Town Hall Protests: Astroturf 2.0?
The anti-health care reform groups seeking to marry corporate money with Obama-style organizing savvy.
This summer, town hall meetings to discuss health care reform have turned into battlegrounds—with fist fights, belligerent protestors, and at least one lawmaker reporting a death threat. Some Democrats have blamed the chaos on astroturf operations: fake grassroots groups funded by special interests. But are the forces whipping up the anti-health care frenzy really astroturf—or a new form of corporate-funded campaigning?
Most astroturf operations are semi-covert activities, precisely targeted at vulnerable or undecided lawmakers. Tried-and-true practices include phone banks in which paid callers posing as concerned voters read from prepared scripts, or phony citizens groups with few members, if any, but plenty of industry money to bankroll television ads and mailers. Particularly unscrupulous operators might mobilize a narrow constituency—like conservative Christians—on behalf of their corporate clients. The idea is to create the impression of grassroots activism, but rarely to seriously attempt to influence broader public opinion. Michael Scanlon, a colleague of disgraced uberlobbyist Jack Abramoff, once captured the logic succinctly: "Simply put we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."
By that standard, some of the groups orchestrating town hall protests against Obama's health care reform have adopted a new, hybrid model—one that blurs the lines between astroturf and grassroots activism. As far as it's possible to tell, their financial base remains heavily dependent on corporate interests, and some of their tactics are familiar, too. But instead of furtively targeting selected lawmakers, they’re also mounting highly visible outreach efforts via public forums and Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking tools. In the process, they're picking up at least some genuine support. It remains to be seen whether they can attract large numbers to their cause, but already they've helped to hijack the health care debate at a critical juncture. Here's MoJo's guide to the major groups and their backers.
Americans for Prosperity
Americans for Prosperity is one of the most prominent groups opposing the Obama administration's two key domestic policy goals: health care reform and cap and trade. The organization presents itself as a grassroots movement that espouses limited government. But a large portion of its money comes via staunch free-market conservative David Koch, part owner of Koch Industries, an oil and gas conglomerate that is perhaps the largest privately owned company in the US, with holdings in medical device and pharmaceutical companies.
Koch helped found AFP in 2003 and serves as chairman of its affiliated foundation. Its president is Tim Phillips, a master of the art of astroturf. Along with Ralph Reed, he cofounded Century Strategies, a PR and consulting firm known for effectively renting out Reed's evangelical Christian allies to its clients—not to mention clients of Jack Abramoff. In 1999 and 2000, Century mobilized anti-gambling evangelicals to protest proposed casinos—but didn't know Century was working for an Abramoff client, a casino-owning Indian tribe hoping to vanquish its competition. In a memo, an Abramoff colleague noted that Century's Christian connections would ensure a "political effort that truly resembles a people's movement" without the signs of a "paid political operation."
This year, AFP is devoting its deep resources and strategic prowess to organize protests at Democratic health care town hall meetings, where activists hold signs like "Sorry Grandma, No Health Care for You." But unlike most typical astroturf operations, AFP's efforts seem intended to gather a broader base of supporters. To that end, the group makes use of social networking sites to reach out to potential followers. It posts information about local events and organizing strategies for its nearly 4,500 fans on Facebook, who share YouTube videos of protests. More than 1,000 people rallied at an August event in Scottsdale, Arizona, organized by AFP; the local fire department was called to handle overflow.
AFP sponsors two other groups advocating against the Obama administration's proposed reforms, innocuously titled Patients United Now and Patients First. Both fund ads that make misleading claims. One Patients United Now television ad wrongly asserts that "Washington wants to bring Canadian-style health care to the US." Patients First also launched a 13-state bus tour that wraps up at the end of August. At one stop a speaker compared proposed reforms to the Stalin and Hitler regimes because they would lead to "physician-assisted suicide"—a blatantly false claim. But these outlandish accusations have proved convincing to some: More than 206,000 people have signed Patients First's petition opposing current health care reform proposals.
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Healthcare
After living in the United States, for 25 years and just over that in Europe, I am baffled by the debate on healthcare. I 'survived' socialised healthcare in Europe and trying to survive the same here in the US. If you have money, you have insurance, but if not things are scary. I have few complaints about the healthcare provided in Europe and I think Americans would have healthier lives if they didn't need to constantly worry or stress about healthcare. Why don't we send a delegation around the world to form an unbiased view of how it works abroad!? On a recent visit to Europe I had the need to visit a hospital and a dentist. I paid privately for the dental work - it was cheaper than a deductible here. As for the hospital visit I didn't so much fill out any paper work and left without a bill.
THere is a short answer to the healthcare issue here, it's called BIG business.
p.s. BLue Cross, I believe, was non profit several years ago, what happened?????
Hospital stay and no bill!
Sounds wonderful...la la la...if only we could have that FREE stuff. By the way, do you think SOMEBODY had to pay for your hospital bill? Do the doctors and nurses work for free? do the gas and electric companies send their service to the hospital for FREE? Does the staff clean, wash linens and prepare food for FREE? Oh yeah! We all want FREE stuff. The question comes down to 'How much free stuff can you afford?'
You're a douche. You've
You're a douche. You've could have supplied a substantive response, rather than a little puff ball of sarcasm.
It is a substantive
It is a substantive response.
Healthcare is NOT free and never will be. The taxpayers in the countries that have it get raped weekly when they receive their paychecks to pay for it, the same kind of raping we're about to receive here. I think I'll invest in the companies that make Vaseline and Preparation H because they're going to be selling a lot of it soon.
Liberal Delusions
The town hall protests are substantially a genuine outpouring of legitimate dissent. Astroturf is is and always has been the trademark of the Left through, for example, such organizations as ACORN and the World Workers Party.
When you campaign on vacuous nonsense like "Yes We Can!" and "Hope and Change" and other such empty bromides, your victory hardly betokens a public desperate for specific and massive changes affecting intensely personal issues, like who you can choose as your doctor and how it's going to get paid for (or not paid for and thus, as people are starting to understand, rationed).
The push for health care "reform" is in one important way a recklessness borne of arrogance -- or if not arrogance exactly, then of the echo-chamber quality of a liberalism that can no longer hear the outside world or, increasingly, itself. This is again related to the way Obama campaigned and has governed. The fact that big majorities are satisfied with the health care system in general and their care in particular just does not register with him. What registers are the Queen for a Day stories -- the cancer-stricken granny whose insurance company cuts her off three days before chemotherapy was to have begun, etc.
Putting a single human face on policy choices that will affect 300,000,000 people paints a powerful picture. But in short order it succumbs to the defects of its "virtues." The public is not yet so dumbed-down that it's going to cashier a system it knows and likes in favor of the Government Sponsored Unknown, and still less is it going to do such a thing on the basis of a handful of anecdotal horror stories -- stories that it senses are deeply dishonest for attempting to convey as routine something people know is anything but.
Bottom line: When you hide your outrageous agenda and campaign instead on nothing, don't be surprised when outrage is the public's response after the agenda actually shows itself.
President Obama's Healthcare Prosposal
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tagged as:
- solution
The point is that the current U.S. state of healthcare IS NOT WORKING & IS ALL ABOUT THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR. It is not working. Not working. Therefore change is needed. Not being a senior, nor white as those seem to be the only idiots who lack the civility and decorum to show up @ these town hall meetings, I wonder where have all the young people and minorities gone? They are out there. Having befriended many seniors as I live in the mecca for retirement villa, I know that they CONSTANTLY GO TO THE DOC. CONSTANTLY. One thing is for sure: None of us get off of this planet alive. I would suggest to the white men who are yelling their pie holes off @ the town hall meetings which achieves ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, yet looking bigger than the Octomom, to walk around their neighborhood block three times a week and stick a banana or a carrot in their gullot to decrease their chances of hypertension, diabetes, heart attacks, cancer, etc. instead of looking for multiple tests to keep them alive past their hundreds. We are all in the same boat: no one wants to be ill, however, currently a great majority of the U.S. citizens do not have health insurance or the ability of having ONE MRI, let alone multitudes. And the idiotic summation that President Obama is proposing Eurthenasia is ludicrous...just stupid. WE AS A SOCIETY NEED TO GO TO A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY AND KNOW THE TRUE MEANING OF BEING A BIG FAT LOSER BY STARVING AND IN ADDITION NOT HAVING HEALTH CARE. Have you had your bowl of boiled red ants lately? Me either, but given that as opposed to starving, I would eat the ants. The U.S. healthcare plan is not working and has become a gluteny of too many tests. Just like the million dollar man of old, we have the capability, the technology, so numerous high cost MRI's, Xrays, testing in general are bleeding the U.S. dry.
I am disgusted with the yelling, incompetence and general ignorance being spouted by the predominately white seniors regarding the current healthcare proposal. I admire President Obama for his forward thinking and for taking on all of the crappy mess that that idiot Bush left all of us in.
The terrorists can just wait for us to eat ourselves to death, no need to bomb.
Studying other healthcare systems
You ask: "Why don't we send a delegation around the world to form an unbiased view of how it works abroad!?" That's been done, sorta. Although not unbiased, Michael Moore's movie "Sicko" presented numerous examples of healthcare systems in Canada, Europe, even Cuba. While it didn't answer the difficult question of how to address our problem here, it raised awareness of the problem, both in terms of underserved populations and waste and inefficiency. Just comparing the amounts spent on health care in the U.S. with other countries makes it obvious that we have a huge problem.
But the biggest problem is resistance to change. Since the majority of Americans have health insurance and the majority of insured have few serious health problems, they don't realize how vulnerable they are to the vagaries of the insurance companies and the prospect of losing employment and health insurance in the event of a major health problem. Getting people to embrace change is President Obama's biggest hurdle. Ironic, isn't it! They voted for change but don't want it if it might cost them something!
That's exactly what Taiwan
That's exactly what Taiwan did, and they came to the conclusion that American Medicare was the best model, and they worked from that. They have few complaints there. This whole debate is dripping in irony, it's grotesquely humorous. How did this get to be so retarded? To be honest, I will probably have money and healthcare for the rest of my life, so I'm not personally worried. But I feel really sorry for people of low socioeconomic status whose chances of affordable healthcare are being destroyed by citizens who are being manipulated by deceptive special interests. It's disgusting.
This is exactly the process
This is exactly the process whereby dictatorships are set in motion. And it does not really matter if it is a right-wing or left-wing dictator. People will eventually grow tired of the bickering and all the BS which accompanies it. They will then settle for a strong-man.
And unfortunately those who
And unfortunately those who do not repeat Santayana's quote on history are doomed along with those repeating history.
Dictators R'nt Us
Trollstein, that's why we have term limits.
O RLY?
It looks like the Democrats are working on that already.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=hj111-5
Get ready for Emperor Obama.
As you'll recall, Bonner &
As you'll recall, Bonner & Associates – the D.C. Astroturf shop busted for mailing at least a dozen forged letters to Congress this summer prior to the House vote on climate and energy legislation – has found itself under the media spotlight lately, struggling to defend its sullied brand.
Novak was a special type of
Novak was a special type of agitator. His "super-power" was to utilize sound bites that made his cause sound like the injured and aggrieved party, whereas in reality his was the oppressive position.
He was not the most annoying pundit, just the most arrogant. Everyone else who disagreed was a coward and loser, in his view. The last time I saw him on cable TV, the subject was school lunches. He turned to the moderator and said: "I just had pot-roast for lunch with béarnaise sauce, fried potatoes and an ice cream parfait for desert. What is wrong with that?" Well, nothing if the net effect is that now we are rid of you.
Astroturf
OH! My gosh! Sounds like...like...Oh No! Like B. Obama, ACORN, SEIU and the Democratic Party have been doing for years!
How exactly does SEIU and
How exactly does SEIU and ACORN astroturf? Speaking more specifically of SEIU, is astroturfing possible for an organization made up of and funded by its membership, who are largely low-wage workers? Maybe I'm naive...
ACORN's modus
ACORN's modus operandi:
Round up as many homeless people as you can find
Give them a bath, a hot meal and one of those nifty ACORN shirts
Bus them to today's protest target, even if it's hundreds of miles away
Drop them off and tell them to march with a sign in their hand if they want a ride back home.
When bigots, bullies,
When bigots, bullies, bible-thumpers, buffoons, and walk-behind broads (e.g. Palin, Bachman, Taitz) go bonkers in public, I laugh (and watch them closely.) These clueless novices resemble really bad actors in a B- horror movie (or a one-trick, fear-stricken, dog and pony sideshow.)
Furthermore, if a Republicant ever had an original idea, I guarantee he/she stole it from a Dem/Indie. Hell, these parroting-mimics have anxiety attacks when their children color outside the lines!
So "WTF is going on with these people?" A clue: Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA). Bob Altemeyer, Professor of Psychology, U of Manitoba, world-wide expert on Authoritarianism, posted his book on-line. It's a real eye-opener: http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
In a nutshell:
RWA is a personality trait. However, RWAs are usually political conservatives. They're “right-wingers” both psychologically and in the political sense as well.
RWAs are submissive followers first (and, not too bright,) timid, and easily frightened (their Achilles heel.) They need their leaders to tell them what to think and do, "stand up, take off your hat, put your hand over your heart, and repeat after me [insert pithy putrid phrase]..." Given conflicting information, their minds shut down and lock up. Unable to sort through evidence, they abdicate reason - they don't need no stinkin' facts:
> Earth is 6,000 years old (a Brontosaurus makes a great pack animal) - OK;
> Obama is the Anti-Christ(?)Messiah, Nazi/Fascist/Socialist/Communist, born in Honolulu, Africa - OK;
> THEY'RE (whoever they are) going to kill grandma and the disabled - OK!
> God wants you to drink this cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. You'll be dead, but your troubles will be over (then big, bad, boogie-men won't get you!) - OK
> Your embryo will grow up to be Gay - OMG!
Their leaders always use fear and mistrust to throw their followers into “us versus them” mob mode. Mob violence is their stock and trade in their feudalistic, southern plantation, master-slave version of modern society.
My suggestion: Know thine enemy & Save your logic - it's wasted on these loons! BTW: We're sooo beyond Saul - we entered Sun Tzu's realm years ago!
WHYS=Wise but No≠KNOW
Why are all the yelling,
Why are all the yelling, disgruntled, impolite protestors predominately seniors and white?
Because they are so very very concerned about one thing: themselves.
The media is not showing minorities or those in favor of President Obama'a healthcare proposal. And there lies the promotion of propoganda, the so called media gets the clueless to view the rhetoric on a daily basis leaving them thinking, "well I guess this here plan is no good."
What happened to the news?
What happened to young people and minorities?
What happened to acting like a civil human being to get your question answered?
I admire President Obama for his ability to make a proposal that is so desperately needed.
If you don't want big brother, government, etc. telling you what to do, then DO NOT CHANGE YOUR INSURANCE YOU IDIOTS AS THIS IS A HEALTHCARE CHOICE.
And please do not give me that you are thinking about the costs to your children and grandchildren, for it that were the case, you seniors wouldn't be running to the doc more than an addict trys to get a fix.
Disgusting misuse of healthcare.
How many tests do you old timers need?
WE ALL GET OLD, UNLESS WE DIE FIRST, THEREFORE WE ALL WILL BE IN THE SAME BOAT, I JUST DON'T PLAN ON LOOKING LIKE A BABY WHALE IN THE BODY OF A HUMAN AND ELECRICALLY CARTING MYSELF AROUND THE GROCERY STORE.
TRY GETTING HEALTHY, BE PROACTIVE AND REDUCE YOUR CHANCES OF DIABETES, CANCER, HEARTATTACKS, ETC. BY MOVING YOUR BIG FACT BUMS-FANNIES AND STICKING LETTUCE IN YOUR MOUTHS.
OH, CAN'T MOVE??? THEN TAKE A HEATED WATER AEROBICS CLASS.
Quit sucking the rest of us dry financially.
Jesus was most definitely
Jesus was most definitely Socialist... hmm... What would Jesus do?
WWJD?
He would walk the path beyond fight or flight and take militant non-violence to the streets (the means to victory must be as pure as the ends sought):
> Use his opponents vicious behavior to unmask their essential cruelty;
> Force evil out of hiding from behind its facade of legitimacy;
> Burlesque its pretensions to justice, law, and order;
> Humiliate and destroy their public credibility;
> Assert his human dignity; and,
> Be fearless as he stood his ground!
Good ends can be achieved only by the employment of appropriate means. The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced. A. Huxley
WHYS=Wise but No≠KNOW
It's amazing how distorted
It's amazing how distorted the whole debate over Healthcare has become.
No matter which side of the fence you're on. People seem to have forgotten
Walter Reid, Hospitals closing nationwide, insurance premiums sky rocketing,
outrageous prescription drug prices. Pre-existing conditions, claims routinely denied.
If you have health insurance, it's your responsibility to the insurance company to verify treatment, if not done, they won't pay their bill. You have a certain amount of time, then it becomes your bill. Regardless of your insurance. Isn't it time we remember what we're fighting for. Not whom we are fighting against.
reform
We need to shut down all this corporate money being used to sway the the morons. Campain reform is needed now to save this capitalist pig of a nation. The money lenders need their table turned over and run out of the temple!
Astroturf 2.0
Remember: the leaders are serpents & sharks, their followers are choleric, undereducated dupes. That being said, to be recognizeable, all they need is brown shirts & swastika armbands.
Astroturf
I love how MJ doesn't even CONSIDER the possibily that perhaps the protests from the town halls could truly originate from legitimate anger and frustration of American citizens. The very first paragraph poses the question: "But are the forces whipping up the anti-health care frenzy really astroturf—or a new form of corporate-funded campaigning?" This leaves no doubt whatsoever that clearly, these protests are 100% fake. Last I checked, these town hall meetings were set in motion for Barack Obama to pitch his health care ideas to American CITIZENS, (not lobbyists), regardless of their political party affiliation.
And also some proof for this comment would be nice: "AFP is devoting its deep resources and strategic prowess to organize protests at Democratic health care town hall meetings."
This looks more like an article that should be on Fox News.
The point isn't that the
The point isn't that the people protesting aren't genuinely angry, but that their anger is being manipulated by groups with ulterior motives.
One glaring example: Century Strategies, which duped conservative evangelicals into protesting a casino competing against one of Century's casino clients.
Health care reform NOW !!
Praise Obama! http://www.theobamaforum.com/index.php
WWJD..........Single
WWJD..........Single Payer!!!!
thanks
Charity at gunpoint isn't
Charity at gunpoint isn't charity, it's theft.
This healthcare debate has
This healthcare debate has me thinking of Genet's The Balcony. In the war of images, who will win?
astroturf 2.0?
Thank you for identifying some of the corporate/special interests behind health insurance reform. They are different from the corporate/special interests behind current healthcare reform proposals. Although I’ve been to numerous tea parties, I’ve never been interested enough to hear of nor communicate with any of these organizations. It is good to be aware of who would try to exploit the justified indignation of Americans expressing their right to debate and dissent.
The fact is the socialists thought they could slip one past the country on Obama’s fastball, and the American people fouled if off. The socialists saw Bush pull a fast one with TARP 1, but the people trust Obama even less, and now the people are paying attention. They paid attention for Bush’s illegal immigrant amnesty, North American Union, Trans-America Highway, Mexican trucks, Harriet Meyers and Dubai Ports, and smacked each one out of the park. I only wish they had paid attention to the raping of the country’s wealth sooner.
There is an opportunity here now for the congress to listen to the voices and do the right thing. I fear there are too few left in congress that have not been bought and paid for, who have some morality, some convictions left with which to take a stand for, or a greater sense of nobility beyond what will benefit them personally. No change has taken place. Washington is still a place full of corruption, nepotism, payoffs, greed, lies, special interests, slander and pride. Only the players have changed.
As to your premise, could you leave open the possibility that this is a genuine grass roots effort that corporate interests are attempting to hijack? I mean, large numbers to the cause have already been attracted. I have seen email solicitations from PAC’s which I promptly delete and I have seen nothing on Facebook. No one I’ve met at these growing rallies has been paid to be there or make phone calls. They don’t hold mass-produced signs nor have they been instructed to start fistfights. Talk about superimposing! I imagine it is hard to recognize what is genuine when you have been immersed in covering the fakery and phoniness of special interest leftists for so long. I can see how the awakening of the American people to the proper exercise of their responsibilities under this republic might be a shock to your system. Although, no such shock occurred and the left didn’t claim “astro-turfing” during the smack downs of amnesty, North American Union, Harriet Meyers, etc. As to any actual astro-turfing/hybrid modeling you suggest, sounds like envy and dismay that the left might be being beaten at their own game.
Solutions to these opportunities will not come from Washington or special interests. They will be and are being solved by individuals willing to recognize and act upon the fact that the change needs to begin within themselves, and then everything changes. I have more faith in American ingenuity and generosity in a willingness to solve these problems equitably than I’ll ever have in a government bureaucrat or a corporate lawyer. You should be happy we fouled off the fastball.
They have a lot of nerve
calling these protestors an organized mob. I suppose when ACORN goes out and rounds up a bunch of homeless, gives them a bath, a hot meal, a red shirt and a sign to carry then buses them to the protest target of the day, that's what they call grassroots.
And don't think I haven't noticed that at many of these events the healthcare supporters carry professionally made signs while the so called "organized mob" carries handwritten ones. Where is the money coming from for all the professionally made signs that the so called "paid protesters" can't afford to buy?
CAPING HEALTHCARE COSTS
As a Canadian looking South across the border, I am in awe of President Obamas attempts to reform the US health care system. He is struggling to make good on his election promises, and an uphill struggle it is. The knives are coming out and given the virulance being displayed towards him, I actually fear for his safety.
It strikes me however that he was elected on those promises by a majority of Americans and not by the pharma groups, HMOs or the insurance industry in general. He must therefore stick with his plan of reforms because at this stage in US history, I believe that reform may be the only way to save America from itself.
And just think. It wouldn't cost the American tax payer a nickle.
Chief among these reform from my perspective is a major overhaul of the US Judicial system. The root cause I believe of the current healthcare crisis. Law suites against hospitals and healthcare providers have gone through the roof over the past 30 years, and this has created untold wealth for law fims but nightmares for the healthcare system. It has also resulted in the cost of healthcare in the US to rise disproportionatly to that of other countries in the world.
I cannot see the cost of health care being rolled back soon, however some checks and balances are needed to ensure that hospitals and healthcare providers can operate without the fear of being the target of a frivilous law suite. The decision of payout amounts should not be left to a jury. A presiding judge should decide based on a state legislated payout schedule or a federally mandated plan.
In this way at least a cap will be placed on healthcare costs and result in more money being made available to improve the healthcare system. Increased profits for hospitals mean better and more available medical services. And it wouldn't cost a nickle for the American tax payer.
Amazing
Does ANYBODY actually believe this article?
1. Go to Google.
2. Type in the keywords: Townhall meeting violence
3. Note that the vast majority of results show violence from SIEU, union members and/or ACORN members.
and
EVERYWHERE they have a townhall meeting, you see hundreds of frustrated people. That is a LOT of people to plant across this entire nation. IF it were an Astroturf setup, wouldn't you see evidence of that. You would see classified ads in local papers asking for people to act frustrated at your local townhall meeting. But you don't see that.
It truely amazes me.
Just responding to one
Just responding to one fallacy:
>Healthcare is NOT free and never will be. The taxpayers in the countries that have it get raped weekly when they receive their paychecks to pay for it...
Actually the *per-capita* cost is about 2/3 that of your system. Of course that includes the unemployed, low income, seniors etc. For a typical employed middle-class family, the part of their total tax bill for our medicare system is around $7500 in USD. In the united states, the estimates I've read are $10k / ann for a family of four in the United States.
Without crazy incentives for extra testing and the huge overburden of administration (30% of your spending!), aka the Real Life Insurance Company Death Panels, well, costs are a lot lower.
Waitlists here apply to things like knee surgery (cancer etc is dealt with *very* quickly, days or weeks with everyone I've ever known. The Canadian woman on your TV's is lying.) While imperfect, our health care system does rank well above yours in outcomes, with much lower costs.
Oh, and btw, in a recent poll support for expanding our public medicare system, vs more private options? Well, it was 86%. And that's after 50 years.
It's pretty obvious from the outside that what people are really pissed about down there is the Wrong People getting medical care with My Taxes. You guys are going nuts because your healthcare debate is a proxy for ...well... other fears.
Astroturf 2.0
I want to challenge you to review the premises behind government
intervention in our healthcare.
The first premise is moral: that medical care is a right. It is not. There
was no right to such care before doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical
companies produced it. Health care is a service, which we all need, and none
of us are better served by placing our lives and our doctors under
government bureaucratic control.
The second premise is economic: that the government can produce a positive
result by redistributing thousands of billions of dollars from its most
productive citizens. This is the road to stagnation and national bankruptcy,
not universal prosperity.
If Congress really wanted to address health care problems, it could begin
with three things: (1) tort reform, to end the ruinous lawsuits that force
medical specialists into paying insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of
dollars per year; (2) Medicare reform, to face squarely the fact of the
program's insolvency; and (3) regulatory reform, to roll back the onerous
rules that force doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies (who are
pilloried for producing the care that many people then demand as a "right")
into satisfying bureaucratic dictates rather than solving patients'
problems.
Let's get back to the basic grass-root issues and keep government (Left or Right) out of our private lives. If you want to preview government run healthcare, take a good long look at the Veterans' Hospitals. Then, tell me that's what you want for all Americans.
Congress will never consider
Congress will never consider tort reform because most of them are lawyers who want to continue working in the legal profession if they ever get voted out of office. Lawyers should not be in a position where they pass the very laws that provide them with business in the future. It is clearly a conflict of interest.
grassroots protests of Obamacare
I would have you know that I went to a town hall meeting. I am not a part of any organization, no one called me on the phone to whip me into a frenzy. I went because I don't want the u s government to run healthcare. They can't run anything else. Look at the post office, medicare, medicade, social security, because they can't keep their greedy hands out of the money. I also don't want a bunch of radicals running my government (communists, socialists, rements of the students for a democratic society, acorn (a bunch of thugs) I didn't vote for any of that nor do I want it. By the way the meeting I went to was respectful. It could have had something to do with the congressman being a republican. They people still asked the hard questions though. The difference is we got intellegent answers and were not called names an dinigrated.
So melanoma rates have been
So melanoma rates have been rising steadily with sunscreen
sales...what's in sunscreen? The skin absorbs a large percentage of what
is put on it, could the fun chemicals in the sunscreen be causing major
health problems? Follow the money and you'll be amazed at what you'll
find.
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Stick to the lineage 2
Stick to the lineage 2 accounts road if you decide to travel through any higher-level warhammer gold zones in-between, and be sure to pick up any flight warhammer gold paths you pass during the warhammer power leveling trip.
With the general speed of leveling warhammer accounts in the game these days, you really do have an abundance of freedom in warhammer power leveling how you choose to level. You can very easily skip any number of perfectly good warhammer accounts quest hubs without so much as a hiccup in your lotro power leveling. For example, it's entirely reasonable for you to take your lotro gold Blood Elf mage through Eversong Woods to level 10, Ghostlands to 20ish, then skip over traditional lotro gold Horde staples like lotro power leveling The Barrens and Stonetalon Mountains completely, and head aoc gold straight for someplace like aoc gold Hillsbrad Foothills or Ashenvale. Or you could hit the aoc power leveling Battlegrounds for a few levels. Or go farm lower level zombies in Silverpine Forest until your brain begins to atrophy. Or just get a good aoc power leveling group together and chain-run Shadowfang Keep aion item until your mage looks more like wow gold Arugal than Arugal buy wow gold does. There are all kinds of cheap wow gold ways to level, and none of wow gold them are the right way. Or the wrong buy wow gold way, for that cheap wow gold matter. Choose the aion kina method that appeals to you the most aion gold and ride it til buy aion gold it no longer appeals to you aion gold.
Ok, so much aion kina today about, more buy aion gold would be continued here for you. Hope I can see you here tomorrow.
Town Hall Protests
Health care has become a big issue, is also make Mr Obama headache.
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