Trump's Manhattan Trial Is More Serious Than Many Think

 

I am a little irritated by a lot of the media coverage about Trump's trial in Manhattan, which is set to start in just a few days. It is commonly referred to as the "hush money to a porn star" case, making it seem as though it's not a very serious matter. But it is far more serious than that.

And Donald Trump knows it is a serious matter. That's why he has tried so hard to get it dismissed or delayed.

It started when Trump paid off a porn star (Stormy Daniels) to keep quiet about their sexual encounter. Paying her off would not be a crime. But he tried to hide the payoff by making numerous small payments to his attorney (to reimburse him for making the payoff). Hiding the payoff in this way was business fraud.

Hiding the payoff in this way would normally be a misdemeanor, but it became a felony because the intent was to cover another crime (election fraud). Trying to cover election fraud made each of the payments a felony - 34 in all.

Each count could carry a 4 year prison sentence, and if made consecutive could total as much as 136 years in prison. It is doubtful he would get a long prison sentence. More like, he would get probation (because he has not been convicted of a previous criminal act, and he is a rich man running for president). 

But even a guilty verdict resulting in probation would make him a convicted criminal.

And being a convicted criminal could seriously affect his chances to be elected president.

This is a serious matter, and Trump knows it (even if many in the public don't).

NY Appeals Court Gives Trump A Break He Doesn't Deserve

Donald Trump was supposed to put up a bond before appealing the nearly half a billion dollars judgement today. He had been convicted of fraud. But on the last day, a New York Appeals Court stepped in and lowered the bond to $175 million, and then gave him another 10 days to post it.

Frankly, I'm baffled as to why the appeals court lowered the bond to less than half of the judgement. The trial judge issued a detailed and well thought out decision on why he had set the original verdict amount. Is the appeals court thinking of lowering the judgement amount - without even hearing the case?

This smells of favoritism - that we have a two-tiered justice system - one for the rich and famous (or infamous) and another for the rest of us. Do you think a normal person would have received this kind of break from the appeals court (even if they could not afford to post a bond)? Of course not!

Trump is still claiming that no one was hurt by his criminal activity. That is not true. By inflating his property values, he received a much lower interest rate on loans - cheating the banks out of millions of dollars. And by deflating those same property values when paying taxes, he cheated the state of New York (and its citizens) out of many millions of dollars.

Trump was found to have engaged in fraud - and that fraud garnered him hundreds of million dollars in ill-gotten gains. He should be forced to pay the entire amount. Anything less is not justice! 

Santos Played Fast And Loose With The Law & Got Caught

 The following is part of an op-ed by David Firestone in The New York Times:

The scheme Mr. Santos is charged with is so flagrant, so spectacularly dumb in both conception and execution, that Justice clearly decided it had a no-brainer of a case. If Mr. Santos had structured an improper political money stream the way the grown-ups do every day, he might have gotten away with it.

The additional counts in the indictment — that Mr. Santos defrauded the unemployment insurance system and that he lied to the House about his finances — are embarrassing enough that his Republican colleagues should kick him back to Long Island, though they won’t because Speaker Kevin McCarthy needs every vote he can get these days. But the centerpiece of the indictment is a wire-fraud scheme in which Mr. Santos is accused of raising money for his campaign and then using it on a spending spree that included luxury clothing, car payments and other items on his personal credit card.

According to the indictment (Mr. Santos pleaded not guilty to all charges), he told donors they could support his campaign by giving money to a tax-exempt “social welfare organization,” known by its I.R.S. designation as a 501(c)(4). . . .

Many 501(c)(4) groups claim a large amount of “overhead” in their spending; crucially, it’s rarely itemized and therefore escapes close scrutiny, according to Saurav Ghosh, the director of federal campaign finance reform at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center. Mr. Santos might have gotten away with a lot of dubious spending in that category without anyone knowing.

But Mr. Santos didn’t structure his fraud the usual way, according to the indictment. Instead, the government said, he set up a regular business and falsely told donors that it was a 501(c)(4). That company, which The New York Times says appears to be RedStone Strategies, had nothing to do with supporting Mr. Santos’s campaign but everything to do with supporting his bank account. He “converted most of those funds to his own personal benefit,” the indictment says, and didn’t even go through the usual procedural sham of registering the social welfare group with the I.R.S., which is not exactly difficult to check.

Nor did he use his so-called leadership PAC to raise money for personal expenses, which more sophisticated politicians do all the time to buy expensive clothes, luxury vacations and country club memberships.

Instead of exploiting existing political loopholes, he just took the cash with all the finesse of a Long Island pump-and-dump operation, leaving a pathetically obvious paper trail for federal investigators to follow. . . .

The government says it has emails, text messages and telephone records showing that Mr. Santos knew the company wasn’t a legitimate social welfare or political group but told donors that it was and that the money they wired to him would be used for advertising. And it said the records show that he directed the contributions to be wired to his bank account. Apparently it didn’t occur to him that wire transfers can be traced and that using them illegally is a federal offense.

As Mr. Ghosh noted, even if RedStone had been a legitimate 501(c)(4), Mr. Santos would not have been permitted to solicit money for it, since the groups are legally required to be independent of political campaigns. . . .

This time, at least, the government used its enforcement power. But only because Mr. Santos so audaciously disregarded the rules.

Most Believe Trump Fraudulently Inflated Property Values

The chart above reflects the results of the new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between September 24th and 27th of a nationwide sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,341 registered voters). The margin of error for adults was 3.2 points, and for registered voters was 2.9 points.

Thieves Stole Billions Of The Stimulus Bail-Out Money

The stimulus money was supposed to help small businesses in this country survive the recession due to the Coronavirus. Sadly, it didn't work out that way.

Thanks to the incompetence of the Trump administration's overseeing of the distribution of those funds, billions of dollars went to thieves who made fraudulent requests -- and because of that, many small businesses were unable to get any money.

Here's how Bloomberg.com describes what happened:

For a few months this year, a U.S. government aid program meant for struggling small-business owners was handing out $10,000 to just about anyone who asked. All it took was a five-minute online application. You just had to say you owned a business with at least 10 employees, and the grant usually arrived within a few days. 

People caught on fast. In some neighborhoods in Chicago and Miami, it seemed like everyone made a bogus application to the Small Business Administration’s Covid-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. Professional thieves from Russia to Nigeria cashed in. Low-level employees at the agency watched helplessly as misspent money flew out the door.

Even after the $20 billion in funding for grants dried up in July, the fraud continued, as scammers looted a separate $192 billion pot of money set aside for loans. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said an SBA customer-service representative who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her job. “I don’t think they had any processes in place. They just sent the money out.”

This account of the disaster-aid program is based on interviews with frontline SBA workers and outside fraud investigators, and on a review of thousands of social-media postings. The unprecedented scale and urgency of the pandemic response made some missteps inevitable, and lawmakers explicitly ordered the agency to prioritize speed over thrift. But decisions by agency leaders contributed to the chaos.

The SBA’s much-vaunted new computer system, built by an outside contractor for $750 million, proved blind to certain types of fraud and sometimes awarded grants even when it spotted disqualifying features. The agency pressured loan officers with little training to churn through applications quickly, while making it difficult for them to detect or report suspicious ones. When officials eventually tightened fraud controls, the result was often delays and rejections for legitimate applicants.

The amount stolen from the program, if it’s ever tallied, will almost certainly be measured in the billions of dollars. But that’s only part of the cost. Many legitimate applicants were denied grants because scammers got the money first. And identity thieves pocketing loan proceeds left an unknown number of Americans saddled with bogus debts.

Trump (& Ivanka, Eric, Don Jr.) Accused Of Financial Scams

(This caricature of Trump is by DonkeyHotey.)

The following is just a part of an excellent article about Trump (and three of his children) engaging in financial scams to use the Trump name to bilk people out of their hard-earned money. It is shameful (and probably criminal) behavior. The article was written for The New York Times by Maggie Haberman and Benjamin Weiser.

A new lawsuit accuses President Trump, his company and three of his children of using the Trump name to entice vulnerable people to invest in sham business opportunities.

Filed in federal court in Manhattan on Monday, the lawsuit comes just days before the midterm elections, raising questions about whether its timing is politically motivated. It is being underwritten by a nonprofit whose chairman has been a donor to Democratic candidates.

The allegations take aim at the heart of Mr. Trump’s personal narrative that he is a successful deal-maker who built a durable business, charging he and his family lent their name to a series of scams.

The 160-page complaint alleges that Mr. Trump and his family received secret payments from three business entities in exchange for promoting them as legitimate opportunities, when in reality they were get-rich-quick schemes that harmed investors, many of whom were unsophisticated and struggling financially.

Those business entities were ACN, a telecommunications marketing company that paid Mr. Trump millions of dollars to endorse its products; the Trump Network, a vitamin marketing enterprise; and the Trump Institute, which the suit said offered “extravagantly priced multiday training seminars” on Mr. Trump’s real estate “secrets.”

The four plaintiffs, who were identified only with pseudonyms like Jane Doe, depict the Trump Organization as a racketeering enterprise that defrauded thousands of people for years as the president turned from construction to licensing his name for profit. The suit also names Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump as defendants.

Trump Is No Dealmaker - Just A Bully And A Con Man

Donald Trump claims to be a great negotiator and dealmaker, but the truth is that he's yet to make a single deal since being sworn in to office.

Here's how Robert Reich (pictured) sums up Trump's dealmaking prowess:

Trump promised to be America’s dealmaker in chief. 

“We need a leader that wrote The Art of the Deal,” he said in the speech announcing his candidacy. “I’m a negotiator. I’ve done very well over the years through negotiation,” he said during a Republican debate. “That’s what I do, is deals,” he said in May. “I know deals, I think, better than anybody knows deals.”

Rubbish. So far, Trump has made no deals at all, and the ones he thinks he’s made have unraveled.

He has no deal with North Korea. Following his June 12 summit with Kim Jong Un, Trump declared on Twitter that “there is no longer a nuclear threat” from North Korea.

In fact, recent satellite images show that North Korea has upgraded a nuclear facility. It also appears to be finalizing the expansion of a ballistic missile manufacturing site.

Instead of surrendering its nuclear stockpile, American intelligence says North Korea is considering ways to conceal it at secret production facilities. 

As if to drive home the point that there’s been no deal, just after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Pyongyang to start filling in the “nitty-gritty details” of Kim’s vague commitment, the North accused the Trump administration of pushing a “unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearization,” calling it “deeply regrettable.” 

Trump apologists say the supposed deal with North Korea will take time. 

Maybe. But Kim got everything he wanted from the summit – an American president appearing to grant North Korea co-equal status, and cancellation of joint military exercises with South Korea – without conceding anything on weapons and missile programs.

Trump has no trade deals, either. Instead, he’s launched  simultaneous trade wars with Europe, China, Canada, and Mexico.

After slapping tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports, China has retaliated with tariffs on $34 billion of American exports. Trump is now threatening tariffs on nearly everything China exports to the United States, as well as a clampdown on Chinese investment here.

After Trump raised tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada, Mexico, and the European Union, they also retaliated. They promise further retaliation if Trump acts on his threat to place a 20 percent tariff on imported cars and car parts.

Are these Trump’s negotiating tactics? “Every country is calling every day, saying, let’s make a deal, let’s make a deal,” he boasted last week.

More rubbish. Trump’s actions have poisoned relations to such an extent that instead of joining the United States to, say, push China to open its markets, our trading partners – including China – are starting to join together to stop Trump from doing worse damage.

Meanwhile, talks to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada are dead, partly because Trump’s bullying has generated so much animosity across our two neighbors’ borders.

Trump has no deal on Iran, either. No deal on Syria. No deal on the Qatar blockade. No deal on Israel and the Palestinians.

Trump will soon meet with Vladimir Putin – with no agenda.

Over the past few weeks, Trump has given away his bargaining leverage with Putin, anyway. He’s called for Russia to be readmitted to the Group of 7 industrial powers, suggested it has a legitimate claim to Crimea because a lot of Russian speakers live there, and expressed more doubts about whether Moscow meddled in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has no deal on climate change. He simply pulled out of the Paris accords.

No deal with the Group of 7 leading economic powers. He merely refused to sign the communiqué his own team had agreed to. And no deal with NATO countries on increasing their military spending.

“No deal” also describes Trump’s relations with the Republican Congress.

He got no deal on replacing the Affordable Care Act, so Trump is quietly repealing it administratively. At least 5 million people will lose coverage. 

No deal on gun control. After the Parkland shooting, Trump promised to tighten background checks for gun buyers and said he’d consider raising the age for buying certain types of guns. He subsequently gave up, bowing to the NRA. 

No deal on DACA or immigration, despite Trump’s promises. No budget deal, despite his assertions.

The tax deal wasn’t really Trump’s – it was a deal between the Republican Senate and Republican House, with Trump bloviating from the sidelines.

One of the biggest cons from the biggest conman to occupy the Oval Office is that he’s a dealmaker.

He’s not. All he really knows is how to bully friends, stage photo ops with enemies, and claim victory.

Trump's "Charity" Was Just A Slush Fund To Avoid Taxes

(Cartoon image is by Robert Ariail in The State.)

The federal government doesn't make charities pay taxes. That's because the funds donated to those charities are supposed to be used for the good of people who need help. But that doesn't seem to have been a goal of the Trump Foundation. It was set up as a "charity" to avoid taxes, but it did not use its funds for charitable purposes. Instead, it operated as a piggy bank for the Trump family -- paying their personal expenses, and in violation of campaign laws, even donating money to Trump's presidential campaign.

Trump may have thought he was being smart in doing that, but it has caught up with him. The New York Attorney General has filed suit, demanding the Trump Foundation be disbanded and pay huge financial penalties for the wrongdoing. The trial is expected to start shortly before the mid-term elections.

Here is part of an article on this by Adam Davidson in The New Yorker:

Barring an unexpected change, the Donald J. Trump Foundation will be defending itself in a New York courtroom shortly before this fall’s midterm elections. The proceedings seem unlikely to go well for the institution and its leadership; President Trump and his elder children, Ivanka, Donald, Jr., and Eric, are being sued by New York’s attorney general, Barbara Underwood, for using the charity to enrich and benefit the Trump family. On Tuesday, the judge in the case, Saliann Scarpulla, made a series of comments and rulings from the bench that hinted—well, all but screamed—that she believes the Trump family has done some very bad things.

The judge seemed frustrated, even confused, that the Trumps were fighting the case at all. At one point, she told a lawyer for the Trump children that they should just settle out of court and voluntarily agree to one of the sanctions: a demand by the Attorney General that they not serve on the boards of any nonprofits for one year. (The case will be tried in civil court, and the Trumps aren’t facing any criminal charges.) That’s far from the worst sort of punishment, but to accede to it would be a public embarrassment and an acknowledgement that the family did, indeed, use the foundation as something of a private slush fund to enrich themselves and reward their cronies. Judge Scarpulla made clear that she felt the children should agree to the sanction now, and that, if they don’t, she will probably impose a similar restriction “with or without your agreement.”

The case against the Trumps appears damning. Charitable foundations are governed by a crucial compromise: they can operate without paying taxes on the condition that their leadership insures that all money spent is spent in pursuit of the public good. The case brought by Attorney General Underwood shows that the Trump Foundation was neither well-managed nor focussed on what would generally be considered the public good. Its operations were shockingly sloppy; at least one of the organization’s official board members said that he had no idea he was on the board and that the board had never met, to his knowledge. No surprise, then, that the other controls that normally govern nonprofits were absent. As David Fahrenthold, of the Washington Post, exposed in a series of stories in 2016, the Foundation did virtually none of the charitable things it claimed to be doing.

In recent years, the only “contributions” to the charity seem to have been payments from business partners, not from the Trumps or the Trump Organization. The charity’s spending appears to have benefitted the Trumps themselves, not the public welfare. The organization had been operating this way for years, but, according to Underwood, in 2016 the Trump Foundation became an arm of the Trump political campaign, cutting checks to Trump’s political allies in key states just before the election. If true, this would mean that the Trump Foundation evolved from a mere tax-avoidance scheme into an instrument for carrying out potential acts of campaign-finance fraud. The Attorney General made clear that her evidence could support criminal cases against the Trumps, but she has no jurisdiction to bring such charges, since tax and campaign fraud are federal matters. She referred the case to federal officials, though it seems unlikely that the I.R.S. or the Federal Election Commission would choose to prosecute a sitting President or his children.

During Tuesday’s hearing, the Trump Foundation’s lawyer, Alan Futerfas, asked that the trial not commence in October, because it was so close to the midterms. Judge Scarpulla laughed in response, did not change the trial date, and hinted that she is likely to require the President to testify. It is not clear, however, that such a trial would dramatically change how people vote; it was clear during the 2016 Presidential election, thanks to Fahrenthold’s reporting, that the Trump Foundation was almost certainly engaged in systematic fraud.

Paul Ryan Was Always A Fraud And A FlimFlam Man

(Caricature of Paul Ryan is by DonkeyHotey.)

With the announcement of his retirement, there are those who want to make him some kind of conservative hero -- one who couldn't get his agenda done because of the political climate. That's bullshit! And I'm not the only one who thinks that.

Here's just a part of what Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman had to say in his New York Times column about Paul Ryan:

About Ryan: Incredibly, I’m seeing some news reports about his exit that portray him as a serious policy wonk and fiscal hawk who, sadly, found himself unable to fulfill his mission in the Trump era. Unbelievable.

Look, the single animating principle of everything Ryan did and proposed was to comfort the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted. Can anyone name a single instance in which his supposed concern about the deficit made him willing to impose any burden on the wealthy, in which his supposed compassion made him willing to improve the lives of the poor? . . .

And his “deficit reduction” proposals were always frauds. The revenue loss from tax cuts always exceeded any explicit spending cuts, so the pretense of fiscal responsibility came entirely from “magic asterisks”: extra revenue from closing unspecified loopholes, reduced spending from cutting unspecified programs. I called him a flimflam man back in 2010, and nothing he has done since has called that judgment into question.

Which brings us to the role of the congressional G.O.P. and Ryan in particular in the Trump era.

Some commentators seem surprised at the way men who talked nonstop about fiscal probity under Barack Obama cheerfully supported tax cuts that will explode the deficit under Trump. They also seem shocked at the apparent indifference of Ryan and his colleagues to Trump’s corruption and contempt for the rule of law. What happened to their principles?

The answer, of course, is that the principles they claimed to have never had anything to do with their actual goals. In particular, Republicans haven’t abandoned their concerns about budget deficits, because they never cared about deficits; they only faked concern as an excuse to cut social programs.

And if you ask why Ryan never took a stand against Trumpian corruption, why he never showed any concern about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, what ever made you think he would take such a stand? Again, if you look at Ryan’s actions, not the character he played to gullible audiences, he has never shown himself willing to sacrifice anything he wants — not one dime — on behalf of his professed principles. Why on earth would you expect him to stick his neck out to defend the rule of law?

So now Ryan is leaving. Good riddance. But hold the celebrations: If he was no better than the rest of his party, he was also no worse. It’s possible that his successor as speaker will show more backbone than he has — but only if that successor is, well, a Democrat.

Trump Committed A $17 Million Insurance Fraud

(Caricature of Donald Trump is by DonkeyHotey.)

The following is some of a revealing article on Donald Trump -- written by Caleb P. Newton at the Bipartisan Report:

As it turns out, there is an even more personal side to the issue of Trump and dealing with natural disasters. While not previously unknown, an issue over storm damage to Trump’s Florida Mar-A-Lago resort that reportedly was made up has made its way back to the front of the nation’s political conversation in light of Harvey.

In October of last year, as the nation was gearing up for the general election, the Associated Press got wind of insurance claims that Trump had filed after the 2005 hurricane season, claiming massive damage to Mar-A-Lago.

There was just one problem — the damage doesn’t seem to have actually existed.

To start out with, “Mar-a-Lago members, staff and preservation officials do not recall significant damage.” Obviously, personal testimony can be hit-or-miss, but there’s more.

Palm Beach city records show that Trump never took out a permit for any major repairs to the property, even though the magnanimity of the damage that would have underlined $17 million in insurance claims would have no doubt required work that needed permits, as former city officials explained to the AP. . . .

Trump’s former butler, Anthony Senecal, who said that “Hurricane Wilma, the last of a string of storms that barreled through in 2004 and 2005, flattened trees behind Mar-a-Lago, but the house itself only lost some roof tiles.” . . .

Confirming what we could all guess is going on here, Trump admitted at one point to having deposited “some” of the money into his own accounts.

Hank Stein, the insurance agent who assessed Trump’s claims at the time they were filed, says that he can’t remember details of the breakdown of the supposed $17 million in damage.

Barbra Streisand Blasts Our "Fake President"

(This photo of the incomparable Barbra Streisand is from imdb.com.)

Barbra Streisand wrote an article for The Huffington Post , giving her opinion of Donald Trump -- and she minced no words. Here is part of that wonderful article:

There’s a narcissistic fraud in the White House. An angry, hollow, vindictive man is running the country. What bottomless emotional need does he have for acclaim? It is hard to know where his rampant narcissism ends and serious mental problems ensue. He lies prodigiously and for no reason except he obviously has an unclear vision of what the truth is. 

Is his narcissism the driving force behind his lies? Look no further than the lobbies at seven of his golf courses, where he has hung fake Time Magazine covers with made-up headlines of effusive praise for himself. What a bizarre intersection between vanity and fraud. That is a president whose cabinet officials obsequiously offer tribute to his greatness while cameras roll. What is next, Dear Leader... a new haircut? 

Trump has lied so much there was a New York Times article listing just the lies he’s told since taking the oath of office. This is to say nothing of the lies told repeatedly on the campaign trail and the ones he used to sell investors before bankrupting six business deals. He tells us he is very rich, but disregards the Constitution to enrich himself and his family. The chief government ethics officer just quit over it.

Trump continues to lie about the number of people at his inauguration. Why is that so important to him? Is he so obsessed with losing the popular vote by 3 million that he established a partisan, taxpayer-funded commission to search for non-existent voter fraud? A Stanford analysis of what Trump’s “voter fraud” panel would do, shows how devastating it would be to legitimate voters, “For every one case of double voting the program identified, it yielded 200 false positives that would purge the registrations of people legitimately eligible to vote.” Luckily, 44 states (as of July 5th) have refused to fully comply and hand over the invasive partisan information requested by the commission. Business Insider pointed out the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t even intend to investigate whether voting machines were hacked in November, and the commission is not bothering to investigate Russian interference. As I write this, it is being reported that Trump has accepted, despite our intelligence community’s unanimous finding otherwise, Putin’s denial that Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election. . . .

Residents of the world have taken note. According to a recent Pew Research Poll, international faith in the president of the United States to respond well to global crises is 22 percent. This is down from 64 percent when President Obama was in office.

Keith Olbermann has taken to calling our Commander in Chief, #FakePresident. One could almost hear his unrequited search for legitimacy when he said, “I’m president and you’re not” to the media. You can hear the singsong of a child saying, “lalalalala!” There was also his stunt for WWE when he faked a body slam, which of course was later repurposed into a tweet he shared with a CNN logo over his opponent’s face. While he fit quite nicely into this WWE world of fake entertainment, what case of arrested development is it to retweet this? Is he 12? 

This is the Trump presidency. He will not grow in the office. Does his vindictiveness stem from Obama teasing him at the White House Correspondents Dinner over the “birther” insanity? As Charles Blow so perfectly put it, “Trump wants to be Obama — held in high esteem. But, alas, Trump is Trump.” His approval rating is underwater. A full 20 percent of his first five months in office has been spent golfing instead of learning about policy. He watches cable TV and then tweets in a rage. He lacks the temperament to fulfill his role. For all his ranting about fake news and fake media... the truth is, he is the fake president.

10% Of Medicare Budget Goes To Fraud And Billing Mistakes

Recently, the Justice Department arrested over 400 people for medical care fraud. This is a particularly heinous crime, since most of that fraud was in the Medicare program -- the program dedicated to making sure that senior Americans have adequate medical care. If found guilty, I hope these people receive very stiff fines and prison sentences.

But the truth is that these arrests are only a drop in the bucket when it comes to Medicare fraud and abuse. It is estimated that from 10% to 11% of the Medicare budget is eaten up by fraud, waste, or over-billing. That's tens of billion dollars each year.

I think both Democrats and Republicans can agree that this is unacceptable. But it won't be fixed by just cutting Medicare funding (as the Republicans would love to do). We need to have better bookkeeping and accountability systems by the government, and more vigorous enforcement of Medicare laws and regulations by the Justice Department.

Here is just part of a good article on this issue by Fred Schultz for Kaiser Health News and the Center for Public Integrity:

Federal health officials made more than $16 billion in improper payments to private Medicare Advantage health plans last year and need to crack down on billing errors by the insurers, a top congressional auditor testified Wednesday.

James Cosgrove, who directs health care reviews for the Government Accountability Office, told the House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee that the Medicare Advantage improper payment rate was 10 percent in 2016, which comes to $16.2 billion.

Adding in the overpayments for standard Medicare programs, the tally for last year approached $60 billion — which is almost twice as much as the National Institutes of Health spends on medical research each year.

“Fundamental changes are necessary” to improve how the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ferrets out billing mistakes and recoups overpayments from health insurers, he said.

Medicare serves about 56 million people, both those 65 and older and disabled people of any age. About 19 million have chosen to enroll in Medicare Advantage plans as an alternative to standard Medicare.

Federal officials predict the Medicare Advantage option will grow further as massive numbers of baby boomers retire in coming years.

Standard Medicare has a similar problem making accurate payments to doctors, hospitals and other health care providers, according to statistics presented at the hearing. Standard Medicare’s payment error rate was cited at 11 percent, or $41 billion for 2016.

All Hat - No Cattle

"All hat -- No cattle". That's a term we use in Texas to describe someone who is a fraud. It refers to someone who wears a big cowboy hat, but doesn't work or own any livestock. He's just posing as a cowboy, but is actually a fraud.

The term easily can be applied to Donald Trump. Trump likes to put on a big show, but there's no substance to back it up. He's a giant fraud, who thinks his show will fool the American people. A prime example of this occurred during his recent press conference. Here's how Colin Taylor at Occupy Democrats described it:

Donald Trump’s efforts at fooling the American people into believing he’s a competent leader are nothing but a pathetic charade, and nothing makes that clearer than discovering that the large pile of folders placed next to him at yesterday’s dumpster fire of a press conference were in fact all for show, and contained nothing – like Donald Trump’s promises to divest himself from his businesses.

The giant stack of documents next to Trump yesterday were supposed to be evidence of “preparations” he had made for turning his business over to his sons, full of word-papers and number-stuff like a real businessman. “These papers are all just a piece of the many many companies that are being put into trust to be run by my two sons!” crowed Trump.

Of course, the papers were all blank.

This is the political equivalent of stuffing your clothes to make your…hands look bigger. Trump even had his staffers there cheering, giving the impression that there was a huge crowd, but it’s all smoke and mirrors.

Trump has no idea what he’s doing, and while these petty grade-school ruses go quite well with his grade-school insults, it just goes to show how desperately he’s working to convince people that he actually knows what he’s doing – and it’s not working one bit.

Trump Voters Were Scammed By A Master Con-Artist

(Cartoon image of Trump is by Joep Bertrams in The Netherlands. Found at cagle.com.)

The following post was written by Brett Arends at Market Watch:

Hey, Trumpkins — have you worked it out yet? Is the truth dawning on you, or are you still in the dark?

See if you can put it all together from the resumes of those in President-elect Donald Trump’s closest political circle so far:

Treasury secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin: Goldman Sachs.

Chief strategist Steve Bannon: Goldman Sachs.

Transition adviser Anthony Scaramucci: Goldman Sachs.

Commerce secretary nominee Wilbur Ross: Rothschild & Co.

Possible budget director Gary Cohn: Goldman Sachs.

Potential secretary of state Mitt Romney: Bain Capital.

Trump is just getting started. Check out that “swamp draining.” The whole thing is just draining before our eyes! Take that, Wall Street! Take that, “international financial cabal!”

Trumpkins, you’ve been scammed. There’s a sucker in this game — and it’s you.

And by the way, what’s the best-performing stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.23%   since the election? 

Goldman Sachs. GS, +0.14%

Yes, really. Shares are up 24%, to $225 from $182 when the market closed on November 8. The next biggest gainer: Wall Street powerhouse JP Morgan Chase JPM, +0.02%

Half of the Dow’s gain since the election, in fact, is due to just those two Wall Street stocks. By contrast, shares of “Main Street” companies Johnson & Johnson JNJ, +0.09% Procter & Gamble PG, +0.60%  and Coca-Cola KO, +0.20%  are down.

According to company documents, the partners at Goldman own 30.65 million shares. Which means that the partners at Goldman Sachs, in total, are $1.3 billion richer than they were on November 8, thanks to Trump’s election.

Remember when Trump and his proxies assailed Hillary Clinton for allegedly being too close to Goldman Sachs because she gave a couple of speeches there? Trump even singled out Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, plus other Jews, in a sinister campaign commercial that inveighed against an “international financial structure” that cheated ordinary American workers. The 2016 election is “a choice between Donald Trump and Goldman Sachs,” insisted NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden earlier this year.

What a number Trump has played on the “poorly educated.” No wonder he said he loves them. 

Trumpkins are learning the hard way what happens when you buy an investment scheme from a con-artist. I’ve been writing about scam artists for more than 20 years. They always promise you the moon — that is, until your check clears.

When will these voters get it? Maybe never. Author Maria Konnivoka notes in her book The Confidence Game that many victims refuse to admit they’ve been scammed — no matter what the evidence. Indeed, she says, many just keep coming back for more. This is something I’ll bet Donald Trump knows full well, and which he’s banking on (pun intended) in 2020.

Meanwhile, give credit where credit is due. Trump is fattening the bank accounts of the elite, but he also may have saved 1,000 jobs at Carrier . If he really did, good for him. Those who opposed Trump should stop being so churlish. After all, on President Barack Obama’s watch the U.S. economy generated 8.6 million net new jobs — equal to 2,945, or about three Carrier deals, every day, including Sundays, for going on eight consecutive years. And who can forget all of those patriotic Republicans congratulating Obama for that?