Nancy Pelosi spoke at the Asian American and Pacific Islanders Summit on Capitol Hill last Friday, informing them that because of the new health care reform, they would no longer be “job locked.” Here’s the quote:
“We see it as an entrepreneurial bill,” Pelosi said, “a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care.”
That’s right. Did you know that you could just… not work? Utopia! Sit at home and paint. Sculpt. Dance. Play your harp on SoCal streets naked. Live the dream! Those evil rich people will totally just pick up the slack, too. They’ve got an endless supply of cash, and they shouldn’t be reaping their own rewards anyway, right? Just raise their taxes! What’s another tax hike for the sake of art?
No, I’m not exaggerating. Watch for yourself.
Translation: Just give your soul to the Democratic party and you’re golden! No need for these silly jobs – we have no idea how to create them anyway!
“Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.”
Democrats don’t care about jobs. They care about owning people and controlling everything they can find a way to control. This empty “follow your heart, you deserve it, we got your back” talk is disgusting and manipulative.
Just to break it down: They forgot to figure out how to pay for Obamatopia in the “fog of controversy” leading up to the vote. You may not be able to quit your job… but count on the high taxes and increased unemployment. Again.
I was on the ground in DC all weekend. I got down there early on Saturday and had the opportunity to speak to the crowd of around 30,000 people, if only briefly. Saturday was beautiful. The weather, the attitude – people had come on short notice from everywhere to be in town to hold Congress accountable. We were overwhelmed by the turnout, and just stunned that that many had come together on such short notice to fight.
The magnitude of this was not lost on anyone in DC this weekend. Everyone understood the ramifications of what was happening. Everyone came ready to talk to whoever they needed to talk to, to yell and make noise and remind Congress that we are currently experiencing the consequences of our votes, and come November, they’ll experience the consequence of theirs.
Here’s a quick clip of Brendan and I speaking, which I posted earlier, but will repost, just because.
I spent most the of the day on the West Lawn. Here are some photos from the rally:
We represent millions of voters.
A woman with her fist in the air. I love this.
We the People
The crowd from the back of the West Lawn
I’m going to express some of my inherent girly-ness with the next statement, but I don’t much care. I teared up several times watching people come in, and was really just overwhelmed by the crowd. I hate that people have had to come back to Washington over and over again. I want to stop asking them to… but we didn’t have much of a choice. People just keep showing up. There was nothing we could do about it. For all the accusations we get from people of controlling the movement, we have no ability to control anything, and this weekend was proof positive that this is bottom up – because we honestly had very little idea of what to do at the top. We encircled the Capitol around 5pm, and then wound up on the east steps, chanting and rallying until the Congressmen went home, and then moved over to the Supreme Court, where we held a candlelight vigil and marched around the Capitol one more time. That was when I split off and fell asleep on the train on the way home.
Nothing was planned for Sunday, but Rep. King and Rep. Bachmann had called us back to the Capitol at 11am, so I showed up. We did church on the West Lawn through bullhorns before breaking off again and disbursing through the House offices, gallery, and West Lawn. There was no stage or PA system. There were people everywhere, and it was just chaos. I covered what I could on Twitter, but the tension was something I am not sure I can really communicate effectively. Let me just paint a picture for you:
We’re in Washington, DC, among the monuments, the Capitol, the White House, and every other historic landmark that resides here. Over the course of the weekend, there were anti-war and SEIU funded amnesty rallies in the same space. So when Sunday rolls around, and the country-shaping vote on health care reform is looming, people are riled up. The SEIU thugs start infiltrating the crowd that had gathered on the south lawn. Some GOP Congressmen had hung a Gadsden flag from the balcony of the Capitol, and everyone was going nuts. I turned to my left to ask a woman standing next to me who it was, and she responded with “Someone who’s being f***ed in the a** by insurance companies…” and began yelling at me. I walked away. It was shortly after that I needed to retreat for a bit and we went to a pub not far from the action. People were having heated conversations at the bar. In the midst of March Madness, Fox News was on to monitor the Stupak announcement. The tension was physically draining.
I was so worn out by 5pm that I couldn’t go back down to the battle field. I one point I sent out a tweet that said “I feel like I’m reporting from a war zone”, and that’s the best way I could describe it. I got shouted at by people on the street that overheard my conversations with my boss, so I was literally crossing the street to call my friends, because I couldn’t do so among any crowd at that point. It was funny on some level, because I was looking for a Gadsden flag or an American flag or something to identify a friendly face. Honestly, that part was relatively easy as the amnesty marchers were all in matching shirts with pre-printed signs.
Amnesty marchers.
I also feel like I should speak to the accusations that have been flying about racist and homophobic remarks. Any time you get that many people together, there will be fringers who go over the edge. Like the LaRouchies that we can’t seem to shake. However, I was all over the place all weekend and heard nothing of the sort. All of the “evidence” I have seen has proved that it never happened. And when it comes down to it, some idiot saying something discriminatory doesn’t change what’s right, and freedom is what’s right. That’s what we’re fighting for, and even when we lose, I’m heartened to know that there are so many who still are willing to show up to battle.
This fight is not over. We are far from done. I have taken a few days to catch my breath, and I’m back on the road on Friday. Y’all ready to do this with me?
Basically, get your tails to DC if at all possible on March 16th. This is the end of the road – they’ve made the 18th their do or die date. So they need one more reminder apparently. And how awesome would it be to have tens of thousands of you in Represenatives offices to tell them what you think?
They need to hear from you. If I can help you get there, let me know.
Hey y’all! quick run down on what’s coming up in the health care reform battle. Not a lot going on, but on Jan. 6th when the House comes back, it’s going to be messy. Don’t get lazy now.
Deep in the bowels of the health care monstrosity being rammed down our throats, there is a provision that will add a 5% tax on a “cosmetic surgery and medical procedures.” The $849 cost of this bill, which Democrats in Congress have done such a brilliant job of ignoring thus far, has to be paid for somehow. And since the American people are the government’s primary source of income, the cost of the bill falls on the shoulders of the working class that this administration has promised over and over to protect.
What does that mean exactly? The tax would cover any cosmetic medical procedure deemed “not necessary to ameliorate a deformity arising from, or directly related to, a congenital abnormality, a personal injury resulting from an accident or trauma, or disfiguring disease.” Which, keep in mind, is totally arbitrary. Isn’t this what they pretend to hate insurance companies for?
During the campaign, then Candidate Obama put an incredible amount of pressure on Senator McCain for the proposed tax on health insurance. That aversion to a medical tax in any form is no longer in play now that it is inconvenient to keep taxes low. The truth is that they have no way to pay for this legislation, despite the empty promises that it will not affect the national deficit. This Congress has never met a tax it didn’t like, so now it’s on the table – and the American people should fight it mercilessly. Why? Let’s break this down:
Taxes will be raised the Middle-Class. Yes. The same middle class that President Obama and Congress pretend to be fighting for all the time.
Women have more surgeries and procedures. Therefore, women will be hit hardest by this. Again, those same women that the Left pretends to care about. One can think of some women in Congress that will be hit particularly hard by this.
It violates patient privacy. When the government is footing the bill, they feel like they own you. It should be noted that the same people that were up in arms about the Patriot Act, which was an attempt to strengthen our national security, will gladly hand over their privacy now that there is a hand out involved.
Patient safety. This is compromising to those in need of procedures because the short story is that costs will go up all around. The doctors will not absorb all those taxes and those increased costs will ultimately come from the patient. Doctors are not the enemy, yet they will be forced to bear some of the burden.
This does nothing to advance the goals that has been set for health care reform. The goal, which has been stated over and over, is to provide low cost, easily accessible health care for everyone in the country. This tax exists to pay for the outrageous cost of the provisions in the bill, and that is all. It is not there to help the American people gain access to affordable health care.
There is no logistical plan put in place. It is impossible for the government to effectively manage the tax on every medical procedure. So the weight of this problem falls on the shoulders of the doctors, who now have to spend more resources to make sure that they’re obeying the law. There is no way on God’s green earth that this is going to bring down costs.
It is the patient’s right to choose surgery. Those who choose surgery to enhance the self esteem so valued by our culture should be able to do so safely. By making it more difficult and inaccessible, they are limiting innovation, adding unnecessary burden to surgeons who are also performing procedures that may very well be deemed “necessary” by the Medical Procedure Powers That Be. Some simple examples of procedures that could be affected by this tax are including botulinum toxin and dermal filler injections, laser hair removal, microdermabrasion, dental caps and implants, teeth whitening, and more.
In addition, many experts and medical organizations have spoken out against this tax. From the AMA:
“The AMA strongly opposes taxes on physician services to fund health care programs or to accomplish health system reform. We believe that additional revenues generated to help finance health system reform should come from broad-based taxes.” (American Medical Association, AMA comments on Senate health reform bill H.R.3590, 12/1/2009)
From the Wall Street Journal:
“The Botax proposal was a last-minute addition to the Senate health bill. It was aimed at plugging a revenue gap after Sen. Reid scaled back a planned levy on high-value insurance plans.” (Jonathan D. Rockoff, Knives Drawn Over the ‘Botax’, Wall Street Journal, 12/4/2009)
The core of this argument goes back to the core of the argument against government intrusion in our health care system: these decisions should be made by doctors, not an arbitrary board of government employees. It is up to patients and doctors to decide what is necessary. Is this the ugliest or most outrageous part of this bill? No. It is, however, the one part that infringes upon a person’s right to make choices concerning their own body. It allows women’s choices to be held up for scrutiny and viewed with contempt. Hands off, Congress. Some choices are not for you to make.
Today, Americans showed up in force again at Upper Senate Park for the Code Red Senate Rally. Similar to Michele Bachmann’s House Call last month, today was a day for constituents to show up and speak to their Senators on their own turf. I just left the rally, and as I write this, Laura Ingraham is probably on stage riling people up. This will go strong for the rest of the day as people line up and wait to talk to their Senators.
The tone from Hill staffers and Capitol Police was less friendly than it has been. I’m getting the impression that they’re sick of seeing us. Well, guess what guys, we’re sick of having to go down there. I’d rather not babysit Congress every day, trust me. If they had their junk together we wouldn’t have to do this every few weeks. The Senators seem a little more freaked out than the House members did about having constituents in their offices. One highlight was Senator Lieberman’s office threatening to arrest Tea Party Patriots National Coordinator Mark Meckler. Check this out:
All across the country, Senators refuse our calls, ignore our emails, throw away our letters and refuse to meet with us.. Today — in the Senate office building — Senate staff literally threatened to arrest three members of the Tea Party Patriots, including two National Coordinators. When one of the most “moderate” Senators threatens to have well groomed, quiet, cooperative tea partiers arrested simply for sitting in the office waiting to meet with a Senator, it is clear that representative democracy is on its death bed in this country.
I’m beginning to recognize so many faces from these events, people who come out every single time they can manage it. Those who have to take off work and come week after week don’t do it for fun. However, there is also a sense of commitment – we are fighting this battle to win. No one is going anywhere until we’ve defeated the socialization of the American health care industry. Period. This is not a battle we can afford to lose. I’m glad to have so many incredible people showing up.
Here are some photos from today:
Code Red Rally Crowd
Passing a flag over the crowd.
Tea Party Movie star and generally incredible American, William Temple.
Me, Michele Bachmann, and Dick Armey
FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe with Dick Armey
Keep it up, everyone. As one of my dear friends reminds me on weekends where I go home and hibernate on her couch, “Don’t grow weary of doing good.” Today was one more nail in the coffin for the Senate Health Care bill.
What surprises me most about this poll isn’t that 69 percent of Americans think that Preisdent Obama will break his promise not to raise taxes on everyone except C. Montgomery Burns and the Monopoly Guy but that 31 percent don’t actually realize he’s already done it.
It’s not like the President doesn’t have a few more big tax hikes just waiting in the wings, and why shouldn’t he? If you sold one tax hike with the improbable theory that raising taxes will bring in gobs more revenue for an expensive health care program, why wouldn’t you do it again and again? Every tax hike you get now will become a lever of control you can pull later, which is the real progressive purpose for them in the first place.
Of course, eventually the voters get wise to your not particularly clever scheme and you have to find some other way to get what you want. From the looks of the Fox News poll numbers (PDF Link), he’s running out of clever options and may end up having to go the brute force route. That won’t be for a few months, though. He still has his clueless third out there believing he won’t ever do what he’s already done. He can get a lot of publicity mileage out of the earnest way they ask questions at his town hall meetings and they way they report the news.
I know y’all are probably sick to death from hearing me talk about Obama’s ridiculous health care plan, but sick to death is exactly what you’re going to be if it passes.
CNN (that oh-so-trustworthy news source) did an opinion poll that shows 50% of Americans in favor of HR 3200 and 45% opposed.
That’s a tight margin, when you account for error (+/- 3 pts) and the fact that only 1,136 people were polled.
The fact that it’s so tight means you still have time to DO SOMETHING about it. Stop moaning to your friends, coworkers and family about how you don’t want this bill, and moan to the people who matter – your elected representatives.
If you’re sitting in your office or cubicle reading this, I know there’s a phone on your desk. USE IT. Just down the hall from where you’re sitting is a fax machine. USE IT.
If you’re at home, chances are you have a phone lying around somewhere. Pick it up and dial.
The fact that you’re reading my blog tells me that you’re online and have an email account. USE IT.
I am happy and energized to go out there and be the voice of a fight on your behalf, but that doesn’t give you permission to just sit there and lazily watch me do it.
It’s your Republic too. If you can keep it.*
Here’s a great resource – a list of all the State Reps across the country, with contact info. Find yours. DO IT.
You want me to make it even easier for you? Here’s the email/letter/script you should be using:
Dear Representative ___
As a member of your constituency, I wish to voice my opposition to the proposed “Obama Care” HR 3200 bill.
There is no reason to look to a single payer system like Canada when other countries, such as France and Sweden, have shown to be more effective and less costly. A unity between public and private, with comprehensive reform of tort laws and insurance practices, would be far more likely to succeed without crippling an already suffering economy.
[If you are a women, use this paragraph] I am told every day how it’s my body and my choice. Well [Sir/Madam Representative], I choose NO to HR 3200 unless it is massively overhauled from how it reads today.
Thank you.
[Your Name & Zip]
There. How easy was that? See? I do everything for you. Now copy that out, fill in the blanks, and do the little I am asking of you.
So how many of you are on President Barack Obama’s email list? Yeah, me neither. BUT, I did manage to catch wind of this one:
Dear Friend,
If you’re like most Americans, there’s nothing more important to you about health care than peace of mind.
Given the status quo, that’s understandable. The current system often denies insurance due to pre-existing conditions, charges steep out-of-pocket fees – and sometimes isn’t there at all if you become seriously ill.
It’s time to fix our unsustainable insurance system and create a new foundation for health care security. That means guaranteeing your health care security and stability with eight basic consumer protections:
No discrimination for pre-existing conditions
No exorbitant out-of-pocket expenses, deductibles or co-pays
No cost-sharing for preventive care
No dropping of coverage if you become seriously ill
No gender discrimination
No annual or lifetime caps on coverage
Extended coverage for young adults
Guaranteed insurance renewal so long as premiums are paid
Learn more about these consumer protections at Whitehouse.gov.
Over the next month there is going to be an avalanche of misinformation and scare tactics from those seeking to perpetuate the status quo. But we know the cost of doing nothing is too high. Health care costs will double over the next decade, millions more will become uninsured, and state and local governments will go bankrupt.
It’s time to act and reform health insurance, drive down costs and guarantee the health care security and stability of every American family. You can help by putting these core principles of reform in the hands of your friends, your family, and the rest of your social network.
Thank you,
Barack Obama
Notice how the focus is on how much they can supposedly do for us? This is all about the sell, baby. Scare us by telling us how unsustainable things are currently, create a panic (state and local governments will be bankrupt), and offer no solutions except “Let’s act!. RIGHT NOW! BEFORE YOU KILL ONE MORE INNOCENT PERSON YOU MONEY-GRUBBING FASCIST!”
I can’t say this enough, this is not the only option for health care reform. HR-3200 is not the only choice. Why are costs so high? In part because of malpractice costs. We won’t hear about that, because that doesn’t call for the government to swoop down and rescue us.
Gah. Make it stop. Go here and harass your Senator. Learn how to be a 5 Minute Activist!
