Healthcare Plan Misinformation Video-induced Debate

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Three Rachel Maddow clips

Rachel Maddow does an excellent job (the post has good links) at dissecting the 'spontaneous average American people's outrage' that took place at those town hall meetings - which the GOP has nothing, nothing at all, to do with - and exposing it as what it actually is, very effective and professionally organised republican PR, or 'Astroturf'. The look Maddows takes at Recess Rally's (probably only by accident also engaged in organising those ubiquitous tea parties) list of donors is instructive.

I eventually found the video on Youtube:

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In this organised political circus, protesters are even being shipped around the country in organised bus tours, where probably, like in game shows (after all this is show business), the organisers use whips to bring the folks into 'the right mood'. Probably they are even so kind, efficient and far sighted to prepare some protesting equipment. In that sense, it is not 'rent a mob', but 'first bait and then ship a mob'. People like Limbaugh and Beck and others in the right wing echo chamber play an instrumental role in doing the baiting. It is really eerie, when you listen to one day of US right wing political commentary, they are all harping the same themes.

The imaginary threats these people protest against have no equivalent in reality and the goal they in reality protest for they don't know about. Granted, it would probably be unlikely to get them on the streets for securing the profits of insurance companies by ruling out state competition in health care. It also suggests that the GOP spinmeisters must be cynics with little more than contempt for the GOP activist base. I imagine that it must be hard to respect people that you manipulate (think of Abramoff calling the Indian clients he ripped off for millions the 'monkeys from the Choctaw tribal council'). To them they are merely a bunch of misinformed and gullible - and thus useful - idiots who can be sold everything. In saying that I assume they are indeed, in Abramoff's mold, cynics, and not so outlandish and actually believe the nonsense they spout out about, say, socialism, eugenics, Hitler, Obama etc. pp.

The most brazen example for such a cynical and wildly successful manipulation by GOP allied lobbyists would probably be the case of Jack Abramoff 'activating' religious gambling opponents to lobby against (competing) gambling interests - and make anti-gambling activists secure gambling interests. Oh the irony. Like robocalls, orchestrated outrage it is an established tactic used by republican operatives. Does anyone remember the 'Brooks Brothers Riot'?

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In that sense, GOP head Steele is disingenuously right in the technical sense only when he says that neither the national GOP nor the state parties have anything to do with it. Right, the organisations running that are not the GOP. They only work for them, in tacit collaboration, and with a degree of (im)plausible deniability.

 

The hypocrisy of the Democrats and their supporters never ceases to amaze me.

Nationwide we have large groups of concerned citizens exercising their first amendment rights to be heard and to tell their government that they are not happy with the direction things are going. Instead of listening to what the people are saying they spend their efforts trying to come up with ways to dismiss them instead. Are there people that are trying to organize these efforts? Of course there are. People don't just spontaneously show up without some sort of organization.

Have the Democrats lost their memory? Do they react this way at gay pride marches? Do any of them remember Cindy Sheehan and her code pink activists? Did it never strike any of them as odd that she would show up wherever there was going to be an anti-war protest? Did the million man march for black men just happen spontaneously? Have they already forgotten about how ACORN, Moveon.org, Code Pink, Daily Kos, etc. have been telling them how to mobilize for almost a decade?

If Tal asked us all to march on Washington for CRPG rights and we all showed up, does that belittle the cause?

I believe the Democrats are actually jealous of the tea party movement. Activism and protest have long been the staple of the liberal. I am having trouble remembering a time in our history when conservatives have taken to the streets. Conservatives (being conservative) are far more likely to just sit on the couch and watch the news (my opinion). The fact that all these people are actually making themselves heard is miraculous and I for one am damn proud of them.

 

Snook, somehow I knew you would say that.

Sheehan iirc didn't protest the Iraq war because she wanted to make money, or wanted someone else to make money. She's a true peacenick. In doing her protests she expressed a political view that resonated in the country (as opposed to Code Pink's, which doesn't, really). She didn't need to deceive anyone about her intentions. Nobody really has a business interest in legalising gay marriage either. By the way, Code Pink or Fred Phelps also don't do it for the money.

Insurance companies financing Astroturf protests against government health care, against competition, do it for securing their profits. That is ordinary political lobbying for business interests and PR - disguised as citizen protest, and under pretexts like ... that Obama wants to kill America's elderly and wants to impose socialism or some other nonsense.

The things you are comparing may look similar in means, in how they express themselves, but are quite different as far as ends are concerned.

Astroturfing, which involves a far more pronounced element of deception, apparently doesn't.

 

What?! It's "miraculous" that the insurance lobby is being HEARD? With all the power and influence peddling that they already have in government and in Washington, now that they are busing in people and shutting down townhall meetings, and you consider that a "miracle?" The insurance companies have almost an unlimited supply of resources and money in order to make themselves heard.

Wow. While that may be an accurate description of yourself, and non-religious conservatives, who have had very little to protest over the previous 8 years, since conservatives had all the levers of power, that hardly describes the religious side of your tribe. Of course, you have forgotten about the pro-life movement. You may not have them there, but we've had a number of them here by the religious right - whether it's abortion clinics, evolution being taught in schools, trying to ban books at the local library or even attacking local displays of "art," there have been disruptions at our local government meetings in our area.

 

Oh, and the anti-war people telling everyone it was all for oil and big business is different? Let's face it, Tal, demonizing the opponent has long been a legitimate tactic in any form of politics, street level or congressional. What worries me is that, on occasion, it's dead on, but no one listens anyway because it's demonizing.

Also, TGS is right, it is amazing that the non-religious right have mobilized like this. I don't remember that happening for as long as I've been paying attention to politics. Did they do this for Clinton, or was that just the religious? That period is a little fuzzy for me.

 

You may want to think back to several months ago, there were "tea parties" which drew much large crowds of conservatives. This is somewhat different in that the crowds are much smaller and are being bused in, so it's often only 100 or so people, rather than several thousand. What is amazing is that GOP operatives can lie and cheat their way into these meetings, pretending to be just plain "concerned citizens." I'm losing vast amounts of respect for people who believe that this is just "business as usual."

 

I was tired and going to head to bed but once you start reading and commenting it is hard to stop.

This may be business as usual. But even if it is it seem to be to be a poor acting to disrupt sessions between congress people and the people represent.
Especially if the people doing the disruption come from outside the district.

I could support a debate in each congressional district but if the accounts of not even letting congressmen speak are true this isn't even that. This is making sure there is no discussion.

 

Yes, they take a group of agitated people, bus them to a town hall meeting with the express reason to ruin the entire event by turning it into a riot. They do not have an interest in debate. The idea is to kill debate by shouting the speaker down. That's just a yota more subtle than traditional brown-shirt tactics - because there are no uniforms there is a degree of deniability.

It is interesting to have a look at the Tampa incident and how the mob got mobilised. The Tampa chapter of the Glenn Beck's 9-12 Project says it encouraged members to show up and ask questions. Others had received e-mails from the Hillsborough Republican Party that urged people to speak out against the plan and offered talking points. Interesting side note - the opening headline of the "Stand Up and Lead" section of the 912 Project Web site reads: We Surround Them. To get a glimpse on how that looks like, footage from Tampa

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Wouldn't the GOPer herd's conduct here meet the standard of 'disorderly conduct', i.e. one who with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm ... engages in ... threatening ... or tumultuous behaviour? With escalation potential as well; people have been injured in these riots.

The Republicans who organise these riots, perhaps better put as 'town hall raids', signal that they are willing to ruin every congressman's day if they are pursuing health care reform any further - or probably any other policy, because when this works, they will repeat it. Yes, that are intimidation tactics, and in this scope they are pretty much unprecedented in recent American history.

 

Tal, the anti-war group did exactly that in the early 90's with Desert Storm. Complete with megaphones, huge banners and flags to burn.

It seems to be a tradition in the US for the minority party to use disruptive tactics. It's pathetic, but it works (what's really pathetic is that it works).

 

I actually count that and this as the same thing (one a continuation of the other), and I doubt you'd disagree too much.

Shouting down speakers, threatening, and being disruptive, I agree are mob tactics, though they're also not uncommon in the US, as T2 pointed out. Spouting propaganda that may or may not be based on fact is standard operating procedure for everyone, though.

Again, that's very much the nature of extremist politics, and this is hardly the first time it's been used, nor are the Reps the only ones who have used it.

I blame the news for that. Sensationalism wins the day, and mob riots get more attention than a rational discussion of the problem all the time.

Would you care to support that claim? How were they different? Did they not shout down speakers? Were they not bussed from location to location? Did they keep to their own rallies rather than disrupting others?

 

Tal, there's also a huge difference between a war (where the public planning phase is all of about a day and the war can be realistically called off at any time) and a bill (where the public planning phase is months to years and, once passed, it likely won't change for a decade or more). This is the right time to protest. It's the manner of protest that's the question.

 

That would be the government taking health care away from people. I don't think even the Republicans would go there, once there are millions of people on the program. Most rational Americans are not concerned with the notion of a government public insurance plan, but how much it will cost and how to pay for it, that raises many concerns.

But really, it's the only workable solution. Insurance reform would be better -- tighter regulation, but the insurance companies just ignore the law, pay the millions in fines, and go on their merry way. They don't care if the government fines them, they just raise your rates to pay for it. I heard someone comment on TV the other day, that an American car has about $750.00 in steel in it and $1600.00 in someone's health care. Some people don't realize that the cost of health care is passed through the entire ecomony. No company gives anything away for free if it can help it.

 

No, future Republicans will not repeal government provided health care.

Rather they will appoint an expert from the insurance industry to head the agency. He will rewrite the programs regulations and cut funds to make the program more 'competitive', then they will cut jobs in the administration of the program to 'make it more cost effective', perpetually reorganise it to make it ever 'more efficient', and then, when the program eventually succumbs to its inevitable disorganisation, disruption and growing workload, they will point at it's failure and then they will 'reform it' and say:

Much like what they did to FEMA - call it engineered failure, or 'creative destruction'.

 

Well, the insurance companies are shielded from the free market. They have a captured client base, because it's either "pay or die." When the Reaper is your only competition, it's an easy choice.

 

If Tal got us all to participate by convincing us that the opponents of CRPG's were led by a fascist who was worse than Hitler, who wanted to kill all our grandmas, and when we showed up we all chanted "tyranny!" and were generally disruptive a-holes, then, obviously, YES.