Healthcare Reform - or something else.......

The American people did not want socialized health care in the 90’s (promoted by Hillary Clinton) and they don’t want it now (promoted by President Obama). As you now know – this isn’t just about healthcare – there is a bigger agenda at work here. Everyone is beginning to realize this. People in America are waking up.

This quote from the article below says it all:

One woman prompted a standing ovation by telling Specter: "I don't believe this is just health care. This is about the systematic dismantling of this country. … I don't want this country turning into Russia, turning into a socialized country. What are you going to do to restore this country back to what our founders created, according to the Constitution?"

A standing ovation. Americans want what we’ve always wanted – freedom to choose our own way – and it does not matter what the issue is. We do not want anyone (including our Government) making our decisions for us.

The problem is that we no longer resemble our nation when it was founded. Most of our current leaders have no idea what our founding fathers created (a Republic where we all have inalienable rights) – so they don’t understand when we say we want to return to the nation that our founders created.

Instead, we get answers like this:

However, Specter also noted that overhauling the health-care system is about America taking care of all its people.

"In our social contract, we have provisions that see to it that you take care of people who need some help," he said.

Mr. Specter – the U.S. Constitution is not a ‘social contract’ – nor does it contain provisions that the U.S. Government should take care of everyone. Actually – it was created to do the opposite – to give us freedom to take care of ourselves. I admit – providing healthcare to everyone sounds good on paper (as many things do) – but in reality – it fails (as many things do once they face the harsh test of reality). It fails because you would force us to pay a bloated, wasteful, incompetent government to manage yet one more facet of our lives. You are, once again, taking away my right to choose based on a free market. Can a private enterprise that must play by the rules of finance (private healthcare) – compete with a massive entity that does not (our government)? Over time – government healthcare will become our only healthcare (regardless of what you tell us) - a healthcare system where decisions are made for us - a healthcare system that we do not want.

Do we think the government does a good job with what it already manages? No. Do we think a government that has repeatedly shown us that it cannot balance a budget and has driven us to the edge of financial ruin can somehow manage another bloated bureaucracy? No.

Should we help people Mr. Specter? Yes – we should. But that is my personal decision. I choose whether to give to my Church and charities, whether to help my family and my friends – whether to help someone who needs assistance. I choose what to do with my money. I do not want to give it to a huge bureaucracy and watch it vanish without any knowledge of how it is really being spent. Contrary to what you believe – my money is not yours to do with as you please. With all of the local, state and federal taxes I pay – I don’t want to give you any more of my money to mismanage. Not one dime.

I believe that most Americans feel the same way I do – which is why people are angry about this universal healthcare proposal. As Americans, we do not like to have anything shoved down our throats – and this is exactly what you are doing. I have read that most of the town hall meetings have been highly tense affairs – with lots of shouting and accusations. This may be a surprise to the people in Washington D.C. – but it’s not a surprise to me. You are slowly taking away our freedoms – and we’re now noticing. This isn’t just about healthcare Mr. Specter – it’s about the American people getting fed up with our incompetent leadership losing touch with the people who elected them.

The American people have been lied to – about many things over the past few years. We have been told repeatedly that all of these stimulus and bailout packages will revive our economy – but our economy continues to deteriorate. Many of us are now realizing that most of the ‘stimulus’ is going to big banks and corporations – not us. We see our government mismanaging our finances at the local, state and federal level – leading to massive deficits and budget cuts – which is accelerating our decline.

We have been lied to about the events of September 11, 2001. Many people have demanded an independent investigation of 9/11 (family members of those killed, many architects and engineers who view the events with a trained eye, many American citizens – thousands upon thousands of people). To date – we have received no response.

The majority of Americans opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – yet off we go to fight two wars. These wars are killing and injuring our sons, daughters, fathers and mothers. These wars are separating us from our families – straining our marriages, keeping us from our children. We don’t know when they will end. We hear lots of talk of pulling out of these countries – but we see no action.

Mr. Specter – we are beginning to understand that our government is no longer by the people – for the people. It now does what it wants – whenever it wants. It is now for those special interests that have money and power. It is no longer for us – it is for you – to do with as you please. Many of us are losing our jobs – we are being forced out of our homes – we are struggling to afford food to eat – and while we continue to struggle, we see you giving more money to failing banks and financial institutions. We see you approving $500 million for private jets so that our Congressional ‘leadership’ can travel the world. I’m sure traveling to the South Pole or Mongolia is nice – I’m just not sure why I’m paying for it.

Mr. Specter, we do not care if Bank of America or Goldman Sachs fails. These are large institutions that took huge risks in order to chase after profits. They made horrible business decisions. In a truly free market – if you make colossal mistakes – it is quite possible that you will fail. If you fail – others step in to pick up the pieces. If the entire system fails – then maybe it’s time for a new system that doesn’t favor a small group of powerful interests. We understand this – why don’t you? You are taking my tax money and giving it to wealthy people who failed. It surprises you that I’m angry about this?

Mr. Specter, small businesses support approximately 70-80% of the jobs in America – yet everything you are doing (proposed healthcare taxes, healthcare requirements, access to loans/capital, etc.) is hurting small business. Based on your actions – it would appear that you are attempting to destroy small businesses while supporting large financial institutions and corporations. It surprises you that I’m angry about this?

Mr. Specter, I will warn you and our President that the American people are waking up. We are now realizing what you are trying to do – and we don’t like it. We will tolerate some things – but we will not tolerate the destruction of our freedom. We want less government – not more. We do not want you managing our businesses or our healthcare plans. We want you out of our lives as much as possible. We want a Republic where our rights are honored above all else and our government actually listens to us.

Mr. Specter, if you insist on taking away more of our freedoms - then you will force us to act. These town hall meetings are just the beginning. Maybe you think we’re soft and easily manipulated? Maybe we have been – but no longer. Do I need to remind you what has happened in the past to those who have threatened our freedom in America? This nation was founded because England tried to do – exactly what you are trying to do to us. We have never accepted oppressive government – and we won’t now. Continue to threaten our freedom as you are doing now – and we will unite - and stand against you. Make no mistake – we are not like you. We will not give in easily to socialism and global government. You are waking a sleeping giant.

Mr. Specter, if we allow you and our leaders in Washington D.C. to destroy this country – then everyone who fought and died to protect our freedom – will have died in vain. We can’t let that happen. We won’t let that happen.

We will truly unite under God. We will seek our creator and ask Him to forgive us for what we have become. We will seek knowledge and wisdom from Him – not you. We will ask for strength and courage from the Creator of the heavens and earth. We will put away our prejudices and our differences and we will stand - against you and the global elite.

Mr. Specter, we do not want healthcare reform – we want our freedom. We don’t want the government running our lives – we want to remain free to choose. We want to be free of this international banking cartel that is destroying our economy and our nation. We want strong leaders who will stare into the face of evil and not flinch – but stand for us. We want leaders who are honorable and listen to us – and act in our best interests – not in the interests of a small minority.

We want true leadership – and we’re not getting it.

jg – August 11, 2009
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Specter faces angry crowd at town hall meeting

CNN.com

Posted: August 11th, 2009 12:02 PM ET

LEBANON, Pennsylvania (CNN) — A hostile crowd shouted questions and made angry statements Tuesday at a town hall meeting on health care led by Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter.
At one point, Specter shouted into his microphone that demonstrators disrupting the proceedings would be thrown out.

"We're not going to tolerate any demonstrations or any booing," he said after one audience member shoved another making an unsolicited speech. "So it's up to you."

Many in the crowd identified themselves as conservative Republicans, with one man noting they had voted Specter to Congress before the senator changed parties earlier this year.

One woman prompted a standing ovation by telling Specter: "I don't believe this is just health care. This is about the systematic dismantling of this country. … I don't want this country turning into Russia, turning into a socialized country. What are you going to do to restore this country back to what our founders created, according to the Constitution?"

Specter responded by noting his support for the Constitution as a past chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on issues such as warrantless wiretaps.

"When you ask me to defend the Constitution, that's what I've been doing," Specter said.
However, Specter also noted that overhauling the health-care system is about America taking care of all its people.

"In our social contract, we have provisions that see to it that you take care of people who need some help," he said.

Several people asked if a health-care bill would mean taxpayer dollars would pay for others to get abortions. Specter responded that any measure passed by Congress would allow people to choose a plan that didn't cover abortions.

The shoving incident occurred early in the 90-minute session, when a man started shouting that he had been told by Specter's staff that he could speak, but he didn't get one of the 30 cards distributed to people allowing them to ask questions. Another man stood up and shoved the protester, and Specter approached the men shouting for calm.

"You and your cronies in government do this kind of stuff all the time," the protester shouted before leaving the hall. "I'm not a lobbyist with all kinds of money to stuff in your pockets. I'll leave you so you can do whatever the hell you do."
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AUGUST 11, 2009

Obama’s Tone-Deaf Health Campaign

Wall St. Journal

By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ

It didn’t take chaotic town-hall meetings, raging demonstrators and consequent brooding in various sectors of the media to bring home the truth that the campaign for a health-care bill is, to put it mildly, not going awfully well. It’s not hard now to envision the state of this crusade with just a month or two more of diligent management by the Obama team—think train wreck. It may one day be otherwise in the more perfect world of universal coverage, but for now disabilities like the tone deafness that afflicts this administration from the top down are uninsurable.

Consider former ABC reporter Linda Douglass—now the president’s communications director for health reform—who set about unmasking all the forces out there “always trying to scare people when you try to bring them health insurance reform.” People, she charged, are taking sentences out of context and otherwise working to present a misleading picture of the president’s proposals. One of her key solutions to this problem—her justly famed message encouraging citizens to contact the office at flag@whitehouse.gov if they got an email or other information about health reform “that seems fishy”—set off a riotous flow of online responses. (The word “fishy,” with its police detective tone, would have done the trick all by itself.)

These commentaries, packed with allusions to the secret police, the East German Stasi and Orwell, were mostly furious. Others quite simply hilarious. Ms. Douglass, who now has, in her public appearances, the air of a person consigned to service in a holy order, was not amused.
Neither has she seemed to entertain any second thoughts about the tenor of a message enlisting the public in a program reeking of a White House effort to set Americans against one another—the good Americans protecting the president’s health-care program from the bad Americans fighting it and undermining truth and goodness.

She intended no such outcome, doubtless. That this former journalist, now a communications director, failed to notice anything amiss in the details of that communiqué is a bit odd but not altogether surprising.

Crusades are busy endeavors, the enlistees in this one, like those in every undertaking of this White House, concerned with just one message. Which is that the Obama administration is in possession of vital answers to ills and inequities that have long afflicted American society (whether Americans know it or not), and that those opposed to those answers and that vision are cynics, or operatives of the powerful vested interests responsible for the plight Americans find themselves in (whether they know it or not), or political enemies bent on destroying the Obama administration.

It shouldn’t have been surprising, either, that the tone of much of the commentary on the town-hall protests was what it was. There was Mark Halperin for one, senior political editor for Time, bouncing off his chair, Sunday, in agitation over all the media coverage of this rowdiness—“a horrible breakdown of our political culture, our media culture” and so “bad for America,” as he told CNN’s Howard Kurtz. “I’m embarrassed about what’s going on, as an American.” The disruptions and coverage thereof distorted serious discussion, he explained. Mark Shields said much the same on Friday’s PBS NewsHour, if with less excitation, pointing out that these events were “not good for the democratic process,” and were a breakdown of civil debate.

There was no such hand-wringing over the decline of civil debate, during, say, election 2004, when cadres of organized demonstrators carrying swastika-adorned pictures of George W. Bush routinely swarmed about, and packed rallies. There was also that other “breakdown of our media culture,” that will dwarf all else as a cause for embarrassment, the town-hall coverage included, for the foreseeable future. That would be, of course, the undisguised worshipful reporting of the candidacy of Barack Obama.

That treatment, or rather its memory—like the adulation of his great mass of voters—has had its effect on this president, and not all to the good. The election over, the warming glow of those armies of supporters gone, his capacity to tolerate criticism and dissent from his policies grows thinner apace. His lectures, explaining his health-care proposals, and why they’ll be good for everybody, are clearly not going down well with his national audience.

This would have to do with the fact that the real Barack Obama—product of the academic left, social reformer with a program, is now before that audience, and what they hear in this lecture about one of the central concerns in their lives—his message freighted with generalities—they are not prepared to buy. They are not prepared to believe that our first most important concern now is health-care reform or all will go under.

The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country’s heart and character.

He seems unable to grasp what runs counter to its nature. That Americans don’t take well, for instance, to bullying, especially of the moralizing kind, implicit in those speeches on health care for everybody. Neither do they wish to be taken where they don’t know they want to go and being told it’s good for them.

Who would have believed that this politician celebrated, above all, for his eloquence and capacity to connect with voters would end up as president proving so profoundly tone deaf? A great many people is the answer—the same who listened to those speeches of his during the campaign, searching for their meaning.

It took this battle over health care to reveal the bloom coming off this rose, but that was coming. It began with the spectacle of the president, impelled to go abroad to apologize for his nation—repeatedly. It is not, in the end, the demonstrators in those town-hall meetings or the agitations of his political enemies that Mr. Obama should fear. It is the judgment of those Americans who have been sitting quietly in their homes, listening to him.

—Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.