872 Program to Alter Elections found in vote-counting Computer; Google backs Hillary

Program to Alter Elections found in vote-counting Computer; Google backs
Hillary

Newsletter published on 2 November 2016

(1) Code in Vote-Counting computers allows Rigging (variable weighting)
(2) Votes are being counted as Fractions instead of as Whole Numbers
(3) How U.S. elections are hacked
(4) Vote fraud expert Bev Harris exposes electronic voting machines
(5) Wikileaks reveals Google "Strategic Plan" to help Hillary win, and
track Voters
(6) Could neither Hillary nor Trump win? Could House of Reps appoint
Mormon candidate?
(7) Dollar slumps against euro, jumps against peso on potential Trump win
(8) Sheldon Adelson donates big to Trump, but only at the last minute
(9) Trump is to blame for ‘Unprecedented’ Train Wreck of an Election -
Jewish Forward
(10) In wake of Trump ascendancy, The (Rothschild) Economist switches
allegiance to Canada

(1) Code in Vote-Counting computers allows Rigging (variable weighting)

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2179920-program-to-alter-elections-found-in-system-that-counts-us-votes-video/

Program to Alter Elections Found in System That Counts US Votes (Video)

By Joshua Philipp, Epoch Times |

November 1, 2016 AT 1:53 PM

Last Updated: November 1, 2016 5:46 pm

The electoral system in the United States is based on the standard of
"one person, one vote," yet a nonpartisan organization investigating the
elections has found code in vote-counting machines that allows them to
alter how each vote is weighed.

Black Box Voting released a video on Oct. 31 that exposes the code found
in the GEMS machines, which count votes in elections for a quarter of
the United States. Investigators showed video evidence of tabulation
computers being tampered with in U.S. elections.

The investigators also found functions on the vote-counting systems that
hide alterations and code that divides whole votes into fractions.

"In short, it’s like having the ability to say a vote is not a whole,"
said Bennie Smith, a Tennessee programmer in the investigative video,
who analyzed the GEMS system.

ES&S, the company that runs the GEMS system, did not respond to
questions sent through its media request form asking why the GEMS system
contains code to alter how votes are weighed.

Black Box Voting published a report showing the code it discovered in
the GEMS system. James Scott, co-founder and senior fellow of the
Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, a cybersecurity think
tank, reviewed the code and said it functions as "alter" commands.

"An adversary could not write malware more damaging, better hidden, or
more capable of altering election results than the fractionalization
feature already included in GEMS," Scott said. "This is deeply disturbing."

Scott said the code also raises the risk of an outside hacker using the
built-in system to alter votes. "If this is already built into the GEMS
software, then they’ve made it easy," he said. "All a hacker needs to do
is compromise credentials of someone that already has access to this
software and you can use your imagination after that."

(2) Votes are being counted as Fractions instead of as Whole Numbers

http://blackboxvoting.org/fraction-magic-3/

Fraction Magic – Part 3: Proof of code

By Bev Harris May 12, 2016

3 – Programming to treat votes as decimals –

The term "DOUBLE" means to store and process numbers with "double
precision floating points" – in other words, to enable large numbers of
decimal values.

In contrast, the term "INT" instructs the program to treat numbers as
whole integers.

Source Code:

Below are clips from GEMS source code showing that it converts votes
from whole numbers (previous version, GEMS 1.17) to store and process
them as decimal values by setting them to "double" in GEMS version 1.18:

"ALTER TABLE SumCandidateCounter" "ALTER COLUMN TotalVotes DOUBLE"
"ALTER TABLE SumRaceCounter" "ALTER COLUMN NumberOfUnderVotes DOUBLE" ***

"CREATE TABLE SumCandidateCounter ( ReportunitId INT, VCenterId INT,
CounterGroupId INT, CandVGroupId INT, TotalVotes DOUBLE )" ***

"CREATE TABLE SumRaceCounter ( ReportunitId INT, VCenterId INT,
CounterGroupId INT, RaceId INT, TimesCounted INT, TimesBlankVoted INT,
TimesOverVoted INT, NumberOfUnderVotes DOUBLE )  " ***

"ALTER TABLE CandidateCounter " "ALTER COLUMN TotalVotes DOUBLE " "ALTER
TABLE RaceCounter " "ALTER COLUMN NumberOfUnderVotes DOUBLE" ***

# Contains the candidate counts for the race "CREATE TABLE
CandidateCounter (            CounterBatchId INT,
ReportunitId INT,            CounterGroupId INT,            CandVGroupId
INT,            TotalVotes DOUBLE # Number of votes ) " ***

"CREATE TABLE SumCandidateCounter (            ReportunitId INT,
     VCenterId INT,            CounterGroupId INT,
CandVGroupId INT,            TotalVotes DOUBLE ) " ***

Non-programmers may not have seen the term "double" used to describe
processing numbers with decimals. Here is an SQL tutorial -- there are
many -- showing that "Double" means to process numbers as decimal values:

The above source code instructions create and define data structures in
Microsoft Access tables, used by GEMS to create results reports. By
opening the GEMS tables using MS Access, and right-clicking "design
view" for the tables related to vote-counting, you see that the
instruction to treat vote counts as "double" is implemented. The vote
format in each is set to "double," counting votes as decimals.

Overvotes are counted as whole numbers but undervotes are counted as
decimals:

Because the "double" configuration for votes is built into the source
code, the most important requirement for sophisticated, configurable
election tampering exists wherever the program is used. [...] * * * * *

Bev Harris is a writer and founder of Black Box Voting. She has
researched and written about election transparency and computerized
voting systems since 2002. Harris was featured in the Emmy-nominated HBO
documentary Hacking Democracy, and is the author of Black Box Voting:
Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century, a book purchased by the White
House Library and also reportedly found on Osama bin Laden’s bookshelf.
Harris’s research has been covered in The New York Times, Vanity Fair,
Time Magazine, CNN and several international publications, including the
Philippine Daily Inquirer and Agence France Presse. Contact by text or
phone 206-335-7747 for media inquiries.

Bennie Smith is a Memphis-based application developer for an electrical
manufacturing company. He is also a political strategist who has
developed a micro-targeting application that predicts voter turnout. In
August 2014 he was approached by a number of candidates who insisted
that their elections had been stolen. He disagreed with the group and
offered to look into how the system works. After discovering a number of
irregularities, Smith began to research how votes that originate from
the same source can change once they get into the GEMS vote tabulation
program. Smith’s attention to these anomalies uncovered an
extraordinarily high-risk tampering mechanism and ultimately provided a
new infrastructure for analyzing questionable election results.

(3) How U.S. elections are hacked
http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/how-u-s-elections-are-hacked-missing-link-found/

How U.S. elections are hacked, missing link found

Vote-fraud expert exposes electronic voting machines

Published: 1 day ago

(INFOWARS) — Black Box Voting, founded in 2003, performs nonpartisan
investigative reporting on elections in an attempt to stop vote rigging.

You may be wondering what the term "black box" means. A "black box"
system is non-transparent; its functions are hidden from the public.
Elections, of course, should not be black box systems.

Author Bev Harris became known for groundbreaking work on electronic
voting machines, which can remove transparency of the vote count.

With voting machines, all political power can be converted to the hands
of a few anonymous subcontractors:

(4) Vote fraud expert Bev Harris exposes electronic voting machines

http://www.infowars.com/how-americas-elections-are-hacked/

Infowars.com - October 31, 2016

Black Box Voting, founded in 2003, performs nonpartisan investigative
reporting on elections in an attempt to stop vote rigging.

You may be wondering what the term "black box" means. A "black box"
system is non-transparent; its functions are hidden from the public.
Elections, of course, should not be black box systems.

Author Bev Harris became known for groundbreaking work on electronic
voting machines, which can remove transparency of the vote count.

With voting machines, all political power can be converted to the hands
of a few anonymous subcontractors:

Extensive analysis on the topic by Alex Jones can be viewed below:

Watch the full interview with Bev Harris from the Alex Jones Show:

(5) Wikileaks reveals Google "Strategic Plan" to help Hillary win, and
track Voters
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-01/wikileaks-reveals-googles-strategic-plan-help-democrats-win-election

Wikileaks Reveals Google's "Strategic Plan" To Help Democrats Win The
Election, Track Voters

by Tyler Durden

Nov 1, 2016 3:09 PM

Among the latest set of Podesta releases, was the following email sent
on April 15, 2014 by Google's Eric Schmidt titled "Notes for a 2016
Democratic Campaign" in which the Google/Alphabet Chairman tells Cheryl
Mills that "I have put together my thoughts on the campaign ideas and I
have scheduled some meetings in the next few weeks for veterans of the
campaign to tell me how to make these ideas better.  This is simply a
draft but do let me know if this is a helpful process for you all."

Google head Eric Schmidt's secret strategic plan for the US election
#PodestaEmails https://t.co/LskJODXyXn

More: https://t.co/ZUfh7WDAT5 pic.twitter.com/llq5G9kp5V

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 31, 2016

While there are numerous curious nuances in the plan, presented below in
its entirety, the one section that caught our - and Wikileaks' attention
- is the following which implicitly suggests Google planned the creation
of a voter tracking database, using smart phones:

Key is the development of a single record for a voter that aggregates
all that is known about them. In 2016 smart phones will be used to
identify, meet, and update profiles on the voter. A dynamic volunteer
can easily speak with a voter and, with their email or other digital
handle, get the voter videos and other answers to areas they care about
("the benefits of ACA to you" etc.)

As a reminder, two days ago it was revealed that just days prior to the
April 15, 2014 email, Schmidt had sent another email in which he
expressed his eagerness to "fund" the campaign efforts and wants to be a
"head outside advisor." In the email from John Podesta to Robby Mook we
learned that:

I met with Eric Schmidt tonight. As David reported, he's ready to fund,
advise recruit talent, etc. He was more deferential on structure than I
expected. Wasn't pushing to run through one of his existing firms.
Clearly wants to be head outside advisor, but didn't seem like he wanted
to push others out. Clearly wants to get going. He's still in DC
tomorrow and would like to meet with you if you are in DC in the
afternoon. I think it's worth doing. You around? If you are, and want to
meet with him, maybe the four of us can get on t

Another email from February 2015 suggested that the Google Chairman
remained active in its collaboration with the Clinton campaign: John
Podesta wrote that Eric Schmidt met with HR "about the business he
proposes to do with the campaign. He says he's met with HRC" and adds
that "FYI. They are donating the Google plane for the Africa trip"

The remainder of Schmidt's proposed plan, presented in its entirety
below, is just as troubling.

Notes for a 2016 Democratic Campaign
Eric Schmidt
April 2014

DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT

Here are some comments and observations based on what we saw in the 2012
campaign. If we get started soon, we will be in a very strong position
to execute well for 2016.

1. Size, Structure and Timing

Lets assume a total budget of about $1.5Billion, with more than 5000
paid employees and million(s) of volunteers. The entire startup ceases
operation four days after November 8, 2016. The structure includes a
Chairman or Chairwoman who is the external face of the campaign and a
President who is the executive in charge of objectives, measurements,
systems and building and managing the organization.

Every day matters as our end date does not change. An official campaign
right after midterm elections and a preparatory team assembled now is best.

2. Location

The campaign headquarters will have about a thousand people, mostly
young and hardworking and enthusiastic. Its important to have a very
large hiring pool (such as Chicago or NYC) from which to choose
enthusiastic, smart and low paid permanent employees. DC is a poor
choice as its full of distractions and interruptions. Moving the
location from DC elsewhere guarantees visitors have taken the time to
travel and to help.

The key is a large population of talented people who are dying to work
for you. Any outer borough of NYC, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Boston are all
good examples of a large, blue state city to base in.

Employees will relocate to participate in the campaign, and will find
low cost temporary housing or live with campaign supporters on a donated
basis. This worked well in Chicago and can work elsewhere.

The computers will be in the cloud and most likely on Amazon Web
services (AWS). All the campaign needs are portable computers, tablets
and smart phones along with credit card readers.

3. The pieces of a Campaign

a) The Field

Its important to have strong field leadership, with autonomy and
empowerment. Operations talent needs to build the offices, set up the
systems, hire the people, and administer what is about 5000 people.
Initial modeling will show heavy hiring in the key battleground states.
There is plenty of time to set these functions up and build the human
systems. The field is about organizing people, voter contact, and get
out the vote programs.

For organizing tools, build a simple way to link people and activities
as a workflow and let the field manage the system, all cloud based.
Build a simple organizing tool with a functioning back-end. Avoid deep
integration as the benefits are not worth it. Build on the cloud.
Organizing is really about sharing and linking people, and this tool
would measure and track all of it.

There are many other crucial early investments needed in the field:
determining the precise list of battleground states, doing early polling
to confirm initial biases, and maintaining and extending voter
protection programs at the state level.

b) The Voter

Key is the development of a single record for a voter that aggregates
all that is known about them. In 2016 smart phones will be used to
identify, meet, and update profiles on the voter. A dynamic volunteer
can easily speak with a voter and, with their email or other digital
handle, get the voter videos and other answers to areas they care about
("the benefits of ACA to you" etc.)

The scenario includes a volunteer on a walk list, encountering a
potential voter, updating the records real time and deepening contact
with the voter and the information we have to offer.

c) Digital

A large group of campaign employees will use digital marketing methods
to connect to voters, to offer information, to use social networks to
spread good news, and to raise money. Partners like Blue State Digital
will do much of the fund raising. A key point is to convert BSD and
other partners to pure cloud service offerings to handle the expected
crush and load.

d) Media (paid), (earned) and (social), and polling

New tools should be developed to measure reach and impact of paid,
earned and social media. The impact of press coverage should be
measurable in reach and impact, and TV effectiveness measured by
attention and other surveys.

Build tools that measure the rate and spread of stories and rumors, and
model how it works and who has the biggest impact. Tools can tell us
about the origin of stories and the impact of any venue, person or
theme. Connect polling into this in some way.

Find a way to do polling online and not on phones.

e) Analytics and data science and modeling, polling and resource
optimization tools

For each voter, a score is computed ranking probability of the right
vote. Analytics can model demographics, social factors and many other
attributes of the needed voters. Modeling will tell us what who we need
to turn out and why, and studies of effectiveness will let us know what
approaches work well. Machine intelligence across the data should
identify the most important factors for turnout, and preference.

It should be possible to link the voter records in Van with upcoming
databases from companies like Comcast and others for media measurement
purposes.

The analytics tools can be built in house or partnered with a set of
vendors.

f) Core engineering, voter database and contact with voters online

The database of voters (NGP Van) is a fine starting point for voter
records and is maintained by the vendor (and needs to be converted to
the cloud). The code developed for 2012 (Narwahl etc.) is unlikely to be
used, and replaced by a model where the vendor data is kept in the Van
database and intermediate databases are arranged with additional
information for a voter.

Quite a bit of software is to be developed to match digital identities
with the actual voter file with high confidence. The key unit of the
campaign is a "voter", and each and every record is viewable and
updatable by volunteers in search of more accurate information.

In the case where we can’t identify the specific human, we can still
have a partial digital voter id, for a person or "probable-person" with
attributes that we can identify and use to target. As they respond we
can eventually match to a registered voter in the main file. This
digital key is eventually matched to a real person.

The Rules

Its important that all the player in the campaign work at cost and there
be no special interests in the financing structure. This means that all
vendors work at cost and there is a separate auditing function to ensure
no one is profiting unfairly from the campaign. All investments and
conflicts of interest would have to be publicly disclosed. The rules of
the audit should include caps on individual salaries and no investor
profits from the campaign function. (For example, this rule would apply
to me.)

The KEY things

a) early build of an integrated development team and recognition that
this is an entire system that has to be managed as such
b) decisions to exclusively use cloud solutions for scalability, and
choice of vendors and any software from 2012 that will be reused.
c) the role of the smart phone in the hands of a volunteer. The smart
phone manages the process, updates the database, informs the citizen,
and allows fundraising and recruitment of volunteers (on android and
iphone).
d) early and continued focus of qualifying fundraising dollars to build
the field, and build all the tools. Outside money will be plentiful and
perfect for TV use. A smart media mix tool tells all we need to know
about media placement, TV versus other media and digital media.

(6) Could neither Hillary nor Trump win? Could House of Reps appoint
Mormon candidate?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-02/us-election:-could-both-clinton-and-trump-lose/7988484

US Election: Could neither Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump end up president?

The World Today

By Eleanor Hall

There is a possibility that neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump
could win the US presidential election, says Bill Whalen, a research
fellow at the Hoover Institution

While the latest national polling is showing Hillary Clinton and Donald
Trump neck-and-neck, Mr Whalen, who also worked on several past
Republican campaigns, said the unpopularity of both candidates could
lead to some interesting results.

Mr Whalen said there was a chance a third party candidate could pick up
enough votes in the state of Utah and "start a process that could lead
to genuine chaos".

He said as well as the usual suspects of key states to keep an eye on
during election day — Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida — the Republican
candidate, Mr Trump, would also have to hold onto every state carried by
Mitt Romney in 2012.

"Where that would be troubling him would be Arizona, Georgia, North
Carolina and Utah," he said.

"But in terms of getting to 270, besides holding on to the 206 he needs
to pick up the following, if he wins Florida and Ohio he is now up to
253 — he is only 17 electoral votes away.

"If he won the state of Pennsylvania, which has 20 electoral votes, that
would do the trick right there, but he's struggling in Pennsylvania so
now he's looking at Michigan, he's looking at Wisconsin and other states.

"A very curious state would be the state of Utah, which almost always go
Republican — I think it last voted for a Democrat in 1964.

"You can almost always put six electoral votes in the Republican side."

Mr Whalen said right now the Mormon independent candidate, Evan
McMullin, could instead pick up those six electoral votes in Utah.

"And start a process could lead to genuine chaos in terms of another
candidate getting to the requisite 270 electoral votes they need to win
the presidency."

Mr Whalen said in the case of Mr McMullin winning the Utah votes, then
the matter would have to be decided by the House of Representatives.

"What the McMullin campaign would hope is this, that once he got into
that vote, because the constitution of the United States dictates that
the top three earners of electoral votes are considered by the house,
and McMullin would be part of this calculation," he said.

"What his campaign would hope would be that they would get to the House
and suddenly people would be thinking well, we don't like Donald Trump,
we don't think he's suitably presidential.

"Hillary Clinton is under federal investigation right now, if she's
elected to office there could be a constitutional crisis — let's start
voting for McMullin."

This, he said, could all result in an election season where neither
Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton end up in the White House. [...]

(7) Dollar slumps against euro, jumps against peso on potential Trump win

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-forex-idUSKBN12X022

Wed Nov 2, 2016 | 11:08am EDT

By Sam Forgione | NEW YORK

The U.S. dollar hit its lowest level in more than three weeks against
the euro, yen, Swiss franc and sterling on Wednesday on continued
nervousness about a potential victory for U.S. Republican presidential
candidate Donald Trump next week.

Investors are rethinking long-held bets on a Nov. 8 victory for Democrat
Hillary Clinton. Clinton held a 5 percentage point lead over Trump,
according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Monday, but some
other polls showed her Republican rival ahead by 1-2 percentage points.

The dollar index .DXY, which measures the greenback against a basket of
six major rivals, fell about 0.4 percent to 97.26, its lowest since Oct.
11. The Mexican peso tumbled to a more than one-month low against the
greenback of 19.4295 pesos MXN= per dollar on fears of a Trump victory.

Markets' assumption in the past month has been that the dollar would
fall if Trump won. Clinton is viewed as the candidate of the status quo,
while there is greater uncertainty over what a Trump victory might mean
for U.S. foreign policy, international trade and the domestic economy.

"There is a huge amount of unknown unknowns around Trump," said Richard
Franulovich, a senior currency strategist at Westpac Banking Corp in New
York. "That uncertainty is obviously anathema to markets."

The euro EUR= rose about 0.6 percent against the dollar to $1.1115, its
highest since Oct. 11. The dollar sank 1 percent against the yen JPY= to
103.10 yen, its lowest since Oct. 10. The dollar plunged about 0.6
percent against the Swiss franc CHF= to 0.9695 franc, its lowest in
roughly a month.

The Mexican peso suffered MXN= a more than 1-percent drop against the
dollar for a second straight day. A possible Trump victory has been
viewed as a key risk for the Mexican currency given the candidate's
promises to clamp down on immigration and rethink trade relations.

"People are pricing in higher odds" of a Trump victory, said Win Thin,
global head of emerging market currency strategy at Brown Brothers
Harriman in New York.

The Fed ends a two-day meeting on Wednesday and is due to issue a
statement at 2 p.m. ET (1800 GMT) that is widely expected to open the
door, on economic grounds, to a hike in interest rates next month. A
number of analysts said, however, that might prove irrelevant in the
context of the election.

(Reporting by Sam Forgione; Additional reporting by Patrick Graham in
London; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

(8) Sheldon Adelson donates big to Trump, but only at the last minute

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/31/adelson-pours-25-million-into-white-house-race-more-may-be-coming.html

Adelson pours $25 million into White House race, more may be coming

By Ed Henry

Published October 31, 2016

EXCLUSIVE: Billionaire Sheldon Adelson just committed $25 million to an
anti-Hillary Clinton Super PAC to try and help tilt the presidential
race and down ballot House and Senate races to Republicans, Fox News
learned Monday. There are indications the casino magnate will pony up
even more by the end of the week.

Two senior Republican sources familiar with the donation described it to
Fox News as a "massive" amount of money to be spent during the final
week of the presidential race and a sign that Adelson, who has largely
been on the sidelines after initially suggesting he would give $100
million to help Donald Trump, is now going all in on the Republican nominee.

The money will benefit Future 45, a Super PAC launched by the Ricketts
family in Chicago, founders of TD Ameritrade. The group has recently
been running a television ad in battlegrounds comparing Clinton to
Richard Nixon, calling her a "secretive, paranoid politician who
destroyed 30,000 pieces of evidence."

The Republican sources said the contribution was made in the last few
days as the FBI re-ignited its investigation of Clinton’s email server,
and could spark other big GOP donors – who may have thought the
Democratic nominee was coasting to victory just days ago -- to step up
their support of Trump in the final days.

Most importantly, one source familiar with the Adelson contribution
revealed he is considering pouring as much as another $25 million
dollars into the race before Election Day on November 8.

The first major contribution came as Trump visited Adelson’s Venetian
resort and casino in Las Vegas for a rally with supporters on Sunday.
Trump praised Adelson and his wife, Miriam, without any reference to the
money that went to the Super PAC. [...]

(9) Trump is to blame for ‘Unprecedented’ Train Wreck of an Election -
Jewish Forward

http://forward.com/opinion/politics/353212/why-donald-trump-is-to-blame-for-unprecedented-train-wreck-of-an-election/?attribution=home-hero-item-text-1

Why Donald Trump Is To Blame for ‘Unprecedented’ Train Wreck of an Election

J.J. GoldbergNovember 2, 2016Getty Images

You could say a lot of things about this year’s presidential election
campaign, but there’s one word that keeps popping up over and over:
unprecedented. And that’s just the right word. This is unprecedented.
We’ve never seen anything like it.

Never before have the two major candidates been so widely disliked by
voters. Never, at least since the Civil War, has the American public
been so bitterly divided, nor a presidential election campaign been
conducted in such coarse, degrading, inappropriate tones.

Let’s be frank: There’s plenty of blame to go around on all sides, and
neither candidate is close to ideal. But the debased tone of this
campaign is mostly the handiwork of one man: Donald Trump.

When we speak of an unprecedented election year, we’re really talking
about Trump. This nation has never seen a major-party presidential
nominee who was so profoundly ignorant of the nature, scope and limits
of the job, of the workings of government and the content of the
Constitution. So uncomprehending of the dangerously volatile
complexities of international relations, of military power and its uses,
of deterrence, of weaponry, treaties and international law. So unaware
of his own limitations, so incurious about the things he doesn’t know.

Above all, we’ve never seen a competitive candidate for the highest
office in the land who was so emotionally unstable, so quick to dole out
outrageous insults and yet so quick to take offense, so incapable of
taking what he’s dished out. So thin-skinned and narcissistic that he’s
perpetually threatening to use organs of the state to take revenge on
those who’ve hurt his feelings. So incapable of separating his own needs
from those of the nation that he can actually express confidence in his
ability to repair relations with Russia because "Putin has said nice
things about me."

We’ve known all this almost since he entered the race more than a year
ago . His campaign speeches from the beginning have consisted of little
more than long catalogues of who was "fantastic" because they’d said
nice things about him and who was "disgusting" because they’d spoken
unkindly about him. All about him.

We’ve known all along that he represented something new and frightening
in American politics. You didn’t have to be a Democrat to find him
alarming. The Trump phenomenon has split the Republican Party, to the
point where many question the very future of the GOP. A new movement,
Never Trump, has emerged from the ranks of sane conservatives with the
sole purpose of repudiating the candidate. We’ve seen and heard the
alarms sounded by journalists like William Kristol, Jennifer Rubin,
George Will and Charles Krauthammer, by elected officials like Paul Ryan
and Jeff Flake, by the entire Republican royal family, the Bushes.

All the more disappointing, then, that the Democrats and their
standard-bearer, Hillary Clinton, have devoted so much of their campaign
to attacking the conservative principles Trump shares with the
Republican mainstream, rather than hammering home the ways in which he
is not like other Republicans but is rather a malignant mutation.
Pursuing business as usual, flogging the liberal cookie-cutter issues
that please the Democratic base but unite Republicans in opposition to them.

Until the last month or so — until the Access Hollywood video was
released on October 7 — the Democrats were practicing business as usual
rather than responding to the national emergency that Trump represents.
In building a campaign around opposition to Republican policies — on
immigration, abortion, racial justice, gun laws — they were effectively
reminding anti-Trump Republicans of all the reasons they didn’t like
Democrats. They were shoring up Trump’s base rather than shrinking it
and expanding their own.

This unprecedented election year could have been a rare opportunity to
attack one of the most urgent crises in Washington, the polarization and
gridlock that embitters all sides and paralyzes government. Rather than
— or in addition to — using the Trump phenomenon as an opportunity to
push back the Republicans, Clinton could have called for bipartisan
unity in the face of an unprecedented threat to America and American
democracy. She could have called on Republicans to join her in a sort of
government of national unity, with serious Republican representation in
her Cabinet and an agenda topped by resetting the tone in Washington.

It’s not too late. In the few days remaining before the election,
Clinton could issue a declaration of national emergency, a call for
unity and an agenda for the next two years including creating task
forces, identifying areas of possible common ground, or at least
compromise, and trying to define new ground rules that might promote
civility in public affairs. The views and opinions expressed in this
article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the
Forward.

(10) In wake of Trump ascendancy, The (Rothschild) Economist switches
allegiance to Canada

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21709305-it-uniquely-fortunate-many-waysbut-canada-still-holds-lessons-other-western

Liberty moves north

It is uniquely fortunate in many ways—but Canada still holds lessons for
other Western countries

Oct 29th 2016 | From the print edition: Leaders

WHO will uphold the torch of openness in the West? Not America’s next
president. Donald Trump, the grievance-mongering Republican nominee,
would build a wall on Mexico’s border and rip up trade agreements.
Hillary Clinton, the probable winner on November 8th, would be much
better on immigration, but she has renounced her former support for
ambitious trade deals. Britain, worried about immigrants and
globalisation, has voted to march out of the European Union. Angela
Merkel flung open Germany’s doors to refugees, then suffered a series of
political setbacks. Marine Le Pen, a right-wing populist, is the
favourite to win the first round of France’s presidential election next
year.

In this depressing company of wall-builders, door-slammers and
drawbridge-raisers, Canada stands out as a heartening exception. It
happily admits more than 300,000 immigrants a year, nearly 1% of its
population—a higher proportion than any other big, rich country—and has
done so for two decades. Its charismatic prime minister, Justin Trudeau,
who has been in office a year, has welcomed some 33,000 Syrian refugees,
far more than America has. Bucking the protectionist mood, Canada
remains an eager free-trader. It was dismayed by the EU’s struggle to
overcome a veto by Walloons on signing a "comprehensive" trade agreement
that took seven years to negotiate (see Charlemagne). Under Mr Trudeau,
Canada is trying to make amends for its shameful treatment of indigenous
peoples, and is likely to become the first Western country to legalise
recreational cannabis on a national level. In this section

Irredeemably dull by reputation, less brash and bellicose than America,
Canada has long seemed to outsiders to be a citadel of decency,
tolerance and good sense. Charles Dickens, bewildered by a visit to
America in 1842, found relief in Canada, where he saw "public feeling
and private enterprise in a sound and wholesome state; nothing of flush
or fever in its system." Modern Canada’s social safety net is stronger
than America’s; its gun-control laws saner. Today, in its lonely defence
of liberal values, Canada seems downright heroic. In an age of seductive
extremes, it remains reassuringly level-headed.

Many of Canada’s virtues spring from its history and geography and are
not readily exportable (see Briefing). It is easier to be relaxed about
immigration when your only land border is protected by a wall the size
of the United States. Appreciation for the benefits of trade comes more
easily to countries next door to big markets. British Brexiteers might
justifiably claim that they voted for exactly what Canada already has:
control of immigration and the freedom to negotiate trade deals with any
country willing to reciprocate.

Despite such luck, Canada suffers from some of the stresses that feed
populism in other rich countries. It has experienced a decline of
manufacturing jobs, stagnant incomes for most of its citizens and rising
inequality. It, too, frets about a shrinking middle class. Canadians
worry about Islamist terrorism, though the country has so far been
spared a big attack. Some right-of-centre politicians, playing on fears
that one will happen, indulge in Trumpian rhetoric. Yet Canada does not
seem tempted to shut itself off from the world. What can other Western
countries learn from its example?

First, Canada not only welcomes newcomers but works hard to integrate
them. Its charter of rights and freedoms proclaims the country’s
"multicultural heritage". Not every country will fuse diversity and
national identity in the same way that Canada does. Indeed,
French-speaking Quebec has its own way of interpreting multiculturalism,
which gives priority to the province’s distinct culture. But other
countries can learn from the spirit of experimentation that Canada
brings to helping immigrants find employment and housing. Its system of
private sponsorship, in which groups of citizens take responsibility for
supporting refugees during their first year, not only helps them adapt
but encourages society at large to make them welcome. The UN High
Commissioner for Refugees has called on other countries to copy it.

The second lesson is the value of knowing when fiscal austerity does
more harm than good. Canada has been managing its public finances
conservatively for the past 20 years or so. Now in charge of a sluggish
economy, Mr Trudeau can afford to give growth a modest lift by spending
extra money on infrastructure. His government has given a tax cut to the
middle class and raised rates for the highest earners to help pay for
it. These economic policies deserve to "go viral", the head of the IMF
has said. Canada has a further economic lesson to impart in how it
protects people hurt by globalisation. Compared with America, its
publicly financed health system lessens the terror of losing a job; it
also provides more financial support and training to people who do. And
its policy of "equalisation" gives provincial and local governments the
means to maintain public services at a uniform level across the country.

Perhaps most important, this mixture of policies—liberal on trade and
immigration, activist in shoring up growth and protecting
globalisation’s losers—is a reminder that the centrist formula still
works, if politicians are willing to champion it. Instead of folding in
the face of opposition to liberal policies, Mr Trudeau and his ministers
have instead made the case for them. Although free trade is not the
hot-button issue in Canada that it is in America, they have been
tireless in listening to critics and trying to take their concerns into
account.

Canada is far from perfect. It remains a poorer, less productive and
less innovative economy than America’s. While championing freer
international trade, Canada has yet to eliminate obstacles to trade
among its provinces. For many liberals, Canada’s emphasis on "peace,
order and good government", enshrined in its constitution, is inadequate
without an infusion of American individualism. But for now the world
owes Canada gratitude for reminding it of what many people are in danger
of forgetting: that tolerance and openness are wellsprings of security
and prosperity, not threats to them.