A few thoughts about the recent presidential election.

A big reason why Donald Trump outsmarted his opponents is he is a business guy. An entrepreneur and a developer.

This business guy looked at spending campaign money differently than his politician opponents did. A business guy asks, “If we spend this money, will we get a proper return? Show me how.” A politician says, “Spend the money. We’ll squeeze more from our big donors.” Result: Trump spent a fraction of what his opponents spent. And whipped them.

In office, politicians say, “Spend more money. We’ll get it by borrowing more. Or we can raise taxes.” Here’s hoping this business guy does not succumb to such thinking. Here’s hoping he will come to Washington with the attitudes about spending he displayed in the campaign.

Bring together a mob of CEOs. From companies in finance, investments, drugs, media, etc. First, you will see big differences. Steel and mining and oil guys will be much rougher characters than guys from banking, finance, and pharmaceuticals. They will be more down-to-earth. Gruffer in language and manners.

Now observe the CEOs from truly entrepreneurial businesses. Especially developers. They are more creative and usually more colorful than the others. They refuse to go along with popular thinking. Think Ted Turner and Richard Branson. Both famous for rude language, social awkwardness, and original thinking.

Trump outfoxed his opponents because he thinks like a business guy and the creative, unpredictable developer he is. His opponents thought like politicians and were plodding and predictable.

Developers have to see and envision things others do not or cannot. They look at derelict buildings and imagine renovations and new uses. They look at swamps and see shopping malls or housing developments.

Trump looked upon the American scene and saw dissatisfactions that his opponents ignored. He saw opportunities his opponents missed. And when he pursued them, he used imagination his opponents simply did not have.

I hope he will bring imaginative, creative thinking to Washington. Thinking that does not always call for throwing money at our problems.

I hope Trump will bring some of the disciplines of business to Washington. Only with such discipline do we have a hope of cutting some of the waste. He has promised to appoint business people to key positions. Their thinking could be refreshing.

I hope Trump will bring some understanding of small and mid-sized business to Washington, D.C. There has been sweet little of it the last 20 years. Our tax and regulation idiocies are smothering this community.

By the way, a lot of commentators tell us Trump will have many problems learning to deal with politicians. I am sure he will. But they ignore the fact that politicians are going to have to learn to deal with Trump. In the primaries and the general election, they were not up to that challenge. He left them in the dust, scratching their heads. In the process, Trump guillotined the Bush dynasty and collapsed the corrupt Clinton machine.

The mainstream media totally misread the Trump phenomenon. Because they are so biased toward the left. And because their people listen mostly to each other.

They take little input from people in places like Toledo, Grand Rapids, Green Bay, Binghamton, and Utica.

From Tom…as in Morgan.

Tom Morgan writes about political, financial, and other subjects from his home near Oneonta. Several upstate radio stations carry his daily commentary, Tom Morgan’s Money Talk. Contact him at tomasinmorgan.com

President-elect Donald Trump has already issued a “Contract with the American Voter” and has vowed to “repeal and replace” Obamacare.

And those who advocate for health freedom and patient privacy are holding him to it.

Among them is Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF), which has long called for full repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), rather than replacing it with another plan that is bogged down with federal controls and does not return health freedom to patients and doctors.

Now that he has been elected, President-elect Trump should work to repeal Obamacare without delay. Waiting for agreement on replacement would lead to disaster. Constitutionally, health care should be returned to the states; we don’t need another federally controlled plan. And this should be done quickly as a main priority in President Trump’s first 100 days in office.

Repeal is a very realistic possibility with a GOP-controlled House and Senate, but Obamacare is also a huge liability for Democrats. We had life before Obamacare; we can have life after Obamacare. Today, many people are looking at skyrocketing premiums they just can’t afford and are considering alternatives such as paying the penalty tax and not being covered at all. Obamacare has created a crisis, not a solution.

The problem with health care is that the government should not have been involved in the first place. To return affordability and freedom to patients and doctors, health care must head in a completely opposite direction — back to direct payments and indemnity insurance. Essentially, we need to go back to the future, one without all the costly interference, intrusions, regulations, and profiteering interlopers.

We hope President-elect Trump is truly committed to repealing Obamacare and it wasn’t an empty campaign promise. But to delay repeal because lawmakers can’t agree on a replacement squanders the precious time we have to be freed from this damaging health-care law. Ultimately, there may never be a repeal if we wait for a replacement. And unless the replacement returns health care to the states, we’d be trading in one version of federal control for another. The only “fix” is full repeal and returning health care to the states, which is required under the 10th Amendment.

Going forward, there are at least 10 things President-elect Trump should do until a repeal bill is signed, and especially if Congress resists repeal. 

• Shut down any “risk corridor” bailouts for insurance companies.
• Return ACA “reinsurance” dollars to the U.S. Treasury, as the law requires.
• Require all members of Congress and their staff to enroll in Obamacare, as the law requires.
• Shut down any administrative plans to bail out insurers through lawsuit settlements.
• Put all 20,000-plus pages of Obamacare regulations on hold and begin to rescind them.
• Issue an executive order allowing all states to open or reopen their shuttered high-risk pools for people with pre-existing conditions.
• Issue a rule or executive order that would reopen the market to indemnity policies, the affordable catastrophic coverage that Obamacare outlawed for people age 30 and over.
• Require the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to automatically accept every hardship waiver request, allowing Americans to escape the unaffordable individual mandate.
• Shut down Obamacare’s website, HealthCare.gov, for its longstanding privacy and security issues.
• Dismantle the federal health-insurance exchange program database, which gathers information on every Obamacare enrollee and stores it permanently for research and other uses.

Finally, as his first executive order after inauguration, President-elect Trump should rescind the federal regulation that forces Medicare-eligible Americans to enroll in Medicare Part A (hospitalization) or lose their Social Security payments. There’s no reason for private insurance to end at age 65. This is the first freedom he can return to all Americans — the freedom and the right to stay out of Medicare.

Twila Brase, RN, is president and co-founder of CCHF (www.cchfreedom.org), which says it is a patient-centered, national health freedom organization based in St. Paul, Minnesota that exists to protect health-care choices, individualized patient care, and medical and genetic privacy rights. This opinion piece is drawn from a news release CCHF issued on Nov. 14.