Health care “reform” — oops, sorry, health INSURANCE “reform” — the Chicago Way
Via corruption, bribery, and extortion, of course.
WASHINGTON — The drug industry has authorized its lobbyists to spend as much as $150 million on television commercials supporting President Obama’s health care overhaul, beginning over the August Congressional recess, people briefed on the plans said Saturday.
The unusually large scale of the industry’s commitment to the cause helps explain some of a contentious back-and-forth playing out in recent days between the odd-couple allies over a deal that the White House struck with the industry in June to secure its support. The terms of the deal were not fully disclosed. Both sides had announced that the drug industry would contribute $80 billion over 10 years to the cost of the health care overhaul without spelling out the details.
Hey, wait, I thought Big Pharma was evil? Why are our sainted protectors in the Obama junta cutting deals with these unholy killers?
Ah well, can’t have everything. At least support for this incredibly crucial plan to save Americans from the folly of health care choice and (relative) market freedom isn’t being Astroturfed at all. Why, that would invalidate the whole people’s movement to…uhh, the important thing here is that it’s a spontaneous, grassroots…umm…uhhh….
Well, damn.
In another sign of the urgency gripping the pro-health care reform camp, billionaire George Soros has pledged to sink $5 million into the fight, the group getting the money confirmed.
Soros — whose operation carefully guards the privacy of such donations — made the pledge to Health Care For America Now, the leading coalition of pro-reform groups, unions and providers, HCAN chief Richard Kirsch confirmed in an email that was forwarded to me.
Kirsch was asked by a prominent liberal blogger to comment for a post on Soros’ $5 million pledge, which the blogger had heard about. “Thanks for the heads up,” Kirsch emailed in reply. “HCAN is pleased to be supported by people and organizations who support our campaign to win quality, affordable health care for all.”
The blogger, who didn’t end up writing about the donation, passed the email along, and an HCAN spokesperson didn’t dispute the email or the figure when I asked about it.
Why, how bizarre. It’s almost as if liberal bloggers don’t want to write about behavior from their own side that they would hysterically denounce as completely illegitimate and sinister if they noticed it happening on the Right. Adding to the uncanniness of it all is the fact that it ISN’T happening on the Right, but they’ve gone ahead and denounced them for it anyway.
I’d suggest that they’re merely dirty little whores for the socialist agenda with absolutely no integrity or credibility at all, but that would just be absurd. Also a hate crime, probably.
Via Ed, who says:
Remind me again which side is Astroturfing and getting big, powerful firms funding their operation, and which one represents the actual sense of Americans on government-controlled health care.
Liberal Utopia is otherwise known as Bizarro World, where up is down, black is white, freedom is slavery, good is evil, and evil good.
Update! Via Hoft: mercenaries sought for Obama’s War On America:
At the Fund for the Public Interest, we’ve been organizing campaigns to protect the environment, stand up for the public interest, and defend human rights for more than 25 years. We’ve helped cut global warming pollution with Environment America. We’ve helped pass laws that require drug companies to disclose more of the dangerous side-effects of their drugs with NJPIRG. And working with the Human Rights Campaign, we helped organize the grassroots opposition needed to defeat the discriminatory Federal Marriage Amendment.
Now is the time to work for change
We need people like you—lots of people like you—to go out in communities around the country this summer and help make change happen. And you can earn money doing it. Earn $4,000-$6,000 this summer.
Go out into your communities, meet new people, kick the crap out of them — and get paid for it!
Alternatively, you could just call 1-800-OBAMATHUG and sign up to join the fight against freedom of speech in Obamerika.
Oh, and I may have tampered some with that last line.
- Entries
I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.
After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.
On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.
After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department, and which has not been bombed to smithereens thanks to the various branches of the United States Armed Forces.
And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.