From the twilight zone
Submitted by jlgolden on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 10:54pm
Looking for a way to spoil a good evening, I went tonight to a Patrick McHenry town hall in Hickory. I know, it sounds like cruel and unusual punishment and, yes, it felt like punishment. Aural waterboarding maybe. I have to say that I greatly admired my father, a WWII vet and Roosevelt liberal who seemed to grow more liberal as he aged, but who watched Crossfire religiously because, as he said, he wanted to know what the other side thought. I admire that, and don't do it very well myself. But tonight I did.
Remember, this is one of the reddest districts in the state, and I found myself pretty much surrounded by the Patrick McHenry Fanclub—lots of applause, people standing up to thank little Patty for representing them so well, gushing and swooning, that kind of thing. And little Patty thanked everyone for their civility, saying in effect that "we can show the country how a town hall is supposed to run." Of course, since he was surrounded by people who more or less agreed with him, there was no great need to bus in disruptive and obnoxious right-wingers. Disruptive and obnoxious left-wingers exist, I'm sure, but they're not nearly as plentiful or as available to be bussed in to such venues as are the right-wing variety.
The auditorium at Lenoir Rhyne University was almost full. There was the usual amount of disinformation, the usual number of Republican talking points and sound bytes that got the obligatory applause from the self-interested masses. There were comments about cap and trade, and immigration, and those pesky immigrants. As might be expected, however, the bulk of the evening revolved around healthcare. At one point little Patty brought out "The Bill," a stack of bound papers about the thickness of two or three Charlotte phone books, and dropped it dramatically on the floor with a resounding thud. Then he proceeded to step around it, over it, on it. There was a lot of indignation, and a few polite questions and challenges from people who probably felt as out of place as I did—unlike Republican visitors at predominantly Democratic town halls, Democrats don't as a rule stoop to shouting, insulting, intimidating, bloviating. His responses were dismissive, light-weight, and bookended by talking points.
One thing in particular, however, struck me. There was a lot of talk about "the Obama plan" and "The Bill" (with thumb-pointing, nods, and toe nudges to the stack on the floor), but at no point did he actually say, or even imply, that the House bill was anything but a work in progress, a baby not fully formed. There was no mention of the fact that the House and Senate bills would need to go to reconciliation before anything would be presented, much less voted on, that much of what was in the House bill and the three Senate bills would be adjusted, enhanced, pared back, dropped, morphed. There was no mention of that. Instead, he set up this straw man in the form of The Bill, that hideous heap that lay like so much dead trash on the floor. And he left just about everyone in the auditorium with the impression that this was it, the finished product, the beginning of the end of the American free enterprise system and the American way of life. Granted, he probably had to dumb it down a bit for the Republican masses. I mean, you can't be throwing caveats and qualifiers in there when the townspeople are massing all fired up with their rakes, clubs, and pitchforks. Little Patty went so far as to say that he'd not read The Bill in it's entirety ... translation: I may not know what it says, or what it will say after it's been through reconciliation, but I'm against it.
Healthcare legislation is indeed a work in progress in both the House and Senate. It is indeed a child not yet fully formed in the womb of our legislative system, much less ready to be rejected, supported, or voted on. Little Patty McHenry, however, did his dead level best this evening to abort that baby before term.
The guy's a joke
and sadly, the joke's on us. Was Tom Fetzer there?
Do good. Be nice. Have fun.
It might occur to some people.....
that they spent all that time at that meeting to find out...? I'm sure they got a whole load of 'hate' spewed out by their Rep, but no ideas on what to do. I'm sure the socialism word was thrown around, but the congressman didn't offer to drop his own socialist heathcare plan. Yeah, it will be good for those people to stay with the 'status quo' for their health insurance, if they can afford it. Meanwhile, the congressman has completed the mission he was paid to do by the lobbyists, and carry on the tradition of the party of "No" ideas or change.
Actually...
He had a few ideas, from what I could discern. See from what I understood, he said he doesn't want government involved in health care, but he supports the VA and military medical plans. He doesn't want government involved in health care so his plan was to have a web page hosted by the government apparently, to allow you select different providers...
My favorite moment was his saying he doesn't think it's the government's business to get into your business. (I suppose that is if you exclude DOMA, Hate Crimes Legislation, and ENDA)
My favorite audience member though was the woman who was upset because she said Obama is going to send her daughter to boot camp, and she won't even let them join the girl scouts because she has to protect her children, and how dare he tell her that she is going to have send her off for three months to be indoctrinated...
Boku no otto wa totemo aishite
Liberal interpretation
You might want to take a look at the 1000-page, $1 trillion price-tagged bill(by the bipartisan congressional budget office) known as HR 3200 as submitted by the Democratic leadership under the direction of Obama. This is what people are responding to because this is what the democrats propose in writing. What else would you suggest people respond to? Left unchecked, I doubt most democrats would do much "paring" and would rush through on a Saturday at 3am if they could.
My guess is you haven't read it, but I can probably read your mind...
"I may not know what it says, or what it will say after it's been through reconciliation, but I'm FOR it."
"rakes, clubs, and pitchforks" - a little condescending? Bigoted, perhaps? Maybe even hate speech? Somebody has to actually DO the work in this state and instead of just sit around arguing of who gets what out of the treasury.
Book learnin'
I haven't read the entire telephone book but I can still find what I need when I need it.
Not everybody reads the entire contents of a set of plans, specifications and contract documents for a building such as a hospital or the associated volumes of codes and ordinances but you can still construct a first rate medical facility because everybody understands their role in the context of a larger purpose.
Book learnin'
ASTUTE!! Can we quote this? Part of the fury at Arlen Specter is that he tried to explain why he hadn't read the bill word for word yet.
Fraud and Corruption in Private Health Care
I may not have read the entire bill, but when I was sick and United Health would not pay my medical bills, this was going on.
"On October 15, 2006, it was announced that McGuire would step down immediately as chairman and director of UnitedHealth Group, and step down as CEO on December 1, 2006 due to his involvement in the employee stock options scandal. Simultaneously, it was announced that he would be replaced as CEO by Stephen Hemsley, who has served as President and COO and is a member of the board of directors. [12] McGuire's exit compensation from UnitedHealth, expected to be around $1.1 billion, would be the largest golden parachute in the history of corporate America.[13]
McGuire's compensation became controversial again on May 21, 2009, when Elizabeth Edwards, speaking on The Daily Show, used it to support her argument for a public alternative to commercial insurance[14]. Edwards stressed the importance of restoring competition in health insurance markets noting that at one point, "the President of United Health made so much money, that one of every $700 that was spent in this country on health care went to pay him":
Estimates of McGuire's 2005 compensation range from $59,625,444 [15] to $124.8 million[16], and the revenue of United Health Care was then $71 billion. It has therefore been suggested that Mrs Edwards may have meant to say that one of every $700 that was spent on United Health Care premiums went to pay McGuire."
I can show you over a 1,000 pages of my medical records, I've read every page several times as I fought with UH to pay what it owed. Go peddle your Rt Wing crap somewhere else, where people don't read and listen to the bloviators from Fox.
I wish we could all agree, Republican and Democrat alike,
that the common and most serious problem we citizens face is a Congress heavily populated by amoral congenital liars nourished by greedy special interest groups.
Can you imagine how hollow it would sound for these weasels to "pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" towards anything?
The opposing parties blame each other for the complexity of the legislation they themselves create but refuse to actually do anything to rein in their own excesses and eliminate their own abuses of the purpose and process of the work they are supposed to do.
Stan Bozarth
Well said
From all I have been able to learn, the legislation was written for and by insurance companies anyway. No wonder it's extraordinarily complex ... it's designed to increase insurance company profits.
Do good. Be nice. Have fun.
Two Words
A friend of mine once told me that "most of human history can be boiled down to two words: Land Grab." 'Land' being a placeholder for money, power, influence, control, resources, and yes, actual land.
It's scary and predictable when you place yourself on the line between large corporations and equally large piles of money. They very seriously want that money, and I have become convinced that there is nothing they will not do/say to get it. For them the end justifies the means. When you catch them lying, and prove they are lying, they look at you like you haven't spoken at all, or at best give you a Cheney-esque, "So?"
I wish when politicians protected special interest groups, that the special interest group thus protected was the People Of The United States. I mean we're a group and we're special, so there!
-b
--
There cannot fail to be more kinds of things, as nature grows further disclosed. - Sir Francis Bacon
Self-interested masses?????
In fact, the "self-interested masses" have been deluded into being the proxies and stooges of the powerful insurance companies.
______________________________________________________________________
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. -- sign on Einstein's office wall.
I was there too.
And got offered an armed escort to my vehicle. LOL
Well, respectful was his tone I guess if you count encouraging the audience to boo Barney Frank. The first time I was toward the front, but I stepped out for a second, when I came back in I sat in the back and a few of the people didn't just boo Frank, but called him a 'faggot.'
And McHenry flat out lied about the Hate Crime bill. He said he voted against it because if a preacher talks about gay people and and one of his followers kills a gay person that the preacher will be held responsible. (Side thought. If a Muslim cleric preaches on the Christians, and one of his followers kills Christians, don't they call that terrorism) I should have stood up but I was so outraged I was afraid of sounding like one of the birthers or teabaggers.
But I did confront his assistant after the meeting, because Lo! I had a copy of the bill with me! And the fool told me it had changed. I then pointed out the incident of the anti-gay hatred of the people I had been sitting next to, and asked him how am I supposed to feel safe walking out of that building, in the dark, across the street to the parking lot. (This is the point when he offered to have a police officer accompany me.) He completely missed the point that I should not require a police escort to feel safe in my own community. (Side note, in Newton (just next door to the small town I live in, a man had his house vandalized with anti-gay slurs)
I also told him about my situation of lacking insurance and not being able to be added to my husband's (not that he cared about that either.)
Boku no otto wa totemo aishite
Town Hall in Caldwell County
I'm going tonight. They are holding the meeting in the civic center to accomodate the crowd.
Last town hall I attended McHenry looked right at me and lied. I am a trustee at our community college, and I asked him why he voted against the funding for the first generation college students. He said he voted for it.
Because it made his leg. aide nervous that he was lying to a trustee, she sidled up to me later to try to explain he was confused about the question.
When cornered, he lies. He wasn't confused.
Beth
Town Hall in Greensboro Wed. 8-19
The State Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC) is hosting a Town Hall Meeting on Health Care Reform next WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 6:30-8 p.m. at the
Teamsters Union Hall (Sandy Ridge Road & I-40) Greensboro.
The meeting is OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. It will give state employees, retirees and other community members the opportunity to ask questions to elected officials, and medical and business professionals about how the current debate over health care reform will impact people in N.C.
Please help spread the word about this event.
Progressives are the true conservatives.