U.S. Chamber Sinks Big Money Into Health Care Ads In Handful Of Key States
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is perhaps the most powerful and well-funded foe of much of President Obama’s governing agenda, just announced that it’s running a “multi-million-dollar” national ad campaign attacking the Dems’ health care reform proposals as “expanded government control of health care”.
I’ve obtained a detailed state-by-state breakdown of the first round of the Chamber’s ad spending from an ad buyer for labor unions, and it provides an interesting glimpse into this well-armed business group’s view of the health care battleground:
Indiana $429,105
Maine $156,345
Tennessee $89,985
Colorado $494,630
Arkansas $218,390
Kentucky $127,220
South Carolina $55,495
North Carolina $745,215
Ohio $20,000Total:$2,336,385
Big money in this round of buying is concentrated in Indiana, Colorado, Arkansas, and North Carolina. It’s hard to know precisely who the targets are, but here are the key Dem lawmakers in these states:
Indiana: Senator Evan Bayh and key House Blue Dogs like Baron Hill and Joe Donnelly.
Colorado: Senators Michael Bennet and Mark Udall.
Arkansas: Senators Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor.
North Carolina: Senator Kay Hagan and Blue Dog Heath Shuler.
The TV spot takes direct aim at the public option, showing a balloon being inflated until it bursts, as it attacks the public option and asks voters to call Congress. A script of the radio spot is here.
Anyway, the ad buying pattern of the Chamber — which didn’t immediately return an email for comment — offers a pretty reliable view of what this very powerful and flush foe sees as the main pressure points on the health care landscape right now.
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Anyone hav a clue why they’re even bothering to spend in SC? It’s not a lot of money, but it still seems like a waste for a state that is overwhelmingly conservative.
Wow, Greg! Featured TWICE last night on Rachel Maddow! Way to go!!
It is puzzling because its members must be crying out for relief from inflating healthcare premiums that they have to provide for their employees. Is the Chamber even pursuing the self-interest of its members outside the healthcare industry.
Its not puzzling at all. Don’t forget that the health insurance companies are all a part of the Chamber of Commerce and besides that it is run by right wing, free market, idealogues aka Republicans. They know that health care reform will have far reaching implications including but not limited to Democratic leadership for years and years to come. Which should coincide with more regulation shich they hate.
Never believe that this is really about oppostion to health care reform. Its not.
I’ve noted this particular Lewis Lapham essay previously but thought I’d do so again for those who aren’t aware of it or who didn’t have the chance to read it. It’s significance here relates to the key role that the US Chamber of Commerce has played since at least the very early ’70s in funding and establishing institutions (think tanks, media outlets, etc) which have the goal of eviscerating progressive legislation (deemed as a threat to business interests). It really is one of those mandatory-reading pieces and I encourage everyone to get familiar with it… http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Republican-Propaganda1sep04.htm
What do progressives stand for and how different is it from other democrats?
middleoftheroad – like conservatism or liberalism, the term refers to a political philosophy which might be described in different ways depending on time and place, not to mention who is doing the defining (if they have an ideological axe to grind). Recommend you do some reading. Wikipedia would be a good start.
thx msmolly — Maddow was very generous…
yippe finally someone taking on the progressives and their soro’s $$$$.
progresives sure don’t like it when their tatics are deployed against them!
ha lovin every minute of it, nothing better than watching the progressives MELTDOWN when they realize they can’t bully and get their way anymore!
All this money, all this todo just to try to get Americans a better deal on health care and hold the insurance industry accountable for their failure to do anything but make obscene profits.
We pay more than anyone on earth and all this money is going to make sure we, the American consumer, continues to get screwed.
The right is so purblind and stupid and gullible they are doing the work of the corporations for them.
I’d like to thank the GOP and the rest of the Right for ruining the country and everything else – thanks. This keeps up and y’all will win – a broke, unworkable country that you’re going to run with guns and nothing else.
Ummmmm, the last time progressives got their way Johnson was in office.
(Okay, Nixon.)
a broke, unworkable country that you’re going to run with guns and nothing else.
But don’t you understand???
THAT’S FREEDOM! THAT’S LIBERTY!
what’s up with the obama signs at rally making him look like hitler?
@middleoftheroad:
A “progressive” used to be a liberal who was afraid that the Republicans had so damaged the “liberal” brand that it was toxic to rational policy discussion. Rather than trying to take back ownership of the word “liberal” from the Republicans, they thought they could sneak liberal policies past the public by rebranding them as “progressive” without doing the hard work of actually winning a majority over to their way of thinking. It was a “fight fire with fire” response to the way they thought Republicans had been pushing policies past an increasingly vapid public that were facially contrary to the public interest by sloganeering and facile idological arguments.
However, now that the word “liberal” has become so ineffective as a scare word that Republicans have had to escalate the rhetoric up to “socialist,” “communist,” “fascist,” and “nazi,” in order to get a rise out of anyone, “progressive” seems to be the word that the more dogmatic liberals uses to distinguish themselves from liberal pragmatists, who they usually can’t really distinguish from those Democrats who are very conservative, completely co-opted by Big Bidness or both. (These latter, most of whom are somewhere to the right of Dwight Eisenhower, are, of course, in the venacular of the Village, referred to as “Moderates,” evidently because they are less conservative than the right-wing extremists who are now called “Conservatives.”)
Hope this clears things up for you.
Oh, from what I gather the Lyndon Larouchees have decided that Obama is the next incarnation of Hitler.
Oh, and the Hitler sign is apparently the favored visual calumny of the LaRouchites who’ve, predictably, glommed on to this “movement” the wingnuts are having. The teashirts’ favored visual contribution to rational discourse appears to be the “Obama as Joker,” (sometimes with hammer and sickle on his forehead) image.
Bring it, status-quo lovers and greedy obstructionists. You place profits ahead of people and the well-being of your country. You are shamelessly transparent.
I’m sure the OFA pushback (among others) will commence shortly.
“Oh, from what I gather the Lyndon Larouchees have decided that Obama is the next incarnation of Hitler.”
The Larouches couldn’t run a goddamn thrift store for profit. They are the most clueless bunch of nitwits in the country. They think it’s 1885 and we should all live like we’re living in a frontier town in a territory.
It ain’t like that anymore, ya idjits.
@Tena, “The right is so purblind and stupid and gullible…”. Hmmm, the record of your commentary seems to show you to be the same in regard to your Obamaphilian leftist views. Objectivity requires a critical review of all positions and a reasoned statement of position without unreasonable assertions about those who have a different opinion.
“I’d like to thank the GOP and the rest of the Right for ruining the country and everything else – thanks. This keeps up and y’all will win – a broke, unworkable country that you’re going to run with guns and nothing else.”
And somehow you think the massive government growth and spending that Obama plans on will not result in a “…broke unworkable country…? Sheesh.
To Bernie Latham. Thanks for that link. That is a great article and I have passed it on to friends.
Yes Greg, kudos to you for getting the nods from Rachel. You deserve it
“And somehow you think the massive government growth and spending that Obama plans on will not result in a “…broke unworkable country…? Sheesh.”
You are an idiot. Pure and simple.
No amount of explaining makes any difference to someone who has closed his mind, like you have. You refuse to face the truth about this and about what the GOP and right are doing and what they are basing it on – which is corporate control of the population in perpetuity.
You are so damn stupid. You are doing the work of those who do not mean you any good at all but you are so damn blinded by ideology that you have no sense left at all.
Obama is trying to fix what Bush and the Republican Congress broke and broke badly.
Go ahead and keep on with your blind ignorance of the things that we are trying to do to help you – that’s all we’re doing. We’re trying desperately to help Americans and to help the economy – which the ?Repugs ignored totally when Bush was president.
You don’t mean any of your arguments and don’t say you do – you don’t. You are parrotting what you’ve been told because there isn’t one of you who knows how to think for himself.
And that’s the last troll I ever respond to. I’m thoroughly disgusted with your immaturity among other things.
“Hold the insurance industry accountable for their failure to do anything but make obscene profits. We pay more than anyone on earth and all this money is going to make sure we, the American consumer, continues to get screwed. The right is so purblind and stupid and gullible they are doing the work of the corporations for them.”
This is hilarious when you consider that the Democratic party is the one that takes more health insurance PAC money than the Repubs, the Democratic party takes more Pharmaceutical manufacturers’ PAC money than the Repubs, the Obama administration has cut a backroom deal with PhRMA, the Obama administration has cut a backroom deal with the hospital industry, the Obama administration has a handshake deal with the health insurance industry, and the Obama administration has secured a pledge from PhRMA to provide 150 MILLION DOLLARS worth of advertising to support the Democratic H/C reform legislation.
If the health insurance companies and big pharma are so gosh darn evil then please, Democratic party, put your money where your mouth is and stop taking their “blood” money!
Tena, you are the perfect personification of what you accuse me of being. “No amount of explaining makes any difference to someone who has closed his mind, like you have.” Look in the mirror honey. You don’t know my ideology.
There a people in this country who understand that a propersly regulated, free enterprise, capitalist economic system promotes the highest standard of living for the greatest number of the population. Many of these people are Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and Independents. Yet you insist on tarring all Republicans with the same brush.
“You are an idiot. Pure and simple.”
“You are so damn stupid. You are doing the work of those who do not mean you any good at all but you are so damn blinded by ideology that you have no sense left at all.”
By name calling and non-specific utterances you also demonstrate your inability to conduct civil discourse. This belies your claim to have practiced law as there is a strong indication that you lack the intellect to achieve the required education.
This is how brilliant y’all are on the Right:
From the Columbus, Ohio TV station WBNS, here’s a story about Margaret Druko, a woman with a four and a half year-old child with Down’s Syndrome. Druko had to quit her job because child care centers wouldn’t take her daughter. The only insurance she could get was for catastrophic care at $5000 a month. “Margaret said insurance companies told her Emily was considered a death risk. Without health insurance Margaret couldn’t afford to pay for Emily to continue with her physical and occupational therapy. The Druko’s go without medication for themselves because it’s just too costly.” The final ****-you-Sarah? That story is from two weeks before Palin made her statement.
Or, in other words, ex-Governor, the death panel is there. It’s called “the profit margin.” Indeed, if the Grukos were a bit poorer, they’d qualify for government-run health care. Which would ensure that their daughter gets the care she needs. Denial of private insurance coverage because of Down’s syndrome is unsurprisingly common. That’s called “rationing.”
Or, in otherer words, ex-Governor, now that you’re out of a job, and by the time your COBRA runs out, and you’re applying for new health insurance policies, Trig better hope that pre-existing conditions clauses or excessive risk denials don’t bite his mom on her lying ***.”
Y’all are the biggest most gullible damn idiots on the planet.
Y’all don’t seem to understand that the health insurance industry has agreed to resolve the issues surrounding pre-existing conditions clauses and excessive risk denials. They will do this in exchange for millions more customers mandated by the proposed legislation and subsidized by the government. Some on the right, like myself, support such health insurance reform. Some on the right, like myself, merely do not support some aspects of the proposed legislation, such as the public option. The bills have many other problems – for instance, they fail to control long term costs. The left around here (The Plum Line) seems to repeatedly conflate two issues: many support reform and are merely opposed to certain aspects of the proposed legislation. We want to reform healthcare and health insurance with a bipartisan bill that makes things better, not worse. Obama and the Dems will pass some sort of “reform” – that’s a given – let’s please do it the right way. Something this important requires broad public support.
Reality Check.
The present American Health Care system costs the most, and delivers the least, among all the western industrialized nations. The facts; just the facts Ma’am!
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/nation/story/73546.html
Key Excerpts:
” Ask around for the healthiest country in the world, and the United States won’t come close to topping the list.
People live longer in just about every industrialized nation, from Canada to our north, throughout much of Europe, and around the Pacific in Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
New mothers and their babies also face a rockier start here, with U.S. infant and maternal death rates double some of our industrialized peers.”
“A 2006 study that compared white people in England with whites in the United States, in an effort to keep different ethnicities from complicating the findings, reached conclusions Muennig found startling. Even the richest white Americans, who are pretty much universally insured, had more diabetes, more high blood pressure, more heart disease and more cancer than the richest white Britons. On most measures they were a little less healthy than middle income Britons.”
What sbj supports is a system that even reformed will still cost more and result in poorer results than the systems he opposes found elsewhere in the world.
@oddjob: How do you “know” that I support a reformed system that will “still cost more?” Did you read my comment? “The bills have many other problems – for instance, they fail to control long term costs.” Are you contending that the ONLY way to reduce long term costs is to enact a public option? I don’t believe you are correct.
@oddjob: You DO understand that the two house proposals fail to control long term costs, even including a public option. Right?
Just like many Americans cannot afford healthcare neither can our government. Does that not matter?
How many who can’t afford health care have internet access, cell phones, credit card debt, new cars financed, etc?
How many pictures and posters of Bush as Hilter and a Nazi were we blessed with from the left for eight years?
How many times did they hang Bush and Palin in effigy and not a peep out of the left.
Now you demand respect after 8 years of total disrespect towards the sitting president and those on the right?
You want Americans to support the take over of our lives by Government?
Ha ya’ll are really crazy!
How about the Progressives dig into their own pockets and use some of the billions they collect from Americans to keep them in power and set up free clinics for those they are so concerned about?
I think the testimony of what’s out there now indicates that we already have a more expensive system that produces poorer results, and I suspect no small part of the reason the other systems are less expensive is because of their universal nature. Making healthcare universal makes it political which I strongly suspect subjects it more easily to cost containment.
(In the long term.)
Just like many Americans cannot afford healthcare neither can our government.
A ridiculous notion, but an ancient one that the insurance companies are very fond of insisting upon when it suits them.
When Bush visited Portland, Ore., for a fundraiser, protesters stalked his motorcade, assailed his limousine and stoned a car containing his advisers. Chanting “Bush is a terrorist!”, the demonstrators bullied passers-by, including gay softball players and a wheelchair-bound grandfather with multiple sclerosis.
One protester even brandished a sign that seemed to advocate Bush’s assassination. The man held a large photo of Bush that had been doctored to show a gun barrel pressed against his temple.
“BUSH: WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE,” read the placard, which had an X over the word “ALIVE.”
Another poster showed Bush’s face with the words: “F— YOU, MOTHERF—ER!”
A third sign urged motorists to “HONK IF YOU HATE BUSH.” A fourth declared: “CHRISTIAN FASCISM,” with a swastika in place of the letter S in each word.
Although reporters from numerous national news organizations were traveling with Bush and witnessed the protest, none reported that protesters were shrieking at Republican donors epithets like “****!” “*****!” and “Fascists!”
Frank Dulcich, president and CEO of Pacific Seafood Group, had a cup of liquid thrown into his face, and then was surrounded by a group of menacing protesters, including several who wore masks. Donald Tykeson, 75, who had multiple sclerosis and was confined to a wheelchair, was blocked by a thug who threatened him.
Protesters slashed the tires of several state patrol cruisers and leapt onto an occupied police car, slamming the hood and blocking the windshield with placards. A female police officer was knocked to the street by advancing protesters, badly injuring her wrist.
The angry protest grew so violent that the Secret Service was forced to take the highly unusual step of using a backup route for Bush’s motorcade because the primary route had been compromised by protesters, one of whom pounded his fist on the president’s moving limousine.
All the while, angry demonstrators brandished signs with incendiary rhetoric, such as “9/11 – YOU LET IT HAPPEN, SHRUB,” and “BUSH: ******* CHILD OF THE SUPREME COURT.” One sign read: “IMPEACH THE COURT-APPOINTED JUNTA AND THE FASCIST, EGOMANIACAL, BLOOD-SWILLING BEAST!”
Yet none of these signs were cited in the national media’s coverage of the event. By contrast, the press focused extensively on over-the-top signs held by Obama critics at the president’s town hall event held Tuesday in New Hampshire.
Oddjob ridiculous notion? So you are telling me that you run your checkbook in the red and continue to borrow more money to fix your money problems?
boy oh boy I have heard it all! reality to oddjob come back we miss you!
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Deficit grew by $181 billion in July
Falling tax receipts and increased spending on bailouts for auto companies and the financial sector and for the economic stimulus package added to the deficit, according to CBO.
Spending through July of 2009 has increased by $530 billion, which is 21 percent over the same period in 2008. The bailout money for banks, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae accounted for almost half of the spending increase. Unemployment benefits have more than doubled, Medicaid spending has grown by a quarter and Medicare spending has increased by 11 percent.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/deficit-grew-by-181-billion-in-july-2009-08-09.html
—-
President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/14/obama-deficit-unsustainab_n_203726.html
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Friday, July 17, 2009
Congress’s chief budget analyst delivered a devastating assessment yesterday of the health-care proposals drafted by congressional Democrats, fueling an insurrection among fiscal conservatives in the House and pushing negotiators in the Senate to redouble efforts to draw up a new plan that more effectively restrains federal spending.
Under questioning by members of the Senate Budget Committee, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said bills crafted by House leaders and the Senate health committee do not propose “the sort of fundamental changes” necessary to rein in the skyrocketing cost of government health programs, particularly Medicare. On the contrary, Elmendorf said, the measures would pile on an expensive new program to cover the uninsured.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/16/AR2009071602242.html
Time Magazine report uncovers where Palin and Gingrich got their Death Panel lies from.
The New York Post. That is right folks. Rupert Murdoch does it once again. Notice how those birther loons do not seem to care about being mislead around by their noses, by a guy who was not born in the USA.
The post ran a swiftboat type article, in which they made the claims about death panels, which now Palin, Gingrich, and many of those town hall ranters have picked up.
Read the Time Article at this link.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1915835,00.html
Excerpt from the Time mag. article.
“Within days, the Post article, with selective and misleading quotes from Emanuel’s 200 or so published academic papers, went viral. Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachmann, a fierce opponent of Obama’s reform plans, read large portions of it on the House floor. “Watch out if you are disabled!” she warned. Days later, in an online posting, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin attacked Emanuel’s “Orwellian thinking,” which she suggested would lead to a “downright evil” system that would employ a “death panel” to decide who gets lifesaving health care. By Aug. 10, hysteria had begun to take over in places. Mike Sola, whose son has cerebral palsy, turned up at a Michigan town-hall meeting to shout out concerns about what he regarded as Obama and Emanuel’s plans to deny treatment to their family. Later, in an interview on Fox News, Sola held up the Post article. “Every American needs to read this,” he declared. (Read “What Health-Care Reform Really Means.”)”
Thanks for the reality check, Liam.
August 22, 2007
Why the U.S. Ranks Low on WHO’s Health-Care Study
By John Stossel
The New York Times recently declared “the disturbing truth … that … the United States is a laggard not a leader in providing good medical care.”
As usual, the Times editors get it wrong.
They find evidence in a 2000 World Health Organization (WHO) rating of 191 nations and a Commonwealth Fund study of wealthy nations published last May.
In the WHO rankings, the United States finished 37th, behind nations like Morocco, Cyprus and Costa Rica. Finishing first and second were France and Italy. Michael Moore makes much of this in his movie “Sicko.”
The Commonwealth Fund looked at Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States — and ranked the U.S. last or next to last on all but one criterion.
So the verdict is in. The vaunted U.S. medical system is one of the worst.
But there’s less to these studies than meets the eye. They measure something other than quality of medical care. So saying that the U.S. finished behind those other countries is misleading.
First let’s acknowledge that the U.S. medical system has serious problems. But the problems stem from departures from free-market principles. The system is riddled with tax manipulation, costly insurance mandates and bureaucratic interference. Most important, six out of seven health-care dollars are spent by third parties, which means that most consumers exercise no cost-consciousness. As Milton Friedman always pointed out, no one spends other people’s money as carefully as he spends his own.
Even with all that, it strains credulity to hear that the U.S. ranks far from the top. Sick people come to the United States for treatment. When was the last time you heard of someone leaving this country to get medical care? The last famous case I can remember is Rock Hudson, who went to France in the 1980s to seek treatment for AIDS.
So what’s wrong with the WHO and Commonwealth Fund studies? Let me count the ways.
The WHO judged a country’s quality of health on life expectancy. But that’s a lousy measure of a health-care system. Many things that cause premature death have nothing do with medical care. We have far more fatal transportation accidents than other countries. That’s not a health-care problem.
Similarly, our homicide rate is 10 times higher than in the U.K., eight times higher than in France, and five times greater than in Canada.
When you adjust for these “fatal injury” rates, U.S. life expectancy is actually higher than in nearly every other industrialized nation.
Diet and lack of exercise also bring down average life expectancy.
Another reason the U.S. didn’t score high in the WHO rankings is that we are less socialistic than other nations. What has that got to do with the quality of health care? For the authors of the study, it’s crucial. The WHO judged countries not on the absolute quality of health care, but on how “fairly” health care of any quality is “distributed.” The problem here is obvious. By that criterion, a country with high-quality care overall but “unequal distribution” would rank below a country with lower quality care but equal distribution.
It’s when this so-called “fairness,” a highly subjective standard, is factored in that the U.S. scores go south.
The U.S. ranking is influenced heavily by the number of people — 45 million — without medical insurance. As I reported in previous columns, our government aggravates that problem by making insurance artificially expensive with, for example, mandates for coverage that many people would not choose and forbidding us to buy policies from companies in another state.
Even with these interventions, the 45 million figure is misleading. Thirty-seven percent of that group live in households making more than $50,000 a year, says the U.S. Census Bureau. Nineteen percent are in households making more than $75,000 a year; 20 percent are not citizens, and 33 percent are eligible for existing government programs but are not enrolled.
For all its problems, the U.S. ranks at the top for quality of care and innovation, including development of life-saving drugs. It “falters” only when the criterion is proximity to socialized medicine.
realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/08/why_the_us_ranks_low_on_whos_h.html
“How many who can’t afford health care have internet access, cell phones, credit card debt, new cars financed, etc?”
I get it – you don’t want to see anyone else get a break. You resent having to contribute to fairness in society.
I totally get it – every one of you is completely twisted.
Tena, nice try but you don’t get it and probably never will that is why you have to resort to the tatics you are by claiming that society is only fair when others pay for your needs!
fair is me paying for me and you paying for you That is the American way don’t like it go to a socialist country and get your fair share! ah but you won’t do that now will you!!
btw I have paid my fairshare of taxes for others for over 50 years, along with donating more of my fair share to those in need.
How did I get my fairshare? I worked for it!
I come from a family that lived at the poverty level, so I ensured I could pull myself up out of the poverty level by going to school, paying my way through college and then joining the work force, I also served my country for 10 years. I have never had a hand out from the government and don’t want one but I do pay my fair share for you and others that want to continue to reach in my pocket so you can lay on the couch and cry on the internet about the fairshare you deserve from others!
“ing that society is only fair when others pay for your needs!”
Let me spell this out in small words: I’m not asking for anything personally except to have my taxes raised back to the rate they were under Clinton.
I’m in the top 25% income tax bracket. We pay 5 figure taxes. I don’t need any help. I’M TRYING TO GET HELP FOR THOSE WHO NEED IT. NOT FOR MYSELF.
ya nasty twisted little ****.
5 figure, hell – that was years ago. WE pay 6 figure taxes.
well then reach in your pockets and help those you want to help and stay out of mine you nasty little theif! Oh that’s right liberals only want to help with other people’s money and the government controling it.
What happened to the liberals I grew up with? they hated government and would never want to even think about having the government provide for them
better yet teach those who need help how to help themselves. Oh but that would not keep the masses slaves to the DNC vote now would it.
Take your five figures and put them to good use instead of letting the government waste it while ensuring the poor get poorer.
Federal deficit higher in July, $1.27T this year
Record federal deficit climbs higher, $180.7 billion in July, $1.27 trillion so far this year
finance.yahoo.com/news/Federal-deficit-higher-in-apf-3876319127.html?x=0&.v=5
“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816
“A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
-Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
-Thomas Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 15:332
“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to E. Carrington, May 27, 1788
“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”
-John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787
James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated upon this limitation in a letter to James Robertson:
“With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”
In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
-James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)
“…[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
-James Madison
“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.” James Madison, “Letter to Edmund Pendleton,”
-James Madison, January 21, 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14, Robert A Rutland et. al., ed (Charlottesvile: University Press of Virginia,1984).
“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.”
-James Madison, Federalist No. 58, February 20, 1788
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
-James Madison, speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788
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obviously progressives have their own version of the US Constitution and history!
scat you rats hugo wants you!
God these people think they are patriots while they tear this country to bits; turn Americans against each other on the basis of age, of class, of race – they scream hatred and invective at people who are trying to make democracy work.
And they are the patriots.
You fools – if there were more of you, we’d be in trouble. But you are a very small minority and you are bucking a large majority and you are going to lose.
when will this large majority that is being bucked going to rid the US of it’s constitution?
So according to Tena the founding fathers were not patriots either!
Go Tena make it up as you go that will work screw the US Constitution the progressive don’t need no stinkin constitution!
btw Tena you are everything you claim about others and then some!
Yippee- do you use the VA health system?
Former patients could have been infected with HIV, hepatitis via non-sterile equipment
Posted June 16, 2009
By E.J. Mundell
HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, June 16 (HealthDay News) — The scandal over potentially tainted colonoscopy and endoscopy equipment used at three Veterans’ Affairs hospitals made its way to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, with U.S. lawmakers rebuking VA officials for not taking tougher action to remedy the situation.
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In February, the VA launched an investigation after learning that more than 10,000 patients at three agency hospitals in the Southeast may have been exposed to HIV, hepatitis and other infections through non-sterile equipment used in colonoscopies or endoscopies conducted as far back as 2003.
Some believe the problem may extend beyond those three hospitals, which are in Miami, Fla., Murfreesboro, Tenn. (where the problem was first detected), and Augusta, Ga., the Associated Press reported.
“I think this was an institutional breakdown,” Rep. Phil Roe of Tennessee, a doctor and ranking Republican on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs oversight and investigation subcommittee, told the news service.
After the initial problems were reported at Murfreesboro, the VA conducted a nationwide safety “step up” at its 153 medical centers. The agency says it has also discussed the issue with staff at all hospitals, as well as representatives of the company that made the equipment, Olympus America, Inc., the news service said.
The VA’s inspector general also conducted random, surprise checks on 42 VA locations to see if similar, lax sterilization procedures were in place. According to the AP, VA officials said that similar problems were noted at more than 12 other facilities, but they did not warrant follow-up blood tests from current and former patients.
According to Roe, the VA has been trying to keep patients and the public abreast of the issue since its discovery. “These people [at the VA] did not intentionally do anything wrong,” he said.
On Tuesday, the agency’s inspector general told the Congressional hearing that fewer than half of VA facilities targeted by last month’s surprise inspections have proper training and guidelines in place to improve safety.
“You would certainly think that after the initial discoveries and the directive from the VA that medical directors would make sure that all of their equipment and procedures were brought into line, and yet this investigation shows that many, many did not,” House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Filner, D-Calif., said on Tuesday. Filner did applaud the VA for the transparency with which it was handling the issue, however.
One expert believes fears over contamination via the medical instruments used at the VA may be exaggerated.
“Sterilizing medical equipment is a good idea,” Philip Alcabes, associate professor of urban public health at Hunter College in New York City, told HealthDay. “But to claim that an extra threat of transmitting blood-borne viruses pertains to the VA’s colonoscopy clinics seems like showmanship,” he added. “Since it isn’t clear that any patients were actually infected by this equipment, the situation doesn’t seem to warrant special rhetoric. It would be better to try to separate the political controversy from the actual health problem here.”
http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2009/06/16/va-faces-questions-over-tainted-colonoscopies.html
Angela | August 12th, 2009 at 07:25 pm
Yippee- do you use the VA health system?
–
I feel a loaded question here, so first let me say that any Veteran that uses the VA is not getting a hand out from the government. It is a benefit for their service to this nation. Just like retired union members who receive healthcare for life is not a handout it is a benefit they EARNED.
Now I have used the VA and can use it anytime I like as I am a 50% disabled veteran due to medical malpractice (which I had no legal recourse due to it being a military doctor/government and active duty can not sue) during surgery while I was active duty that left me unable to have children.
I don’t use the Va because they don’t carry the basic medicines I need nor do they provide the level of healthcare that I can gladly buy from the private sector. I am also frighten of government run health care as it left me unable to have children. It is A crying shame that our Veterans are not taken care of before hand outs to the welfare populus is given.
So there is no way I would ever support government run healthcare for the public knowing that the government can’t run anything without run away spending and incompetence and possible slaughter of it’s patience’s with no accountablility.
Wow how horrid and imcompetent this is just unreal this poor young man now has no legs! This breaks my hear and makes me sick there is no reason for this incompetence from our government!And now they have the nerve to try and force a plan down our throats that they exempt themselves from.
Air Force Man goes in for Gall Bladder surgery and comes out with legs amputated, gallbladder intact due to mistake by Air Force Surgeon.
Last week, 20-year-old Colton Read, who grew up in Arlington and who’s now in the U. S. Air Force, went to have laparoscopic surgery to remove his gall-bladder at David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base near Sacramento.
His mother, Shelly Read-Miller says he wasn’t worried. “He said ‘Mom, this is routine, it’s no big deal.’”
But what happened during surgery turned out to be a very big deal.
Jessica Read says around 10 a.m., about an hour into the procedure, “A nurse runs out, ‘We need blood now,’ and she rounds the corner and my gut feelings is, ‘Oh my God, is that my husband?’”
She says his Air Force general surgeon mistakenly cut her husband’s aortic artery, but waited hours to transport him to a state hospital which has a vascular surgeon. “It took them until 5:30 to get him to UC Davis. I don’t understand.”
Because Read lost so much blood during that time, doctors had to amputate both legs. His mother sobbed, “I watched him take his first steps, and now his legs are gone.”
Read is still in intensive care, and doctors can’t remove his gall bladder for fear of infection.
Now, his wife says they must keep his spirits up because he knows what happened to him. “When we’ve been in there he’ll say, ‘They’re gone,’ and we say, ‘It’s okay though. You made it through the surgery we have your life, thank God.’”
In a statement, Lt. Holly Hess, chief of public affairs at Travis Air Force Base says, “We are conducting an exhaustive review with experts from outside David Grant Medical Center, as well as an internal investigation with the goal of ensuring patient safety and quality care at the center.”
Read’s wife says the doctor admitted it was human error. “All my husband ever wanted to do was to deploy, all my husband ever wanted to do was serve his country. He used to tell me when we had flyovers and they played the national anthem, the chills he would get from the pride that he felt from being an American airman, and this is something an Air Force doctor has taken from him.”
But because of an old federal law called the Feres Doctrine, Read, his wife, and his family members can’t sue the military over what happened to him.
Until last November, retired Lt. Colonel Colby Vokey served in the U. S. Marine Corps for 21 years, the past 11 as a judge advocate, or attorney. “To me, it’s disgraceful.”
Vokey says the original thought behind the law was, “The military would make someone whole. That if you’re hurt in the line of duty, hurt in battle, the military would take care of their own. That’s certainly not the case, and certainly not the case with this young man.”
A bill is pending in congress that would end this law.
For now, Read’s wife says the military may place him on medical retirement, in which he’ll likely receive less than half his $1600 monthly salary. “I can’t understand why they won’t help him when they did this to him.”
Friends who serve with Read at the Ninth Intelligence Squadron at nearby Beale Air Force Base have sent him a get well card. Read’s family members say his friends at the base and commanders there have provided much emotional and financial support.
Jessica says she knows she must keep it altogether. “I’ve made up my mind. I can cry later, because right now he needs me. He needs me to be strong.”
cbs11tv.com/local/medical.mistake.military.2.1091010.html