Here’s a Leftist Spin on Healthcare For You
April 14, 2010 | Filed Under Barack Obama, Budget, Business, Capitalism, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Government, Government, Corruption, Health, Liberals, President, Socialism, Taxes, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off
-By Warner Todd Huston
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said that Obamacare is a ”momentous step toward comprehensive health care.” Implicit in that statement is that Obamacare isn’t finished and the left fully intends to up the ante even more as time goes on. But that isn’t the spin I announced in my headline. Here is something from the AFL-CIONowBlog written by one Mike Hall. Try this on for spin…
The bill survived a $100 million lie-and-distortion campaign by Big Insurance to kill it—the same kind of tactics these groups have aimed at health care proposals for six decades.
That is some wonderful spin, isn’t it? The bill “survived” a distortion campaign designed to “kill it,” says Hall. But he’s spinning one hundred miles an hour with his claim. The truth is that the bill did not survive that campaign.
The bill was unpopular with a majority of Americans throughout the process and a strongly Democratic Senate seat in blue, blue Massachusetts flipped to the Republicans because the legislation was so unpopular. Millions of Americans were so outraged by Obamacare that they got up from their couches and held anti-Obamacare rallies from coast to coast. This sort of uprising over taxes and government hasn’t been seen in many decades in this country. In fact, the last time may have been the original tax protests against the British!
The only reason Obamacare made it into law is that it “survived” our democratic process, the process that should have killed it. If our representatives had actually been serving we the people, this bill would have been tabled at the very least.
Yet here is the AFL-CIO spinning this legislative triumph as a win over special interests when it is really a defeat of the voters as well as an obviation of our very political process.
Hall wasn’t the only one spinning, though, as Trumka himself proved he was up for some spinning of his own. In the same AFL-CIO post we see him trying his hand at the venerable art.
Trumka says the bill is not “a baby step or half measure,” but a solid step forward to set our country on a path to health care that actually works for working families.
That might sound good at first but on closer examination it doesn’t even stand up to logic. If something is not a “baby step or a half measure” then it is the full measure, a finished journey. Yet Trumka follows that by saying that it’s only a “step forward” to set us on a path to healthcare. Trumka obviously feels the journey is just beginning here, so Obamacare as it is now by necessity proves to be a “baby step” on that new path.
And therein lies the prevarication from the left on this whole legislative journey because this entire process was built on spin. Even weeks after passage Obama is running about the country telling us that this is no take over of healthcare and that he doesn’t want an eventual socialist healthcare system, but all his supporters and those that voted for the legislation are saying just the opposite.
Before the vote we were told it was all about saving lives. After the vote we began to see the admissions by members of Congress that this was but a redistribution of wealth and was meant for reasons other than to help American’s health.
Not long after the vote, for instance, on the floor of the Senate, Max Baucus told us that this bill was “an income shift” to address the “maldistribution of income.” On March 24 on MSNBC Democrat leader Dick Durbin said that the tax hikes in the bill was “the cost of having the kind of America we want to have.” Vice President Joe Biden even told ABC in March that government was going to “control the insurance companies.” That same month Congressman John Dingel told WJR radio that the bill took so long because it “takes a long time to put together legislation to control the people.”
It turns out that healthcare was far less the reason for this legislation than redistributing the wealth and controlling businesses and the people.
The spin is in high gear and it isn’t done yet.
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.
Leave a Comment
If you would like to make a comment, please register to do so. I hate to do that but there are so many spam-bots out there that deleting spam comments would be a full time job if I were to just open it up for anyone without asking them to jump through a few hoops first.
You must be registered and logged in to post a comment. Anyone can register. No registrant's information is kept, used, or sold. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
Social Networking
Help the Soldiers!
American Genius
Our Founding Ideas- The Declaration of Independence
- The Federalist Papers
- The U.S. Constitution
- Debates of 1787
- The Anti-Federalist Papers
- The Writing of John Locke
"Governments are instituted among men,deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776
Recently Written
Featured Sites
What THEY Say:
Foreign News In English
Illini Alliance
Blogroll
of Thinking
Political Parties
Contact Us
Email Publius' ForumArchives
Links
Other Blogs
MilBlogs
Religion
Gun Rights
Education
Separation of School
from State
Radio Hosts
| Blog: |
| Publius' Forum |
Topics: |
| Politics, News, Commentary |
