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MY THOTS - Few politicians are more adept at twisting and distorting reality than Donald Trump. What’s most remarkable is his mastery of empty promises, a polite way of saying that he’s no more reliable than a Ponzi scheme.
The most glaring example of this ability to manipulate is the issue which at the center of his campaign: Immigration. The candidate Trump promised to find and deport what he insists is a plague of immigrant criminals who are destroying everything Americans hold dear. The elected Trump has done anything but that.
Since he took office and control of Immigration & Customs Enforcement, Trump has presided over a race-based assault on employed people of color. ICE is reported to be averaging better than 700 immigrants per day, resulting in the detention of more than 100,000 individuals. Those now incarcerated or awaiting deportation include an untold number of women and children; thus far, not one of those has been charged with a crime.
The ICE campaign directly contradicts the campaign promise. Rather than seeking and detaining known or suspected criminals, ICE typically raids places of employment. Invading farms, hotels, and restaurants achieve the least desirable result. Hard-working, low-income employees doing menial chores are not criminals, they are taxpayers who feed our economy at the same time they generate employer profits. Women and children are not lawbreakers, they are part of our social fabric, doing their best to get along just like the rest of us.
This “round ‘em all up” strategy may, indeed, result in an occasional felon capture, but if that happens, it’s purely by chance.
It is worth noting that it is illegal to employ undocumented workers. Yet, if giant agri-businesses and lucrative hotel chains are being charged with crimes, it’s the biggest on-going secret in the land.
The President’s promise of a safer, less lawless nation is sheer folly. Consider, to cite but one glaring example, that none of the immigrants in Ohio whom the candidate accused of all manner of lawlessness including abducting pets and serving them for dinner have been arrested.
This same misguided logic is at the heart of the administration’s approach to healthcare fraud.
Trump promised to weed out cheaters who take advantage of Medicare. Instead, the President on has managed to completely ignore the source of real fraud. Over the years, the FBI and Department of Health & Human Services have engaged in investigations of healthcare fraud. The results are consistent. The vast majority of healthcare fraud stems from providers, not consumers.
Unscrupulous hucksters have for decades found ways to game our federal healthcare bureaucracy. They inflate service charges, generate fraudulent invoices and grossly over-charge for everything from aspirin to x-rays. The paltry few patients who exaggerate their medical expenses are guilty, at worst, of misdemeanors requiring repayment of their penny-ante ill-gotten gains. Hustlers who create hundreds of thousands of phony patient accounts, on the other hand, reap the benefits of seriously illegal felonies.
Donald Trump’s oft-celebrated legislative approach seeks to hunt down and punish patients while failing to create, for example, a task force of forensic accounts to discover and dismantle the most costly sources of healthcare crime.
The shyster’s promises turn out to be firmly rooted in poor planning, ignorant initiatives, and barely negligible results. Innocents suffer while the guilty waltz on. It’s all chicanery of the highest order. It is, sadly, extremely poor governance.
(David M. Hamlin writes mystery novels and short stories in addition to his commentaries for CityWatchLA. His latest short story, Money Talks, is currently featured in The Bloomin Onion, a literary magazine. You can find it, at no charge, at https://www.thebloominonion.com/)
