The Tea Party Movement
April 15th was a historic day for those who love freedom. Hundreds of thousands of Americans came out to protest the massive government spending that is burdening our country with huge debt and future tax increases. From main streets in small towns, to county courthouses and state capitols, your voice was heard loud and clear. The sight of over 15,000 freedom-loving Americans protesting in downtown Atlanta was incredible. I was thrilled to be a guest at that “tea party” and was inspired by the local organizers who put it together.
People came out of their homes and into the streets to stand together and say “Enough!” But the liberal media and some pundits would have you believe only a few people showed up, and that those who did were not representative of the American people. Of course you and I know the truth and we know that April 15th, 2009 was just the beginning of something huge.
We must keep our momentum going, and keep the pressure on our elected officials as they vote on how much more of our money they will spend, and how much more of our money they will confiscate. Congress in session and the champions of big government will be working to pass a massive budget, a new national energy tax, government-run health care, and other policies that would cripple our economy even further.
Many of you have been discussing the next steps for the “tea party” movement. I’ve heard some great ideas about how to follow up on our historic day. I’d like to share some of those with you, and ask you to save the date for another big day: 9-12-2009.
FreedomWorks will be partnering with other like-minded grassroots organizations and local organizers to plan a massive, historic March on Washington on September 12, 2009 at the U.S. Capitol. Please sign up today, and keep checking our website for updates and travel information for the March on Washington. We have been inspired by your involvement in this cause, and we believe that we can work together to send a message to the politicians in Washington that we’ve had enough of the wasteful spending, trillion dollar deficits, bailouts, and taxes.
While you plan for the March on Washington on 9-12-2009, you should also remain active in this movement in your own community. Here are some ideas to do just that:
1. Stay active and organized. Don’t let the momentum fade away by becoming dormant. Keep the fire lit with regular meetings, and regular online communications.
2. Get some political training. Take advantage of institutions like FreedomWorks and The Leadership Institute that offer grassroots leadership training. Read books about organizing, and apply the best practices to your own group.
3. Recruit new people to the cause. Take advantage of the national media attention and find people that want to get involved in the movement. Focus on getting all of your volunteers to bring new people to each meeting, and motivate the new members to get involved in specific activities right away.
4. Plan a tea party outside your congressman’s district office on July 4th. Office locations can easily be found on the House of Representatives website.
If we continue to stay involved and focus on recruiting more people to our cause, we can make a huge impact this year to disrupt the “road to serfdom” that is being paved with our own tax dollars.
Please join FreedomWorks and the other great organizations combining forces to make this the moment when the American people rise up to defend our liberty against those who would plunder our treasury and burden our children and grandchildren with debt and devastating new taxes.
Together, we can write our own history as a people, and take our country back.
Sincerely,
Matt Kibbe
President
FreedomWorks.org
Entries(RSS)
you all are idiots you will never succeed. communism and socialism are not the same. socialism is less strict and works it only has not been attempted. it has in the soviet union but Stalin took over instead of Trotsky. GIVE UP. and stop getting on obamas case he has not done anything. government runned health care works in Cuba and they have better health care. it worked in the depression. stop protesting some thing that will give everyone equality
it has been attempted i forgot and it is working with el salvador
Why are you still in the US? There are several Central American countries that would welcome your progressive entrepreneurial mind. Why not give yourself a promotion? Cuba will even take you.
Well if you agree that cuba’s system works, and you would like to live as a socialist, then why don’t you live in Cuba??? Let us defend our freedom and everything that the founders of this country faught for, and everyone after them. People migrate to this country to get away from socialism, they are tired of the government telling them how to run their lives and how to do things and deciding their future for them.
That is exactely why I moved here many years ago. Kudo for you. You nailed it right on the head.
Interesting…Why is it that Cubans flood this country and risk their lives to get here in makeshift boats drifting almost 100 miles in the open sea? Hmmmm…
they are the rich. and i never said Castro was great he turned into a tyrant. but they have better health care
Exactly cry freedom
The socialist who posted the comment that Cuba’s healthcare system is better than our own has obviously never lived or even visited Cuba. My father came to this country from Cuba shortyly after Castro took over. His family had to leave everything they owned in order to get out. My stepmother still has family in Cuba and has been there in the last five years to visit. She had to take clothes and sheets to her family, one of whom was in the hospital and was lying in filth because there were no sheets to change her bed. This socialist obviously gets his information from pro-Castro propaganda sources, not reality. I do have a great suggestion though. I suggest that we start a foreign exchange program in which all those people who believe that Cuba has better health care leave this country to live in Cuba in exchange for one of the thousands of Cubans who try so desparetely each year to escape. I’m sure those Cuban exchange persons will be more than happy to leave their “superior” health care behind. I also suggest that the socialist comment poster be the first to sign up for this new program.
Amen to that! You are so very right. Everything you say is true. I have some friends who recently arrived from Cuba. They are both physicians and I know you would believe the horror stories they tell about the really bad Cuban health care system. They’re so glad they are here and look forward to the day they can become American physicians and are praying that it will not be under anything even remotely resembling obamacare.
You lie. I’ve been to Cuba. It’s great there. The literacy rate is 100% and the health care system is top notch. They are gaining more freedoms as we speak because of progressives.
Amen to the comments posted by Reality checker. I had several friends whose families escaped from the dictatorship of Castro’s Cuba, all saying that conditions were horrible.
Try to work on your grammar buddy. Whoorah patriotism!
You probably want to take a second look at medicine in Cuba before you site it as your shining example.
The problem with Obama’s plan is that it WILL drive private medical insurance plans out of business. That is his intention despite his claims. It will first drive the private premiums up considerably. That will do two things. First, it will raise the ceiling for the tax rate for the public option. The ceiling will be much higher than the current 85 by 2013 when the public option is available. Second, it will cause a mass move into the public option as there will be no other realistic choice. Think about it rationally. This is obvious. A public plan that includes provisions to protect the private option might work but other changes need to be included such as tort reform. Obama’s unwillingness to fervently insist on tort reform is proof that his agenda is more important to him that health care. The question is, what is his agenda? And, that rationally leads us to a bigger question. Why would any great leader want to put so much power in the hands of government? It is his job to protect the people from too much government. If he is the wonder philanthropist you assume he is, why is he content to leave us vulnerable to the whims of later presidents? I hope you have a great answer to this. I am truly concerned about his motives.
Wow its weird that everyone is questioning Obamas motives when it comes to him wanting to reform health care for the better. But when it came to Bush wanting to spend billions on a war that was a lost cause from the start AND full of lies everyone was OK with that. I live in a country that has socialized medical care and it is not something to be afraid about. People live longer and healthier here than they do in the US. Is it such a bad thing that the big health insurance companys with fail if we have reformed health care? NO it wont because they prevent people everyday from getting the treatment they need because of cost issues. Reformed health care is a realistic choice! Many many many countries have socialized health care and it works! Just like public education works.
Well, maybe Pres. Bush has spend billions as you said, but Obama is spending TRILLIONS. Big Difference… Also, I don’t know which country you are from, but I can tell you that not all health care are the same… Point in fact: my brother is a physician and he chose to leave the country because of exhorbitant taxes levied on “professional” and a cap on services. He could not make both end meet at the end of the month and he is a dedicated, and great physician. On the other side of the spectrum, my mother developed breast cancer in her 70’s and she was told she was too old to have continued treatments. Her cancer could have been treated successfully with good care. How is this for great healthcare. Just wait till you get old…It won’t be all it’s cracked up to be…
FROM CUBA
Havana Hospitals Are Filthy
HAVANA, October 17 (Oswaldo de Céspedes, CPI) – The standards of hygiene in the maternity and children’s Havana hospital known as “Lebredo” have been called “deplorable.”
Here is one article. “Sources say the building is deteriorating for lack of maintenance and the bathrooms overflow with refuse. “The lack of running water contributes to the unsanitary condition of the hospital,” said Clara Morales. The situation is further complicated by the scarcity of cleaning supplies and disinfectants.
“The crisis puts the patients’ health in danger, and also the health of visitors,” said Morales.
The problem with Obama’s plan is that it WILL drive private medical insurance plans out of business. That is his intention despite his claims. It will first drive the private premiums up considerably. That will do two things. First, it will raise the ceiling for the tax rate for the public option. The ceiling will be much higher than the current 8% by 2013 when the public option is available. Second, it will cause a masses of people to move to the public option as there will be no other realistic choice. Think about it rationally. This is obvious. A public plan that includes provisions to protect the private option might work but other changes need to be included such as tort reform and economic protection of the private plan. It is not on an even playing field with the public plan. Obama’s unwillingness to fervently insist on tort reform is proof that his agenda is more important to him than health care. The question is, what is his agenda? And, that rationally leads us to a bigger question. Why would any great leader want to put so much power in the hands of government? It is his job to protect the people from too much government. If he is the wonder philanthropist you assume he is, why is he content to leave us vulnerable to the whims of later presidents? I hope you have a great answer to this. I am truly concerned about his motives.
haha then move to cuba… Im sorry but I dont want America to be anything like cuba…ick
YOU are exactly the type of person we DONT want in Government and YOU and PEOPLE LIKE YOU are the reson other countries SUCK
Do you even knoe what socialism means? The difference between socialism and communism is that socialism does not require whats being governed to be run by ONE particular dictator…and communism does. Instead, socialism is a group of dictators instead of just one. They both are not a politcal system in government, what they are is an economic system that derives from a control of economy rather than the traditional capitalism the allows free market and the freedom to advance through work ethic and success…. Youre socialism that you seem to value so much, like communism, seeks to distribute the economy among all people evenly reguardless of work ethic or success and therefore prohibits the oppotunity to “get ahead”.
And by the way, the distributing of these advantages evenly among all people is the reason for the failure in the economy in the first place, which started when Pres. Bill Clinton passed a bill that allows people with lower or no credit and income to be approved for home loans. This in turn, over a period of time, built up the number of americans who had house notes that they could not afford and ended in forclusure or bankruptcy which then ruined credit as a whole.
Like a rubber band being stretched, there were eventually too many of these cases for the economy to handle as a whole, nor for people to ignore.
You Sir/Mam are the idiot.
Shannon, you are hurting rather than helping our cause.
I think it’s great that you use examples to prove your case, but when you use such vitriolic language you bring down the image of the group as a whole, unfortunately. One person really does have that much power, yes. Your posts are something someone else can point to and say “look at that” and they’ll shake their heads and sarcastically say “yeah, I bet they have a real important message” and ignore our reasonable requests.
As much power as you have to hurt our cause, you also have to help it.
Thank you.
Well thanks for youre opinion, but Im tired of being nice and polite so to speak. Its for those very reasons that this has gone on so long from the far left and OUR side is just now doing something about it when it quite possibly may be too late. People have held their tongues and said nothing when all this should have been stoped a long time ago…phrases like “thats racist” or “Thats bias” or “Thats discrimination” have been used out of their true context for people who do not want to halp themselves and have no morals or values to get away with not contributing to society. I agree its inopropriate for someone to yell at the Pres. that hes a liar in the middle of his address, but obviously, sitting quietly has NOT helped the cause either. This is mine, my husbands, and my childs life on the line here. Im sorry that you think my statements harsh or inappropriate… and you are intitled to that very opinion, but like you, Im going to call it how I see it.
You also obviously looked at my post and took some interest in it. Its apparent that you read the whole thing…so maybe someone wont just point and say sarcastically “yeah I bet they have something real important to say” It got your attention…did it not?
I also am not going to accept someone calling me an idot for being a patriot and a conservitive when, not to brag, I know I am intelligent. Again, not to brag, I certainly have flaws, but I am far from an idiot and someone telling people that we should be more like cuba in any aspect….im sorry is very much the opposite of an intelligent person.
John Adams was known for saying many things people thought inappropriate and he happened to care more about the people than most; he also is one of the main reasons this nation even exists…There came a time for him to say what was true reguardless of others feelings.
Everyone thought it inappropriate when Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men were created equal and were indowed by their creater with certain unalienable rights. Which eventually lead to the freedom of an entire race.
I will grant you this. I have a known history for being very expressive and speaking my mind without using the brain/mouth filter that we all were supposed to be equipped with, but that doesnt make my statements any less true.
If you think that the social system and the healthcare work in Cuba, why don’t you move there? I moved to the states because coming from a socialist country, I was tired of the “no oportunities”, high taxes and paying people who chose to do nothing to better their life other than putting out their hand. You must think you have something to gain by being a socialist. Let’s see if you get it…..
Lots of idiots in one place. Glad you have a big virtual sign on your foreheads to proclaim your cluelessness. Enjoy yourselves because the rest of the country will be laughing at you and your general stupidity.
Why do uneducated people claim Obama is a Socialist?
Socialism is government ownership of ALL the means of production. The US Government has been growing and is obviously wasteful in many areas but outside of the Postal Service, owns very few means of production. Most of our industry has been shipped overseas so the rich can get richer and the rest of us can see our jobs disappear. Our industries and means of production are NOT owned by the government.
Communism tries to make all people equal, which doesn’t work because the lazy don’t contribute and the brighter aren’t motivated to try harder. It is different from Socialism.
We did let the greedy financial industry get away with so much selfish abuse that it caused our current crisis, then both parties participated in wasteful bailout programs.
There are many areas like utilities, recreation, transportation, etc. which are more logically operated by government but these are services, not means of production. Competition between private industry can lead to progress but it can also waste resources by competing instead of producing. Some functions can best be served by government, others by private industry. It’s naive to assume either extreme. We have had regulated monopolies in the past that worked very efficiently when properly controlled. We have also seen government swayed to give functions to private industry that were working well (line airline regulation, communications, etc.) which are now so embroiled in competing with each other that they are wasteful of resources and no longer profitable for the providers.
What we need are limits on wealth and earnings so all the scammers and exploiters have less motive to cheat the rest of us. The rich get richer and the rest of us get the shaft. In the past we have had income surtax rates as high as 88%. A few entertainers, sports stars, CEOs and financial manipulators can earn billions. Are they really worth that much? What is their real contribution to society?
Many of our welfare programs reward people who could be employed in some useful work but there are also many needy people with little opportunity to better themselves who need assistance. Besides financial assistance, training and opportunities should be increased for them.
We also need to intelligently examine which functions are best served by government and which by private firms but more importantly we need politicians who will return our military forces stationed in 50 foreign countries to the USA to perform services here like providing alternative energy. If we massively reduce oil imports, reduce wasteful military spending and massively reduce purchases of cheap import products our economy will become strong again. Otherwise a few rich will become richer and the rest of us dupes will continue to get the shaft, even while being distracted by naive extreme movements to greatly reduce government rather than selectively examining which functions government can best perform and demanding efficiency in government.
It’s simple. It’s because people haven’t a clue what socialism is. They throw big labels around when they can’t explain things with facts or have an argument with facts.
All this is just fear-mongering.
And here is an organization that is “not for profit” meaning it does not pay taxes, which means it sucks on the tit of the people without giving anything back, and yet they have words like “the liberal media’ and they say they do not want to influence politics?
You morons. You are donating money and time to BIG BUSINESS. That’s who is behind all this. BIG BUSINESS and the few 0.001% of the population that owns them OWNS YOU and your minds, and your foolish actions because you won’t even bother to go and look up a term like socialism or even know how your country works.
All that can be said about idiots is that they get what they deserve.
Right on! … Thank God someone has made an intelligent comment on this site. When I first ran into word of this 9-12-09 DC protest following headlines from Yahoo News and found the media blanketing the same AP article virtually everywhere (sfgate, nytimes, usatoday, yahoo, startribune, etc.) I wondered what’s up? Oh, a few thousand protested and I saw the photos in the streets, and indeed a few thousand…whoop de do! Where have you guys been for the last 8 years? We had 12 million in the streets of America one Saturday at the beginning of the Iraq Invasion and we got about the same coverage as your “thousands in DC 9-12-09″. The media does not cover the truth, right or left. It spins everything to look as though the status quo of capitalism – war for empire; bailouts for the wealthy; selfishness is healthy; poverty is caused by laziness; tax the working class and subsidize the corporations; cut: education, public transportation, health care, job training, help for the elderly, Soc Sec, safety nets of all kinds – is the only option that exists.
Get a clue folks…you’ve been duped and this site is part of that duping! Look at the money required to post this slick website and all the other slick looking logos of “conservative” protests groups “co-sponsoring”… and wonder where did the capital come to make all of this happen? Believe me brothers and sisters, it didn’t come from any of us commoners!
Ever wonder why you’ve never heard of a residential rooftop solar program to eliminate the need for any coal burning energy plants? There are lots of very creative people and ideas out there that are blocked by the elites who run the system that controls us all. The Dems and Reps and the Media that showcase them are nothing but theater to keep us commoners confused and compliant. The Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence were written by our forefathers to create a government that would protect citizens from elite tyranny. If you want to know what REALLY happened to YOUR TAXES read Pulitzer Prize winning author David Cay Johnston’s “Perfectly Legal”…
http://www.amazon.com/Perfectly-Legal-Campaign-Benefit-Everybody/dp/1591840198
… and get off your buts and go after the elites that are keeping you and me imprisoned in a tyrannical oligarchy!
Yeah well nobody said that you had to be informed to speak your mind.
I find it VERY interesting that you are taking such an interest in the unnecessary spending to promote a website or conservitism, whe you support a president that spends $2.6 Million on the study of grapes.
Actually Shannon,
That is a Republican rep. who spends 2.6mil on grape research.
Yeah and thats rediculous too…But why be mad at the spender but not the one whos giving it out to spend
We are starting a detective movement against politicians. We are organizing Americans and Detectives to follow our politicians until we catch them in their corruption and expose it. Please help us keep our elected officials honest. You can visit our site by clicking the name on this post.
Sarah Palin is off working on her memoirs somewhere, so she wasn’t in the audience Wednesday to hear President Barack Obama call her a liar.
Palin is the most prominent politician to have promoted the idea that Obama wants to create some sort of Third Reich-style medical bureaucracy that would decide whether the disabled and the elderly deserve to live, or just have their health care terminated.
“Death panels,” Palin called them, in one of the most calculated, incendiary falsehoods of the entire health-care debate. It embarrassed even some of her fellow right wingers.
But it served its purpose, scaring the living daylights out of older voters and churning up so much anxiety over the summer that Obama was forced to address it in his speech to Congress this week.
The death panels rumour, said Obama, “would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.”
In the same speech, though, Obama cited a few uniquely American anecdotes not too far from just the sort of thing Palin and her cohort are predicting:
* An Illinois man whose health insurance was cut off in the middle of chemotherapy because an enterprising researcher at the insurance company discovered he hadn’t reported gallstones he didn’t even know he had. With his treatment cut off, he proceeded to die.
* A Texas woman who was about to undergo a double mastectomy when her health insurer cut her off, citing an unreported case of acne earlier in her life. By the time she got the decision reversed, said Obama, her breast cancer had more than doubled in size.
These are common stories here, reported in the media just about every day.
* The Los Angeles woman with lupus, fluid in the heart and pancreatic cancer who was cut off health coverage because of unreported earlier back pain (which she says isn’t even true).
And of course, it doesn’t have to be true. Or even remotely related to your illness. It just has to be in your doctor’s notes, or hinted at in your doctor’s notes, even if your doctor didn’t tell you about it.
The moment the insurance company finds it, bang! Your treatment is cut off. And the insurers really start looking for excuses once you get sick and start submitting costly claims (one insurer, Health Net, has actually admitted paying bonuses to employees who dig up reasons to maroon sick clients).
If your treatment is life-preserving, like chemotherapy, and you can’t find some other way to pay, you die.
The industry term for cancelling a policy on some sort of technical grounds is “rescission,” and it is probably the most odious practice of an industry known for some pretty predatory behaviour.
Now, imagine for a moment what the reaction would be if federal or state governments started directing public servants to comb medical histories for the slightest excuse to cut off life-saving care. (It’s not well understood abroad, and sometimes not very well understood here, but the American government is already in the health-insurance business, big time. Medicare pays health-care bills for senior citizens, and Medicaid, the state-run programs, pay to treat the indigent).
The answer is obvious. It would be called what it is: Brutal, near-criminal, disgusting, inhuman behaviour. Maybe even death panels. And it wouldn’t last long once the public found out.
The curious thing is, when private companies do it, companies whose profit motive is diametrically opposed to the well-being of their clients, the American public remains relatively supine.
This sort of thing has been going on here for years, and while the horror stories are denounced regularly by liberal activists and routinely retailed by Democrats in stump speeches, it seems to be regarded by the public at large as just business. As in: “Well, they do have shareholders to answer to.”
In the minds of many here, business is good for America, and whatever business has to do to make money is good for America, too.
Certainly you don’t hear much about health insurance rescission from Sarah Palin, or Senator Jim DeMint, or the Christian conservative leaders who are now mobilizing against Obama’s plan. They have various motives. Palin wants to be president. The evangelicals believe Obama’s plan will lead to publicly financed abortion. Others, like DeMint, have stated flatly they simply want Obama to fail.
But where great swathes of the public are concerned, the antipathy to publicly funded medicine is something else. Clearly, a lot of people here fear any plan run by their own government more than that of the most venal insurance company.
It’s partly the innate distrust of government itself among conservative Americans, and it’s partly the widespread American self-image as a nation of rugged individualists who scorn public handouts, as delusional as that may be (see earlier reference to Medicare and Medicaid, not to mention the ocean of public subsidies that flow from Washington).
Obama himself has been talking about a woman who sent him a letter containing a stern admonition: “‘I don’t want government-run health care. I don’t want you meddling in the private marketplace. And keep your hands off my Medicare.’”
“True story,” says Obama, when he tells it.
And sort of pathetic, given the stakes of what’s going on here.
The fact is, there is so little understanding of what really exists here now and what is actually being proposed that for Palin and her cohort, working against Obama’s plan amounts to picking low-hanging fruit.
After Obama’s speech, the Washington Post quoted a middle-aged woman sitting in the waiting room of a local hospital.
The speech, she said, sent her blood pressure up: “For every story he tells about somebody that doesn’t have insurance, there’s one you can tell about somebody who wouldn’t get treatment because the government wouldn’t allow it.”
Well, as somebody who lived for 40 years in a country that has one of the most strictly public health systems in the world, I know all about the shortcomings of government-funded medicine. But in all those years, I never saw anything like what the insurance companies here are capable of.
To borrow one of Palin’s attack phrases: “Downright evil.”
YOU LIDERALS ARE THE DOWNFALL OF AMERICA. “All good things come to an end” YOURE all the reason that phrase even exists. Maybe someday when you no longer have the freedom to think like crazy idiots because youre controlled by a government full of even more crazy idiots, you’ll realize you are more destructive than productive. If you like being so liberal and thinking like a bunch of nut bags then you should like this idea…You all should be sent to 3rd world countries for 5 years and then see if you like the idea of government control. Youre so stupid you don’t even realize youre about to destroy everyones right to choose ANYTHING in this country….including your own. The governement hasn’t cared about the poor since like…ooohh I dont know, 1993!!! and they dont now…they DO NOT care about the 15% of people without health insurance….What they care about is controlling the other 85%! If you believe they really want to help the poor get good health coverage, youre a fool because youre healthcare will not be improved… It will be CHEAP…and just remember, you get what you pay for.
WOW out of everything i say it is about Cuba respond to something else
sry your right i should do more research before saying things openly. i have a loud mouth you can continue or not you have the right to protect America from whats wrong if you find it wrong. we have are differences and if you are right then god (even though i am a hardcore athiest) help you. i should go to some debate sight to do this
enough responses i agree with my point you agree with urs
OATH OF OFFICE
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
EXACT WORDS OF OBAMA
“Barack Obama, what are your thoughts on the Declaration and Constitution?”
“I-I-I think it’s a remarkable document –“ he began haltingly.
“Which one?” Helfrich interjected.
“The original Constitution as well as the Civil War Amendments,” he replied. “But I think it is an imperfect document, and I think it is a document that reflects some deep flaws in American culture, the Colonial culture nascent at that time.
“African-Americans were not — first of all they weren’t African-Americans — the Africans at the time were not considered as part of the polity that was of concern to the Framers. I think that as Richard said it was a ‘nagging problem’ in the same way that these days we might think of environmental issues, or some other problem where you have to balance cost-benefits, as opposed to seeing it as a moral problem involving persons of moral worth.
“And in that sense,” Obama continued, “I think we can say that the Constitution reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day, and that the Framers had that same blind spot. I don’t think the two views are contradictory, to say that it was a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now, and to say that it also reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”
First of all…it was the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE that supported the rights of african americans to be freed from slavery. The Declaration of independence goes hand in hand with the constitution, it was the document that declaired our freedom and right to create and uphold a constitution. One can not be understood without the other.
Patriots?
Ironically, the people who call themselves patriots are exactly the opposite. The anti’s are actually anarchists who would reverse over 200 years of progress. If you all think our government and this country are so bad, why not take your tea party and go somewhere else. The original Tea Party was a statement against a foreign power that was not recognized as a legitimate government. Your use of the name implies that you don’t recognize the U.S. government and would advocate it’s overthrow. So would that make you terrorists???
Precisely
What a shame, what kind of Nation has become of us?
What a shame, what kind of Nation has become of us? “United We Stand Divided We Fall”
Domo Arrigato
The Lie Machine
GOP operatives are running a secret campaign to kill health care reform, and it’s based on Karl Rove’s old playbook
TIM DICKINSON
Posted Sep 23, 2009 9:01 AM
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Read Tim Dickinson’s full story in the new issue of Rolling Stone, on stands now.
On the first day of August, a mob of 200 right-wing Texans stormed the parking lot of a Randalls grocery store in southwest Austin. They were united in a single goal: Disrupt the “office hours” that Rep. Lloyd Doggett, the district’s congressman, had scheduled for his constituents. The protesters targeted Doggett for his role in crafting the House’s bill to reform health care, brandishing signs that read “No Government Health Care” and “No Government Counselor in My Home!!!” But their anger seemed to encompass a universe of conservative fears: higher taxes, illegal immigration, socialism. The threat of violence was thinly veiled: One agitator held aloft a tombstone with the name Doggett. Screaming, “Just say no!” the mob chased Doggett through the parking lot to an aide’s car — roaring with approval as he fled the scene.
Conservatives were quick to insist that the near-riot — the first of many town-hall mobs that would dominate the headlines in August — was completely spontaneous. The protesters didn’t show up “because of some organized group,” Rick Scott, the head of Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, told reporters. “They’re mad about the stimulus bill, the bailout, the economy. Now they see that their health care is about to be taken over by the government.”
In fact, Scott’s own group had played an integral role in mobilizing the protesters. According to internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone, Conservatives for Patients’ Rights had been working closely for weeks as a “coalition partner” with three other right-wing groups in a plot to unleash irate mobs at town-hall meetings just like Doggett’s. Far from representing a spontaneous upwelling of populist rage, the protests were tightly orchestrated from the top down by corporate-funded front groups as well as top lobbyists for the health care industry. Call it the return of the Karl Rove playbook: The effort to mobilize the angriest fringe of the Republican base was guided by a conservative dream team that included the same GOP henchmen who Swift-boated John Kerry in 2004, smeared John McCain in 2000, wrote the script for Republican obstructionism on global warming, and harpooned the health care reform effort led by Hillary Clinton in 1993.
“The insurance industry is up to the same dirty tricks, using the same devious PR practices it has used for many years, to kill reform,” says Wendell Potter, who stepped down last year as chief of corporate communications for health insurance giant CIGNA. “I’m certain that people showing up at these town halls feel that they’re there on their own — but they don’t realize they’re being incited, ultimately, by the insurance industry and the other special interests.”
Behind the scenes, top Republicans — including House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, Minority Leader John Boehner and the chairman of the GOP’s Senate steering committee, Jim DeMint — worked hand-in-glove with the organizers of the town brawls. Their goal was not only to block health care reform but to bankrupt President Obama’s political capital before he could move on to other key items on his agenda, including curbing climate change and expanding labor rights. As DeMint told an August teleconference of nearly 20,000 town-hall activists, “If we can stop him on this, the administration won’t be able to go on to cap and trade, card check and the other things they want to do.”
WRITING THE SCRIPT
The campaign to mobilize the town-hall mobs began with a script written by the right’s foremost fearmonger, Frank Luntz. Luntz rose to fame in 1994 as pollster for Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America, and crafted the Republican playbook on global warming. In a May memo, Luntz outlined a battle plan for conservatives to block what he branded the “Washington takeover” of health care — the most terrifying buzz words conjured up in his polls and focus groups.
The logic of the language is simple, Luntz writes: “Takeovers are like coups — they both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom.” For a third of all Americans, he adds, the top worry about health care reform is “being denied a procedure or medication because a Washington bureaucrat says no.” Luntz concludes by telling Republicans how best to play the fear card. “It is essential that ‘deny’ and ‘denial’ enter the conservative lexicon immediately,” he writes, “because it is at the core of what scares Americans most about a government takeover of health care.”
Distributed widely to Republicans on Capitol Hill, the memo framed the right-wing attack on health care reform. What Luntz describes as “the best anti-Democrat message” is by now familiar to everyone in America: “No Washington bureaucrat should stand between your family and your doctor… The Democrats want to put Washington politicians in charge of your health care.”
For the archenemies of Obamacare, however, Luntz’s anti-Washington script didn’t go nearly far enough. To amp up the panic, they decided to spin the “takeover” fear to its most extreme conclusion: Washington bureaucrats plan to institute “death panels” that would deny life-sustaining care to the elderly. That portion of the script was drafted by Betsy McCaughey, the former lieutenant governor of New York, who insists that her expertise as a constitutional historian enables her to decipher the 1,017 pages of legalese that comprise the House health care bill.
McCaughey first unveiled her “findings” on July 16th, during an appearance on the radio show of former GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson. “I have just finished reading the House bill,” McCaughey declared. “I hope that people listening will protect their parents from what’s intended under this bill.” Citing page 425 of HR 3200 — a section that outlines the same kind of optional, end-of-life counseling that Republicans have voted for in the past — McCaughey uncorked a terrifying lie. “Congress,” she said, “would make it mandatory — absolutely require that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.” The Obama plan, she added, is financed by “shortening your mother or father’s life.”
McCaughey has run this con before. During the debate over Clinton’s health care overhaul in the early 1990s, McCaughey — then an academic at the right-wing Manhattan Institute — wrote an article for The New Republic called “No Exit,” in which she claimed that Hillarycare would prevent even wealthy Americans from “going outside the system to purchase basic health coverage you think is better.” Even though the bill plainly stated that “nothing in this Act” would prohibit consumers from purchasing additional care, McCaughey’s claim was echoed endlessly in the press, with each repetition pounding a stake further into the heart of the reform effort.
McCaughey’s lies were later debunked in a 1995 post-mortem in The Atlantic, and The New Republic recanted the piece in 2006. But what has not been reported until now is that McCaughey’s writing was influenced by Philip Morris, the world’s largest tobacco company, as part of a secret campaign to scuttle Clinton’s health care reform. (The measure would have been funded by a huge increase in tobacco taxes.) In an internal company memo from March 1994, the tobacco giant detailed its strategy to derail Hillarycare through an alliance with conservative think tanks, front groups and media outlets. Integral to the company’s strategy, the memo observed, was an effort to “work on the development of favorable pieces” with “friendly contacts in the media.” The memo, prepared by a Philip Morris executive, mentions only one author by name:
“Worked off-the-record with Manhattan and writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part exposé in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means to you. The first part detailed specifics of the plan.”
McCaughey did not respond to Rolling Stone’s request for an interview.
ASSEMBLING THE TEAM
Armed with the script prepared by McCaughey and Luntz, a tight coalition of deep-pocketed groups took the lead in mobilizing the town-hall protests. The two primary groups — Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks — actually grew out of the 2003 breakup of an outfit called Citizens for a Sound Economy that had been integral in the fight against Hillarycare. Indeed, the same “Tobacco Strategy” memo in which Philip Morris boasts of shaping McCaughey’s writings also reveals that the tobacco giant paid Citizens for a Sound Economy to engineer a “grassroots” revolt against health care reform by staging demonstrations in the home districts of key congressmen. “The goal,” states the memo, “is to show the Clinton plan as a government-run health care system replete with higher taxes… rationing of care and extensive bureaucracies.”
Americans for Prosperity, which has taken the lead in the current fight against reform, is a front group for oil billionaires David and Charles Koch, co-owners of the world’s largest private oil and gas conglomerate. The Kochs, who provide much of AFP’s budget, have a strange affinity for mock uprisings: Matt Schlapp, one of the original “Brooks Brothers rioters” — the GOP activists who disrupted the Bush-Gore recount in Miami-Dade County — now serves as director of federal affairs for Koch Industries, orchestrating the firm’s political efforts in Washington.
To head Americans for Prosperity, the brothers tapped Tim Phillips, one of the Republican Party’s most notorious dirty tricksters. Phillips served as a strategic consultant to George W. Bush in 2000 and reputedly took part in the smear campaign in South Carolina that portrayed John McCain’s adopted daughter as his mulatto love child. That same year, Phillips was linked to a nearly identical smear campaign in Virginia that portrayed the primary opponent of Rep. Eric Cantor — a Jew — as the “only Christian in the contest.” Under Phillips, AFP became a driving force behind the Tea Party protests against Obama’s economic stimulus plan, and the group organized the Austin mob that attacked Rep. Doggett. Boosted by the mobilizing effort, AFP now boasts 700,000 members and chapters in 24 states.
The second group behind the town-hall mobs is FreedomWorks, headed by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. An ideological crusader against the safety net, Armey denounces Medicare as a form of “tyranny” and backed George Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security. At a 2004 event promoting the benefits of private accounts for “regular folks,” Bush appeared onstage with a “single mom” from Iowa — who, upon closer examination, turned out to be the Iowa director of FreedomWorks.The stated goal of the group, which has received funding from the archconservative Scaife family and corporations like MetLife, is to become “a grassroots juggernaut capable of going toe-to-toe with the unions, extreme enviros and the MoveOn.org’s of the world.” Armey, however, unabashedly compares FreedomWorks to a lynch mob. “We used to use the old saying in the West, that you got outta town just one step ahead of the hangman,” he says, explaining why George Bush’s budget-busting policies didn’t inspire the same outrage among his 400,000 followers. “That’s pretty much what happened with Bush. And poor old President Obama walked into town, y’know, just at high noon.”
After FreedomWorks orchestrated the original Tea Party protests last April, it ostensibly handed over the reins of the movement to a third group, called the Tea Party Patriots. But internal correspondence from the group’s private listserv obtained by Rolling Stone makes clear that FreedomWorks is still calling the shots. In June, after activists on the list began advocating to change a Tea Party logo, a top official from FreedomWorks stepped in and shut down the discussion. “I talked to everyone here,” wrote Brendan Steinhauser, director of federal and state campaigns for FreedomWorks, “and there was consensus that we will keep the logo.”
The Tea Party Patriots listserv also disseminated the playbook used to instruct the town-hall mobs in the tactics of disruption. Titled “Rocking the Town Halls — Best Practices,” the guide was written by a Connecticut tea partier named Bob MacGuffie, who outlined how fewer than three dozen activists could effectively silence a U.S. congressman. “The goal is to rattle him,” the memo states. “Yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements… have someone else follow-up with a shout-out. Set the tone for the hall as clearly informal and free-wheeling. It will also embolden others who agree with us to call out.” In a listserv posting on June 13th, an organizer with the Tea Party chapter in New Haven brought the memo to the attention of Jenny Beth Martin, the national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots. “Hey folks!” the organizer wrote, attaching a copy of MacGuffie’s memo. “We here in CT have developed a strategy for holding our elected officials accountable. We show up en mass at the ‘town hall’ meetings they have!”
Martin immediately knew she’d struck gold. “Showing up en mass at town hall meetings is very good strategy,” she replied. “We want to make sure they feel the heat about these government-run health care bills that will be coming out of committees soon.” Within three weeks, a July 7th e-mail from Martin reveals, the group had appointed a “Nationwide Town Hall Coordinator” to oversee the protests. The goal was straight from the Luntz script: to use the town halls “to inform American Taxpayers of what the implications are if government bureaucrats take over our health care.”
The fourth group behind the town-hall protests, Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, has direct connections to the health care industry. Its founder, Rick Scott, is the former CEO of Columbia/HCA, the world’s largest hospital conglomerate. Scott was ousted from the company after it was caught overbilling taxpayers for Medicare treatment; it eventually pleaded guilty to criminal fraud and paid a record $1.7 billion in penalties. Scott now runs a chain of urgent-care clinics that serve uninsured Americans fearful of being bankrupted by hospital emergency-room visits. “He is one of those people who’s gotten very, very, very rich off of sick people,” says Potter, the former CIGNA executive. “He doesn’t want that cash cow to go away — so that’s why you’re seeing all his money there.”
Indeed, Scott has bankrolled Conservatives for Patients’ Rights with more than $5 million of his own fortune. “We have invested a lot of time, energy and resources into educating Americans over the past several months about the dangers of government-run health care,” he boasted in August. “And I think we’re seeing some of the fruits of that campaign.” To block reform, Scott has also hired CRC Public Relations, the firm that orchestrated the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against John Kerry in 2004. CRC enjoys high-ranking connections to the right-wing establishment, with a client list including the RNC, the National Republican Senatorial and Congressional Committees, the Federalist Society, the Parents Television Council and the Christian Coalition.
It doesn’t count as grassroots if Corporate Lobbyists, Fox News, and The Rebublican Party organize your protest and tell you how to respond. That’s why no one pays attention to you.
You represent the very people who put this country into this recession!
Here’s a Fox News producer directing your actions at the rally!
From Gawker:
“Fox News has been accused of riling up winguts for the wacky, psychotic 9/12 protests. And while Glenn Beck and company deny such antics, there’s now proof. We’re nearly speechless..
http://gawker.com/5363771/relatively-inexperienced-fox-news-producer-in-912-video-scandal
The above video shows a Fox News producer egging on the crowd, a crowd the improbably named newsman Griff Jenkins described on air as “absolutely grassroots.” It was, he declared, an “uprising.” It sure is. Indeed.
Fox executives, of course, have an excuse for the apparent breach of ethical, balanced conduct: the girl’s simply young and “inexperienced.”
The employee is a young, relatively inexperienced associate producer who realizes she made a mistake and has been disciplined.
Hmmm. This looks pretty experienced to us, but perhaps it’s just youthful exuberance — something of which we know nothing.”
Can someone please explain to me how getting an check by working in an private buisness isn’t an government check? It’s all coming from government any way isn’t it?
What I’m saying here is this that whenever we all work in private business we still get our checks through federal monies any way because that money comes from the federal government any way. Most of us are being mislead and I feel it’s time we stop allowing ourselves to be.
I would like to see more grassroots at our local government offices instead of at Washington,DC. We are wasting our energy and resources going and speaking to people whom just don’t care and have lost faith and hope a long time ago in our God-given governmental ways. We do not need more government but we also do not need no government either which is what really concerns me that I keep hearing about.
We all need to be governed and the only way to do that is to have the government work. It would if we’d actually do what the constitution saids to do. We already have some of that set up already in our Constitution and I would love to see more Americans ban together and do what the Constitution really saids and not be afraid to do what it saids to do completely. We need to fight back the way we should instead of what I am seeing and hearing is going on. I’m only hearing and seeing a small few grassroots groups actually doing what our Constitution saids we should do. We’ve got a long way to go if we don’t all quickly ban together and fight back right and soon. The time is now. There is a right and wrong way to doing things.
By voting out the bad and putting into offices people not only worthy of the office but proven backer of our Constitution and Bill of Rights.To do that we should be spending most of our energy going and having campaign try outs now that way we’re not all surprised and just going through the motions once it’s time to vote for people when the time comes for voting time. We need to be making sure we are heard by camping out and literally not budging until we are all heard and things are correctly done the way it’s suppose to be. If that doesn’t work then we keep at it until we are heard. There isn’t enough jails to put us all into. And we need to stop being so afraid of these people. They want us to be afraid of them. That is their very point. So we should be showing them that we really aren’t having it anymore by defending ourselves by pushing back and showing them what it’s truly like to be an American. Not just say it and then cower just because they intimidate us with whatever they say they can do to us.
You want to stop Washington from spending and raising taxes and so forth then we need to stop letting them by not allowing them to buy out our statehouses and telling our states what they can and can not do. We need to be putting in people whom are actually for our Constitution so we can get our statehouse system working the way it should and then remind the people working in the statehouses what they represent and why. We then need to lobby for our constitutional rights and get them done by getting the states to stop taking any federal monies from then on. We cut them off completely and we stop feeding the feds. Then we make our own money and cap and trade and bring in green jobs and new technology and help our own survive.
The constitution states that if the federal government and it’s congress has gone rogue then it’s up to the people and/or the states to take over and do what the constitution saids to do or make new government. Whichever is needed. Meaning in that, said emergency (which this is) then we the people or the states have the right to over throw the federal government and stop allowing it to be fed. Basically cutting it’s own source off. Which is the states. We are not called the United Federal Government. We are called the United States of America. And it is time we acted like it.
We need to be going to our statehouses and banning together as one voice all around the states and flooding the phones to our reps and telling them that you work for us or we the people arrest you for high treason against the people and we book them in jail ourselves. Our constitution gives us the legal right to do this. It’s in there for all to see. Our forefathers and mothers knew these things would happen they just didn’t know when it would. And now is the time to do what it saids to do. So please my fellow Americans let’s cut off the source completely and stop it from hurting us. We need not be afraid because we have God who backs us up. So go ahead all of you that mock us and ridicule us. You know your time is over with and a new time begins. And it begins with One Nation Under God Indevisable with Liberty and Justice for All! Amen!
Whatever happened to prevention? I thought we all are suppose to prevent colds,flus.etc. I know we can’t prevent everything but we shouldn’t stop trying just because our numbers in this country have grown. We have more sicknesses because others refuse to take better care of themselves and so we all suffer the conseqences of others not doing what’s right. So now we get sick easier and quicker and our bodies are having such a hard time keeping up. We need more prevention and the federal government needs to butt out of it. We need more natural business practices like good Naturopathic doctors and prevention booklets. These are private businesses that the federal government should not be apart of. Free clinics need to come back and the federal government need to leave our states alone and let it’s real people help fix the problem. Prevention! Information! Real Health Care Practices!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, SEPTEMBER 2009
Manipulating the Public Agenda:
Why Acorn was in the News and What the News Got Wrong
http://departments.oxy.edu/uepi/acornstudy/acornstudy.pdf
Why do conservatives target Acorn?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#33064799
Why don’t you or your handlers ever go after any of these organizations?
http://www.contractormisconduct.org/
You need a balance of socialism and capitalism to have a stable government.
Its Americas extreme capitalistic ideas that brought on the recession,
the pursuit for money = neglect on human side of society.
Instead of being stubborn and holding onto something that clearly isn’t working,
America should learn from outside national borders to countries that have balanced socialist and liberal ideas. While increasing the economy will bring wealth and jobs, if the majority are living in despair… what’s the point?
Yes. Reform will hinder the private sector. But the question is how else will this growing giant be controlled? How else can the poor be able to afford their own well being?
It is a sacrifice that will benefit many.
As explained by previous posts, socialism isn’t something that should be feared. Besides the negative aspects, there are many great ideas in socialism that would make America better. In fact, similar ideas were the foundations for unions and lobbies.
We should have a better knowledge of other countries, and learn from their strengths and mistakes. What America needs right now are new ideas – instead of cooking from the same old recipe
Don’t throw a good idea out totally just because it has been categorized and misconceived in American culture. We should discuss, criticize and shape on the positive aspects of socialism, and combine with our current state to build something new for the future.
Good luck using common sense on this bunch. I applaud your attempt though.
U.S. most admired country globally: survey
Mon Oct 5, 2009 2:40pm EDT
By Patricia Reaney
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – The United States is the most admired country globally thanks largely to the star power of President Barack Obama and his administration, according to a new poll.
It climbed from seventh place last year, ahead of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan which completed the top five nations in the Nation Brand Index (NBI).
“What’s really remarkable is that in all my years studying national reputation, I have never seen any country experience such a dramatic change in its standing as we see for the United States for 2009,” said Simon Anholt, the founder of NBI, which measured the global image of 50 countries each year.
He believes that during the previous administration of George W. Bush the United States suffered in the world ranking with its unpopular foreign policies but since Obama was elected, and despite the recent economic turmoil, the country’s status has risen globally.
“There is no other explanation,” Anholt said in an interview, referring to the impact of Obama.
The global survey, conducted by GFK Roper Public Affairs & Media, involved 20,000 people in 20 rich and developing countries around the globe. They were asked to rate 50 nations in categories such as culture, governance, people, exports, tourism, landscape and education.
Canada took the biggest hit in the latest survey, falling to seventh from fourth place, while China climbed several spots to 22nd, which Anholt believes in due in part to the successful staging of the Olympics.
China has always scored low on human rights and environmental policies but high on cultural heritage.
“It is the first time China’s profile has risen,” said Anholt, who has been doing the annual poll since 2005.
“Since the Olympics its score for tourism and its people has risen and that has helped to stem its decline,” Anholt explained.
Italy maintained the sixth spot in the survey for the second year, while Switzerland came in eight, followed by Australia in 9th place and Spain and Sweden, which tied for 10th place.
At the opposite end of the survey Colombia and Kenya tied for 47th place. Angola was number 49 and Iran came in last at number 50.
New York Times
October 10, 2009
Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
By WALTER GIBBS and ALAN COWELL
OSLO — In a stunning surprise, the Nobel Committee announced Friday that it had awarded its annual peace prize to President Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
“He has created a new international climate,” the committee said in its announcement.
Beck calls his audience “zombies,” O’Reilly dismisses Beck’s flu vaccine conspiracies: “That’s nuts”
October 09, 2009 5:44 pm ET
From the October 8 edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor:
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200910090052?lid=1069566&rid=35870712