"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have"
Thomas Jefferson

Monday, August 10, 2009

Meet The Mob

Mob or One Of Us?

Imagine people with real beliefs who are smart enough to protest and articulate policy differences like health care. And you thought there could only be protests against G W Bush with the likes of Code Pink, et al. Not so, people can actually take issue with the Great One - yes, many consider this blasphemy.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

both

Anonymous said...

From Merriam-Webster:

"Astroturfing" (verb) a public relations campaign seeking to create the impression of being spontaneous "grassroots" behavior.

The goal of such a campaign is to disguise the efforts of a political or commercial entity as "grassroots" public reaction.

Astroturfers attempt to orchestrate the actions of apparently diverse and geographically distributed individuals, by both overt ("outreach", "awareness", etc.) and covert (disinformation) means.

Astroturfing may be undertaken by an individual pushing a personal agenda or highly organized professional groups with financial backing from large corporations or activist organizations.

Anonymous said...

Not a single person here could articulate exactly why they don't like Obama's health care proposals.

You are becoming increasingly irrelevant, Political IV.

SG

Anonymous said...

These people are the problem and they dont even realize it. They have no idea what his healthcare plan is, they are only scared of it because of the rhetoric they heard from GOP operatives and believed Dems will destroy this nation. If everyone wants the system to change there is only ONE way to do make it happen. Educate yourself, and vote informed instead of party line as these people clearly do.

Anonymous said...

Actually this video on Obama Care, explains why the mob is confused.

Anonymous said...

12:03 PM
Are you kidding? There is nothing wrong with our health care. It is by far the best!The majority of health research and new drugs are developed in the good ole USA.If you want to destroy that just let government get more involved than they already are. The problem is the cost and if you dig deep enough you will find the goverment is the cause of that too. Obamas plan is nothing more than a ploy for more gov. control and power.I applaude the american people for standing up and fighting this. This is a fight we cannot lose. Hopefully it won't end with health care. I would like to see the people take this country back! from the lazy ass sitters that feel the world owes them a living, I know I see them everyday. The ones that were hopeing for a free ride have a hard reality coming. The country is waking up and I for one feel it's about time.

Anonymous said...

hey 10:16, care to talk about hard reality. How do you get your health care. Medicare or VA or Government?
Are you on Social Security, or receive a Government pension? Care to share. Maybe you are actually employed in the private sector and you haven't gotten a real raise in over five years, want to know why? Ask your employer how much his Health Insurance bill has gone up, just to cover his lazy ass workers. I find those with the biggest mouths who are sitting pretty with entitlement benefits up their wah zoo. My 18 employees and my family lost their 15 year Oxford health insurance coverage in May this year because we could not continue to pay the premiums and remain competitive. United Health Care, one of the big four Health Insurance monopolies who own everybody and everything had decided to increase our premiums at the rate of 600 to 700% each year for the last 4 years. By the way the CEO of United Health Care took home 76 million dollars as salary last year. If congress had a pair the would break up the health insurance monopolies like they did with ATT and 'The seven (oil) sisters'. But after congress got its ass kick trying to break up the Microsoft/Explorer monopoly, control of America shifted away from elected representatives to multinational corporation. I agree government is not the best answer for health care, their just isn't any other option. Don't believe me ask a Republican what their plan is. They don't have one, except to keep getting all the lobby money to keep the status quo.

Anonymous said...

7:00 AM
Nope self employed, cost $725 a month for wife&I.And we don't even use it.I still don't want the government poking it's nose in my business because I know they will screw it up.It's their way both parties. They can see what they can do about the cost but thats it.Ask schumer why NYS insurance is 65% higher than FL then you will be on the right track.And why NY taxes are the highest and we are # 50 as in dead last for personal freedom.

Anonymous said...

8:23 Thanks for your honesty.
Your cost for health insurance is $725 a month, (if my math is correct,
20 working days a month @ 7.5 hours per day), that works out to almost $5.00 dollars an hour gross pay for your health insurance. Current minimum wage is $7.25. I don't know how the working man and woman can afford health insurance. My policy was great in 1994 at $134 dollars. See any doctor, everything covered and $5 dollar deductible on all prescriptions, and I thought it was expensive then. Then United Health Care acquired Oxford and chunk by chuck, everything changed. Roughly 50% of name brand prescriptions were no longer covered forcing us to take generics. Then soon after, many common generics were no longer covered. Then the deductible went to $15, then $25, then $50 in just four years.
All the while the premiums were going up over $100+ a month every time the contract renewed. Our office dropped family coverages and covered only individual, then no coverage for employees until 6 months employment. Increase deductibles, and higher employee pay percentage really didn't help much. Finally we contacted Oxford and they gave us four different options none of which brought the premiums under $700 dollars. We tried to shop around but I have high BP, which is a 'catch 22', don't even get me started. I been half joking about buying a retirement home near Toronto, and maybe trying to get dual citizenship for the health coverage and prescriptions at 1/5 the cost of Rite Aid. Many of my employees already have dual citizenship so when they have babies or need a procedure, they go home to Ireland, or Italy, or Greece, yes and even Columbia for the national health care. But because I am an American I'm completely screwed, first by United/Oxford, then Rite Aid and finally my very own elected officials, both Dems & Repubs. I truly believe these political leaders care more about United/Oxford and their profits, then about my one citizenship, American born employees and my family. The irony here is that many of these corporations are offshore using outsourced employees and pay no taxes. These offshore corps are only doing business here to suck the life blood of working Americans. When the monies gone they more on. Corporations for Red(blood), White(dying), and Blue(dead).

hermit thrush said...

I still don't want the government poking it's [sic] nose in my business because I know they will screw it up.

to the extent that by "my business" you mean "my health insurance," i heartily disagree.

there's a very prominent line of thinking on the right that government never does anything right, that's it, end of conversation, no need to think any more about it.

but i think the fact of the matter is that there are some things government does quite well. and i think the evidence strongly points to insurance being one of them!

take a look at medicare. it's not perfect, but its users are by and large quite satisfied with it. and it has way, way less overhead than what you find in private insurance companies, which helps to make it cheaper.

medicare was only passed in the mid-60s; before then, seniors were on their own for health insurance. did its passage "screw up" health care for seniors? i really don't think so. in fact, i think it resulted in great improvement in health care for seniors.

and i think the health care proposals being made by congress right now stand to greatly improve health care for all americans.

Anonymous said...

2:28 PM
Ah yes medicare was a good plan in the 60s but now the cost is getting to large,it's going broke.It was a fine program for seniors but now there are 3 generations of lazy asses sucking off medicaid and making it unsustainable. Now the gov wants to qaudruple the size of the program. It may buy some time and help a few people but it's at the expense of the people that have good coverage now. We are still going to pay but we will all have the same coverage, most folks myself included won't go for it. Thus the large crowds at the townhalls. These are not paid protesters like obamas clans these are people that are sick of government meddling in our affairs.

hermit thrush said...

dear anon 6:27,
a few points.

first, medicare (= federal health insurance available to citizens over 65) and medicaid (= federal/state health insurance available to citizens with sufficiently low incomes and resources) are different programs with separate financing. you can't (honestly, at least) explain away medicare's future funding problems by demagoguing against the poor.

second, and on that note, you're quite right to point out that medicare does have long-term cost problems. but the key fact here is that the cost problems in the private sector are worse. take it away, krugman:

Here’s the raw fact, from the National Health Expenditure data: since 1970 Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen at an annual rate of 8.8% — but insurance premiums have risen at an annual rate of 9.9%. The rise in Medicare costs is just part of the overall rise in health care spending. And in fact Medicare spending has lagged private spending: if insurance premiums had risen “only” as much as Medicare spending, they’d be 1/3 lower than they are.

relying on the private sector to solve this problem will only make things worse, not better.

Anonymous said...

7:39 PM
I have been led to understand from my ins. man no less that part of the reason my premiums have gone up non stop is because of medicaid and the nonpaying folks. The government forces the ins.co to pitch in and pay part of the unpaid bills to the hospital.Not sure if this is true but a friend of mine (no insurance) had throat cancer,went to doctor got it cured payed $5500.00 cash he asked doc price if he was insured. He told him $15000.00+ now that tells me doctors like cash just as much as the rest of us.Now I realize most people nowadays can't save 50 cents talk about thousands but maybe it's time to change this living check to check lifestyle.

Live Blogging