare—as entirely inadequate as they were—there isn’t even an attempt to replace the ACA. Under this framework, which repeals as much of the law they can get away with through reconciliation, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 18 million Americans would lose their insurance in the first year, and a staggering 32 million by 2026. CBO also said premiums would increase by 25% in the first year and that they would double by 2026.

Every Republican but Senator Collins is on record supporting this approach

The Senate passed full repeal in 2015, knowing they didn’t need a replacement. That’s because everyone knew at the time President Obama would veto the repeal bill, so Republican Senators didn’t bother to come up with a different way to help people afford insurance once the tax credits were repealed, or a way to replace the coverage millions of Americans got for the first time through the Medicaid expansion. They didn’t have to consider that their plan would cause premiums to double. Unfortunately, it passed the Senate with 52 Republican votes, including many of the Senators now expressing doubts about TrumpCare. It was a reckless bill that would have been a catastrophe for the American people that fortunately died a prompt death under President Obama’s veto pen.

But, like all Republican health care bills apparently, it has now risen from the dead.

Republicans may try to argue that they are repealing now and will work on a replacement later that Democrats will be forced to negotiate on. This is nothing short of holding millions of lives hostage for their failed partisan agenda. Considering Republicans have been talking about this for 7 years, and McConnell just tried to construct a replacement that would pass the Senate—only to utterly fail—there is no reason to think they could craft a replacement later. And while McConnell plays this political game, millions of people will lose insurance, see their premiums skyrocket, delay important medical care, or go bankrupt.

How Republicans are trying to do this

The first hurdle Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans have to clear is a procedural vote called the “motion to proceed.” That vote means the Senate is agreeing to debate the bill. He intends to use the TrumpCare bill the House narrowly passed in May—the American Health Care Act—as the vehicle for this full repeal bill. That means when the Senate votes on the motion to proceed, they’ll actually be agreeing to debate the House bill. But the first amendment that McConnell will offer is one that strikes the entire House bill, and replaces it with the repeal bill from 2015.

We can stop them

No Senator should support this bill, whether they supported TrumpCare or not. The full repeal goes far beyond even what TrumpCare would do. That means every Senator should oppose both the bill and the motion to proceed, but especially the ones that “had concerns” with previous versions of TrumpCare. This is the most extreme attempt yet at dismantling people’s healthcare, but we’ve stopped or delayed all previous attempts. We can kill this bill, too.

SAMPLE CALL DIALOGUE

Caller: Hello! My name is [name] and I’m calling from [part of state]. Can you tell me how Senator [ ] plans to vote on the motion to proceed on the health care bill?

Staffer: The Senator hasn’t made a decision on that yet.

Caller: That’s terrible. Senator [ ] should absolutely oppose any attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. This is a reckless move that Mitch McConnell is making out of desperation with no plan whatsoever as to how the ACA would be replaced. The Congressional Budget Office says 32 million people will lose their insurance and that premiums will double. How could Senator support that?

Staffer: But those numbers aren’t accurate because this is just repealing now with a replacement to come later. We won’t let people go without health insurance.

Calle: That’s ridiculous. If Congress can’t find a compromise today, why should we believe it will find one in a year or two? This is playing games with people’s lives.

Staffer: Again, Senator hasn’t made a decision yet.

Caller: Well I want Senator [ ] to make a decision, and oppose any effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, especially if there is no plan in place to replace it. I want the Senator to vote against the motion to proceed and against the bill itself.

Staffer: Thank you. I’ll let the Senator know your thoughts.

Caller: Thank you. Please take down my contact information so you can let me know how Senator [ ] votes.

Posted in ACA, Trump | Tagged Repeal, Replace, senate, trumpcare | 1 Comment

New Senate health bill shows no love for New York

Posted on July 17, 2017 by D. Posnett MD

http://buffalonews.com/2017/07/15/new-senate-health-bill-shows-no-love-new-york/

By Jerry Zremski | Published July 15, 2017 | Updated July 15, 2017

WASHINGTON – To hear New York health care experts tell it, the Republican senators’ new plan to replace Obamacare is the legislative equivalent of a grave pre-existing medical condition, made worse through a haphazard quack treatment.

They say the bill is largely a status quo measure that preserves the quadruple whammy that could cost the state billion dollars more per year than a House-passed measure that leaves the state $7 billion short annually. But they also say the new Senate bill is worse in one way in that it threatens to eat away at a key consumer protection provided under state law.

Higher-income New Yorkers would be losers, too, under the measure, as the bill restores some of the taxes that would have been eliminated under the earlier version of the bill. That tax money would go instead to expanded health care subsidies for lower- and middle-income people who buy health insurance on their own.

One unlikely New Yorker emerges as a winner in the new legislation: Rep. Brian Higgins, a Buffalo Democrat who waged a lonely battle against tax breaks for insurance executives – and saw Senate Republicans drop those tax breaks in the revised bill.

Overall, though, the new bill is much more similar to the Senate’s previous version than it is to the law it aims to replace: the 2010 Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

“So far, I’m not seeing much that changes for New York,” said Bill Hammond, health-care analyst at the conservative-leaning Empire Center, an Albany think tank.

Just like its predecessor, the new Senate bill whacks New York’s Medicaid program – which serves everyone from poor children to seniors in nursing homes who spent all their assets on health care – in four ways. It would:

Reduce federal Medicaid payments to states over time by changing the way they are tied to inflation.
Trim payments to states with expensive Medicaid programs by including an “equity adjustment.”
Curb federal funding for states such as New York that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare in a way that will cost New York more than $7 billion more annually starting in 2024.
Keep in place the House’s controversial Collins-Faso amendment that ends New York’s practice of charging counties for part of the cost of Medicaid, pushing at least another $2.3 billion in costs annually onto the state.

Not surprisingly, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo appeared unimpressed with the new Senate legislation.

“The token changes to the Senate health care bill are a thinly veiled attempt to disguise the same cruel bill,” he said. “Far from improving our health care system, the Senate Republican health care bill is still a death trap for New York.”

Cuomo once again made his case against the Collins-Faso amendment, saying it could lead to cuts that would cripple hospitals, nursing homes and home care providers.

But Rep. Chris Collins, the Clarence Republican who sponsored the amendment with Rep. John Faso, R-Kinderhook, has said Cuomo is more likely to try to raise state taxes instead of finding savings in the state’s huge and costly Medicaid program.

“Through the Collins-Faso amendment, we’re on the verge of delivering the largest property tax reduction ever,” Collins said on Facebook. “Instead of making tough decisions, Governor Cuomo has threatened to push for new taxes on New York families.”

Beyond its impact on Medicaid, Hammond said the Senate bill – like the earlier version and the health bill passed by the House – threatens to eviscerate the state’s Essential Plan, which is aimed at state residents who earn just a bit too much to qualify for Medicaid, the state-federal health program for the poor and lower middle class.

And like its predecessor, the new Senate bill conflicts with existing state law in several ways. It bars people from using federal subsidies to buy insurance plans that cover abortion – yet New York law requires health plans to cover abortion. And the new Senate bill allows insurers to charge older people more for insurance, while New York law does not.

The new Senate measure also adds one new conflict with state law that could totally alter the market for individuals who have to buy insurance on their own – or that could amount to nothing.

The bill includes a provision offered by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, that allows the sale of bare-bones insurance policies with low premiums and gigantic deductibles, all in an effort to make health coverage more affordable for people who probably wouldn’t buy insurance otherwise.

“I am encouraged that the revised bill ensures consumers have the freedom to choose among more affordable plans that are tailored to their individual healthcare needs,” Cruz said.

New York health experts such as Bea Grause are by no means so encouraged. The president of the Healthcare Association of New York State, Grause said the offering of the Cruz-backed cheap insurance plans would start “a race to the bottom for coverage and consumer protection.”

Higgins agreed, saying that those inexpensive plans are “junk health care” that could upend the insurance market. If healthy people flocked to those plans instead of buying more comprehensive insurance, anyone buying more traditional insurance plans would inevitably have to pay more, given that fewer healthy people would be subsidizing the cost of those better plans.

It’s unclear, though, whether such bare-bones insurance plans would be available in New York, given that current state law bans them from sale in the state. Federal law typically supersedes state law, though, which is why Grause and others fear that court action could open New York’s market to those new health plans.

“I think New York, like a few other states, has a robust regulatory infrastructure,” Grause said. “It would be a question of how or whether the Cruz amendment would apply.”

Despite Higgins’ concerns about the Cruz amendment, the new Senate health bill includes one change that the Buffalo congressman was happy to see. The bill no longer includes a provision that would have given health insurance executives tax breaks valued at as much as $500 million in total.

Higgins was one of the strongest voices in opposition to those tax breaks, railing against it in a committee hearing and on the House floor, calling it a giveaway to corporate executives who don’t deserve it.

He said Senate Republicans stripped that provision from the bill knowing that UnitedHealth, one of the nation’s largest insurers, is facing a Justice Department lawsuit accusing the company of Medicare fraud – and knowing that other insurers could end up in the same trouble.

“They’re saving themselves from further embarrassment,” Higgins said.

Then again, Republican senators were also looking for savings in the bill that allowed them to slightly expand the health insurance tax credits the bill will offer to help the lower middle class to buy insurance.

The new version also preserves taxes on high net worth individuals that were instituted under Obamacare but that were set for repeal under the original Senate health bill. But other Obamacare taxes on medical device companies and health insurers would be repealed, just as they would have been under the Senate bill’s first iteration.

Those changes were by no means enough to satisfy Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. He urged Republicans to abandon their current health care effort and instead work with Democrats to improve the current health care system.

“Any Republican who votes to proceed on this bill next week will have to look constituents square in the eye and explain why,” Schumer said. “Why did they move forward on such severe cuts to Medicaid? Why did they cut taxes for special interests? Why did you send my out of pocket costs skyrocketing?”

Meantime, though, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell argued that Democrats were making the-sky-is-falling arguments that have no connection with reality.

“I’m sure we can expect many of the same tired and predictable attacks from the defenders of Obamacare’s failed status quo,” McConnell said. “It hardly matters what the draft says, they would launch the same kinds of attacks anyway.”

McConnell also noted that Democrats wrongly said Obamacare would lower costs and expand health care options while allowing everyone to keep their longtime policy if they chose to do so.

“They were wrong before,” he said. “They’re wrong again today.”

Related stories from the Buffalo News:

What’s at risk if Medicaid is scaled back under health bill? By Henry L. Davis | Published July 2, 2017 | Updated July 3, 2017

Senate bill a quadruple whammy to New York Medicaid program. By Jerry Zremski | Published June 24, 2017 | Updated June 26, 2017

See also the following related recent posts on R&R:

Rural hospital association representative: ‘This bill will close hospitals. … People will die’

Health of Suffolk County Hospitals?

Millions More Uninsured Could Impact Health Of Those With Insurance, Too

Senate’s health care bill will cost New York’s Medicaid program billions

Medicaid Cuts Will Drive Up Cost Of Private Coverage, Montana Insurers Say

Report: BCRA would mean more than 900K healthcare jobs lost

Zeldin’s Approval of Senate Healthcare Bill Reveals His Lack of Concern for Veterans

CONGRESS: KEEP AMERICANS COVERED

Posted in ACA, AHCA, American Health Care Act, Health Care, Pre-existing Conditions, Seniors, trumpcare, Uncategorized, Women, Zeldin | Tagged collins faso, Cuomo, healthcare bill, new york state, senate | Leave a comment

Millions More Uninsured Could Impact Health Of Those With Insurance, Too

Posted on July 14, 2017 by bcolbath42

KAISER HEALTH NEWS — REPEAL & REPLACE WATCH

By Julie Rovner July 14, 2017

Neonatal intensive care, trauma care or burn care are among the services that could be hard to access in communities with high uninsured rates.

Much has been written lately about how individuals’ health could suffer if they lose insurance under the health proposals circulating in the U.S. House and Senate. But there is another consequence: creating millions more people without insurance could also impact the health of people who remain insured.

“We know that communities with higher rates of uninsurance have worse access to care for those with Medicare or private insurance,” said John Ayanian, director of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation at the University of Michigan. And if either of the GOP proposals now under consideration becomes law, he said, “it’s very likely we would go back to some of those same problems we had a decade ago with high rates of uninsurance.”

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that either the bill passed by the House or the one under consideration in the Senate could result in more than 20 million more Americans without insurance over the next decade.

Ayanian was part of an expert panel from the nonpartisan National Academy of Medicine that examined the implications of being uninsured in a series of studies from 2001 to 2009. An entire report looked solely at the spillover impact of large numbers of uninsured people on those around them. “The Committee believes it both mistaken and dangerous to assume that the persistence of a sizable uninsured population in the United States harms only those who are uninsured,” said the report.

That is mostly because it is difficult for health providers to maintain services in areas with large numbers of patients who cannot pay for care. “Those communities are less attractive for physicians and other health care providers to locate,” said Ayanian. “That affects access to care for everyone,” he said, particularly for critical but high-cost services like trauma care, burn care, and neonatal intensive care.

The potential is not merely theoretical. Hospitals in sparsely populated areas, particularly in states that did not opt to expand the Medicaid program, have been cutting back services like maternity care or closing altogether in recent years. These are the same parts of the country that voted for President Donald Trump by large margins.

The impact is not just on availability of services. A 2007 study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in the journal Health Affairs found that in areas with many uninsured people, the quality of care was lower as well. Primary care doctors “reported that the higher the proportion of uninsured people in their community, the less likely they are to be able to refer their patients to high-quality specialists,” found the researchers. “Specialists also reported that the higher the community uninsurance rate, the less able they are to deliver high-quality care to their patients,” the study said.

That spillover effect even extends beyond access to health care itself, according to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund. Researchers from George Washington University found that if the House-passed health bill were to become law, nearly 1.5 million jobs could be lost over the next decade.

“We’re talking about a net funding loss to states of millions of dollars,” said Leighton Ku, the study’s lead author. “What this means is that states will have higher needs, less revenue to pay for services, and at the same time the federal government is putting less money into Medicaid,” he said. “So it all adds up to a great revenue crunch that’s similar to the Great Recession” of the past decade.

While most of the job loss would be in health care, other jobs would be impacted too, he said.

For example, health care workers who lose jobs will then purchase fewer goods and services, affecting the bottom line of local businesses. Health care facilities that were planning to expand might not, affecting the construction industry. And the impact could even cross state lines, said Ku. “We might see fewer people going to Disney World,” he said, because people who lose their jobs would lack money to take vacations.

Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit health newsroom whose stories appear in news outlets nationwide, is an editorially independent part of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Posted in AHCA, American Health Care Act, Better Care Reconciliation Act, economy, Employment, Health Care, Medicaid, Trump, trumpcare | 2 Comments

The new Senate health care bill — and the return of preexisting conditions — explained

Posted on July 14, 2017 by bcolbath42

Posted on Vox.com

Updated by Sarah Kliff sarah@vox.com Jul 13, 2017, 1:18pm EDT

Senate Republicans introduced a revised version of their bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act on Thursday, one that would allow insurers to once again deny coverage based on preexisting conditions, and to charge higher rates to sick people.

The bill would keep most of the Affordable Care Act’s tax increases but repeal one aimed specifically at medical device manufacturers. It would deeply cut the Medicaid program, making few changes to the bill’s first draft.

Even with these new changes, the general structure of the bill stays the same from its original draft, which was itself largely similar to the bill that passed the House in the spring.

Healthier and higher-income Americans would benefit from the changes in the new Republican plan, while low-income and sick Americans would be disadvantaged. It would create a two-track system for health coverage on the individual market. One would offer cheaper, deregulated health plans, which healthy people would likely flock to. The other would include comprehensive plans governed by Obamacare’s regulations, which would cost more and mostly be used by less healthy people and those with preexisting conditions — a system experts expect would function like a poorly funded high-risk pool.

Deductibles would almost certainly rise under the Republican plan, as would overall costs for low- and middle-income Americans. Individual market participants would have more options to purchase catastrophic coverage, an option likely to appeal to those with few health care costs.

Experts expect the changes will do little to change the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates that 22 million Americans would lose coverage under the proposal.

You can see a full explainer on the Senate bill here, which will be updated shortly with the latest information. This post focuses on the changes made in the July 13 revision.

Health insurers could bring back preexisting conditions, offer skimpy health plans

Perhaps the biggest policy change in this revision is an amendment to allow health insurers to deny coverage based on preexisting conditions and cover few benefits, so long as they offer a comprehensive plan that covers the Affordable Care Act’s mandated benefits.

These deregulated health plans would be allowed to charge sick people higher premiums or simply deny them coverage. They would not have to pay by the rules of the preexisting condition ban that the Affordable Care Act sets up (Phil Klein at the Washington Examiner has a summary of the rules they’d be exempted from here). Instead, they would operate much like health plans in the pre-Affordable Care Act market, offering cheap rates to consumers they believe would have low medical bills.

Health policy experts know exactly how this would play out: Healthy people would pick the skimpier plan, while the comprehensive plan would essentially become a high-risk pool for sicker Americans.

Individual market enrollees would likely game the system too. A couple expecting a baby, for example, would be expected to upgrade to the plan that covers maternity care for one year before returning to the cheaper plan they had before.

“Someone with chronic illness, they’re going to end up wanting to buy the more comprehensive coverage,” says Joe Antos, a health policy expert with the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “This means that people with those kinds of illnesses will end up paying more. Even if they receive a federal subsidy, they will likely see higher cost sharing.”

As Antos notes, individuals who want to buy the comprehensive plan would receive federal tax credits to do so. They could not use the tax credits for the deregulated plans.

But even after that financial help, these people would still face significant out-of-pocket costs, including high deductibles and premiums. The Congressional Budget Office estimates, for example, that a 64-year-old individual earning $11,500 and receiving tax credits would still need to pay $4,800 to purchase that plan.

The updated Senate bill also allows individuals to use tax credits to purchase catastrophic coverage

There is a quieter way the Senate bill lets people buy skimpier plans: by using their tax credits to purchase catastrophic plans.

This is a practice the Affordable Care Act barred, as the law’s drafters wanted to encourage enrollment in more generous options. But the Senate bill would allow the tax credits to be used for these high-deductible plans. These plans would only include three primary care visits before individuals hit their deductibles and have to pay their medical bills out of pocket. The plans could cover a wide array of health benefits, including maternity and mental health, but, again, coverage would only kick in after paying a large deductible.

The updated bill would let individuals use pre-tax dollars to pay for their premiums

An estimated 29 percent of American workers are enrolled in tax-advantaged health savings accounts (HSA), that allow them to use pre-tax dollars to cover things like copayments and coinsurance.

The Senate bill would allow HSA dollars to go toward premiums as well, meaning someone in the individual market could use pre-tax dollars to pay their monthly bill. This practice was not allowed under the Affordable Care Act.

Liberals have typically opposed this provision, which they argue would mainly benefit wealthy Americans who have the money to contribute to an HSA in the first place. This provision would have fewer benefits for low-income Americans, who rely on tax credits to finance the lion’s share of their premium.

The Senate bill gets rid of most Obamacare tax cuts — but keeps two on high earners in place

The Senate’s revised health care bill still includes an estimated $657 billion in tax cuts by eliminating the health law’s taxes on the medical industry and its individual mandate penalty for not carrying coverage, among other changes.

It does continue two taxes aimed at wealthy Americans: a 0.9 percent investment tax and a 3.8 percent Medicare payroll surtax. Keeping these two taxes in place would net the government an estimated $231 billion in revenue over the next decade, and eliminate some of the benefits high-income Americans would have received under the first draft.

These new taxes, however, do not seem to be fully spent on enhancing the law’s benefits. The new bill includes a $45 billion program to combat opioid abuse as well as $70 billion to offset the costs of expensive patients (this is in addition to the $112 billion already appropriated for that purpose in the first version of the bill). The inclusion of these taxes does not appear to lead to any additional funding of the Medicaid program or offset any of the cuts to the tax credits in the individual market.

The Senate bill still makes very deep cuts to Medicaid

The Senate bill is notable in what it doesn’t change: namely, significant cuts to the Medicaid program. While moderate senators have protested these cuts (particularly those who represent Medicaid expansion states), these provisions of the Senate bill remain largely intact.

One of the main ways Obamacare increased insurance coverage was by expanding the Medicaid program to cover millions more low-income Americans. Prior to the health law, the entitlement was restricted to specific groups of low-income Americans (pregnant women, for example, and the blind and disabled).

Obamacare opened up the program to anyone below 138 percent of the poverty line (about $15,000 for an individual) in the 31 states (plus the District of Columbia) that opted to participate.

The Medicaid expansion gave states generous funding to cover this particular population. Typically, the federal government picks up about half the cost of the Medicaid program and states cover the rest.

For Medicaid expansion, however, the federal government currently pays 95 percent of the costs — an especially good deal for states meant to assuage their budget concerns during the original Obamacare debate.

The Senate bill would begin ratcheting down that Medicaid expansion funding in 2021. By 2024, states would get that same match rate they typically get to cover other populations. In 2021, for example, the match rate would fall to 90 percent, then decline in steps to 75 percent by 2023.

The Congressional Budget Office has projected in a separate analysis that this policy change would mean no additional states expand Medicaid — and that some current expansion states would drop out of the program, resulting in millions losing coverage.

“CBO anticipates some states that have already expanded their Medicaid programs would no longer offer that coverage,” the agency wrote in its analysis of the House bill, which makes a similar change.

The Senate bill would cut the rest of the Medicaid program too

There are significant changes to Medicaid in the Senate bill outside of the expansion too. This bill would convert Medicaid to a “per capita cap” system, where states would get a lump sum from the federal government for each enrollee. Or states would have the opportunity of a block grant — a sum of money untethered from the number of people involved.

This is very different from current Medicaid funding. Right now the federal government has an open-ended commitment to paying all of a Medicaid enrollee’s bills, regardless of how high they go.

The Senate bill would set different amounts for different groups of people. It envisions, for example, higher payments to cover Medicaid enrollees who are disabled (and tend to have higher costs) than for Medicaid enrollees who are kids (generally healthy with lower costs).

The rate at which these payments grow is also important. The Senate bill would have the funding growth tethered to the Medical Consumer Price Index plus 1 percentage point through 2025, and then switch to the urban Consumer Price Index. Analysis of this type of proposal suggests this change would amount to funding cuts for Medicaid, as the program’s spending typically goes up faster than these growth rates.

Posted in Better Care Reconciliation Act, Congress, Health Care, Medicaid, mental health, Opioid, Pre-existing Conditions, trumpcare | Tagged Senate Health Bill | Leave a comment

Americans Don’t Want Senate’s Health Care Plan, But It’s Unclear What They Do Want

Posted on July 13, 2017 by D. Posnett MD

Posted in ACA, AHCA, American Health Care Act, GOP, Health Care, trumpcare, Uncategorized | Tagged aca, healthcare, obamacare, trumpcare | Leave a comment

Natalia Veselnitskaya was no stranger, she was important to Trump’s business

Posted on July 12, 2017 by bcolbath42

Posted on Daily Kos

By Mark Sumner

Tuesday Jul 11, 2017 · 2:25 PM EDT

NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 18: Donald Trump Jr. arrives at Trump Tower on January 18, 2017 in New York City. President-elect Donald Trump is to be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States on January 20. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Sean Hannity’s name may rhyme with sanity, but Donald Trump’s favorite Fox has never been the poster boy for rationality. As the dominoes have started falling ever faster in the Trump–Russia scandal, Hannity has been bouncing all over the place in a storm of twisted logic, misplaced sarcasm, and desperate attempts at misdirection. But in the middle of this Hanni-cane, he actually dropped a line that’s … interesting.

“Why did the Obama administration let [the lawyer] into the country in 2016?” he asked.

Good question. And there’s a good answer.

Natalia Veselnitskaya did not mark up her visa application with “coming to America to give Donald Trump high-level information straight from the Kremlin.” Which, considering the stealth that Trump Junior displayed at the other end of the pipeline, is really rather surprising. Instead, Veselnitskaya’s official reason for coming to the United States really did have to do with the Magnitsky Act. Not lobbying against the act, but acting as an attorney in a lawsuit against a Russian company accused of money-laundering for the mob.

The specific case in question here is against Prevezon Holdings Ltd., a Cyprus-registered company.

How did Prevezon Holding supposedly move mob money into the United States? By snapping up expensive condos and other real estate. And who was it that Veselnitskaya had come to fight after she made her pitch to Donald Trump Junior?

U. S. District Attorney Preet Bharara.

In March, Donald Trump fired Bharara even though he had previously assured the US attorney that he would be staying to complete current cases.

Mr. Bharara was a highly public prosecutor who relished the spotlight throughout more than seven years in office. He pursued several high-profile cases involving Wall Street, and he was in the midst of investigating fund-raising by Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, and preparing to try former top aides to the governor of New York, Andrew M. Cuomo, who are both Democrats. It was not immediately clear how his departure would affect those cases and others that were pending.

But Trump’s desire to get Bharara out of his office was unlikely to have anything to do with his willingness to go after Democratic targets as well as those on the right. Before his firing, Trump tried to make the same moves to secure the attorney’s loyalty that he had also made toward former FBI director James Comey.

“It appeared to be that he was trying to cultivate some kind of relationship [with me],” he told George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, citing several chummy phone calls that Trump tried to initiate with him. “It’s a very weird and peculiar thing for a one-on-one conversation without the attorney general, without warning, between the president and me or any United States attorney who has been asked to investigate various things and is in a position hypothetically to investigate business interests and associates of the president.”

But Donald Trump’s personal attorney has openly bragged that he was the one who told Trump to sack Bharara … for a very specific reason.

According to four sources that spoke to ProPublica, Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s personal lawyer and his primary counsel on matters related to the Russia investigation, had bragged that he was largely responsible for getting the U.S. attorney for New York’s Southern District fired. “This guy is going to get you,” Kasowitz recalled saying to Trump, according to one of the sources.

The connection between Bharara’s cases and Trump–Russia wasn’t immediately obvious. But Bharara hinted heavily that he had been ousted to close down a investigation of corruption related to Trump.

Until now, the case didn’t seem to be a peek into corruption inside the Trump regime. But with the spotlight now falling on Natalia Veselnitskaya, the actions of Prevezon Holdings Ltd are coming squarely to the center. Prevezon appears to be yet another holding company created expressly for the purpose of turning Russian mob money into American real estate in deals that allow oligarchs to clean their stolen funds and US real estate moguls to pocket fat profits. Deals exactly like those Trump is known to have used to escape bankruptcy.

When Donald Trump Jr. says that Veselnitskaya came to his office to discuss “adoption,” what he means is that she wanted to discuss the Magnitsky Act. And that discussion not only reflects on the US sanctions and blacklisting of Russian officials that resulted from the act, it directly plays into the Russian use of US real estate for money-laundering. Which was something Trump Jr. knew very, very well.

“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump’s son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

So even the part of the conversation that Donald Trump Jr. has been passing off as “inane nonsense” was actually directly related to his business, and directly related to an investigation that Trump was anxious to see closed.

One more thing. No matter how many times Trump Jr. pretended to not know who Veselnitskaya was in his statements [Twitter page omitted] Emin Agalarov was more than just someone Trump Jr. had met during the Miss Universe pageant. He was a key contact for the Trump Organization, and their partner on potential deals in Moscow. Natalia Veselnitskaya was also clearly someone other than the nameless woman who showed up to give Trump Jr. a talk he didn’t want to hear. Both of them go right back to the core of Trump’s business—which was money laundering.

If all of this is making the world seem pretty small … it’s because it’s all connected. And the center of that connection is Donald Trump.

Posted in Ethics, Russian connection, Trump | Tagged Donald Trump Jr, Goldstone, Natalia, russia, Veselnitskaya | 1 Comment

Association Health Plans for Small Groups and Self-Employed Individuals Could Be Negatively Impacted under the Better Care Reconciliation Act

Posted on July 12, 2017 by bcolbath42

KAISER HEALTH NEWS

Jun 30, 2017 | Karen Pollitz and Gary Claxton

The Senate Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), a proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), includes a provision to create new association health plan options for small employers and self-employed individuals. These so-called “small business health plans” (SBHPs) would be considered part of the large group market, which has different rules than the small group market. In particular, the ACA requirement that premiums cannot vary based on health status does not apply in the large group market. Neither does the requirement for policies to cover ten categories of essential health benefits. If enacted, this provision would considerably disrupt the small group market because small employers could seek lower rates or less comprehensive coverage in an SBHP when their employees are healthy, but theoretically move back to regular small group market plans if an employee becomes ill or if the group wants more comprehensive benefits. This type of adverse selection could result in significant premium increases and instability in the small group market. The provision could disrupt the non-group market in a similar manner because it would permit self-employed individuals (in states that choose to regulate very small groups of one as small employers) to join SBHPs when they are healthy or want few benefits, but move back to regular non-group coverage if their health or circumstances change.

Background

Under the BCRA, new association health plan options would be available to small employers and to the self-employed in certain states. The bill amends the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to establish the following rules, standards, and definitions for small business health plans:

Large group market rules apply. A SBHP is defined as a fully insured group health plan, sponsored by a certified entity, and offered by a health insurer in the large group market. Several key requirements for small group market insurers do not apply in the large group market. Insurers in the small group market cannot consider the health or claims of a small group’s employees, and must cover the 10 categories of essential health benefits (though states could waive that requirement under the BCRA). These rules do not apply in the large group market. The BCRA sets no standards for SBHPs in terms of what benefits must be covered or how premiums would be set for small firms that want to participate. For example, the insurer covering the SBHP could medically screen small firms applying, and charge relatively low rates for healthy groups but very high rates for groups with sick employees. In addition, the insurer could consider a group’s health and claims at renewal and give them considerably higher rate increases than other groups. The same practices could apply to self-employed individuals. Small businesses could join and enroll in SBHPs, as could self-employed individuals with no other participating employees (i.e., groups of one) in states that choose to regulate such arrangements as small group health insurance.

Federally regulated. The sponsor of a SBHP must be certified by the Secretary of Labor. Federal certification is deemed approved after 90 days unless the Secretary denies the application for cause. To do business in a state, a certified SBHP must provide written notice of its certification to the insurance regulator in every state in which it will operate. The federal government also has enforcement authority over the business practices of SBHPs. The bill includes broad preemption language stating that federal standards “shall supersede any and all State laws insofar as they may now or hereafter preclude a health insurance issuer from offering health insurance coverage in connection with a [certified] small business health plan.” This appears to prohibit a state from requiring that a SBHP be regulated as small group coverage and may preempt other state insurance rules, as well. The Secretary is required to coordinate with the State in which a particular SBHP is domiciled regarding the exercise of federal authority to certify a SBHP and enforce federal standards. The Secretary is also required to ensure that only one domicile state will be recognized with respect to any particular SBHP. The bill does not provide that the rules of the domicile state will supersede the laws of other states.

Nondiscrimination standards. The entity that sponsors a SBHP must be organized for a purpose other than providing health benefits, although it appears that providing health benefits could be the primary purpose of the organization. For example, a sponsoring entity could be a bona fide trade association, organized primarily for professional or industry-related purposes. Or it could adopt broadly inclusive membership standards to permit virtually any small group or individual to join. In addition, the sponsor of the SBHP is prohibited from conditioning membership on the size of its member groups. The bill does not prohibit a sponsoring entity from conditioning membership on the health status of small businesses; a nondiscrimination provision in the bill states that a requirement not to discriminate against employers and eligible employees is satisfied if the SBHP makes information about all coverage options readily available to any eligible small employer.

Under the BCRA, the SBHP provisions become effective 1 year after the date of enactment and the Secretary of Labor is required to issue implementing regulations no later than 6 months after the date of enactment.

Effects on Small Employers, Self-Employed Persons, and Traditional Markets

The establishment of small business health plans could affect the way health insurance operates for small employers, and could affect the entire small group health insurance market, in several ways:

Premium instability for small businesses and self-employed individuals – Because SBHPs would be able to set premiums for small firm and self-employed members based on health and risk status, it could be possible for SBHP members to obtain lower premiums for coverage as long as their workers and their family members are healthy. However, in the event a covered individual becomes seriously ill or injured, nothing under federal law would prevent the SBHP insurer from raising the premium for that small employer or self-employed individual, even to unaffordable levels. The affected small employer or self-employed person might then try to seek coverage in the traditional small group market or non-group market, where health status rating is prohibited, though as discussed below, premiums there could also become unaffordable.

Increased premiums in traditional small group and non-group markets – Selection of coverage options, based on which market rules are most advantageous at the time, is sometimes called adverse selection. The asymmetry of rules applied to SBHPs and the traditional small group market would tend to segment small employers based on risk, steering more expensive groups to the traditional market and driving up community rated premiums. This could lead to premiums in the traditional small group market becoming much higher for employers who need to seek coverage there. Eventually, the impact of selection could force insurers to stop offering traditional small group coverage because they could not predict the risk of potential enrollees. The SBHPs would also be open to self-employed individuals in states that permit very small groups of one to buy small group coverage, as 14 states did prior to the ACA. In 2014, one in five marketplace consumers was a small business owner or self-employed. As a result, adverse selection from SBHPs could also affect premiums in the individual market.

Lack of clear regulatory authority – The BCRA requires that SBHPs must be fully insured group health plans, suggesting that states would continue to have regulatory authority over the insurance product itself, for example, to apply and enforce state standards related to risk based capital and solvency. However, preemption language in the bill is broad, and does not specify which state laws could still be enforced, including for example, laws relating to qualifications of SBHP sponsoring entities, or the covered benefits or rating practices under such plans. At a minimum, it seems legal challenges could arise if states would try to regulate SBHPs more closely. In the past, in response to federal proposals to create new small group insurance arrangements that would not be subject to all state small group market regulation, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the American Academy of Actuaries, and others have raised concerns that market fragmentation and harm to small businesses and consumers could result.

Discussion

The Senate SBHP proposal sets up competing and unequal regulatory regimes for small group health insurance that could undermine the traditional market. It also would potentially increase non-group premiums because healthy self-employed people could leave that market while people with health problems would not qualify for SBHP rates. In addition, small groups and the self-employed could choose less comprehensive policies while they are healthy, but move to more comprehensive plans if their health changed (if they remain available). Such adverse selection could drive up the cost of coverage in these markets, making health insurance less affordable for sick individuals and small groups who would have to rely on them, and potentially not available at all.

Posted in Better Care Reconciliation Act, Health Care, Medicaid, Pre-existing Conditions, Trump, trumpcare | Leave a comment

Uneven Playing Field: Applying Different Rules to Competing Health Plans

Posted on July 12, 2017 by bcolbath42

KAISER HEALTH NEWS — Health Reform

Jul 11, 2017 | Karen Pollitz and Anthony Damico

As the Senate considers the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), a proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), amendments have been discussed to further change private health insurance market rules that apply under current law. Under the BCRA, current law health insurance market rules would still apply: Insurers in the non-group health insurance market are prohibited from turning applicants down or charging higher premiums based on health status and from excluding coverage for pre-existing conditions. In addition, all policies must provide major medical coverage for 10 categories of essential health benefits and must limit the annual out-of-pocket cost sharing (deductibles, co-pays and coinsurance) that people must pay for covered services in network (although states can alter those requirements through waivers).

However, an amendment to the BCRA, suggested by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), reportedly would allow insurers in the non-group market to also sell some policies that would not be required to follow all of the ACA market rules. For example, such policies might not have to follow ACA essential health benefit and cost sharing standards. In addition, some reports suggest that insurers would not have to sell these policies to people with health conditions or risks and could vary premiums for them based on the health of applicants.

This brief examines the likely impact of such a change on the stability of coverage offered through non-group markets and on the number of individuals who might be affected.

Impact on Consumers Ineligible for Premium Subsidies

If the BCRA were amended to permit insurers to sell ACA-compliant plans alongside plans that did not follow ACA-benefit standards and/or rating and access rules, the likely result would be that the cost of ACA-compliant plans would skyrocket. The ACA-compliant plans would effectively become a high-risk pool, attracting enrollees when they need costly health benefits – such as maternity care, or drugs to treat cancer or HIV, or therapies to treat mental health and substance abuse disorders – and those with pre-existing conditions who are turned down by non-compliant plans or charged high premiums based on their health. By contrast, non-compliant plans would attract healthier consumers, at least as long as they didn’t need coverage for such benefits. Premiums from the healthier enrollees would not be pooled to help keep the price of compliant plans affordable. As a result, premiums for compliant plans would increase significantly, while premiums for non-compliant plans would be substantially lower (though they would also cover fewer benefits).

The Senate BCRA would continue ACA-like premium tax credits to subsidize the cost of coverage for low-and middle-income individuals. Like the ACA, premium tax credits under the BCRA would be tied to the cost of a benchmark marketplace plan, though the benchmark would have higher patient cost-sharing than under the ACA. Eligibility for premium tax credits would be capped at income of 350% of the federal poverty level (FPL), compared to 400% FPL under current law. Individuals eligible for tax credits would be required to pay a set percentage of their annual income toward a benchmark plan; the premium tax credit amount for each individual would be the difference between the actual cost of the benchmark plan and a person’s required contribution. Under this formula, as under current law, subsidy-eligible people would generally be shielded from annual premium cost increases, which would instead be absorbed by federal premium tax credits.

While people with pre-existing conditions eligible for premium tax credits would be cushioned from premium increases in compliant plans under the Cruz amendment, those ineligible for credits would not be protected.

According to the National Health Interview Survey, approximately 40% of non-group market participants in 2015, or 6.1 million people, had income above 350% FPL. Most of these individuals purchased non-group coverage outside of the marketplace. Under the BCRA, these individuals would not be eligible for premium tax credits.

We further estimate that, among the 6.1 million non-group market participants with incomes of at least 350% FPL, 24% (or about 1.5 million) would have pre-existing conditions that would have been considered automatically deniable by insurers prior to the ACA. These conditions include cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, substance use disorders (including opioid addiction), serious mental illnesses, and pregnancy. (Figure 1)

For these 1.5 million individuals, non-compliant plans would likely either deny coverage outright or charge very high premiums tied to their health. Even if they could obtain coverage in non-compliant plans, it might not cover key benefits, such as maternity care, mental health care, substance use treatment, or prescription drugs, and would not solve the affordability problem.

Among the three-quarters of other market participants with income over 350% FPL, millions would have other types of pre-existing conditions that were not considered automatically declinable prior to ACA, such as high-blood pressure, high cholesterol, asthma, and depression. Many in this group also could see a substantial increase in out-of-pocket spending for medical care that would offset any premium savings associated with less comprehensive policies.

Methods

To calculate nationwide prevalence rates of declinable health conditions, we reviewed the survey responses of nonelderly adults for all question items shown in Methods Table 1 using the CDC’s 2015 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). Approximately 27% of 18-64 year olds, or 52 million nonelderly adults, reported having at least one of these declinable conditions in response to the 2015 survey. For more details on methods and a list of declinable conditions included in this analysis, see our earlier brief: Pre-existing Conditions and Medical Underwriting in the Individual Insurance Market Prior to the ACA.

The programming code, written using the statistical computing package R, is available upon request for people interested in replicating this approach for their own analysis.

Posted in AHCA, Better Care Reconciliation Act, Health Care, Medicaid, Pre-existing Conditions, Trump, trumpcare | Tagged Cruz Amendment | Leave a comment

New details emerge on Moscow real estate deal that led to the Trump-Kremlin alliance

Posted on July 12, 2017 by bcolbath42

Remember when Trump disavowed any business dealings with anyone in Russia? Someone found a thread to pull…

Michael Isikoff

Yahoo News July 11, 2017

Donald Trump, Aras Agalarov and Rob Goldstone. (Photos: Sean Gallup/Getty Images; Sergei SavostyanovTASS via Getty Images; Adriel Reboh/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

While in Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant in November 2013, Donald Trump entered into a formal business deal with Aras Agalarov, a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, to construct a Trump Tower in the Russian capital. He later assigned his son, Donald Trump Jr., to oversee the project, according to Rob Goldstone, the British publicist who arranged the controversial 2016 meeting between the younger Trump and a Kremlin-linked lawyer.

Trump has dismissed the idea he had any business deals in Russia, saying at one point last October, “I have nothing to do with Russia.”

But Goldstone’s account, provided in an extensive interview in March in New York, offers new details of the proposed Trump project that appears to have been further along than most previous reports have suggested, and even included a trip by Ivanka Trump to Moscow to identify potential sites.

According to the publicist, the project — structured as a licensing deal in which Agalarov would build the tower with Trump’s name on it — was only abandoned after the Russian economy floundered. The economic downturn resulted in part from sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the European Union following Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.

Goldstone’s version of events implies a possible explanation for Trump’s interest in lifting sanctions on Russia — a policy move his administration quietly pursued in its first few weeks until it ran into strong opposition from members of Congress and officials within the State Department.

Goldstone placed Donald Trump Jr. at the center of the Trump Tower deal, saying that his father assigned his eldest son the job of moving the project to fruition after the signing of a “letter of intent” between the Trump Organization and Agalarov’s company, the Crocus Group. It is not clear if the future president personally signed the “letter of intent,” but Michael Cohen, a longtime lawyer for Trump, told Yahoo News Tuesday that it would have been standard practice for Trump, as president of the Trump Organization, to do so.

Goldstone also said that Ivanka Trump flew to Moscow in 2014 and met with Emin Agalarov, the oligarch’s son, a pop singer and a vice president of the Crocus Group, to identify sites for the project.

Trump “put Donald Jr. in charge and then Ivanka went to Moscow to look around for what the location would be,” Goldstone said. But the plans for a Trump Tower fell apart because “the economy tanked in Russia’’ after the imposition of Western sanctions, he said.

Goldstone, a British-born publicist who once did worked for Michael Jackson, represents Emin Agalarov in his music career and was present in Moscow during the Miss Universe pageant when the Trump Tower project was discussed by Trump and Aras Agalarov. His role has gotten new attention this week after the New York Times disclosed that Goldstone emailed Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016 urging him to meet with a Russian lawyer to receive damaging information from the Russian government about Hillary Clinton.

Trump Jr. released his email exchange with Goldstone on Tuesday, confirming the key role of the publicist and, more significantly, the Agalarovs, in offering negative information about Clinton on behalf of the Kremlin. “Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting,” Goldstone wrote Trump Jr. on June 3, 2016.

A chief prosecutor in Russia “offered to provide the Trump campaign some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and would be very useful to your father. This is very high-level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support of Mr. Trump — helped along by Aras and Emin.”

Alan Garten, the chief lawyer for the Trump Organization, did not respond to requests for comment. In a telephone interview, Cohen, who is Trump’s personal lawyer, did not dispute any specific details of Goldstone’s account but offered to check them. He did not later respond. But Cohen adamantly rejected the idea there was anything improper about meeting with the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, given that Trump Jr. was told she might have information helpful to Trump’s campaign. “The purpose of the election is to win,” said Cohen, adding, “Why is this any different?” than the unverified “dossier” on Trump’s ties to Russia prepared by a former British spy working for a Washington research firm hired by his political opponents.

Trump Jr., accompanied by then campaign manager Paul Manafort and senior adviser Jared Kushner, met with the Russian lawyer at Goldstone’s request to review the information she purported to have. “He met with her face-to-face to determine” the validity of the advertised documents and “no information was provided.”

Goldstone had played a key role in helping to broker the initial decision by the Miss Universe pageant — then owned by the Trump Organization and NBC — to hold its 2013 contest in Moscow.

According to Goldstone, he pitched the idea to Paula Schugart, then chief executive of Miss Universe, as a way to promote the music career of Emin Agalarov. Schugart was initially hesitant because of concerns about red tape in Moscow. “What if you had a partner who owns the biggest venue in Moscow?” Emin Agalarov responded, according to Goldstone’s account. “Between myself and my father, we can cut through the red tape. You have a new partner.”

The plans to bring Miss Universe to Moscow was announced by Trump in Las Vegas in June 2013 during the Miss USA contest. Trump at the time quickly expressed hope that it would lead to a meeting with Putin. “Do you think Putin will be going to the Miss Universe pageant in November in Moscow — if so, will he become my new best friend?” Trump had tweeted at the time.

A meeting with Putin never came off during Trump’s Moscow trip; the Kremlin expressed regret that the Russian president wouldn’t be able to fit it into his schedule on the day in question because he had a meeting with the King of Holland. But the trip gave Trump an opportunity to discuss the plans for the Trump Tower in Moscow with Agalarov, a billionaire who has been called “the Trump of Russia” and “Putin’s builder” because of massive construction projects he has done on behalf of the Kremlin. Just 10 days before the Miss Universe pageant, Putin had given Agalarov a prestigious award at a ceremony at the Kremlin: Order of Honor of the Russian Federation.

In an interview with Forbes this March, Emin Agalarov confirmed the plans for Trump Tower in Moscow. “We thought that building a Trump Tower next to an Agalarov tower — having the two big names — could be a really cool project to execute,” Emin Agalarov told the magazine. Agalarov blamed the abandonment of the project on Trump’s decision to run for president, rather than the imposition of sanctions. “He ran for president, so we dropped the idea,” Agalarov said. “But if he hadn’t run, we would probably be in the construction phase today.”

But Emin Agalarov said he and the now president have continued to stay in touch, saying that Trump sent a handwritten note to the Agalaovs in November after they congratulated him on his victory. “Now that he ran and was elected, he does not forget his friends.”

Posted in Ethics, Trump | Tagged Donald Trump Jr, Goldstone, Miss Universe, russia | Leave a comment

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What The Data Dump Means For You

A third of voters remain hardcore, unapologetic fans

Every Republican but Senator Collins is on record supporting this approach

How Republicans are trying to do this

We can stop them

SAMPLE CALL DIALOGUE

Posted on Vox.com

Health insurers could bring back preexisting conditions, offer skimpy health plans

The Senate bill gets rid of most Obamacare tax cuts — but keeps two on high earners in place

The Senate bill still makes very deep cuts to Medicaid

KAISER HEALTH NEWS

Background

Effects on Small Employers, Self-Employed Persons, and Traditional Markets

Discussion

KAISER HEALTH NEWS — Health Reform

Impact on Consumers Ineligible for Premium Subsidies

Methods

Remember when Trump disavowed any business dealings with anyone in Russia? Someone found a thread to pull…

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