Right-wing organizations orchestrating protests at health care reform town halls not only impede progress, but could lead to violence
Anyone who has watched the news lately has seen the rowdy town hall meetings happening around the country over the health care reform efforts.
If you didn’t have the background on these meetings, you would think that the whole country is angry about Congress trying to reform the nation’s health care system. In reality the media and the viewer are being treated to a very well orchestrated bit of "guerilla theater."
Memos from various Republican and right-wing organizations, like FreedomWorks, have been sent out with instructions on how to disrupt and overwhelm the meetings. They offer specific guidelines on how to disperse through the crowd and make it look as though everyone is angry.
Specific topics and sound bites are scripted in these notes to let the protesters gain maximum media exposure and have the effect of shutting down real debate and making any rational answer seem lame.
It’s the old "When did you stop beating your wife?" trick, and it is working.
The media is blindly accepting this theater as reality, and even though the memos have made the rounds in the press, the press is still afraid to expose the staged events as what they are — fake!
But now the problem is bigger than a few loud "plants" at these events. Now the Republican base is buying the lies spread through these events hook, line and sinker.
The Republican National Committee sent out one document to its members with this headline: "Government-Run Health Care Bill Would Dictate Terms Of End-Of-Life Care For Seniors."
In reality, the bill would require that Medicare fund such care and counseling if it was sought. Instead this lie has blown up into the Sarah Palin whopper of "Obama’s death panel."
Those kinds of lies get people angry and afraid.
Fear and anger are a deadly combination, and already this tactic has led to violence and the potential for a really disastrous event.
At one event in Arizona held by Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a visitor dropped a gun. Organizers and police were not amused — and neither am I.
Fear, anger and guns are a deadly trifecta, and when combined they can be a volatile mix that even the Republicans understand is uncontrollable.
Lately some GOP lawmakers are calling for a toning down of the rhetoric, but it may be too late. Already, posters comparing the Democratic Party to the Nazi Party are surfacing at these events, and Georgia Democratic Rep. David Scott’s office was vandalized with swastikas.
Even ultra conservative talker Glenn Beck has said, "If anyone thinks that it would be a good idea to turn violent, think again. It would destroy the Republic. … Just one lunatic like Timothy McVeigh could ruin everything that everyone has worked so hard for."
Yet, he continues to make outrageous claims about the health care bills and pushes his followers to act out.
The situation is very similar to the kind of frenzy Sarah Palin whipped up during the campaign.
Do not mistake it for genuine public discourse or even a legitimate protest movement. It is the kind of mob mentality that is hardly the stuff of the First Amendment.
It can be very hard to stop once it gets going, especially when it is mixed with the kind of incendiary claims coming from the right.
It would be easy to dismiss these events as just another political trick, but they are more than that.
They are having the effect of killing real debate on health care in favor of screaming rumors and outright lies.
It reminds me of a dysfunctional American family at Thanksgiving:
All the members are gathered for a meal even though many of the members have been alienated for one reason or another and rarely speak to each other. Conversation around the table becomes louder and louder, each member vying for attention with no thought to the content of their remarks.
Eventually everyone is shouting to be heard and someone decides that volume isn’t enough, so they toss out a verbal firebomb and offend everyone.
Well, we have been brought together at the common American table to discuss a real problem. As the volume of the shouting gets progressively louder and louder, it is only a matter of time until someone decides volume isn’t enough.
My fear is that this time the firebomb will not be verbal.
Hardy Haberman is a longtime local LGBT activist. His blog is at https://dungeondiary. blogspot.com.
“Guerilla theater antics undermining reform”
Oh, you mean just like Queer Liberaction.
Got it.
Good News !
A staff writer at The New Yorker and some experts have examined Medicare data from the successful hospitals of 10 regions, and they have found evidence that more effective, lower-cost care is possible.
Please be ‘sure’ to visit https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/opinion/13gawande.html?hp for credible evidences !
Some have followed the Mayo model with salaried doctors employed, Other regions, too, have found ways to protect patients against the pursuit of revenues over patient.
And a cardiac surgeon of them said they had adopted electronic systems, examined the data and found that a shocking portion of tests were almost certainly unnecessary, possibly harmful.
According to analysis, their quality scores are well above average. Yet they spend more than $1,500 (16 percent) less per Medicare patient than the national average and have a slower real annual growth rate (3 percent versus 3.5 percent nationwide).
Surprisingly, 16 % of about $550 billion (the total of medicare cost per year) is around $88 billion per year, except for Medicaid (total cost of around $500 billion per year), medicare ‘alone’ can save $880 billion over the next decade.
In addition, under the reform package, along with the already allocated $583 billion, the wastes involving so called “doughnut hole” , the unnecessary subsidies for insurers, abuse, exorbitant costs by the tragic ER visits etc are weeded out, the concern over revenue (below) might be a thing of the past.
(( Net Medicare and Medicaid savings of $465 billion + the $583 billion revenue package = $1048 billion – the previously estimated $1.042 trillion cost of reform = $6 billion surplus – $245 billion (the 10-year cost of adjusting Medicare reimbursement rates so physicians don’t face big annual pay cuts) = the estimated deficit of $239 billion ))
In modernized society, the business lacking IT system is unthinkable just like pre-electricity period, nevertheless, the last thing to expect is happening now in the sector requiring the best accuracy in respect to dealing with human lives. Apparently the errors by no e-medical records have spawned the crushing lawsuits (Medical malpractice lawsuits cost at least $150 billion per year), and these costs have led to the unnecessary tests, treatments, even more profits so far. And in different parts of the U.S., patients get two to three times as much care for the same disease, with the same result.
Thank You !
Oh. Because apparently this is completely different from what Queer Liberaction does and gets applause for. I understand.
lol @ chance
my sentiments exactlyyy