From Brian Faughnan at RedState we learn:
As the debate on health care continues, liberals in Washington continue to try to convince Americans that we need government-run health care. Rather than tell the truth about long waits, denied treatments, lack of trained professionals, and bureaucratic mistakes, they try to convince listeners that the problems of the current system can only be solved by more government.
With that in mind, I will present one case study of government-run care per day – either for 100 days, or until the debate in Washington is over. These stories are drawn from the book Shattered Lives, by the National Center for Public Policy Research.
Wait a minute. Isn’t the really important sounding "National Center for Public Policy Research" run by Amy Ridenour who:
In a series of editorials between 1999 and 2001, National Center for Public Policy Research president Amy Ridenour went to bat for the Commonwealth of the Marianas Islands, a small U.S. territory in the Pacific. Her releases bemoaned efforts to expand federal immigration laws to the island, defended the islands’ meager wages and attacked Clinton Administration attempts to tighten labor laws.
Ridenour also lent her support to the Western Pacific Economic Council, a trade group composed of Marianas garment manufacturers. Her group’s name appeared in a Saipan newspaper backing the Council in 1999.
Both the Marianas and the Economic Council were clients of Jack Abramoff at the time. The Marianas paid Abramoff’s firm Preston Gates $2.9 million in 1999 and 2000 and his second firm, Greenberg Traurig, $2.1 million in 2001. The Western Pacific Economic Council paid Preston Gates $2.3 million in 1999 and 2000.
Ridenour did not return calls and emails asking for comment. Andrew Blum, a spokesman for Abramoff, also declined to comment. Abramoff pled guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials in January.
The National Center took to the national stage when it emerged that Abramoff – who was a member of the nonprofit’s board from 1997 to 2004 – had laundered $2.5 million through the group to increase personal holdings and pay for congressional trips. The money underwrote overseas trips taken by House Administration Committee Chairman Robert Ney (R-OH) and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX).
In her testimony before Congress, Ridenour portrayed herself as a victim of Abramoff’s guile. Describing her impression of when she first met the lobbyist, Ridenour said he appeared a “dedicated conservative” whose “managerial skills, it seemed to me at the time, exceeded my own.”
When discussing how the Center had received millions of dollars from Abramoff’s firm and his lobbying clients, she described the lobbyist’s proposals as “quote a new kind of lobbying unquote.”
She did not, however, discuss work she had done that benefited Abramoff’s clients.
Somewhere tonight Brian Faughnan is saying:
Arthur: You’re a hooker? Jesus, I forgot! I just thought I was doing GREAT with you!




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“I race cars, play tennis, and fondle women, BUT! I have weekends off, and I am my own boss.”
Well, first off, he’s posting at RedState, so the truth of the matter is not important.
If I thought it would help, I could meet his one case and see him a 1000 cases of lives ruined with our for-profit health insurance system. But why bother? No amount of facts will change his/their minds. He/they need to experience the problem 1st hand. Of course when that epiphany happens, he’ll be of no use to the Trike Force – his membership in the reality deniers club will be summarily terminated.
Oh well, if Baucus has his way, the problem will just get worse. It won’t go away, cuz there’s no magic pixie dust to sprinkle on the rotting corpse of for-profit health insurance. We’ll simply get poorer and sicker. Maybe we’ll try again in another decade, assuming we haven’t directly outsourced the Senate Committee on Healthcare to Wellpoint.
Once the USSC gives corporations the right to make unlimited political donations, the US Senate and Wellpoint will be a de facto interlocking directorship. : )
Rather than tell the truth about long waits, denied treatments, lack of trained professionals, and bureaucratic mistakes
Wait, is that what would happen? ‘Cuz that sounds an awful lot like what we’ve got now.
Yes, dear Ruthie, that is the salient point, even though you are the first person (aside from me, of course), who I’ve seen make it.
That is, once John Roberts, later this SC session, frees corporate treasuries to buy the political system directly, no future trigger will ever get pulled, and we’ll just have to keep drifting towards Marxian inter-class crisis.
I think the only hope is to begin talking up Justice Kennedy’s membership on the most corrupt ruling since Plessy, namely, the installation of Bush/Cheney. Kennedy needs to do what he can to save his legacy, and declining to side with Roberts on corporate political money freedom is one way to do it.
The Congress is back in session and doing the dirty work for the Medical Industrial Complex.
mcconnell $3.3M, hatch $2.9M, baucus $2.8M, grassley $2.7M,
lieberman $2.6M, burr $2.4M, ensign $2.4M, cornyn $2.2M, kyl $2.1M,
conrad $2.1M, cantor $1.8M boehner $1.7M, coburn $1.2M were
paid by the Medical Industrial Complex to kill Health Care Reform.
Follow the Money: Link
Call Congress and demand, Single-Payer Health Care for All!
Sign Single-Payer Petition: Link
Don’t let the Medical Industrial Complex steal your Health Care from you and your family by donating huge sums of money to Crooked Politicians in order to maintain the Status Quo. Keep up the good fight.
SEMPER FI!