This will come as no surprise

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Hannah Arendt writes, in her masterpiece Eichmann in Jerusalem:

…there had existed two categories of Jews in the camps, the so-called “transport Jews” (Transportjuden), who made up the bulk of the population and who had never committed an offense, even in the eyes of the Nazis, and the Jews “in protective custody” (Schutzhaftjuden), who had been sent to German concentration camps for some transgression and who, under the totalitarian principle of directing the full terror of the regime against the “innocents,” were considerably better off than the others, even when they were shipped to the East in order to make the concentration camps in the Reich judenrein [“free of Jews” — ed.]. (In the words of Mrs. Raja Kagan, an excellent witness on Auschwitz, it was “the great paradox of Auschwitz. Those caught committing a criminal offense were treated better than the others.” They were not subject to the selection and, as a rule, they survived.) [1]

Think about any fundamentally lawless regime, ruled by a dictator, using terror, the threat of certain, merciless, violent reprisal, to enforce its absolute will in the face of potential resistance. These regimes conduct one-sided unappealable show “trials” without witnesses or evidence, where loyalists take oaths in vain and vote on straight party lines to endorse their leader’s abuses of power and obstruction of justice. These trials can also be used to publicly humiliate, convict and eliminate all enemies, real or percieved.

In totalitarian societies actual criminals are often regarded as a lawless (outside of the leader’s will, which has the force of law) regime’s bold and beautiful, rewarded as men worthy of respect because they take what they want, rejecting weak, liberal social constraints, and the restraints of liberal “conscience” on their great appetites. Criminals are the natural aristocrats of a totalitarian society, as long as their crimes remain above politics, or are committed in the service of the leader. Punishment is for the weak and the timid, for the millions and millions of cowering losers who, even momentarily, seem to refuse to obey blindly. They must all be made examples of!

Here’s another angry Jew, Eli Valley, a fine artist with brilliant brushwork, and a wicked sense of humor, making a related point that some will find overwrought. We who read history somberly, taking careful notes, never dismiss the murderous power of an angry crowd whose passions are stoked by a master of enflaming grievance and rage. There are many, many, many examples of irrational appeals to fear, resentment and rage resulting in mass murder.

Of course, even though it’s happened here many times, more times than most of us are aware of, it can’t happen here. Of course, of course!

[1] Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt, (c) 1963-64 Penguin Classics edition, p. 214

Lest we forget Mr. Trump’s greatest achievement

Fairness demands that I point out that Mr. Trump and his billionaire son-in-law, Mr. Kushner, have done what nobody in history has come close to doing. They brought peace to the Middle East by brokering a historic peace deal between the eternally complaining Palestinians and our great democratic allies in Israel.

Don’t take it from me, here’s Jared Kushner, author of the detailed eighty page plan that solved an explosive and long-festering problem that has generally been considered insoluble. Jared summarizes his delicate diplomatic work in ten seconds or less HERE.

Our democratic institutions remain as strong as our booming economy

And the natural world has never been a less polluted, safer, more sustainable and harmonious place for all living creatures.

Now that the president has been solidly acquitted of Abuse of Power (no such high crime specified in the Constitution, losers) and Obstruction of Congress (the traitors don’t have the votes to make me obey their so-called “subpoenas”, losers) he is bringing the country back together again.

About the acts that led up to his impeachment, a hoax he is now trying to have “expunged” from history– he has been completely and totally vindicated. Any U.S. president, including Trump, can now comfortably do things like withholding military aid to an ally for three months, as they are under attack by a bellicose neighbor, as leverage to exact a personal political favor– as long as he TRULY, HONESTLY AND SINCERELY BELIEVES HE IS DOING IT IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE U.S.A. He can hide the records of his long campaign to pressure that ally without any consequences whatsoever. He can have his loyal party vote on acquittal after a trial without hearing any witnesses or seeing any new evidence. Fair is fair, and it’s always good to have the rules clarified.

To show he understands his impeachment far better than all the wise-ass, well-spoken “lawyers” who tried to make the totally bogus “legal” case against him, he reached down deep for some of his best words:

In a rare bit of eccentric copy editing, the New York Times quoted the eloquent, often uneditable, president on the rumor that he plans to replace loyal Mick Mulvaney, Koch-funded Tea Party zealot, as acting chief of staff. Mark Meadows, another Trump loyalist, has been traveling with the president to campaign events, leading to speculation about the change. Here is the Times, quoting the ever-quotable most powerful man in the world, to somewhat odd effect:

A great false relationship with Mark Meadows? Not hard to believe, I suppose. Everything is a self-interested transaction to the greatest president in American history. Ask any of his wives [1] or children, or members of his own party who dare to oppose any detail of his rule, or anyone of the countless “losers” he has ever exacted vengeance on for the ultimate crime of “disloyalty”. Loyalty to this man is a one way street.

That street is paved with fake gold and leads directly to the ever-angry childish ego of the most powerful man in the world. It is a street where that man could shoot somebody in the face, according to him and his own lawyers, with no consequence to him — particularly if he sincerely believes he is executing a sick and dangerous criminal traitor who desperately needs to die.

Ah, you’re better off watching this, which I pasted in here accidentally:

[1] One lurid example:

The punitive prenuptial agreement between Donald and Ivanka, The Donald’s first wife, was written by none other than Roy Cohn himself. Cohn, one of the most evil men who ever exerted undue influence in America, a self-hating gay homophobe who specialized in persecuting his enemies, using, among his most powerful tools, long-cultivated contacts in the press to rapidly spread lies advantageous to his clients, was Trump’s role model. Cohn died of AIDS he claimed was cancer, disbarred and under criminal indictment at the time of his death. Trump, who values loyalty above all else, turned his back on his long-time mentor as Cohn was dying.

When Trump’s original AG Jeff Sessions did the wrong thing (in Trump’s eyes), by following DOJ ethics lawyers’ solid legal advice about recusing himself from an investigation he’d already lied about under oath, Trump, after grunting “I’m fucked!” immediately attacked Sessions for not protecting him like “Roy Cohn”. “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” he cried out in anguish at the betrayal by DOJ “ethics” weasels who worked for him, seeking the protection of his mythical unconvicted criminal and unrepentant criminal fixer. Bagpiper Bill Barr stepped forward to give the president such snug, cozy protection it would have given Roy Cohn an erection.

What to do if your ACA health insurance is illegally terminated

If your insurance company terminates your insurance, claiming you missed a once a year ten-day “grace period” for payment, go to this site and make an immediate on-line consumer complaint. The complaint at this agency restored my illegally terminated health care in two business days. The New York State Department of Financial Services (yeah, I know) now, finally, does the consumer protections functions of the abolished (in 2011) Department of Insurance. The NYSDFS does what the Attorney General cannot do. (I know…)

Here are the numbers of two offices in New York City that were enormously helpful while I was trying to have the illegal decision terminating my insurance overturned:

For immediate support, and solid advice during this illegal termination, contact the New York City Human Resources Administration, Department of Health, Public Engagement Unit (212-331-6266 M-Th 9am-8pm Fri til 6:30). Alexa at this office urged me to file the NYS Department of Financial Services’s on-line consumer complaint form. She also assured me, 100%, that the unappealable corporate decision to terminate my insurance without notice would be reversed, which it was. Bless her.

In addition to excellent and knowledgable support they will direct you to New York City’s new program, NYC Care. It provides an extensive safety net for low-income individuals who lose access to affordable health care. This wonderful pilot program can save a lot of lives, because it provides for low cost doctor visits long before a too late, ER diagnosis of a fatal stage of a once treatable disease. This compassionate, life-saving program should be well-known by all New Yorkers and well-publicized until it is.

NYC Care has a helpline at 646-NYC-CARE (692-2273). The program is only active in the Bronx, so far, but if you go to any public hospital (Bellvue, Harlem Hospital, Jacobi, Lincoln, Montefiore and others) you can enroll, at the Financial Planning or Business Office of that hospital, in the low-cost, pay-as-you-go “Options Program”.

Mitch, Lindsey and Bolton did nothing wrong!

Any indignation about the processes and procedures involved in “exonerating” our serially “exonerated” president, a blameless man however you slice it, is written off as “Trump Derangement Syndrome” [1]. This syndrome is the same one performed by a childhood bully who uses the victim’s own hand to smack the victim with while saying, with feigned concern, “why do you keep hitting yourself, are you deranged?” It is also a witty variation on “Bush Derangement Syndrome”, the wild attacks made by angry liberals on history’s second greatest president, George W. Bush.

While some Americans would consider the open collusion between Republican Senators and the impeached president’s legal defense team, publicly announced by the Majority Leader on the eve of the impeachment trial, another successful chapter of an impressively detailed book of Obstruction of Justice by an innovatively brazen and lawless administration, we can safely dismiss that belief as a symptom of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

At the risk of expressing a bit more of this serious emotional disease:

Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, two of the president’s most passionate supporters, declared up front that they’d work closely with the president’s defense team and do whatever was necessary to quickly acquit the president after an expedited trial pursuant to baseless partisan accusations based on no direct evidence. Mitch and Lindsey further stipulated, before the trial, that previously blocked witnesses and previously withheld evidence would probably not be allowed at the trial. What would the point be, if the goal is to quickly acquit their leader?

This is kind of arrangement is generally called “collusion” or “conspiracy to obstruct justice”. A trial without firsthand fact witnesses or documentary evidence is usually called a “show trial” and has traditionally been allowed only in dictatorships or theocracies. Before officially assuming their special roles as impartial jurors (the law stipulates that jurors must be free of obvious bias), Mitch and Lindsey (and their 51 Republican co-conspirators) took an oath, administered by the impartial Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, solemnly swearing to listen to all evidence and render an impartial judgment based only on that evidence. Hence, the banning of any and all potentially damaging evidence at the trial. No harm, no foul, no evidence to ignore, no possible jury bias!

Mitch and Lindsey (and fifty other Republican Senators) did nothing wrong, their apologists will say. If they had, they’d have been arrested and prosecuted for perjury, the “argument” goes, since we are, as we’re often reminded, a nation of laws. As it was argued by the president’s lawyers during the impeachment “trial”– Obstruction of Congress is not a crime, particularly when members of Congress participate willingly in the so-called obstruction. Taking a false oath is no crime for a Senator, nor is it an ethical matter — except between the taker of the false oath and the God they swear to. Only an actual provable federal crime, which the president himself cannot be indicted for (or even investigated for) while in office, rises to the level of an impeachable, or even censurable, offense in the United States of Trump.

John Bolton has long been a raging asshole who loves the projection of American power through war. He has argued for years that the U.S. must destroy Iran. During the time he was Trump’s national security advisor he was seen as more hawkish that the impulsive Transactionalist-in- Chief, The Artist of the Deal, Mr. No Quid Pro Quo Why Not Quid Pro Quo? himself. Bolton was fired by Trump, Trump says now, on September 10, 2019, day 83 of the “hold” on military aid to Ukraine, the day before Trump finally allowed the aid to be released. Bolton and Trump apparently had serious policy disagreements, one being the illegal hold on military aid to Ukraine. Bolton seems to have finally won that argument, hence his firing the day before the shakedown on Ukraine was ended by releasing the aid. Bolton claims to have resigned. Flip a coin to decide which of these unimpeachable public servants is lying.

In a case of having your cake and eating it too, Bolton after refusing to appear in the House Impeachment Inquiry, publicly offered, if subpoenaed (LOL!), to testify in the Senate during the trial itself. This was great publicity for sales of his soon to be released tell-all book about his time as National Security Adviser to Trump and a safe bet for Bolton. He had little worry about anyone actually sending him a subpoena for a trial without witnesses and could appear to finally be doing the principled thing, the correct and patriotic thing, without risking book sales or spoiling the dramatic revelations of wrongdoing set forth in the soon-to-be bestseller.

In refusing to testify in the House, Bolton lawyered up to wait for the court’s permission to testify over the objections of his former employer who was asserting a blanket privilege to block any testimony that could incriminate him. Presumably this was a byzantine new, Bill Barr-inspired variation of the famous Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

It will require a precedent shattering 5-4 partisan Supreme Court precedent to uphold a president’s right to obstruct an impeachment by any means at his disposal. Much more limited claims of presidential immunity were made by Nixon and Clinton [2] as their impeachment inquiries proceeded. Only Nixon’s executive privilege to withhold evidence claims reached the Supreme Court, where they were unanimously denied in a precedent that stands until today.

No matter, John Bolton did nothing wrong, that is, nothing illegal. Mitch and Lindsey are cool too, the same way. These are honorable men we are talking about. And we all know what they say about honorable men.

[1] A paroxysm of Trump Derangement Syndrome:

The last few weeks have featured contradictory, largely incoherent “arguments” about why Abuse of Power is no vice– the Founding Fathers liked it just fine, they liked it so well that they never specifically made it an impeachable offense, by deliberate design. If they had meant to ban it, obviously, they’d have used those exact words “Abuse of Power” and only those words, clearly, because that’s how they rolled (see, e.g.. the clear and unambiguous language of the Second Amendment — “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” ). As for an unprecedented claim of absolute presidential immunity and unlimited powers to obstruct all testimony and evidence that could tend to incriminate him as corrupt, including in any of the several ongoing legal actions into Trump’s secret, shady financial entanglements droning on, even as the impeached president actively and openly colluded with his 53-47 Senate majority to further obstruct justice and grrrrr… grrr… grrrr! At least we had blessed silence from fucking Bagpiper Bill Barr during that time… along with the wall of silence from Mike Pompeo, Mick Mulvaney, Mike Pence, Rudy, etc.

[2] Wikipedia:

In 1998, President Bill Clinton became the first president since Nixon to assert executive privilege and lose in court, when a federal judge ruled that Clinton aides could be called to testify in the Lewinsky scandal.^[15]

Later, Clinton exercised a form of negotiated executive privilege when he agreed to testify before the grand jury called by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr only after negotiating the terms under which he would appear. Declaring that “absolutely no one is above the law”, Starr said such a privilege “must give way” and evidence “must be turned over” to prosecutors if it is relevant to an investigation.

Note: Ken Starr, as Trump’s lawyer, confidently asserted exactly the opposite.

Happy Ending Story

So, I’m sitting at my kitchen table around 9 pm watching something on the computer and a smoke alarm goes off, either in the apartment upstairs or next door. It sounds like the low battery warning. The beep is very loud, designed to get attention, its pitch calibrated to make it impossible to ignore, it is keeping a very irritating beat, relentlessly. It continues for several long, lengthening minutes. I think, oh, shit, the low battery warning went off upstairs and nobody’s home, it’s going to be a long, long night. Finally I hear footsteps overhead and go out into the hallway.

It appears to be coming from the apartment of my next door neighbor, an elderly woman who always smiles graciously when we meet in the hall. She comes to the door in her nightgown, after I identify myself, pointing to my door as I look at the peephole and try to think of the Spanish word for neighbor. She tells me, in Spanish, with an apologetic tone, that she speaks no English. I point up to the smoke alarm, tell her I will fix it. I climb on a kitchen chair, remove the alarm from its bracket, turn off the noise. She thanks me after I put it back up, after I put the kitchen chair back in her immaculate kitchen, thanks me again as I leave her apartment. I smile and wish her good night, thinking afterwards how easily I could have said “de nada”.

We have been living next door to each other for so many years, in this largely Dominican neighborhood. How is it I don’t know enough Spanish to speak to her in her own language?

Taking Concerted Action in a Budding Autocracy

Once you remove the last legal restraints on a lawless person, the results are easy to predict.

I’m haunted by the image of Mr. Hitler, already the dictator of Germany for a year and a half, finally sending the Gestapo out to liquidate his enemies in “The Night of the Long Knives”. Everyone on Mr. Hitler’s voluminous enemies list was murdered that night, June 30, 1934, including a nationally known ultra-conservative politician and decorated German general named Kurt von Schleicher. He was shot seven times while sitting at his desk, his wife was also killed; a year later Schleicher’s cook, the only eye witness to the shooting, mysteriously drowned.

The killing of Schleicher was sold the next morning as an act of self-defense by the men sent to take Schleicher into custody for treason. The Nazi story in the Nazi-controlled mass media was that they’d shot the accused traitor when he resisted arrest by opening fire on them, as desperate, insane traitors often do. Two weeks later Mr. Hitler could nonchalantly drop the lie during a Reichstag speech and simply tell the nation: “I had Schleicher shot.”

Even though “jobs are booming, incomes are soaring, poverty is plummeting, crime is falling, confidence is surging and our country is thriving and highly respected again” I am feeling unaccountably uneasy. I keep thinking of what our infallible leader tweeted right after Mueller’s investigation “completely and totally exonerated” the man about whose obstruction of justice Robert Mueller III wrote “we could not exonerate him.”

Mueller, the lifelong Republican who completely exonerated Trump, of course — a traitor– and the treason of his witch hunting partisan investigators is being criminally investigated by the aggressive Attorney General’s most aggressive investigator even as we joyously celebrate the unprecedented greatness of our great land. Here’s the part of the president’s tweet I can’t manage to forget:

“It is finally time to turn the tables and bring justice to some very sick and dangerous people who have committed very serious crimes, perhaps even Spying or Treason.”

Before he actually gets to do that, I, personally, have to get busy. Voting every few years for an attractively packaged corporate candidate, the one with the most persuasive public relations campaign, has not prevented the frightening historic moment we find ourselves in. I have a strong need to sit in a room with other determined people who are organizing to fight the forces of autocracy. I have a gnawing need not to accept my individual helplessness as a citizen of our great democracy, as even the pretense of that democracy is poised to perish from the earth.

I found one organization to check out just now, with headquarters in Brooklyn NY. One of its leaders is one of the women who stopped a sheepish Jeff Flake in an elevator, on the eve of the Judiciary Committee vote to send the nomination of the angry, crying, self-pitying, intemperately partisan “Brett” Kavanaugh to the full Senate, and asked Flake on camera to do the right thing. The short video went viral. As the result of this direct public pressure, Flake did as much of the right thing as any Republican not dying of brain cancer can do these days (I refer to John McCain’s thumbs down to narrowly defeat the vote to end the Affordable Care Act, not long before his own death).

We should also pause to note Mitt Romney’s heroic and lonely vote of conscience to allow a fair trial, with witnesses and evidence, prior to the president’s acquittal — an unthinkably radical notion today among Republicans in Trump’s America. (Susan Collins, shameless apologist for Kavanaugh– among other things– has to lose her contested election, and good riddance).

Anyway, here’s the organization I want to check out:

The Center for Popular Democracy is an American advocacy group that promotes progressive politics. CPD is a federation of groups that includes some of the old chapters of ACORN. The group’s stated goal is to “envision and win an innovative pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice agenda.” Wikipedia

Alas, not as easy as simply going to their website:

Screen shot 2020-02-05 at 5.58.54 PM.png

I’ll have to phone them tomorrow.

“And God bless these United Shayssssh…”

Note to a friend who asked yesterday if I’m depressed

With a sense of great hopefulness, I wrote this note to an old friend yesterday:

Since I’ve now spent the entire day behind the keyboard tapping away, literally nine or ten hours, I have a better answer for you than I did last night.

I’m not depressed as much as in a constant state of having to keep a watchful eye on my constantly provoked rage at the injustices around us (all rage, of course, believes it is righteous and directed at injustice). This internal battle is exhausting sometimes, and far from ideal, but better than screaming and fighting all the time.

I’ve noticed that when I set out the reasons for my feelings clearly on a page, it makes me feel a bit better about the issue that torments me. I feel distinctly not depressed at such times, after I’ve put the issue down with clarity — I feel energized and hopeful sometimes.

I took a few hours, from the time I woke up, to sit and write this about the maddening health care situation I told you about yesterday, submitting two identical complaints, receiving two completely different outcomes: CLICKEZ ICI

I later decided to start tackling the issue more directly, in a way that could be more useful to my fellow citizens, and wrote the attached letter to the NYS attorney general’s office. (see attached, appended hereto and made part hereof at FN 1)

These actions, putting feelings into simple words, identifying and clarifying an issue, refining my description over the course of the day to make it as clear and readable as I can, this exercise of “fighting back”, improved my mood greatly today. The impeachment situation being already decided “fuck your ‘fair trial’, you insane partisan faggots, 51-49 suck it!!!!” there was no reason to listen to any of it today. “If he takes a shit, you must acquit!”, said Dershowitz, in an argument no more demented than any of his others — and no truer words were ever spoken by the stable genius himself.

Anyway, whether it’s delusional or not (since I don’t sell any of my work and virtually nobody ever reads it) it is this daily practice of sitting quietly and writing about the things that vex me most, or things that intrigue me, sometimes, — what you flatteringly referred to as part of me being a knight– (and I’ll take Don Quixote over Donkey Trump-hay any day) and I thank you humbly, and with a chivalric bow, for that– that I believe is keeping me from a complete emotional meltdown (and also enabling me to look squarely at some truly horrible things and historically alarming events without vomiting my guts out).

I’d love to have a JH [her excellent therapist– ed.] to talk to regularly, but lacking someone like that, I accept that I have to be my own best therapist much of the time. I find I’m always listening carefully, understanding of my motivations and gentle with my flaws and mistakes. That seems to be a pretty good start, anyway.

FN1:

Madam Attorney General:

I am enclosing a copy of the letter I am sending to the two Assistant Attorneys General who oversee your overwhelmed Bureau of Health Care.

The gist of my letter:

The complaint submitted on my behalf by your office, seeking to overturn my termination without notice from an ACA health plan was without force or effect. The identical complaint, submitted through the new New York State Department of Financial Services on-line consumer complaint process, forced the private health company to immediately reverse the termination and apologize to me for its “mistake”.

It is hard for me to understand how a consumer complaint submitted by the state’s top law enforcement office did not yield the same legal result as one submitted through the Department of Financial Services. I bring this puzzle to your attention.

Yours sincerely

Bureau Chief, Assistant Attorney General Lisa Landau
Helpline Manager, Assistant Attorney General Adrienne Lawston
Office of the Attorney General
Bureau of Health Care
The Capitol
Albany, NY 12224-0341

Dear Ms. Landau and Ms. Lawston:

I am writing to find out why your helpline workers are unaware of what is apparently the only way in New York State to resolve a complaint about termination without notice of an ACA policy by a health insurance company. The Department of Financial Services’ likely brand new, virtually secret, on-line consumer complaint process expeditiously solved a problem your office was helpless to solve. The complaints I submitted through your office and NYSDFS were virtually identical — one had no effect, the other made a corporation reverse its “legal” and “unappealable” determination.

On January 22, when I called to pay my premiums through June, I was informed by Healthfirst that my insurance had already been canceled due to my failure to pay my January premium by January 10. I was told this was done “within the guidelines” and that my termination for failure to make this payment within the ten-day “grace period” was not appealable except by an internal appeal to their own “financial” department that would make the final determination. They also insisted that notice was not required before termination of health insurance for “late payment”. The outcome of the corporation’s internal appeal process was predictable.

Your office complained to Healthfirst on my behalf, emailed me an official looking verbatim copy of what I’d told the extremely empathetic worker who helped me over the phone. Soon afterwards I got a call back from the Health Care Bureau with the bad news — Healthfirst had not reconsidered its decision to terminate my health insurance. I was advised by your office to contact The New York State of Health Marketplace to reapply for coverage beginning March 1, 2020 [1].

I subsequently found and submitted the on-line DFS complaint, its text virtually identical to the complaint submitted via your bureau. Two business days later I had a call from Healthfirst apologizing for its “mistake”, telling me my insurance was in full force and effect, would cover the expensive January 8^th procedure I’d had and allowing me to pay premiums for the next six months over the phone during that call, as I’d tried to do a hellishly stressful week earlier. The rep admitted they’d received my DFS complaint and that’s why she’d been instructed to call me. I have to assume Healthfirst had been in violation of the law. I also have to assume there is no penalty for the violation and that anyone similarly mistreated, who didn’t find the new DFS consumer complaint form, remains without insurance.

Why is this quick and effective new on-line DFS complaint/enforcement process something your staff is unaware of and therefore unable to inform consumers about? How can it be that the AG’s complaint form lacks the same force of law?

I assume your office gets many calls on this issue every January, as termination for “late payment” is a common reason health insurance companies have long used to terminate particularly the unprofitable low-cost policies of low income customers. I would guess this old insurance industry chestnut is as common a reason for terminating benefits as the old “pre-existing condition” loophole they used to use.

The ACA has protections during the year against such terminations; I know for a fact that notice is required before terminating a patient’s health insurance for late payment. I assume because Healthfirst quickly changed its iron-clad, guidelines-bound determination that their original irrevocable, “non-appealable” termination had violated the law. The law in question being a complicated, voluminous, health industry co-written law that virtually nobody can scan for a quick (or even painfully slow) answer to this kind of question.

The answer to a relevant and common yes or no question of law (does the ACA allow them to cut off my insurance on January 11^th without any notice or appeal?) should be on a fact sheet available to those who answer your help line. Especially since the AG’s small, under-staffed, overworked Health Care Bureau is the sole government mini-agency in the state dedicated to helping NYS state consumers in vexing, sometimes life and death disputes with private health insurance companies.

I hope you will let me know that you’ve informed your staff of what I bring to your attention today. Please feel free to contact me about anything related to this letter. My current mission is to somehow publicize this secret avenue of redress for my fellow citizens screwed, as I was, by the virtually unregulated corporate “persons” who provide health insurance under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. I fortunately had the skill set and tenacity needed to persevere until I discovered and used the new DFS complaint process. How many thousands of vulnerable NYS citizens thrown off insurance without notice have that chance? When they call your office they should be given a fighting chance to reverse illegal decisions that suddenly and without warning “irrevocably” deprive them of access to affordable health care.

[1] Dealing with NYSOH conjures only dread for me, based on my experiences with them, including two traumatic three and four month quasi-appeals I had to win before they would correct their own easily verifiable mistakes. Not for nothing, NYSOH is an agency that in my long experience with many state and federal agencies is among the most cumbersome, unresponsive and inept. I understand that the political appointee who runs it, Donna Frescatore, has been promoted for her stellar work at NYSOH and is now also overseeing Medicaid in the state. It’s good to know the right people, I suppose.

License to Lawlessness

Spoiler: [ Here is the on-line consumer complaint form, that quickly solved the problem described below. I have to figure out how to publicize it.}

With the largely incoherent “arguments” about why Abuse of Power is no vice and justifying absolute presidential immunity for obstructing multiple corruption investigations droning on in the foreground of American democracy — let’s examine what happens to the average citizen when the law that protects their health care can be routinely violated without consequences.

In New York State, patients who get their health care through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA” or “Obamacare”) can, on the eleventh day of January every year, have the health insurance they’ve lawfully reenrolled in canceled at the whim of the private health insurance company they pay for coverage. I learned this sobering fact when it happened to me on January 22 of this year when I called to pay my premiums through June, as I had done every six months for the last few years.

The reason given for abruptly canceling the policy I’d renewed on December 6 was that I’d missed the ten-day “grace period” for paying the first month’s premium for a new policy. My arguments that I’d received no notice of any “grace period”, that it was the same policy I’d had for two or three years, same ID number, same ID card, same premium, fell on deaf ears.

The Healthfirst supervisor, Daya (like the vegan cheese), told me, with great certainty, that Healthfirst was following the “guidelines” and that I’d have to quickly reapply at the New York State of Health Marketplace if I wanted coverage starting March 1. She informed me there was no requirement that health insurance companies give customers any notice of this ten day “grace period” and that the only appeal was an internal one. She said she’d refer my “case” to “financial” and get back to me. She told me I’d be responsible for paying the full price of the expensive, on-going heart-related procedure I’d had on January 8th, mistakenly believing I was still insured.

In her long experience at Healthfirst, she told me, she’d never known “financial” to overturn a valid termination. True to her word, I had a cheerful voicemail from her the following day and when I returned the call was informed by a representative that the termination was, unfortunately, final, irrevocable and non-appealable.

Until two business days later when the company called to apologize for their “mistake”. They took my payment over the phone, right before January ended, apologizing as much as I demanded. I pummeled that poor woman, bullied her into admitting she empathized, would be equally outraged if she suddenly and without any warning found herself in my position. My friends sent me congratulations for my tenacity, my legal skills, for prevailing in a high stakes fight nobody should have to fight just to have the basic right to health care granted to all citizens of every other wealthy nation. I am as angry now as I was when they cancelled my insurance. Here is why:

While one of the innovations of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was making it much harder for insurance companies to cancel policies for late payments without notice (an industry-wide practice as widespread and previously legal as non-coverage for “pre-existing conditions”), the first ten days of every new year apparently offer an annual exemption to this rule allowing health insurance companies to cancel policies without warning. That might be the law, or it might not be the law. It’s up to the individual affected by termination for not paying in the “grace period” to try to find out what the law actually is and if any official in their state can help them determine the legality of what has just been done to deprive them of affordable health care. Oh, and if there’s an available legal remedy if the action taken against them was illegal under the ACA.

An internet search took me to the only public agency that handles health care related consumer complaints. The Better Business Bureau will help consumers with virtually every business-related conflict, excluding anything to do with health insurance. The New York City Public Advocate does not get involved with consumers as individuals, only matters of “public policy”. The state entity that has the monopoly on selling ACA plans, the “New York State of Health Marketplace” (NYSOH) has no mechanism, outside of a three to four month quasi-judicial appeals process, to help health care consumers correct even NYSOH’s own errors that deprive them of health insurance or payment subsidies. NYSOH also does not inform us of our basic legal rights as patients protected by the embattled Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [2].

The job of helping all of the many New York State health care “consumers” (otherwise known as “patients”) who experience problems with their health insurance falls to the small Health Care Bureau, a desk at the New York State Attorney General’s office, a hotline staffed by one or two decent, well-meaning, overwhelmed and powerless people who are very, very busy.

I contacted the Health Care Bureau and spoke to an extremely sympathetic and harried woman who lamented that there was little they could do for me, except to reach out to the company with a complaint and hope the corporation would change its mind. I got an email telling me my transcribed complaint had been submitted [3]. The complaint, which stated my dictated complaint verbatim, looked very official, here is what is at the top of the copy they sent me:

Screen shot 2020-02-03 at 3.33.54 PM.png

The next day the extremely kind woman from the Health Care Bureau reached out to let me know that, sadly, Healthfirst got back to her to say, in essence, “tough noogies.” She greatly empathized when she called to give me the bad news, told me she wished there was more she could do and advised me that I’d better get busy re-applying to NYSOH for health insurance if it wanted coverage again on March 1.

I called a non-profit advocate for the poor and elderly where a lawyer had helped me in the past, though even that excellent lawyer’s powers were extremely limited when it came to overcoming the refusal of a private health insurance corporation to comply with the law. They researched my complaint and called me back to inform me that I’d better reapply if I wanted to be insured again on March 1, since there was probably nothing anyone could do. In a voicemail they regretted they could not be of more help to me and made a reference to the Department of Financial Services consumer help forms.

I spent many more hours on the internet and on the phone, spoke to many more people at several New York City offices [1]. Eventually I found one who told me to file the consumer complaint form I’d already found at the New York State Department of Financial Services. I’d found a link to this form during my second full day of research but had been skeptical, due to past experience with that agency. The great woman I spoke to at the NYC agency, Alexa, told me confidently that the insurance company would be forced to reverse its decision as a result of this complaint. I wrote the complaint, filed it on-line and two business days later, Alexa’s prediction came true.

There is a short explanation for why the corporation changed its unappealable decision: it had violated the law by canceling my health insurance, without notice or warning. The government’s enforcement of its laws is the only thing that can force an unscrupulous person (or “person”) to behave ethically, or at least comply with the law. Without public enforcement, a law is as empty as the words of the lawyer for a vicious criminal arguing that since his client truly believed he was doing nothing wrong it was legally impossible that he’d committed the crime the jury had seen the videotape of him committing. No intent, no crime, no harm, no foul!

The explanation for why the Department of Financial Services was the place to find and file a new, highly effective, amazingly fast-acting on-line consumer complaint against a health insurance company is a little longer. When New York State became one of the first states to adopt the ACA, it abolished the Commissioner of Insurance position as well as the state’s Department of Insurance. All of the functions of that oversight agency were merged into a new agency that also oversees banking and finances in New York State. This was a full three years after the calamitous fallout from the financial industry’s massive fraud came close to causing a world economic collapse. What could go wrong?

The last time I had problems with my health insurance, at some point between my two “successful” several month appeal processes at the New York State of Health Marketplace to overturn errors they had made, I contacted the Department of Financial Services. At the time, their fraud investigators, one of whom I managed to track down and eventually spoke with for a long time, only had the ability to investigate insurance fraud claims lodged by insurance companies against customers. There was no consumer help available, though they helpfully referred me to the same 800 number that had begun my twenty hours or so in the useless administrative cul du sac I’d described in a long letter to the Attorney General’s office.

This time I was screwed by a corporation and, amazingly, managed to get quickly unscrewed. Why am I still angry? A character flaw, I suppose, I can’t help thinking of countless neighbors of mine, for whom English is a second language, who have no hope of finding this well-hidden, highly effective new remedy for the ILLEGAL practice of terminating affordable health care without notice or warning of any kind. I think of anyone who does not have my particular skill set and perversity, anyone who has not been a lawyer, trying to navigate the impossibly rough waters of not being illegally thrown off an insurance policy.

WHY DOES NOBODY (outside of a very cool NYC worker named Alexa) IN ANY OFFICE DEDICATED TO HELPING CITIZENS WITH HEALTH CARE KNOW ABOUT THE SECRET NEW 100% EFFECTIVE CURE for this particular corporate abuse? Why is the public, particularly its most vulnerable members, not publicly and effectively informed of it? Why is there no requirement that we be informed of how the law to protect patients actually protects patients?

As for the amazing quickness of the legal relief I got (two business days!), I can only conclude that out of the many hundreds or thousands around the state similarly screwed, I must have been one of very few, perhaps the only one, who filed a complaint with the Department of Financial Services on their new secret on-line form. I can’t think of how else my vexing problem could have been solved so quickly. Here is the NYSDFS consumer complaint form, by the way.

Abuse is not a crime, unless the law specifically makes it a crime. If the law doesn’t specifically say you can’t abuse, it’s perfectly legal to do whatever you want, “abusive” or otherwise (within other legal limits) to anybody,. If there is a law against a certain kind of abuse, but there is no enforcement available for those abused and no penalty to the abuser, well, that speaks for itself. It says “I know you are, but what am I?!!” In that case, effectively, even though a practice is actually against the law, in reality there is no law. If there is no law, you have the democratic government you vulnerable, helpless, pitiful chumps deserve, losers! It’s up to us all to … oh, never mind… there must be a good reality show we can all watch to calm down…

[1] I learned from a great and knowledgeable woman at the New York City Human Resources Administration, Department of Health, Public Engagement Unit (212-331-6266 M-Th 9am-8pm Fri til 6:30) that New York City has a new program, NYC Care, that provides an extensive safety net for low-income individuals who lose access to affordable health care.

This wonderful pilot program can save a lot of lives, because it provides for low cost doctor visits. It should be well-known and well-publicized until it is. NYC Care has a helpline at 646-NYC-CARE (692-2273). The program is only active in the Bronx, so far, but if you go to any public hospital (Bellvue, Harlem Hospital, Jacobi, Lincoln, Montefiore) you can enroll, at the Financial Planning or Business Office, in the low-cost, pay-as-you-go “options program”. I will also post this as a separate piece, a public service announcement.

[2] The inept public agency that has the state monopoly on providing ACA health plans is run by an unaccountable political appointee, Donna Frescatore, who does not allow consumers to contact her, nor does she allow NYSOH reps to divulge her identity to consumers. Both of my appeals against NYSOH were necessitated by errors made by NYSOH reps that could only be corrected by winning a quasi-judicial appeal months later. As a result of her excellent stewardship of NYSOH Frescatore has been promoted to Deputy Director of Medicaid in the State. She must have EXCELLENT people skills.

[3] their email reads, with all the hallmarks of officialdom:

Thank you for submitting your complaint to the Health Care Bureau. Attached please find a copy for your records. Your assistance is vital to our efforts to serve the people of the State of New York.

The Attorney General takes seriously the legal issues of all New Yorkers, and every complaint to this office is carefully considered. Please be assured that we will thoroughly evaluate each of the issues you have raised, and determine if we, or any bureau within our office, can provide assistance. We may also share your submission with other local, state, or federal agencies, as appropriate.

We will contact you if we require any additional information. Please do not submit follow-up inquiries through the complaint form, which is for new submissions only. If contacting our office regarding this submission, please refer to Intake #1-129605382. Inquiries may be made by phone at (800) 771-7755, or by email.

Republican Senators Admit Democrats proved their case against the President

But, of course, it’s purely academic now, the vote is in, there will be no actual trial in the Senate and the blameless, or blameworthy, president will be acquitted in this partisan witch hunt too [1]. The Republican position, unified as never before in our nation’s history along a hard “party line” — the president’s defense, come what may — is that a president like Mr. Trump may abuse his enormous powers and repeatedly obstruct the lawful actions of Congress to check and balance this abuse — and these are simply not impeachable offenses, as the demented argument of Alan Dershowitz contends.

Think about his argument out of the context of the impeachment of a president accused of abuse of power: why would anyone concerned with justice ever try to prevent abuse of power? It’s just abuse, which is only an actual crime in certain carefully enumerated circumstances. It’s not like he was kicking a dog in a state that has specific laws against it!

The founding fathers who apparently believed that the will of 51% majority should be the final word on any democratic question, were not concerned, we are told by the president’s most famous lawyer, that a president could abuse his powers if unchecked by Congress and the Courts. The balancing of the powers of one branch of our government against the overreach of another branch is not what “checks and balances” was intended to enforce, not at all. There were debates during the drafting of the Constitution about the grounds for presidential impeachment at the time, notes of these debates are available. “Maladministration” was not approved as grounds for impeachment, if the president runs his administration like an inept, even corrupt, fool the remedy is for the People (by their electors in the Electoral College) to vote him out and elect a better one four years later– no harm, no foul.

Watch this next legalistic sleight of hand carefully, you may have to read it twice to catch the subtle trick. The same, Dershowitz insists, is true of “misconduct in office” — he claims the Founding Fathers swept this aside as a synonym for “maladministration” and “abuse of power”. That abuse of power was part of Nixon and Clinton’s impeachments only proves that the smartest lawyers, even Dershowitz himself, at the time, were not smart enough to see through this clearly unconstitutional partisan canard until now.

79 year-old Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, poised to retire (and who announced his decision to vote with his party for no witnesses and no evidence at trial), issued this statement:

“I worked with other senators to make sure that we have the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense. …The Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate.

“The question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did. I believe that the Constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential election that begins in Iowa on Monday. …Our founding documents provide for duly elected presidents who serve with ‘the consent of the governed,’ not at the pleasure of the United States Congress. Let the people decide.” – Senator Lamar Alexander

In plain words: he did it, it was bad, they proved it. I still love the guy, I mean, not personally, but what he represents for my worldview and my retirement. It would be a shame to let him get publicly embarrassed by even more evidence and testimony that could only show more dramatically how he is constantly lying about the inappropriate things he did and continues to do, and is now explicitly permitted to do.

Alexander, unsurprisingly, supports the leader of his party for re-election in 2020.

Much more to the ominous point was the statement of Florida Senator and one of Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination in 2016, Marco Rubio (Little Marco). Little Marco wrapped his idealistic conclusions in a long, twisting legal-style argument, available at the link above (if you have the stomach for it), the gist being:

“Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a President from office. …

“… I will not vote to remove the President because doing so would inflict extraordinary and potentially irreparable damage to our already divided nation.”

The first statement translates: just because the evidence shows somebody is guilty of committing a high crime, punishment is not always called for. A preemptive, under-the-table pardon is sometimes better for the interests of the 51-49 majority and the higher interests they serve.

Allow me to provide a direct translation of that second part, which is much more troubling than even that first bit:

The president has the undying loyalty of a solid 40% of America, this number never changes much, no matter what. Many of his supporters are very angry, and rightfully so, having been repeatedly screwed by the system. Many have a lot of guns. Most are enraged about the ongoing baseless witch hunts that have constantly tried to damage their hero, since the day he exercised his uncontested right to fire James Comey, the traitorous FBI director who would not swear personal loyalty to the president. Would not swear personal loyalty!!! Trump’s fans are heavily armed and easily outraged, as shown at boisterous nightly campaign rallies. Impeaching and removing their champion from office could set off a bloodbath. I am not ready to take responsibility for a second Civil War, on the eve of the sacred Superbowl.

A little taste of Mr. Rubio’s crack legal analysis:

I also reject the argument that unless we call new witnesses this is not a fair trial. They cannot argue that fairness demands we seek witnesses they did little to pursue.

Nevertheless, new witnesses that would testify to the truth of the allegations are not needed for my threshold analysis, which already assumed that all the allegations made are true.

This high bar I have set is not new for me. In 2014, I rejected calls to pursue impeachment of President Obama, noting that he “has two years left in his term,” and, instead of pursuing impeachment, we should use existing tools at our disposal to “limit the amount of damage he’s doing to our economy and our national security.”

This unified, if not 100% laudable or defendable, party line behind the president brings to mind the old Führerprinzip, the ruling philosophy of the Thousand Year Reich: the leader is always right, even when he’s shown to be completely wrong. Especially in the face of such TREASON!

Nothing to worry about here in America, though, we ain’t fucking Nazis, we’re the world’s greatest democracy. Kick back and enjoy the Superbowl, you’ve earned it, y’all.

[1] And, fuck me in the eye, it was literally by a vote of 51-49 suck it!