Full disclosure: I’m fortunate enough to enjoy adequate health care through my employer.

That said, 20 million Americans get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. It’s commonly called “Obamacare”and Republicans have promised to repeal it since its passage in 2010.

President Elect Trump jumped on the bandwagon from day one in his campaign. Several times he’s called the ACA a disaster and has promised to replace it with a better plan.

I hope he’s right but I have grave reservations. Congress can effectively dismantle the ACA without any Democratic support by defunding it. It’s kind of like telling your child you’re not prohibiting him from buying a new car while emptying his checking account.

By the way, if you’re going to comment that I’m using only links from “liberal” sources, Fox News hasn’t written about defunding the ACA since June 7, 2016 when Senate Republicans promised not to do it. [Update: I’m writing this on the evening of January 7th. The Fox News Website has posted what appears to be a rough cut transcript of “The Kelly File” from January 4th. I can’t tell when it was posted but it appears to have been posted after my post. You can read it here]

And now back to our story. Legislation passes the House of Representatives by a simple majority while the minority party in the Senate can filibuster which requires 60 of the 100 Senators to override.

So here’s the problem: Republicans are claiming they will repeal and replace the ACA. But any replacement will require 60 Senators which will require the support of at least 7 Democrats. This gives the Republicans the ability to “replace” the ACA with clearly unacceptable legislation and then blame the Democrats for being obstructionist.

Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway insists that nobody who has health insurance will lose it. I hope she’s right.

On New Year’s Eve President Elect Trump was asked about a report that Russia was behind a hack of John Podesta’s emails to sway the election in favor of Mr. Trump. John Podesta was campaign manager for Hilary Clinton.

Mr. Trump has reason to want this to go away, and even though evidence is overwhelming, he disputes this. On New Year’s Eve he proclaimed that he knew “things that other people don’t know” about the hacking, and that the information would be revealed today or tomorrow. We don’t know what that will be, but we got a clue from his press secretary Sean Spicer. You can (no kidding) read this on the web page Red State but Sean said this on CNN:

It’s not a question of necessarily revealing. He’s going to talk about his conclusions and where he thinks things stand. He’s not going to reveal anything that was privileged or was shared with him classified. I think he can share with people his conclusions of the report and his understanding of the situation and make sure people understand there’s a lot of questions out there.

Got that? Trump’s press secretary has already told us that he won’t keep his promise but, once again, will give us his opinion.

Sadly there is a pattern here. Trump promises to reveal plans in the future and then hopes we’ll forget. Last September he promised he had a plan to destroy ISIS but refused to disclose it. Strangely, we haven’t heard anything about it since.

After his election many of us grew uneasy over possible conflicts of interest. Later in the month he promised to hold a press conference on December 15th to announce his plans to avoid any conflict. On December 12th his campaign announced that the press conference was postponed until sometime this month. Nothing since.

Simply put, he’s hoping we’re not keeping track. He hopes we won’t hold him accountable to his own words. He hopes we don’t care if he tells the truth. But we do.

Trump won the election based on people who “wanted a change” so badly that they don’t care what he does. They just want a different path.

But we are different. We’re going to spend the next four years holding him accountable to what he says. We read the newspapers, we watch the news, and we remember.

Join me.

Today Catholics around the world commemorate St. Thomas a Becket (1118-1170). On this day he was martyred on the high altar at the Catebury Cathedral.

Thomas had been the best friend of King Henry II (1133-1189) but by 1170 their relationship soured and King Henry snarled: “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Four of his knights took his words literally: believing they were acting on orders, they killed Thomas.

I write this because King Henry learned an important lesson that day: if you enjoy great power, you carry great responsibility. President Elect Trump has not learned this. Over the past 18 months we have watched him make dozens of false and preposterous statements. The web page Politifact (who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009) fact checked 342 of his statements. Of those, 114 (33%) were determined to be false and and 62 (18%) were determined to be “pants on fire.”

And while most of those statements are fairly harmless, others were not. The defense contractor Lockheed Martin is developing the F-35 fighter plane. On December 22nd Don tweeted that he thought it was too expensive. Overnight the stock price of Lockheed Martin lost 2%, or $1.2 billion of value. It was also a hard day for anyone who works for Lockheed Martin. And this is from someone who claims he’ll be good for jobs.

Simply put, he dumps these tweets with no regard to the fact that many Americans’ jobs and livelihood depend on his actions. It’s true with any President but most of his 44 predecessors recognized their responsibility. This one does not.

Throughout the campaign and since the election we’ve heard President Elect Trump talking about “bring back manufacturing jobs.” In that light he talks about imposing tariffs, that is, charging other countries to import goods to the United States.

Historically we’ve used tariffs to prevent other nations from manufacturing or growing products cheaper and importing them to hurt our own manufacturers and farmers. In 1913 our government passed the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, allowing the government to collect taxes on the incomes of individual Americans. Before that, almost all government revenue came from tariffs.

But most economists hate tariffs. They feel that “government intrusion” on the free market chooses winners and losers. They feel that we all do better when the competition of the free market makes everyone work harder and produce better products.

So what happens if President Trump imposes tariffs? There’s a terrific article here that shows what happened in Argentina. In 2009 that nation imposed a 35% tariff on electronics as a way to protect the domestic electronic manufacturing industry. It went well for Argentinian manufacturing, but badly for everyone else.

It was a boon to the black market in electronics. But it was also a boon to Chile, next door. Droves of Argentinians streamed to Chile to purchase electronics. For example, an iPad mini 4 cost $1,260 in Argentina but only $640 in Chile.

So if you want the next generation of iPhone, you need to hope either (1) Trump isn’t successful, (2) You become wealthy enough to pay the 35% tariff, or (3) You live close enough to Canada or Mexico to skirt the tariff.

By the way, Argentina is repealing the tariff.

The elections of 2000 and 2016 have highlighted the role of the Electoral College and they met today. On election night it appeared that Mr. Trump won 306 electoral votes to Secretary Clinton’s 232.

Today electors in state capitals all over the country met and voted. Some states demand that the electors vote for the candidate who won their state, others allow the electors to vote for whomever they choose, and some did.

Mr. Trump won the state of Texas, but one elector cast a ballot for Ohio governor John Kasich and another elector chose Ron Paul.

Mrs. Clinton won the state of Washington, but three electors cast ballot for Colin Powell and one voted for Faith Spotted Eagle, a woman from South Dakota and a member of the Sioux Nation.

I write this as background for Mr. Trump’s claim that he won “in a landslide.”

Despite the fact that Mr. Trump lost the popular vote by 2,500,000 and won the electoral college by only 76 votes, he insists that he won in a landslide. He wrote this in a tweet on November 27th: “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

Mr. Trump is famously thin skinned. Next month he will assume office with little to no mandate. A true leader would recognize this and work to build the trust of the American people.

Strong leaders command respect; poor leaders crave approval. Mr. Trump cannot abide the fact that the majority of Americans voted for someone else and he can’t accept the fact that only 12 Presidential elections were closer than his. Fifty elections awarded the winner more electoral votes.

Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a tough ride as the role of government switches from serving to nation to propping up a frighteningly fragile ego.

In my previous post I spoke about the fact that hackers in Russia hacked into several databases in the United States in the countdown to the election.

So here’s what we know (much taken from this article):

• We’ve known since November that the email server of the DNC and the private gmail account of John Podesta (Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager) were hacked by the Russians and leaked by WikiLeaks.
• The CIA has concluded that the Russians did this to sway the election of Mr. Trump.
• The Russians also hacked in the RNC but did not release that information
• It’s no secret that Russian President Vladimir Putin would rather deal with President Trump than President Hillary Clinton.

And so how does Mr. Trump respond to this? He dismissed them. His reasoning? Good question.

He provides no reason except that he doesn’t believe our intelligence community. This raises an alarming reality: his decisions aren’t based on reason but “how he feels.” Or, perhaps, something worse.

The evidence shows that his presidency begins with less than 50% of the popular vote. Now we understand that a minority of that popular vote may have been influenced by a foreign president who recognized an opportunity to choose “his candidate.”

Mr. Trump claims to desire a better relationship with Mr. Putin. But if Mr. Putin’s view of world domination is correct, he doesn’t want Mr. Trump to be a partner, but instead a lapdog.

In other words, Mr. Putin sees Mr. Trump as a useful idiot.

Mr. Trump, you’ve already told us that you don’t need daily briefings and you’re smarter than the Generals about Isis. Please give us evidence that you’re not a useful idiot.

Yesterday I wrote about how Mr. Trump doesn’t feel he needs to work hard at the job he’s about to assume. In the last few days we’ve learned how serious this can be.

Almost everyone I know who didn’t support Mr. Trump, and even some who did, felt uncomfortable with his admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin. As a matter of fact, we understand Mr. Trump is considering nominating Rex Tillerson for the post of Secretary of State.

Mr. Tillerson currently runs Exxon-Mobile and bring no experience in diplomacy. But he is the 2013 recipient of the Order of Friendship from Mr. Putin.

Mr. Trump hasn’t nominated anyone yet, and there is reason to believe that Mr. Tillerson may have trouble getting confirmed.

But it’s worth noting that Mr. Tillerson is not being looked at because of his experience in diplomacy or his depth of knowledge of foreign governments. He is an expert in only two things: running a multi-national oil company and impressing Vladimir Putin.

I’ll be writing more about Russia and its interference in our election in the next few days. Stay tuned.

A few days ago we learned, without surprise, that President Elect Trump receives only weekly briefings. The current President is briefed daily, and Vice President Elect Michael Pence is briefed six days per week.

There is no requirement that Mr. Trump be briefed daily, but a decades old custom has the President Elect receive the same daily briefing as the President. This election has broken many traditions, not the least of which is the election of someone who has never held office.

Others in his position have recognized the awesome responsibility of the office and the steep learning curve. They’ve recognized that on their first day in office the buck stops here.

Mr. Trump, on the other hand, bragged that I know more about Isis than the generals do and brags about not reading books.

In five and a half weeks he will be the leader of the free world. He will be awakened in the middle of the night and tasked to make incredibly important decisions in a matter of minutes. His decisions will impact the lives of members of our military, the population of our nation, and indeed everyone on earth.

And if his actions so far indicate anything, they indicate that he will be woefully unprepared. He claims that experience negotiating real estate contracts gives him the tools he needs, but it doesn’t. The President can’t suspend negotiations or ask the judge for a continuance. He can do his job only if he comes to the crisis with the background and understanding for the decisions he will need to make.

I pray he comes to an understanding of this before he stumbles too badly.