Harold J Breaux - Illegitimate: Trumps Election and Failed Presidency

Copyright 2020 by Harold J. Breaux

Printed in the United States of America

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Editor: Deborah Kevin
Cover Design: Hanne Brter of Your Brand Vision
Interior Layout: Catherine Williams of Chapter One Book Production

ISBN 978-0-578-78393-2

Dedication to Nollie J. Arcement Jr.

Teacher, Mentor, Coach, and Lifetime Friend

I grew up in an Acadian community in Louisiana, in incredible poverty, but in a nurturing community of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. And then there were my teachers who early on thought that I had potential with so many of them taking a special interest in helping me to overcome the poverty of my surroundings. In high school, Nollie Arcement was my homeroom teacher, American history teacher, and track coach. I trace my early interest in American history and current events to him. His American history class was a discussion where all classroom students were enticed and invigorated to participate. In my senior year, Nollie took me aside and broached the subject of college, to which I had given little thought. My father and mother had completed the fourth and sixth grades, respectively, and had no money whatsoever for college. As we talked, I was somewhat ambivalent about any college plans. Nollie eventually said, You are going to college, or Ill kick your butt. Then he put his arm around my shoulder and said: Lets go talk some more. We spoke, and the rest is history.

Over the decades, when I occasionally flew home to my native Louisiana, an early visit and lunch with Nollie were high on my agenda. Having moved to Maryland after college, I look back with regret at not having made more frequent contact with this dear man. Nollie eventually became a Lafourche Parish school supervisor and deputy superintendent of schools. His early work on establishing the first track and field program in our Raceland High School (we won district championships in the first two years of the newly established program) and his continued efforts on promoting track and field in Lafourche Parish led to the Lafourche Parish school system naming an annual regional area track meet as The Nollie Arcement Relaysa small tribute to this great man.

I am not a professional journalist, politician, or otherwise one who typically writes books about presidents, presidential candidates, or other major public figures and related elections. However, I have long had a keen lifetime interest in daily following essential issues and developments nationally (within the United States) and internationally. This includes daily reading of numerous news and opinion journals, newspapers, books, and watching major news and commentary on TV, following daily events and issues with a particular focus in recent years on events and issues leading to Trumps election and his performance in office. In the process, I have routinely written comments to the author of an article, (in particular, on the Trump presidency) that I particularly liked or disliked.

My background is that of a United States Army commissioned officer (through ROTC), a long career as a Department of the Army/Defense Department civil servant, a B.S. in Physics, a Master of Applied Sciences (focusing on mathematics, engineering, and computer science) with extensive additional Ph.D. level graduate studies beyond the masters. Early in my professional life, I became a ballistician involved with mathematics, physics, and computer science governing and predicting the flight of missiles and shells that were integrated into the fire control mathematics in weapons systems such as the Apache and Cobra helicopters and the Lance and Advanced Pershing nuclear missiles. Later in my career, I performed extensive research on the feasibility of laser weapons focusing on high energy laser propagation and effectsa technology that has now come to fruition in the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

My career spanned fifty years, two as an Army officer, thirty- three as a civilian employee, initially working the technologies described above, and finally, in a significant managerial role in the Army and Defense Department effort to acquire, network, exploit, and provide supercomputers to defense scientists across the country. This thirty-five-year career was followed by a fifteen-year consulting agreement with the Army on supercomputer technology and exploitation.

The tasks I faced continually required the search for new and improved means for addressing challenging problems by a methodology that was either new or otherwise not routinely employed for the specific tasks. As a result, I was consistently faced with analyzing difficult issues for which the solution required either developing or adapting unique, complex mathematical methodology. In retirement, I naturally gravitated to examining various issues from the perspective of my background, i.e., through the insight that might be provided by mathematical modeling using the skills honed over my career.

Early in retirement, I became interested in a local Harford County, Maryland issue that concerned the yearly increase in funding needed to pay for salaries for the local sheriffs department and schoolteachers. Through the insight provided by mathematics, I became convinced that officials responsible for the budget were grossly overestimating these costsa fact that led to the countys consistently withholding incentive pay for experience (so-called experience increments) leading to a loss of experienced personnel to nearby counties. Through mathematics, I proved the point and made a PowerPoint presentation to the County Board of Education. In the process, I discovered that the issue I addressed was common throughout the country and was derived from what I called a logical mind trap. In seeking to provide the benefit of my analysis to a broad community, I began and placed the results on a blog at www.complexpolitics.wordpress.com. The effort was successful in that the county school system, after that, provided catch up increments in the pay structure for the countys teachers.

After the presidential election of 2016, I became interested in how the Electoral College led to the election of Donald Trump as president, despite his losing the popular vote by nearly three million votes. My interest in the topic led to my writing, in January 2018, a thirty-page paper for my above-listed blog titled, Mathematics of a Triple Whammy: How the Combination of the Comey Letter, Voter Suppression, and Fake News Tilted Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania and the Electoral College to Trump. The idea for this book originated as a revision and extension of that paper.

The election of 2016 will remain of great historical interest and, as a result, has been examined and written about regarding both the Comey Letter and fake news (domestic and Russian). In addition to applying mathematics to these two topics, this book examines in depth the additional whammy associated with voter suppression.