Political Commentary: Heath Haussamen
Town-Hall Violence Isn’t Helping Anything
Many conservatives are angry about bailouts, tax-increase proposals, cap-and-trade legislation and health-care reform. Fine. But instead of resorting to violence, they need to take a seat at the table.By Heath Haussamen, 8-10-09
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A libertarian activist in Albuquerque crossed a line on Friday when he advocated physical violence against members of left-leaning groups at town hall meetings on health-care reform.
I’m not giving the guy the publicity of linking to his page or publishing his name, but I will tell you that he posted messages on Twitter stating that people should use “retaliation… be it verbal or physical” against members of ACORN and the Service Employees International Union if they decide to attend or disrupt town-hall meetings and should “hurt them. Badly.”
He even advocated that people take advantage of their “license to carry.”
Of course, the man’s inappropriately dangerous tweets are only the latest disgraceful behavior in the national hijacking of the health-care reform debate that has included raucous town hall meetings, physical violence and at least one death threat against a member of Congress.
Though a violent incident in St. Louis appears to break the mold, in general, most of the potentially dangerous incidents have been caused by angry conservatives.
Fanning the flames
Some of the anger on the right is understandable. Conservatives have watched Republican control of the federal government slip away in recent years. But physical violence is not the answer.
I understand the sentiment of many fiscal conservatives who worry about the nation’s economic policies. I’ve expressed my opposition to the bailouts, and to recent tax-increase proposals that I believe are foolish during a recession.
Many people are also upset about recently approved cap-and-trade legislation. And now they’re worried about the proposal to create a public option to compete with private health insurance companies.
That’s fine. Those are reasonable policy differences between many on the left and right, and I’d be surprised if some Americans weren’t upset about such major policy shifts.
But the flames are being fanned by lies spreading like a virus on the Internet about Obama’s birthplace and false claims that Democrats are making plans to take away Americans’ guns. It’s all garbage, but some people are buying into it. The resulting fear is creating a climate ripe for the type of violence we’ve already seen, violence that threatens to get worse—maybe much worse—in the coming weeks.
Obama is not Hitler
To be fair, Obama has created an opening for conspiracy theorists and liars to spread their messages by acting a bit Big-Brother-ish in his first few months in office. First his administration asked all potential appointees detailed questions about their gun ownership on a personnel form, as if that’s any of the White House’s business. Then, last week, the official White House blog asked supporters of health-care reform to send in “fishy” e-mails or other misinformation that’s being spread about the health-care debate.
So now the White House is collecting e-mails sent by people who oppose its agenda on health care.
That sort of action—collecting e-mails and information about gun ownership—is a little creepy to me, no matter who is president. But comparisons between Obama and Adolf Hitler are not fair. They are outlandish at best, outrageous at worst because of the sentiment they’re helping spread across the nation.
America, we’re better than this. How about toning down the rhetoric, stopping to the violence, and instead putting our efforts into attempting to understand each other and come up with real solutions to our problems?
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Comments
Furthermore, I must point out that calls for sitting down at the table imply that one will be listened to and that the outcome will be affected substantively and positively by one's good-faith presence, that the discussions will be rational and the proposed solutions equally so.
Give me an example.
To my knowledge, the only violence that has occurred has been perpetrated by obamacare supporters upon those excersing their right to speak and assemble. A black man was called a racial epithet, punched, thrown to the ground and kicked by members of the SEIU at the Carnahan town hall meeting in St. Louis. His offense, selling Gadsen flags. 6 obamacare supporters were arrested in connection with that incident. A white man in Tampa was slapped by a female county democrat operative because he argued with her husband during a townhall meeting there. Another white male was hit, his shirt torn and he was thrown against a wall by union members as he tried to enter the meeting room. There is pictoral and video evidence of the violence, some in real time, by union members and other supporters of obamacare.
Your article mentioned a man who opposes obamacare advocating violence against others. Did you miss the call put out by the WH asking their supporters to "get in their faces" and "strike back twice as hard"?
I promise to be to be nicer when Obama quits promising to take away my awesome health care system, quits promising to bankrupt my children and grandchildren and quits assassinating our free market system.
I took the liberty to turn myself into the Whitehouse because I speak out against him. I thought I would save the malcontent liberal on my e-mail list the trouble of turning me in.
The more elected democrats try to sweep away the concerns of conservatives, republicans, independents and democrats with buyer’s remorse, the angrier we will get.
The more democrat Senators and Congressmen stack the townhall meetings with their sycophants and union thugs, the angrier we will get. The more they say we are Astroturf activists the deeper our roots will grow.
If our representatives don’t want angry people at their townhall meetings maybe they ought not anger us by turning everything in our country upside down.
This is a very instructive video, - http://daryl-l-hunter.blogspot.com/2009/07/obama-tells-daughter-that-maybe-her.html -
If you are young you may agree with it, if you are older it may scare the hell out of you.
Heath, I agree Obama isn't 1939 Hitler but to me he is the Grim Reaper.
What about the millions of Americans who aren't lucky enough to have, as you do, an "awesome health care system"? Shall we just leave them to twist in the wind? What if you lose your job or otherwise lose access to your "awesome health care system"? Are you just SOL at that point?
The awesome health care system is ours (America's) not mine. It is the best in the world.
If you want to throw the baby out with the bath water go ahead and try.
Torte Reform to stop defensive medicine is the answer, not health care rationing by government workers.
Love to stick around for the rest of this debate but I am on my way out the door for a photo and fishing trip to Cody so I can forget, for a while, the about the metaphorical sodomization of my children being perpetuated by the democrats because they want a different kind of country than Thomas Jefferson did.
Currently we have health care rationing by insurance companies. Is that better?
The country in Thomas Jefferson's day also didn't give the right to vote to blacks, women, or even white men if they didn't own property. Is that what you're suggesting we go back to?
Taxing one person to give the money to another. That used to be called "charity." It was done by the church. It was a tenet of religion. Alms, tithes, giving, all designed to assuage religious guilt, sins, and forgiveness by helping others, and therefore helping yourself. Well, sports fans, that has all been tossed by the Supremes, the various Circuits, and cannot be a part of government. But the end result, helping those less fortunate, is still the universal health care result. And that is religion. That is a religious practice. That is forcing people to do something they don't believe in. We can't do that with public money. Government can't deny religion and practice its tenets at the same time.
If you want health insurance, you will have to live with what you can afford. Or go without. We have broken the public assistance budget caring for working poor who have come here illegally. We have exported our blue collar jobs. We have become a nation of government employees, for government employees, by government employees, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the West. Yes, the most urbanized place on the Continent, the West. Where the vast majority live in cities, and the rest toil on a small slice of private land, or live rural to manage and play with Federal lands. Many, many, small towns in the West are fully government supported. No industry. Little ag. No timber. No mining or fossil fuels. Just a country with a county seat, a school district, and the sheriff, a court, a jail, a road department, a PUD, an irrigation district, and the offices of the public land managers and staffs. There is a convenience store with a gas station, video rentals, maybe a library section, perhaps a motel and a saloon, a cafe. But no lawyers, doctors, insurance people. No hardware, no nothing. And now you want to enslave the non-public workers into a universal health care deal with no choices. That is what the howling is about. In Oregon, after spending more money on K-12 education, we still get a flunking grade on Jr. High, and High School education results. Can you make a kid pay attention? Can you make a kid study? Can you make them attend class, be at school? Can make their parents be a two parent family? Can you stop young girls from having babies in junior high? And the result is, by their choice, students as a whole are not passing the government mandated standards. They never will for some demographics. Asian kids go to Berkley. Asian Indian kids go to Ivy League schools. A third of African American young men go to prison. Hard to go to prison if you are involved in being a student at Berkley or Princeton. The Mexican kids don't even want to learn English. The Tejanos, the ones from Texas and New Mexico who came here during and after WWII to work in ag, they speak English in public to their families, and Spanish at home. They have integrated, and it is their kids who you see in government jobs, teaching school. It isn't the illegals, the campesinos. They root for Mexico in sports, and ghetto up. Going to school and passing tests is not in their lexicon of stuff to do. We piss away billions each year, taking the money from students who want to expand their horizons, to cater to the unwilling, the non-participants. No wise Latina woman, many of whom now are going down that path of single motherhood, can keep her kid in school. A wise Latina cannot tell a young man to do anything, because that is not her place.
Taxing the public workers to fund the treasury to pay the public workers is one of those declining balance deals that ends up with nothing. So the people who are now very aware of the deal, and how much they LOSE and do not gain, are not happy. So they are angry, and loud. Just like the Left is when they don't like something. The Left should understand better than any why those people are demonstrating, and what they are concerned about.
But, come on!! Don't be critical of the gal who asked you to the dance!! If protests, disturbances, vocal opposition, civil disobedience are part of the process of health care reform, so what? It is now a recognized, allowable, institutionalized form of participation in American governance. Live with it.
Maybe you should just invite Bill Croke back. Can't be anything worse than the rest of the liars here.
And to all of you folks that think Limpbaugh walks on water. The flames he is starting can burn both ways and don't any of you people forget it.
bearbait, make sure you take your meds befoore you make comments like your again. Reality checks are comin. I am willing to bet Medicare is filling your meds too. It is too bad you have plugged your ears so long and don't see well, either. Maybe someday when you SSI gets privatized you will be in the Know Party instead in of thew NO Party.
I listened to public radio yesterday, and some real brainiac stated that the real deal in America is that this is all about having a black President. It is all racist. So you have the white liberals pulling race cards now. Do they borrow them, check them out from Democrats?
The deal about angry people is the bailed out bank foreclosing on someone for being $0.07 shy on their mortgage payment. We just pissed away a trillion to save the banking Ass of America, and then they foreclose over seven frigging cents? That makes some people really, really angry. The Congress has pissed away a few trillion to "save" the economy, and you continue to lose jobs? Hey, the commercial real estate collapse is about to happen, and the "violent" protesters want to know whose money will be used to bail out the fat cats with empty commercial real estate no longer making payments to the lenders, the banks.
When 85% have medical insurance, and it is a payroll untaxed benefit for public employees, and it is an after tax payout for private employees without company insurance, there should be some bitching. That is not fair. That is not equitable treatment for all. And it is time, if you plan to take from Medicare and Medicaid, to pay for newly insured, to tax the benefit of full wally eyes, teeth, braces, total health care insurance public employees get. Step right up to the bar and put down your money so you can continue to benefit those who don't work, won't work, won't go to school for free while working people are taxed to provide that education. A whole lot of people now see that it is not fat cats who are avoiding the fair share payments, but the coddled, special class that is government employed. That makes people think they might be second class citizens if they work in the private sector today. And they might be right.
They aren't stealing from Medicare/Medicaid. There will be people that are currently on Medicare/Medicaid that will need to move to the new system, so the drain on Medicare/Medicaid will be far less.
But that doesn't matter to you teabaggers, does it?
I have only been on Medicare since this spring. I am saving about $100 a month over my private policy, with my bills mostly drugs for thyroid and blood maintenance. That Medicare does not pay it all, for me, is no different than having insurance. My extra costs are to pay for Blue Cross to cover the voids, the skips, the crap in this universal health care for those over 65....And, I could not get full Medicare coverage because I did not sign up at 65....I had to pay a penalty...for not taking a "freebie."
ON the other hand, to have as much coverage as I now have with Medicare, I would have had to pay more for health insurance..I was on a high deductible plan that was very affordable. My premium, at 66, when I had to quit and join Medicare, was less than $400 a month.
No matter where they move people to, the costs are still there. And, my insurance company was not a listed stock company, so the quarterly performance insanity was not a part of the deal. I think I was with an insurance company that was not a part of the NYC money greed, a la Chuckie Schumer protected companies. As long as I could work, I was perfectly happy with my insurance, my costs, and my service. My wife had a bad heart deal, and technology saved her from the new heart list. It all cost a lot of money, which my big deductible paid for. I just have to make a pickup payment each month for a year to pick up the deductible. I can and did do that. And because of how I spent my money, not yours, and how I was responsible in having insurance instead of news rigs, boats, McMansions, the glitter of success, I think I have the right to be critical of those looking for a free ride.
I am a Phil Gramm kinda guy, who thinks there are fewer pulling the wagon than are riding in the wagon. That the wagon pullers think they will have more people in the wagon to pull is what the complaints are about. And we, as a nation, have to find meaningful ways to get people out of the wagon and pulling it, and having productive lives. We need jobs in this country. We cannot support a third of our population standing around with one thumb in their mouth, another in their ass, waiting for some politician to yell "Switch 'em." And throw another truck load of money at them. We need meaningful, useful, productive work, jobs. No work should be beneath anyone, and any job is better than no job. We need a national work ethic with jobs, and then this whole deal about who is going to pay for health care goes away. We all pay for our own, with our own money, using our own insurance money. That is not racism. It is not discrimination. Jobs cannot see your ethnicity, your religious tenets. Health care is a symptom. It is not the problem. I have walked the walk, that I talk about. Been there, done that, have the T shirt, the medal, and the ticket stubs. Working people with meaningful jobs can afford health care. And if the jobs are there, and you won't work, I just guess you die. Rights come with responsibility, and results. You have the right to not work. You also have the right to not get health care due to your choices. Societal tough love. We do need some of that, you know.
I really hope all these people get to lie for years in their own excrement with a tube down their throats in some godforsaken "nursing" home.
And that, folks, is why I can't buy the ObamaNation Universal Health Plan that won't include Obama, et al. The exceptions for exceptional people kill the deal for the hoi poloi. A "greed" transfer is not a solution. It still costs to create health care, and you still have to pay people to do it, and they still have to be educated. This current deal of creating financing from thin air, the trillion dollars at a whack subsidy of commerce, of banking, of "stimulus", is not backed by anything but a printing press for money. Your wheelbarrow or mine, Herr Uninsured? Cry for me, Argentina. Heat your house with Zimbabwe bucks.
"All can call for non profit medicine, and non profit drugs, but someone has to pay to do the R&D;...all these wonderful medical advances have to be paid for somehow."
I say:
TV ads are very expensive. If you watch, you will see ad after ad for prescription drugs. That is where a lot of profits are going, not to research.
Are these ads needed? Would erectile dysfunction drugs have remained unknown to the public without the Viagra or Cialis ads?
If you don't understand those two words in relations to bearbait, then you don't understand prescription medication.
So the US will find itself in the position of metering dollars to health care, and dollars to R&D;, and you end up in the Sarah Palin Death Committee decision making process. Do we spend money to save people today or take the money to put into R&D;to save people next year? Universal health care does not avail itself to developing new drugs, because the financial incentives have gone away. No end of them to build financially non-competitive energy sources, the $7.35/gallon biodiesel contract Portland's mass transit district TriMet has with an agricultural producer comes to mind. In the end it will be about government dollars, and who gets them for what purpose. That is the result of taking out private enterprise. Rationing. And paying doctors not for care given, but for efficiency of that care and its effects to the bottom line. Say, there is that Right Wing Nut Palin, again. Pointing out that when you pay doctors to not spend money on care, you are creating a new national policy to help kids called "Youth in Asia." No?
So the US will find itself in the position of metering dollars to health care, and dollars to R&D;, and you end up in the Sarah Palin Death Committee decision making process. Do we spend money to save people today or take the money to put into R&D;to save people next year? Universal health care does not avail itself to developing new drugs, because the financial incentives have gone away. No end of them to build financially non-competitive energy sources, the $7.35/gallon biodiesel contract Portland's mass transit district TriMet has with an agricultural producer comes to mind. In the end it will be about government dollars, and who gets them for what purpose. That is the result of taking out private enterprise. Rationing. And paying doctors not for care given, but for efficiency of that care and its effects to the bottom line. Say, there is that Right Wing Nut Palin, again. Pointing out that when you pay doctors to not spend money on care, you are creating a new national policy to help kids called "Youth in Asia." No?
Evidence suggests otherwise to your continued attempts to say research would die. Australia, France, Spain and others that use government health care as a fall back system continue to have thriving medical research programs and graduating more PhD's for research each year.
So your insistence about these matters seems to be quite invalid and lacking in anything remotely resembling facts. I wonder why?
That would be great if this were like a football game or something, and the team really responded to rhythmic chanting "we're number one!"
But no, there should be some sort of factual basis for such a claim, shouldn't there? I've yet to see one, just that claim as if everyone knows it's true.
But it isn't. If you want to make the claim that it is, at least provide something to base it on.
Want to watch prices come way down. No more one of every six dollars in the economy circulating in this pathetic, self-serving fraud? Everybody pays cash.
Read the following:http://whiskeyandgunpowder.com/healthcare-solution-go-back-to-cash/
Problem solved.
Even better we could require payment in gold!
You guys are morons, morons with pretensions, the worst kind.