Ralph Nader's Blog, page 41

“Then, I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.” – “King” Donald Trump

By Ralph Nader

December 27, 2019

Against Donald J. Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted narrow impeachment charges, despite key House Committee Chairs’ arguments for broadening the impeachment charges. These veteran lawmakers, led by House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler, urged Speaker Pelosi to include the ten obstructions of justice documented in the Mueller Report. These House Committee Chairs also wanted to add a count of bribery regarding Ukraine – a stance Pelosi took herself in a November 14, 2019 press conference. She then overruled her chairs and rejected the bribery count.

Speaker Pelosi told reporters on November 14:

“The devastating testimony corroborated evidence of bribery uncovered in the inquiry, and that the president abused his power and violated his oath by threatening to withhold military aid and a White House meeting in exchange for an investigation into his political rival – a clear attempt by the president to give himself an advantage in the 2020 election.”

“Bribery” is explicitly listed as an impeachable offense in the Constitution in Article II, Section 4 and resonates with the public. No matter, Pelosi dropped this crucial charge.

Since the two articles of impeachment – abuse of power and obstruction of justice (limited to the Ukraine matter) – passed the House on December 18, 2019, the Republicans may have given Pelosi reason to accept some of her colleagues’ pleas to broaden the impeachment charges.

First, Senator Mitch McConnell indicated that he was going to follow Trump’s White House in establishing the rules of the trial. What about the oath to “do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws: So help me God?” The Senatorial jurors are going to let the defendant, Donald Trump, have a say on the rules in his own impeachment? That bad faith action prompted Pelosi to hold back sending the two approved impeachment articles to the Senate. Currently the stage is being set for the Senate to be a kangaroo court.

Second, more incriminating e-mails have emerged, linking Trump and his cronies to the Ukraine extortion/bribe. On January 3, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is set to review two cases that will weigh heavily on Trump’s legal team. In one case, the district judge ruled that the White House had to obey a Congressional subpoena for the testimony of Trump’s lawyer, Donald McGahn, as the “most important” witness regarding Trump’s obstruction of justice in Robert S. Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The second case involves the House Judiciary Committee’s access to grand jury testimony in the Mueller investigation to determine if Trump lied. The lower court judge said the White House must turn them over.

To add to these developments, Trump mocked Pelosi, asserting that the various impeachment charges she did not allow her colleagues to include in the impeachment articles means the other impeachment offenses were, according to Trump, all “lies” and “fake.” This should bother Pelosi because Trump is trying to legitimize these numerous impeachable offenses due to Pelosi’s inaction. Trump has defiantly refused to “faithfully execute” the laws for health, safety, and economic protections – enriching himself and displaying contempt for Congress by installing cabinet and other high officials without Senate confirmation. Trump also obstructs Congress by blocking Congressional Committee access to testimonies and documents. Getting away with very serious impeachable offenses sets a terrible precedent for future presidential lawlessness. See a listing of twelve such counts by me, constitutional law experts Bruce Fein, and Louis Fisher in the Congressional Record (December 18, 2019, page H 12197).

Nothing in the Constitution or federal statutes bars second or third rounds of impeachments. Indeed, attorneys for the House Judiciary Committee told the Circuit Court that it “is continuing to conduct its inquiry into whether the President committed other impeachable offenses. The Committee’s investigations did not cease with the House’s recent impeachment vote.”

Moreover, Nancy Pelosi has encouraged five House Committees to continue their probe into the outlaw president, whom Pelosi has called “a crook, a thief, a liar” and said she wants to see “in prison.” The question is whether she wants only “oversight investigations” or she also wants “impeachment investigations.” The difference is critical to Trump’s tenure, to the rule of law, and to making the Senate conduct a fair trial with witnesses (the latter backed by 71 percent of the people).

Prosecuting Trump’s other grave constitutional violations would demonstrate the important personal stakes for Americans who have borne the brunt of the President’s monarchical, illegal defiance that takes away life preserving safeguards for the American people, which protects them from rampant corporate ravages.

With the coming of the New Year, Speaker Pelosi has a historic choice regarding constitutional order and compliance with the law by Donald J. Trump. Either she sends a boomerang to the White House or she delivers a solid, broad-based eviction notice that the Senate Republicans can try to defend in a public trial viewed by tens of millions of Americans.

Democrats Cave in Secret Budget Deal with Trump

By Ralph Nader

December 20, 2019

While attention was focused on the House of Representatives’ impeachment of Donald J. Trump, legislators from both parties were secretly huddling with White House aides to seal a $1.4 trillion budget deal to fund the government until next September. They were rushing to do this to avoid a partial government shutdown starting December 21, 2019.

Had the budget been deliberated in open Congressional hearings, the media would have reported on this backroom deal and the people of this country would have had a chance to weigh in during the proceedings. Instead, a degraded Congress pulled a fast one on the citizens. This obfuscation is especially unacceptable considering that these lawmakers work only three days a week at best— when they are not in recess altogether.

Astoundingly the Democrats also caved in on Trump’s wall! After blocking Trump’s funding demand for the wall for three years, the Democrats approved $1.4 billion for the wall and even allowed Trump to divert funds from the Pentagon to that porous, wasteful barrier. In so doing, the Democrats legitimized one of the egregious, impeachable offenses Trump committed earlier this year when he seized $3.6 billion from the Pentagon’s budget in money not approved for the wall. The Washington Post reported that former secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus tweeted “As hurricane heads for Camp Lejeune Trump takes $3.6b from military for needless wall. Same amt Marines say needed to fix Lejeune after last storm.”

Trump usurped the Congressional “power of the purse,” to use James Madison’s phrase, under our Constitution. Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi declined to charge Trump with this and other similarly impeachable spending violations. Now we know one reason why—the ongoing secret budget deal.

Just as astonishing was that the  Democrats caved on the funding for Obamacare. Year after year, Democratic leaders defended Obamacare, rather than support more efficient  full Medicare for All (with free choice of doctor and hospital). See H.R. 1384 for the most recent version of Medicare for All.

With the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals just deciding against the individual mandate in Obamacare, what does the House Democratic leadership do? They go along with the Republicans’ demand to repeal the medical device and health insurance taxes that were helping to fund Obamacare’s expansion of health insurance coverage for twenty million people.

It gets worse. The House Democrats approved a huge increase of $22 billion to the already bloated, wasteful military budget in return for Trump approving paid family leave for federal government employees. The Democrats made this deal instead of just pushing for paid maternity leave,  a right provided in all other Western democracies and numerous dictatorships in the world!

“No problem,” say the feeble Democrats. It is just more of the terrible practice by the Democrats of giving equal increases for the military budget, demanded by the Republican illegal war hawks, as the price for social service funds for low income families and children. What a grotesque way to spend taxpayer money!

To what level has this Congress lowered itself? Allowing the Trump dump to contaminate Congress even extends to cruel bigotry. They allowed Trump to extend his racist discrimination against the American citizens of Puerto Rico by reducing the Medicaid funds from $12 billion over four years to up to $5.7 billion over two years. The higher sum and longer term already were endorsed by Republican and Democratic leaders on two Congressional Committees.

Robert Greenstein, director of the highly respected Center on Budget and policy priorities, declared that “with another funding cliff looming in two years under the new agreement, Puerto Rico may continue to lack the certainty it needs to commit to long-term increases of its very low payment rates to health care providers [vendors] to stem their alarming exodus to the mainland, to provide coverage for such key health treatments as drugs to treat Hepatitis C, and to cover more poor, uninsured residents.”

Over the years, Congress has weakened its exclusive constitutional “power of the purse” by giving presidents waivers. As with the war powers, Congress has delegated more of its constitutional authority to the Executive Branch.

Just days ago, the racist President Trump bragged before a large campaign rally that he has cut off “six hundred million dollars” in aid for Palestinian relief, including aid for suffering children. This was a long term assistance program, under past Republican and Democratic administrations, to help provide the barest necessities to displaced and impoverished Palestinians whose territories are blockaded or militarily occupied by the Israeli government.

Washington justified such expenditures for both humanitarian and security purposes. No more, says the imperial Trump, exercising his Congressionally-granted waiver.

Congress has also long abandoned its constitutional authority over tariffs to the imperial presidency. Constitutional litigator Alan Morrison has challenged the White House’s unilateral imposition of tariffs—now involving tens of billions of dollars—on imports from foreign countries. In January Morrison will argue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that the authority to impose tariffs belongs to Congress.

What is Trump doing with these tens of billions of dollars deposited in the U.S. Treasury? Congress has not approved spending them for any programs or objectives. When I asked a staffer with the House Budget Committee what is being done with loads of money, she replied that “we have it under study.”

Secret government has its direct consequences for the American people, and abdication of congressional checks on the Executive Branch is harmful and cowardly.

Boeing’s Perilous Bungling Requires New Leadership

By Ralph Nader

December 16, 2019

The Boeing executives and marketeers responsible for over-ruling Boeing engineers on the 737 MAX are still in charge of this very troubled aerospace company. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg and the rubber-stamp Board of Directors, with two trophy ambassadors, are still running Boeing – thirteen months after the deadly 737 MAX crash in Indonesia and nine months after the deadly 737 MAX crash in Ethiopia that together took 346 lives. Boeing said in October that it would appoint a board member with deep air safety experience, but it has not happened yet. (Muilenburg is the only board member with an aeronautical engineering background)

Boeing has displayed an egregious pattern of mismanagement. The company is in trouble from contractors, the Department of Defense, and NASA. California Representative John Garamendi said Boeing had “serious quality issues” with the KC-46 aerial tanker used by the military and accused the company of “pushing profits over quality and safety.” According to NASA’s Inspector General Paul Martin, NASA “essentially paid Boeing higher prices to address a schedule slippage caused by Boeing’s 13-month delay.”

First-rate former Boeing engineers, including John Barnett and Ed Pierson, are exposing the reckless conditions at the Boeing 737 and 787 Dreamliner plants in Washington state and South Carolina.

Boeing managers and directors are still on the job and paying themselves handsomely.   These reckless marketeers are able to get away with this because Congress and the White House have disabled the FAA and turned it from a safety watchdog into an industry lapdog, leaving Boeing free to self-certify its planes.

With intensifying investigation by the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure, under the chairmanship of Congressman Peter DeFazio, a stunning internal FAA risk assessment turned up. After the October 29, 2018 Lion Air Flight 610 was hijacked by powerful MCAS software which took control of the aircraft from its pilots. A December 2018 FAA memo concluded that there would be 15 catastrophic crashes globally over the life of the 737 MAX fleet – ranging 30 to 45 years. That would mean the deaths of at least 2900 human beings.

Dr. Alan Diehl, an aerospace engineer with extensive experience at the FAA, at the Department of Defense, and in private business, told the Wall Street Journal that this prediction “would be an unacceptable number in the modern aviation-safety world.” The FAA analysis, surfacing very late in the wake of the two planes going down due to Boeing’s criminal negligence, was conditioned on the 737 MAX not flying until there are design and software corrections.

Chairman DeFazio noted other design problems with the Boeing 737 MAX, including rudder vulnerabilities.  Boeing leadership has displayed all sorts of derelictions,  including refusing to adequately inform pilots about the problems with the 737 MAX, producing faulty training manuals, and refusing to insist on full simulator training. Not only that, but the 787 Dreamliner has been found to have inadequate protection in case of lightning strikes (another Boeing bosses over-ruling of their own engineer’s warnings). Boeing also laid off hundreds of quality control inspectors in its factories, preferring to rely on machines.

The FAA’s new chief, Stephen Dickson,  recently warned Boeing to stop announcing ungrounding times for the approximately 400 737 MAX already in the hands of the airlines. He indicated that the FAA is stiffening its backbone a little by saying that the ungrounding schedule will be decided by the FAA. Boeing has just announced it was suspending production of the 737 MAX for the time being.

The next step for Dickson would be to ask FAA Deputy Administrator Daniel Elwell and Associate Administrator for Safety Ali Bahrami to resign. Elwell and Bahrami turned their backs on airline passenger safety, let Boeing dictate its own safety decisions, and kept the public and Congress in the dark. There is no way the FAA can recover its responsibilities so long as Elwell and Ali Bahrami are still in positions of any responsibility.

Bahrami admitted he wasn’t even aware of his own agency’s risk assessment of the Boeing 737 MAX, noted above.

Meanwhile, the families of the deceased continue to advocate that the Boeing 737 MAX be required to undergo full certification with full pilot simulator training. In their grief, these wonderful family members are fighting daily for the future safety of tens of millions of airline passengers.

Please see flyersrights.org for updates and your participation. You can find their comprehensive report at the following link: https://flyersrights.org/737-max/white-paper/. And see a Democracy Now! Interview on Boeing’s misdeeds: https://www.democracynow.org/2019/12/16/ralph_nader_boeing_737_max_jet

Why Not Also Go With “The Kitchen Table” Impeachable Offenses for Removal?

By Ralph Nader

December 6, 2019

Will the Democrats move to impeach Trump for a narrow brace of violations and accept that the Senate Republicans will keep this outlaw in the White House? Or will they present the Senate with the President’s many proven impeachable offenses, thereby requiring the Senate Republicans, before live national television, in a public trial to defend Trump’s indefensible behavior?

Let’s start with the signal statement by Trump: “Then I have Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.” For almost three years, he has proceeded to engage in monarchical unconstitutional behavior in far more repeated, brazen ways than any preceding president. It is not even close.

The “abuse of the public trust” was stated by Alexander Hamilton as one definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” or an impeachable offense. Trump’s abuses provide deep evidence that he is (1) a serial, chronic, daily liar on matters of state, (2) a serial sexual predator, (3) a racist bigot, as demonstrated by his programs and policies, and (4) one who incites violence at rallies and in his tweets. Taken together, these abuses as an article of impeachment should be put before the Senate for them to defend. Millions of citizens will understand from their own core values that our country should shed this arrogant disgrace from our White House – through removal from office in the impeachment trial.

Another impeachment article should deal with Trump’s corruption in appointing henchmen to head health, safety and economic protection agencies with the objective of dismantling and disabling the laws enacted by Congress. Trump is bad for you when you breathe the air, drink the water, eat chicken, beef, pork, vegetables and fruit or work in hazardous places. Children are being exposed to dangerous pesticides, borrowers are being ripped off by financial companies and students are snagged by student loan traps and for-profit colleges. Trump sides with corporate criminals and fraudsters, and he expands crony capitalism with corporate welfare with your tax dollars. This is no mere de-regulation here and there. This is wholesale removal of the federal cops from the corporate crime beat and leaving you defenseless. Openly rejecting his constitutional duty to “faithfully” execute the laws is a major impeachable offense.

Then there is the loud desire to enrich himself by using the magnetic power of his office to attract patrons to his hotels and other properties in search of favors. Unlike past presidents, Trump defiantly retains direct profit seeking ownership of his businesses, leading to violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause.

These are continual impeachable violations that the House of Representatives can make graphic and persuasive to millions of Americans who believe in the rule of law.

Important as the crooked attempt to bribe Ukraine to enhance his re-election campaign is – something Trump will continue to pursue given his past requests that Russia and China help him against his electoral opponents, this gross behavior has not moved the needle of public opinion. It is viewed as remote from the “kitchen table” concerns of voters. This is not the case with other documented impeachable offenses.

Here are two examples: Appointing “acting” henchmen to head agencies who have not been confirmed by the Senate and spending money prohibited by Congress by shifting funds approved by Congress thereby violating two federal statutes, in addition to the Constitution.

He has also threatened unilateral wars, which can only be declared by Congress, not by him, under our Constitution. He illegally sends armed forces anywhere he wants to destroy anyone he wants – prosecutor, judge, jury and executor all in one. More and more Americans are turning against the bankrupting military policies that only create more enemies and quagmires. Even conservatives are upset by Trump’s imperialistic acts.

Of course the contempt of Congress is Trump’s marquee unconstitutional outrage. Our founding fathers would have had him impeached after a few defiances of Congressional subpoenas, not to mention dozens of such rejections for witnesses and documents starting soon after his inauguration in January 2017 and intensifying during this impeachment period. Trump thinks he can strip-mine the basic oversight and investigative authority of Congress with impunity.

Bruce Fein, a constitutional scholar and litigator, asserts that the impeachment power given to Congress must operate under a greater urgency in 2019 than in 1781 when the federal government’s main employees were postmen. Now the Executive Branch is immensely larger and more dangerous. Without regard for the Constitution and the separation of powers between Congress and the judicial branch, this White House has weaponry and might that can destroy the Earth, install dictators and retard the world’s response to deadly climate disruption. Domestically, the President can accelerate the emergence of a fascistic, corporate state.

Fein says the founder’s view of impeachment as a proactive deterrent heading off worse situations, is given more urgency by the towering size and power of the executive branch today.

Going with a full, strong impeachment case in the House will galvanize the affected constituencies to support this effort. It will put the Senate Republicans in a very tight spot of choosing between their political futures and Constitutional duties or the political fate of Donald Trump.

Failure by Congress to prevent devastating precedents from being invoked and followed by future presidents will create a legacy of disgrace for Congress. Above all, for Speaker Pelosi, a broad and compelling indictment of Trump will move the citizens otherwise described by Abraham Lincoln as the “public sentiment,” to sustain an impeachment verdict by the Senate.

OPEN LETTER TO DONALD TRUMP from Mark Green and Ralph Nader

Dear Donald,

It’s been a while. I [Mark Green] last saw you & Melania when you walked into my final fund-raiser for Mayor on November 4, 2001. You joined the Clintons, Cuomos, Jon Stewart and 1100 other guests in our effort to defeat Republican nominee Bloomberg. Thanks again for your $4500 contribution.

In this very different political situation, we want you to have a copy of our new book — Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption and General Bullsh*t — on the day of its publication. Our conclusion: while you of course were legally selected, you nonetheless are a “fake president” who is unfit to fulfill the duties of the office due to your lack of stability, integrity, honesty and knowledge. Your disabling ego so degrades your judgment that you, in effect, are a PINO, a president-in-name-only.

We’ve observed how you routinely avoid accountability by engaging in angry monologues in your tweets, rallies, FOX interviews and White House lawn walk-bys. In such venues, as noted in Fake President, you invariably stick to a couple of repeated talking-points of-the-day, buttressed by falsehoods and objections (“excuse me! excuse me!”) should any journalist ask something that annoys you. This is not JFK interacting with the press at his many press conferences.

Another device we observed is your “upside-downism” of attacking rivals for criticism of you in order to preempt such criticism and confuse Americans unaccustomed to serial disinformation — e. g., Elijah Cummings was a “bully”, Nancy Pelosi “treasonous”, and House Democrats “unpatriotic” for considering your own impeachable (unpatriotic) offenses. The First Amendment of course allows you say all that but there’s little more to support such sentiments, excepts perhaps a guilty conscience.

Instead, we believe that you should be held accountable for your daily lava of lies that can destroy public trust and subvert democracy. In our view, “presidents are not kings”, to quote federal district court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in her decision last week involving Don McGahn’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee. Since we are not White House correspondents waiting outside your doorstep and hoping to be called on — and given the timing of Impeachment proceedings beginning tomorrow in the House Judiciary Committee — we’d like to send you 10 brief citizen questions involving material in Fake President. The American People need to see if you’ll answer for any of your apparent 14,000+ lies/falsehoods (Washington Post) and the 2600 conflicts of interest uncovered by CREW. Until you admit your compulsive dissembling, you will continue to be a fake — someone hiding the truth — and be rightly called The Lyin’ King.

Out of hundreds of examples in Fake President, we’d like to give you the opportunity to respond to our “Top Ten List of Falsehoods.”

When asked last year if you were aware of or paid hush money to Stormy Daniels, why did you deny it since witnesses under oath later said that you wrote at least six checks totaling over $200,000 while in the Oval Office to cover some of Michael Cohen’s payments?
When you said in 2016 that you would release your tax returns and in 2017 that you’d absolutely testify in person before Mueller, were you simply lying at the time or did you do a 180o later to save yourself from embarrassment?
You believe that assertions are the same as accomplishments. Take health insurance — where is the “terrific” health plan that drives down premiums that you’ve been forecasting for three years and why do you claim to favor coverage for pre-existing conditions when your Department of Justice has sided with plaintiffs who are seeking to end such protections? Which is it since it can’t be both?
You once made fun of congressional Republicans for caving in to NRA money. But how is that any different than the way you refuse to challenge major oil & gas firms as they and you ignore the science of climate violence? For example, can you rationally explain your view that coal is “beautiful [and] clean” but windmills are not?
When you lie, bully citizens, self-enrich, and use veiled racial taunts (“go back to…” the country of your origin), are you at all worried what kind of example you are setting for young people everywhere?
Since it’s virtually impossible that four dozen separate women are lying about you engaging in non-consensual sexual abuse with each of them, can you assure the public that you will not continue such misconduct and make amends to your accusers?
Recall when Richard Nixon said that he was “not a crook” and then it was shown that he was by approving hush money payments to the Watergate burglars. When documentary evidence and all witnesses under oath show that you froze military aid to Ukraine until they announced a probe of the Bidens, how can you expect most voters to continue to believe anything you say?
Does it hurt American interests around the world when the people in some 190 nations have far less regard for you in polls than President Obama registered, while only two — Russia and Israel — now conclude that you are more popular?
Given your massive pulpit, it is disgraceful when you engage in specific character destruction — for example, when asked who might be financing the Caravan that you were denouncing in the Fall of 2018, you typically answered, “maybe it was Soros. I’ve heard that.” Do you understand the difference between evidence and deliberate innuendo?
AG Barr told Congress under oath that he thought the FBI “spied” on you while investigating Carter Page’s FISA warrant. If the independent DoJ Inspector General’s report on December 12 concludes that was false, as press reports indicate, will you rebuke Barr or at least apologize for your role in spreading a falsehood about the leading federal law enforcement agency within Barr’s agency?

Thank you for your attention. We hope that you read Fake President (enroute to your office in a digital file and in hardback) and use it as an opportunity for self-reflection. That would surprise your critics — and help a divided country if you can sincerely promise to stop telling an average of 22 falsehoods/lies daily, stop routinely violating laws, stop incitements to riot, start treating women respectfully and start being racially inclusive in a multi-ethnic country looking for leaders who bring us together.

Best regards,

Mark Green

Ralph Nader

Impeaching Trump for Deliberately Abetting the Climate Crisis Security Perils

By Ralph Nader

November 27, 2019

It is time to take Donald Trump’s disregard for climate crisis seriously. As Commander in Chief, Trump is abdicating his duties to protect his people, instead actively aiding and abetting the corporate polluters who are causing the climate chaos. Trump is wasting irreplaceable time that we need to prevent a worsening climate crisis. Trump’s actions, expanding the fossil fuel industry’s emissions, make the perils even worse. This is another reason for impeachment—climate crisis jeopardizes the American people in major ways.

Trump denies the overwhelming scientific warnings about the devastating destruction of the global climate crisis. He calls climate disruption a “Chinese hoax,” taking his delusionary persona to loony, dangerous levels.

The world is experiencing unheard of environmental upheaval: unprecedented heat waves, rapidly melting glaciers and permafrost, record floods, intensifying hurricanes, more frequent and severe droughts, and massive habitat convulsions. Despite the clear warning signs the worse is yet to come, Trump is shredding regulatory standards designed by law to curb the emission of greenhouse gases by fossil fuels, such as coal. He is opening large areas to oil and gas production, including those on our federal lands, the Arctic wildlife refuge, and offshore.

Trump has also decided to weaken Obama-era emission standards, a move that even upset some auto companies. Ford, Volkswagen, Honda and BMW all supported the stricter regulations set by California over those proposed by the Trump administration. Cutting back on energy efficient technologies releases more greenhouse gases, reduces gas mileage efficiency, and accelerates climate chaos.

It is as if Trump reacts to massive spreading wildfires by denying their causes, then doing nothing to diminish them. To make matters worse, it is as if he actively lowers environmental regulatory standards that would have played a role in preventing these fires.

The Pentagon keeps warning Trump and his cohorts that the climate crisis is a national security danger. Draft-dodger Trump can be charged with weakening our national defenses up against the destructive power of a perturbed nature.

Sea levels are rising. City planners at Miami Beach have an evacuation plan for tidal flooding, not just for exposed homeowners, but for the city itself.

Almost every week, the press, even Fox News, reports record-breaking natural disasters around the world. Just this last week, the Washington Post graphically reported changes in climate that have “set off a devastating chain reaction in the Sea of Okhotsk.” The giant eye-witness article is called “Weakening ‘the heart of the North Pacific.’” The melting ice and the warming sea have resulted in far fewer salmon (salmon catch is down by 70 percent since 2004). The New York Times recently published a page one feature on accelerating heavy rains and destructive droughts that wreak havoc on India’s agriculture and destabilize both urban and rural life. Another issue facing both India and Pakistan is the fast melting glaciers in the high mountains that feed the life-critical down-stream rivers below that sustain a billion people.

Leading scientists, led by climatologists, are putting out regular reports, rooted in evidence on the ground, which keep shortening the time before certain irreversible benchmarks, as with warming temperatures, are experienced.

None of this enters the cranium of the oblivious Donald J. Trump. He is too busy tweeting, scheming and slandering to further his own interests. Our nation’s interests are, to put it mildly, not his primary concern. He remains bent on pulling out of the voluntary Paris Climate Accord by the deadline next year. He is making America last again, behind over  196 nations who have signed the agreement to cut their carbon dioxide and other climate-disrupting gasses to keep the temperatures from rising to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Trumpland is where desired ignorance replaces presidential intellect, where reckless disregard of mounting property losses and human casualties become photo opportunities for alighting from Air Force One. Trump makes vague promises of aid only to then provide far less than what the devastated communities desperately need.

Translated into constitutional terms, Mr. Trump is deliberately refusing to enforce the laws mandated by Congress for environmental and workplace protection. He has given our government over to corporations, putting in charge corrupt corporatists qualified only to dismantle and disable these health and safety agencies. His crony capitalists are pushing out the scientists and crushing the civil servants who have sworn to uphold the law.

In making our country more defenseless against a mankind-driven upending of nature’s equilibrium, he gravely violates his oath to promote the general welfare and provide for the common defense. In a deepening emergency, he is stealing crucial years away from critical preparedness, as his own generals would tell him. Instead, he continues to mouth his insane phrase “beautiful clean, coal,” a mineral that once burned becomes one of the most deadly contributors to climate catastrophes.

Children are marching in the millions all over the world demanding that national leaders and big corporations in the fossil fuel industry move toward renewable, efficient energy with the utmost speed. These youngsters, who are doing their homework, are frightened over what will batter them in the coming decades. Trump should feel ashamed by their desperate pleas.

Our founding fathers often spoke of thinking ahead and respecting “posterity.” The desire to foresee and forestall was especially paramount for Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, not to mention the prescient Thomas Paine. For them and their colleagues, Trump would have been seen as a monarchical nightmare or and an impeachable offender on the climate crisis alone.

Nader and Constitutional Scholars Push for 12 Articles of Impeachment

November 26, 2019

On November 22, 2019, Ralph Nader, Louis Fisher, Bruce Fein wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging her to act on their proposed 12 Articles of Impeachment.

Both the letter and the Articles of Impeachment can be seen below.

300 New Jersey Avenue, N.W.

Suite 900

Washington, D.C. 20001

202-465-8728

November 22, 2019

The Speaker of the House of Representatives

United States Capitol

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Madam Speaker Pelosi:

On October 31, 2019, you elaborated with perfect pitch that the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump was not only about the man but about the constitutional oath of every Member of Congress to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Among other things, you correctly underscored the danger of a Chief Executive who boasts, “Then I have Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” He has recklessly flirted with the ideas of slaughtering 10 million civilian Afghans, which, if acted upon, would violate the War Crimes Act, and initiating a nuclear war of aggression against North Korea, which, if acted upon, would violate the Declare War Clause. A clear and present danger that the President will subvert the Constitution should trigger impeachment. Indeed, at the constitutional convention George Mason insisted that attempts to subvert the Constitution should be impeachable.

Uniquely among wayward presidents, Mr. Trump is shattering our entire constitutional order as our proposed twelve (12) count Article of Impeachment documents . (See enclosure). Several of the counts are per se impeachable and need no more fact-finding: defiance of congressional subpoenas and oversight; spending billions of dollars on a southern border wall not appropriated for that purpose; continuing or expanding presidential wars not declared by Congress; exercising line-item veto power; flouting the Emoluments Clause; and, playing prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any person on the planet based on secret, unsubstantiated information. Hearings to educate the public about the alarming consequences of such per se violations is imperative to fortify the full constitutional legitimacy of the impeachment charges.

The Trump administration’s constitutional lawlessness is unprecedented. The defense of “everyone does it” will not wash. What Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis said about government lawlessness applies with special force to a President of the United States who should be a role model for the citizenry.

“In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”

The House impeachment inquiry into President Trump should be commensurate with the frightening breadth of his constitutional lawlessness, including multiple obstructions of justice. Narrowly focusing on the solicitation of bribery and an illegal foreign campaign contribution connected to Ukraine while leaving the vast number of other constitutional wrongs or usurpations unsanctioned would be disastrous for moving public opinion in favor of impeachment. The unrebuked usurpations would set a precedent that would lie around like a loaded weapon ready for use by future occupants of the White House who claim limitless executive power except a Ukraine-type shakedown. They would downgrade the quality of presidential candidates and lower public expectations of the presidency to alarming levels.

Moreover, Mr. Trump will repeatedly claim his other impeachable abuses are meritless.

Since a Democratic majority in the House did not act more broadly, he will denounce the accusations as lies and fake news.

In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee declined to vote an Article of Impeachment against President Richard Nixon for his secret , unconstitutional war against Cambodia never declared or directed by Congress. Thereafter, unconstitutional secret or overt presidential wars of varying scope and duration became epidemic notwithstanding the War Powers Resolution.

We acknowledge that several of President  Trump’s  impeachable  offenses  were perpetrated by his predecessors with impunity because of congressional dereliction or otherwise. But that  is an unpersuasive  argument  for the current Congress  to stay its hand.  No President  has a right to rely on congressional nonfeasance of its impeachment powers. Moreover, no other President has taken such a massive  wrecking  ball  to our entire constitutional edifice.  It  is not even close. If the Trump presidency is not repudiated by Congress, our posterity will inherit vassalage to a presidential monarch rather than citizenry in a Republic .

An analogy here is instructive. For decades, men sexually  harassed,  assaulted, or subjugated women with impunity. Then came the #MeToo Movement. What was formerly acceptable and not prosecuted became unacceptable and penalized. There is no male defense that social acquiescence in past sexual predation justifies immunity from current prosecution.

Trump’s personal assaults on many women are, of course, per se, sui generis impeachable offenses.

The Republic is at an inflection point. Either the Constitution is saved by impeaching and removing its arsonist in the White House, or it is reduced to ashes by continued congressional endorsement, whether by omission or commission, of limitless executive power and the undoing of checks and balances.

We are further convinced that making the Constitution the battleground of the 2020 elections is not politically objectionable. The Constitution is our birth certificate . It transcends party affiliation. It finds expression in E Pluribus Unum . It is what makes us a nation – not a fragile assemblage of parochial communities.

Corporate fraud, polluted air and water, climate disruption, consumer and worker injuries, deficient hospitals, inadequate mass transit, unaffordable housing, unrepaired roads and unimproved schools are “kitchen table” necessities bludgeoned by his dismantling of agencies established by Congress in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, Article II, section 3. Mr. Trump’s unconstitutional, multi-trillion-dollar garrison state featuring perpetual presidential wars jeopardizes them all.

With far more grave offenses regularly perpetrated than the offenses investigated in the Watergate hearings, the proposed twelve-count Article of Impeachment would invite absorbing televised congressional hearings to educate and unify the public behind our democracy, our hallowed constitutional order, and the urgency of impeaching its vandal-in-chief.

There can be no superior legacy for a House Speaker.

We would be eager to elaborate more broadly and deeply on this letter at your convenience.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader, Esq.                       Louis Fisher*                       Bruce Fein, Esq.

 

*Louis Fisher was formerly a constitutional scholar for four decades, serving thirty-five years with Congressional Research Service and five years with the Law Library of Congress.

NOVEMBER 22, 2019

ARTICLE OF IMPEACHMENT

RESOLVED. That Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, is impeached for bribery and high crimes and misdemeanors in violation of his constitutional oath of office and that the following article of impeachment be exhibited to the Senate:

ARTICLE OF IMPEACHMENT EXHIBITED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND OF ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AGAINST DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT OF ITS IMPEACHMENT AGAINST HIM FOR BRIBERY AND HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS IN VIOLATION OF HIS CONSTITUTIONAL OATH OF OFFICE TO PRESERVE, PROTECT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.

Article 1

In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, in violation of his constitutional duty faithfully to execute the office of the President of the United States, and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, Article 1, section 1, clause 6, and, contrary to his public trust, has systematically scorned the letter and spirit of the Constitution on a scale vastly beyond any previous occupant of the White House in doing the following:

CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS. President Trump has notoriously boasted, “Then I have Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.” He has chronically acted in violation the Constitution accordingly.

The informing or oversight powers of Congress are even more important than its legislative prerogatives.  The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed the plenary authority of Congress to investigate the executive branch for abuses, irregularities, illegalities or the need for new laws.  Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis famously lectured, sunshine is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.  The House Judiciary Committee voted an article of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon for defying a congressional subpoena that compromised the ability of Congress to investigate impeachable offenses.

President Trump has repeatedly and unconstitutionally systematically undermined the congressional oversight power, including the ongoing congressional impeachment inquiry of the President himself, by instructing numerous current and former White House staff and members of the executive branch to defy congressional subpoenas on an unprecedented scale far beyond any previous President.  Without congressional authority, he has secretly deployed special forces abroad and employed secret guidelines for targeted killings, including American citizens, based on secret unsubstantiated information.  He has unconstitutionally endeavored to block private persons or entities from responding to congressional requests or subpoenas for information, e.g., Deutsche Bank.  He has refused to provide Congress information about nepotistic or other security clearances he granted in opposition to his own FBI security experts.  He has refused to disclose his tax returns to the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee contrary to a 1924 law, 26 U.S.C. 6103 (f).

The informing or oversight powers of Congress are even more bedrock than legislation.  Without information, Congress cannot enact informed legislative bills, repeal inadequate laws, or prevent maladministration of good ones. The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly affirmed the authority of Congress to investigate the executive branch for abuses, irregularities, illegalities or the need for new laws. Transparency, not secrecy, is the coin of the realm.

Congress possesses plenary authority independent of the federal judiciary to determine whether presidential defiance or obstruction of a congressional subpoena warrants impeachment for destroying the rule of law in favor of raw presidential power.  A court order is unnecessary.  Under the Constitution, the Supreme Court held impeachment questions are assigned to the House and Senate to the exclusion of federal courts in Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224 (1993).

ABUSE OF THE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT AND ABUSE OF PUBLIC TRUST. President Abraham Lincoln famously declared that, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” The nation’s motto is E Pluribus Unum. President Trump, however, has fostered combustible division and rancor among “We the people of the United States” by inciting violence and threatening civil war if removed from office. Unlike prior presidents, he has made presidential lies as routine as the rising and setting of the sun, confounding civil discourse, truth and public trust.  He has disrespected, belittled, and serially preyed upon women, mocked the disabled, incited violence against the mainstream media and critics, and encouraged and displayed bigotry towards minorities and minority Members of Congress, including intercession with Israel in serious violation of the Speech or Debate Clause, Article I, section 6, clause 1, to deny two Members visitor visas.

Mr. Trump has failed to superintend or check the chronic lawlessness of his subordinates, a dereliction of duty which James Madison characterized as an impeachable offense. In the very first Congress, Mr. Madison elaborated:

“I think it absolutely necessary that the President should have the power of removing his subordinates from office; it will make him, in a peculiar manner, responsible for their conduct, and subject him to impeachment himself, if he suffers them to perpetrate with impunity high crimes or misdemeanors against the United States, or neglects to superintend their conduct, so as to check their excesses.”

George Washington when presiding over the constitutional convention instructed, “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair.” Mr. Trump has so disrespected that standard.

No other President has so consistently voiced extremist and inflammatory views across the board and so grossly neglected the duties of the Oval Office.

APPROPRIATIONS CLAUSE, REVENUE CLAUSE. Article I, section 9, clause 7 prohibits federal government expenditures “but in consequence of appropriations made by law.” Congress has consistently voted much less money than President Trump requested to build an extensive, multi-billion-dollar wall with Mexico.  In violation of the Clause and the criminal prohibition of the Anti-Deficiency Act, President Trump has committed to spending billions of dollars far in excess of what Congress has appropriated for the wall. The congressional power of the purse is a cornerstone of the Constitution’s separation of powers.  James Madison in Federalist 58 explained, “This power over the purse may…be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining redress of every grievance, and to carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”

Article I, section 7, clause 1 requires all revenue measures to originate in the House of Representatives.  In violation of the Clause, President Trump has raised tens of billions of dollars by unilaterally imposing tariffs with limitless discretion under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.  He has become a Foreign Trade Czar in imposing tariffs or quotas or granting exemptions from his trade restrictions in his unbridled discretion to assist political friends and punish political enemies.  Literally trillions of dollars in international trade have been affected.  Riches are made and livelihoods destroyed overnight with the capricious stroke of President Trump’s pen.

EMOLUMENTS CLAUSE. Article I, section 9, clause 8 prohibits the President (and other federal officers), without the consent of Congress, from accepting any “present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatsoever, from any King, Prince, or foreign state.”  The President should be above suspicion.  The clause aims to prohibit dual loyalties or its appearance because of financial conflicts of interests.  President Trump has notoriously refused to place his assets in a blind trust.  Instead, he continues to profit from opulent hotels heavily patronized by foreign governments.  He has permitted his family to commercialize the White House. He has compromised the national interest to enrich family wealth on a scale unprecedented in the history of the presidency.
TREATY CLAUSE. Article II, section 2, clause 2 requires Senate ratification of treaties by two-thirds majorities.  The text is silent as to whether treaty termination requires Senate ratification, and the Supreme Court held the issue was a nonjusticiable political question in Goldwater v. Carter, 444 S. 996 (1979).  But the Treaty Clause purpose indicates Senate approval of treaty terminations. Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 75 that the President would be an untrustworthy steward of the national interest in the conduct of international affairs because of the enormous temptation to betray the country to advance personal ambitions. That suspicion of presidential motives is equally implicated in treaty terminations and points to requiring Senate ratification. President Trump flouted the Treaty Clause in terminating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Russia unilaterally. The treaty assigned the termination decision to the “United States.” The President alone is not the United States under the Treaty Clause.
DECLARE WAR CLAUSE. Article I, section 8, clause 11 empowers Congress alone to take the nation from a state of peace to a state of war.  That power is non-delegable. The Declare War Clause authors distrusted the President to preserve the peace because of the temptation to war to aggrandize executive power and earn a place in history.  In violation of the Declare War Clause, President Trump has continued to wage or has initiated presidential wars in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and has used special forces offensively in several African nations. President Trump has claimed authority to initiate war against any nation or non-state actor in the world—not in self-defense-on his say-so alone, including war against North Korea, Iran, or Venezuela.
TAKE CARE CLAUSE; PRESENTMENT CLAUSE. Article II, section 3 obligates the President to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”  In violation of that trust, President Donald J. Trump deliberately attempted to frustrate special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of collaboration between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia to influence the presidential election. Among other things, the President refused to answer specific questions relating to his presidential conduct; endeavored to fire the special counsel; dangled pardons for non-cooperating witnesses; and, urged Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reverse his recusal decision to better protect his presidency.  In all these respects, the President was attempting to obstruct justice.

President Trump has also systematically declined to enforce statutory mandates of Congress by arbitrarily and capriciously revoking scores of agency rules ranging from immigration to the Consumer Financial Protection Board to the Environmental Protection Agency in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act or otherwise.  He has routinely legislated by executive order in lieu of following constitutionally prescribed processes for legislation.

In violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, Mr. Trump has dismantled and disabled scores of preventive measures to save lives, avoid injuries or disease, help families, consumers, and workers, and detect, deter, and punish tens of billions of dollars of corporate fraud.  He has disputed climate disruption as a “Chinese hoax,” compounded the climate crisis by overt actions that expand greenhouse gas emissions and pollution, and excluded or marginalized the influence of civil service scientists.

Article I, section 7, clause 2, as President George Washington explained, requires the President either to sign or veto a bill passed by Congress in toto.  The President may not exercise a line-item veto, as the United States Supreme Court held in Clinton v. New York, 524 U.S. 417 (1998).  President Trump, however, like several of his predecessors commonly exercises the equivalent of unconstitutional line-item vetoes through signing statements declaring his intent to leave unexecuted provisions he decrees are unconstitutional without a court test.  Presidential signing statements weaken legislative power by disarming Congress from bundling in a single bill provisions both liked and disliked by the President and forcing the White House to choose between all or none.  During the administration of President George W. Bush, an American Bar Association Task Force issued a report condemning signing statements as unconstitutional sent to the President himself. ABA Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine, August 2006.

DUE PROCESS CLAUSE. The Fifth Amendment provides that no person shall “be deprived of life…without due process of law.”  In violation of due process, President Trump claims power, like his immediate two predecessors, to act as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill American citizens or non-citizens alike, on or off a battlefield, whether or not engaged in hostilities, whether or not accused of crime, and whether or not posing an imminent threat of harm that would trigger a right of preemptive self-defense. This combination of powers are euphemistically referenced as “targeted killings,” but they define tyranny.
APPOINTMENTS CLAUSE.  President Trump has repeatedly appointed principal officers of the United States, including the National Security Advisor and Cabinet officials, who have not been confirmed by the Senate in violation of the Appointments Clause, Article II, section 2, clause 2.  On a scale never practiced by prior presidents, Mr. Trump has filled as many as half of Cabinet posts with “Acting Secretaries” who have never been confirmed by the Senate.
SOLICITING A FOREIGN CONTRIBUTION FOR THE 202O PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN AND BRIBERY. President Trump has endeavored to corrupt the 2020 presidential campaign by soliciting the President of Ukraine to contribute something of value to diminish the popularity of potential rival Joe Biden, i.e., a Ukrainian investigation of Mr. Biden and his son Hunter relating to potential corrupt practices of Burisma, which compensated Hunter handsomely ($50,000 per month). In so doing, Mr. Trump violated the criminal campaign finance prohibition set forth in 52 U.S.C. 30121.

President Trump solicited a bribe for himself in violation of 18 U.S.C. 201 in seeking something of personal value, i.e., discrediting Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign with the help of the President of Ukraine to influence Mr. Trump’s official decision to release approximately $400 million in military and related assistance.

VIOLATING CITIZEN PRIVACY. The Fourth Amendment protects the right to be let alone from government snooping, the most cherished right among civilized people as Justice Brandeis elaborated in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.W. 438 (1928) (dissenting opinion).  Government spying on Americans ordinarily requires a warrant issued by a neutral magistrate based on probable cause to believe crime is afoot.  President Trump, however, routinely violates the Fourth Amendment with suspicionless surveillance of Americans for non-criminal, foreign intelligence purposes under Executive Order 12333 and aggressive interpretations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
SUPPRESSION OF FREE SPEECH. The major purpose of a free press protected by the First Amendment is to expose government lies or illegalities—to shine light on the dark side.  Justice Hugo Black elaborated in New York Times v. United States, 403 US. 713 (1971) in protecting publication of the classified Pentagon Papers from suppression:

“The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”

President Trump is violating the First Amendment in stretching the Espionage Act to prosecute publication of leaked classified information that are instrumental to exposing government lies and deterring government wrongdoing or misadventures, including the outstanding indictment against Julian Assange for publishing information which was republished by the New York Times and The Washington Post with impunity.  The United States Supreme Court upheld the First Amendment rights of the New York Times and The Washington Post to publish the classified Pentagon Papers, which accelerated the conclusion of the disastrous Vietnam War, in New York Times v. United States.

In all of this, Donald J. Trump, since the day of his inauguration, has conducted the office of the President contrary to his oath of office to destroy constitutional government to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore Donald J. Trump warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

Beware of the Medicare “Disadvantage” Corporate Trap – Wake Up AARP

By Ralph Nader

November 21, 2019

While the Democratic presidential candidates are debating full Medicare for All, giant insurance companies like UnitedHealthcare are advertising to the elderly in an attempt to lure them from Traditional Medicare (TM) to the so-called Medicare Advantage (MA) – a corporate plan that UnitedHealthcare promotes to turn a profit at the expense of enrollees.

Almost one third of all elderly over 65 are enrolled in these numerous, complex MA policies the government pays so much for monthly. The health insurance industry wants more enrollees as they continue to press Congress for more advantages.

Medical Disadvantage would be a more accurate name for the programs, as insurance companies push to corporatize all of Medicare, yet keep the name for the purposes of marketing, deception, and confusion.

Elderly people enrolled in MA will experience its often merciless denials when they get sick. As hospital expert – attorney, physician, Dr. Fred Hyde put it: “It’s not just what you pay, it’s what you get.”

Start with the cross-subsidy of MA from TM. In 2009, the Congressional Budget Office estimated these overpayments would cost the federal government $157 billion over the coming decade. Obama’s Affordable Care Act started to reduce these subsidies to the giant insurers, but they still amount to many billions of dollars per year.

Add that with Medicare Disadvantage you are restricted to networks of vendors. That restricts your choice for competence and skills, and sometimes, requires you to travel longer distances for treatment. This could mean fewer enrollees will utilize their healthcare and more profits for the insurance companies.

Under Medicare Disadvantage you are subject to all kinds of differing plans, maddening trapdoor fine print, and unclear meaning to the insurers arguing no “medical necessity” when you’re denied care.

The advertisements for Medicare Disadvantage stress that you can sometimes get perks – gym memberships, hearing aids, and eyeglasses, as enticements, but they avoid telling you they are not so ready to cover serious needs like skilled nursing care for critically ill patients.

Under Medicare Disadvantage, there is no Medigap coverage as there is for TM. Co-pays and deductibles can be large. Under a recent Humana Medicare Advantage Plan in Florida, your co-pay for an ambulance is up to $300, up to $100 co-pay for lab services, and another $100 for outpatient x-rays.

A few years ago, UnitedHealthcare corporations dismissed thousands of physicians from their MA networks, sometimes immediately, sometimes telling their patients before telling their physicians.

Dr. Arthur Vogelman, a gastroenterologist, said he received a termination letter in 2013 from UnitedHealthcare. He appealed, documenting his successful treatment of many patients. The company denied his appeal, with no reason, as it had for thousands of network physicians.

Dr. Vogelman called it “an outrage. I have patients in their 80s and 90s who have been with me 20 years, and I’m having to tell them that their insurer won’t pay for them to see me anymore. The worst thing is I can’t even tell them why.” Except that the company wanted more profits.

After a lengthy protest by national and state medical societies in 2013, UnitedHealthcare began to be less aggressively dismissive.

Studies show the main reason MA enrollees return to TM is how badly the corporate insurers treated them when they became sick.

Medicare itself is getting overly complex. But nothing like the ever changing corporate rules, offerings, and restrictions of Medicare Disadvantage. How strange it is that AARP, with its Medigap insurance business run by UnitedHealthcare, doesn’t advise its members to go with the obviously superior Traditional Medicare. AARP reportedly receives a commission of 4.95% for new enrollees on top of the premiums the elderly pay for the Medigap policy from United Healthcare. This money – about seven hundred million dollars a year – is a significant portion of AARP’s overall budget.

AARP responded to my inquiries into their Medicare Advantage policy saying that it does not recommend one plan over another, leaving it to the less informed consumer. That’s one of AARP’s biggest cop-outs— they know the difference.

There is no space here to cover all the bewildering ins and outs of what corporations have done to so-called managed Medicare and managed Medicaid. That task is for full-time reporters. The government does estimate a staggering $60 billion in billing fraud annually just on Medicare – manipulating codes, phantom billing, etc. You need the equivalent of a college-level course just to start figuring out all the supposed offerings and gaps.

Suffice it to say that, in the words of Eleanor Laise, senior editor of Kiplinger’s Retirement Report, “the evidence on health care access and quality decidedly favors original Medicare over Medicare Advantage, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation review of 40 studies published between 2000 and 2014.”

All this anxiety, dread, and fear, all these arbitrary denials of care – prompted by a pay-or-die commercial profit motive – all these restrictions of what doctors or hospitals you can go to, do not exist in Canada. All Canadians have a Medicare card from birth; they have free choice of health care vendors. There are few American-style horror stories there; patients have better outcomes, and almost never even see a bill. The whole universal system costs half per capita of that in the U.S., where over 80 million people are uninsured or underinsured – still! (See singlepayeraction.org, for civic action to rid Americans of this perverse chaos).

The Most Impeachable President vs. The Most Hesitant Congress. What Are The Democrats Waiting For?

By Ralph Nader

November 15, 2019

Amid the worst Republican President and Republican Party in modern times, the Democrats are playing the politics of low expectations. This is not the time for Democrats to be in disarray. On Capitol Hill, the prevailing view of most Democrats is that they will cling to their House majority and they shouldn’t expect to regain the Senate in the 2020 elections. The Democrats should be using massive rebuttal evidence, relayed with invincible vibrant rhetoric, toward a “wave election win” as occurred in 1936, when President Roosevelt won 61 percent of the popular vote and the Democrats won large majorities in both the House and Senate.

Tyrant Trump is the most impeachable president in the country’s history – hands down. Before he resigned, Richard Nixon was sure to be impeached and convicted in 1974 due to his obstructions of the Watergate scandal investigation. Selected president Donald Trump has committed many more serious offenses than Nixon. Trump’s abuses amount to repealing the gains of the American Revolution against monarchical rule, and they eviscerate the U.S. Constitution’s “separation of powers” system of presidential accountability. Moreover, major protections for the American people against big corporate crime, power and greed are all on Trump’s unlawful chopping block.  His offenses and violations are more than enough to require his removal from office!

The Democrat’s narrow impeachment move on Trump focuses on his attempted extortion of Ukraine for personal political gain. The current House inquiry does not yet include the far more serious systematic “high crimes and misdemeanors” he is brazenly committing. These affect the daily livelihoods, freedoms and just treatment of all the people where they live, work and raise their children.

A president who lies and fabricates by the hour is destructive to life-preserving science, reason, truth, and public trust. Trump separates those who believe his delusionary tweets and rantings from the realities they need to confront. No family, neighborhood, community, or workplace can operate under such thunderous falsifications. Trump even lies about his promises when challenged – such as his claim that Mexico will pay to build the wall.

Alexander Hamilton described “high crimes and misdemeanors” as “violations of the public trust.” Trump is the poster boy for this yardstick. He tells Americans they have cleaner air, water, food, forthcoming wonderful health insurance, tons more manufacturing jobs and “clean, beautiful coal.” He continues to maintain these fictions when just the opposite is occurring due to his deliberate destruction of existing health, safety and economic protections. He is subordinating people to increased corporate control. Trump caves to corporate demands for more tax escapes, taxpayer subsidies, stalled or frozen minimum wages and other mechanisms to stop the people from getting what they have earned.

Trump’s income taxes on corporations and his own businesses are the lowest in modern U.S. history. Some companies – like the big banks and General Electric are nearing tax-exemption, so little do they pay into the U.S. Treasury. And Trump’s use of the presidency to enrich himself and his businesses is shameless.

Remember all the factories that he said were coming back to America and the trade deficit he was going to diminish and the federal deficit he was going to reduce? Well, his actions have made a mess of all these matters. Manufacturing output and manufacturing jobs are down, the trade and federal deficits are up. Irregular Gig economy jobs with low pay and no-benefits are replacing good jobs. Consumer debts, including student debt, are at an all-time high.

Overall, average inflation is low, but this is not helping low-income people paying higher rent, rising uncovered health care bills and public transit hikes. Home ownership is sliding, especially for African-Americans. Average life expectancy in America is declining for the first time.

Hand it to Donald Trump. Sometimes he really means what he says.  His cruel attacks on immigrants who take tough jobs, such as being home health care aides that nobody else wants, and his brutish treatment of women and minorities matches his rhetoric. He really has illusions of megalomania. “I am the chosen one,” he said recently.

Trump trumpeted dictatorially: “Under Article 2, I can do whatever I want as President.” Which is what he is doing in violation of many sections of our Constitution, starting with sweeping contempt of exclusive Congressional authorities under our Constitution. These violations involve the appropriations, war and confirmation powers. He has violated surveillance rules, campaign finance laws and encouraged voter suppression of citizens likely to vote against Republicans. He is engaged in an attempted coup, not the Democrats.

No other president has regularly violated more provisions of our Constitution, some of which also involve statutory crimes. No other president has engaged in more personal violence against women, openly incited violence against critics and reporters at his mass rallies. No other president has been more ineffective regarding fulfilling his boastful promises to his betrayed supporters.

There is never a “last straw” fulmination by Donald Trump. The winner thus far is his latest incitement that “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal,'” Trump quoted from a Baptist pastor’s statement. Such a crazy, dangerous incitation would have been decisively actionable to our founding fathers, not to mention Mr. Republican himself – Abraham Lincoln, whose presidency was engulfed by Civil War.

What are the Democrats waiting for? Present to the American people the many demonstrable impeachable offenses, which entail very harmful “kitchen table” impacts. A comprehensive impeachment inquiry will engage more of the public and will produce the critical broader public support for impeachment.

Send ‘Trump and company’ back to Mar-a-Lago so they can contemplate the rising sea levels which he calls a “Chinese Hoax.” Set the stage for the crucial election of 2020 to end the supremacy of grasping corporations placing their “Tories” in what Thomas Jefferson called “the People’s House.”

Ralph Nader & Mark Green are the authors of Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t, Skyhorse Publishing, December 3, 2019.

America’s Streets and Squares Are Waiting: Massive Rallies Work!

By Ralph Nader

November 7, 2019

Around the world people are marching, rallying, and demonstrating in huge numbers. Some of these countries are ruled by dictators or plutocratic regimes, others are considered democracies. Despite the peril of protest, people are seeking justice, freedom, and decent livelihoods.

Many boast about the United States being the oldest democracy in the world. While there are some street protests in the US, they are sadly too few and far between. Rallies calling attention to climate disruption have received less public support and media attention than they deserve. Likewise, the Parkland rally in Washington, D.C. against gun violence could have received more follow up publicity. And we all remember the massive women’s march the day after Trump was inaugurated in Washington, D.C. The subsequent women’s marches have attracted smaller crowds and therefore less media coverage.

It is not as if our country doesn’t have a historic tradition of sustained demonstrations. Mass protests have carried the labor movement, the farmer movement, the civil rights movement, and the anti-war movement to breakthroughs. These mass protests alone were not the sole drivers of political action – books, articles, editorials, pamphlets, posters, and litigation were essential. But visible displays of aggregated people power had a profound effect on those politicians’ actions. When politicians put their fingers to the wind, the repeated rumble from the masses is what fills the sails of change.

It is not as if mass injustices are absent in the “land of the free, home of the brave.” Sadly, the informed populace is just not showing up in an organized, big crowd fashion – the way they did to challenge the nuclear arms race and nuclear power in the nineteen seventies and eighties. In the era of the iPhone and Internet, activists have greater access to organizing tools than ever – no postage stamps or costly long-distance telephone calls are needed.

Consider these candidates for mass demonstrations proximate to where the decision makers are located. Millions of young people are being gouged by student loan creditors and for-profit colleges. Whether it is the U.S. Department of Education’s high interest rates or the exploitation by for-profit universities, the abuses are outrageous, cruel, and in the latter case, often criminal.

Total outstanding student loans amount to over $1.5 trillion. These burdened young Americans know how to contact each other for free; they also can raise money instantly using new crowdfunding technology. They know how to use the visual arts and the verbal arts. Congress can reverse the predatory practices in higher education. Where is the advocacy from millions of student loan debtors? They could have a huge impact if they surrounded the Capitol or held smaller rallies around Congressional offices back home, especially in the coming election year.

Millions of workers are making, inflation adjusted, less than workers made in 1968. The federal minimum wage, frozen at $7.25, is the culprit. The House of Representatives finally bestirred itself to pass a $15 minimum wage stretched over a number of years. But when the Walmart-indentured members of the Senate look out their windows, it would be nice to see masses of workers surrounding their Senate offices, prior to some insistent personal lobbying?

There are no labor mass rallies in front of Trump’s anti-labor White House either, even though, the headquarters of the AFL-CIO are just yards away on 16th Street NW. The face-off of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka v. Donald Trump is overdue.

Millions of minorities are suffering voter suppression. Civil rights leaders are angry. They anticipate Republicans at the state and federal level to again erect all kinds of insidious roadblocks that disproportionately affect people of color the most. Abuses in the Florida and Georgia races were rampant in 2018. Presidential races in swing states are also plagued by voter suppression tactics. All signs point to a more intrusive stripping of eligible voters in the 2020 election.

Where are the marches before the offices of the state secretary of state and culpable legislators and Governors headquarters?

A quarter of our country’s families are poor. A Poor People’s Campaign, led by the Reverend William Barber and local pastors, has been protesting in the streets in North Carolina and other states. Their protests deserve far greater attendance. The media has given them too little coverage. But if there were massive demonstrations in major cities and before state legislatures and the Congress, with coordinated demands and large photographs of key politicians fronting for the rich and powerful, will get mass media coverage.

Tens of millions of Americans have no health insurance or are severely underinsured. Thousands of lives are lost annually as a result. This is a problem in America but not other developed nations that have systems in place that prioritize their citizens’ health. Getting sick or injured without medical care is far too frequent in the U.S. Those who suffer from this deprivation can be motivated to take to the streets. The health care industry’s soaring profits and their mega-rich bosses should move additional Americans to rally for Medicare-for-All!

These rallies can be led by physicians and nurses, tired of the paperwork, the bureaucracy, and the health insurance companies denying access to health care for their patients and arbitrarily rejecting doctor-recommended treatments.

In the nineteen forties, President Harry Truman proposed to Congress universal health insurance. Americans still do not have Medicare-for-All and are paying the highest prices, premiums, and out of pocket bills in the world – not to mention the human suffering caused by an inadequate healthcare system.

What a great street story for television, radio, and print newspapers! Think of the tragic human interest stories, straight from the heart by mothers and fathers with children having limited or no access to health care.

Other marches can come from the homeless and the desperate tenants spending over half their income on rent in the many communities where there is a shortage of affordable housing.

All these mass turnouts can pass contribution buckets or tout websites and raise money from the crowds for the next round of even larger protests. At each event, a list of demands can be presented to decision-makers. At each event, protestors can go to the offices where the decision-makers are or insist that these lawmakers speak to the assembled protestors.

There are many innovations to make these action rallies more impactful, more motivating, and more mass-media-centric. There also have to be some enlightened billionaires, worried about their country and their descendants, who want to provide the modest amount of money necessary for event organizers and focused political action. Show up America!