Here locally, there are two former Republicans who contact me when they receive missives or screeds that they think I should see. One switched sides in 2003 and the other switched sides in 2007, but both are older men who were GOP donors for years, and they remain on every Republican list.
Both offer good, practical suggestions on how Democrats might respond locally to whatever the GOP is selling nationally, suggestions I find very helpful. I don’t know why they seem to be better at opposition than the local Democrats. You have to know your opponent, I guess.
Yesterday, one of the two received a fax at his workplace (he’s an auctioneer) from our House member, Robert Latta.
Latta ran as a moderate in a (then) poor environment for Republicans, but I have yet to see him break ranks with the GOP on any vote, so whatever he claims to believe is essentially immaterial. He is much an extremist as any random Tea Partier.
The fax is a Constituent Opinion Ballot. It asks whether Latta’s constituents want to repeal the Affordable Care Act. I have gotten communications from his office in the past, but no more. I guess I am no longer a constituent. I seem to have dropped off his list after I placed calls to his office last year, asking his support for the Affordable Care Act. That may well be a coincidence or an error, but, really, if it isn’t, what a coward. My polite phone calls merit removal from his list?
There are two interesting portions of the fake ballot. The first is a quote:
According to a study published last fall, by the time Obamacare is fully implemented in 2017, approximately 7.4 million seniors will have been forced out of their Medicare plan…
There’s the obligatory Medicare scare we’ve gotten used to from these fierce and principled opponents of government-run health care. Except Medicare Advantage. That particular government-run program they like because it costs more than the public program, and they’re deficit hawks, as we all know, because they say they are.
Incidentally, that’s a quote not from Rep. Latta but instead from Rep. Wally Herger (R, CA). Representative Latta apparently said nothing worth repeating on health care in his time in office, so he turned to his colleague Wally for the now-obligatory GOP fear-mongering on Medicare.
The second is this:
GOP leaders pledged to repeal and replace the health care law, but the House will not vote on a separate replacement bill next week. Instead, lawmakers will consider a resolution that instructs three committees to report health care legislation. The resolution sets 12 goals for the bill, including lowering health care costs and premiums, increasing the number of insured Americans and “to provide people with pre-existing conditions access to affordable health care coverage”.
Is that an admission that there are popular parts of the ACA, and Republicans are going to have to pretend they plan to address health care, if only through a vote on a resolution to do something or other, sometime?
Cat Lady
It’s an admission that crying wolf works until it doesn’t. They’re running out of time until implementation proves what lying shit bags they are like every other time they’ve been wrong – like about Medicare, women’s suffrage, gay marriage, abortion, etc. etc.
Zuzu's Petals
Well, I hope you freep that questionaire/ballot by sending around copies to folks who didn’t get one so they can vote “don’t repeal ACA.”
The Dangerman
…because they will have died. Are they really proposing Medicare coverage after death?
Joseph Nobles
A polite phone call asking about this Constituent Opinion Poll and why you were no longer receiving things like that might be an interesting conversation.
kay
@Zuzu’s Petals:
His suggestion was to call this to Rep Latta’s attention, on return.
It’s been widely reported. I posted it here when it came out, in the LA Times, but maybe “Forbes” is one of those sources that rightwingers find credible.
Or, they just like the word “Forbes” because it has primal associations to money.
debbie
I don’t think it matters what you do. The GOP will simply say they don’t believe it. Facts are such pesky things.
cmorenc
Another GOP fraudulent disinformation scare that’s being passed around at a similar grassroots level is that the notion that the HCR law contains a 3.8% real estate sales tax that comes into effect starting 2013, that will apply to people selling their primary residences. Here’s the text of one of those right-wing emails that’s currently circulating, which but-for the source link to gop.gov for the information contained in the email (worth following), you could dismiss as the strictly unofficial initiative of a hyperactive crank. However, if you follow the link it confirms that this fraudulent disinformation is being knowingly propagated by the GOP itself.
Now here’s a link to an accurate explanation of the tiny germ of accurate fact from which the above monstrous falsehood was spun – at the website of that notoriously left-wing progressive organization, The National Association of Realtors
The 3.8% tax actually turns out to amount to a 3.8% capital gains surtax on unearned net investment income that potentially, though in practice only very rarely, could include sale of a primary residence. Taxpayer’s lifetime 500k exclusion from recognition of any gain from sale of a primary residence is unaffected, as are any other deductions, exclusions, etc that would have applied before the new law comes into effect. Not only that, but the new surtax only applies to the LESSER of:
a) adjusted gross income over 250K for a married couple filing jointly or over 200k for a single taxpayer; or
b) net investment income (which would have to be over 500k from sale of a primary residence to kick in).
The GOP is propagating the false notion that this surtax would apply to most ordinary middle-class folks, and likely at an especially vulnerable moment, sometime after retirement.
The GOP truly has no shame about spinning completely fraudulent lies from monstrously distorted tiny germs of truth. This real estate “sales tax” applied to homeowners notion is simply less notorious than the “death panel” notion they knowingly propagated, but just as big an outright lie.
Cat Lady
@kay:
You know what will really be funny? When Obamacare has the same connotation that Medicare has, or Social Security. One of those things that’s hard to imagine how life was beforehand. That’s what they’re the most worried about, which is the one and only time Bill Kristol was right.
Mustang Bobby
I grew up in NW Ohio and remember when Latta’s dad was the representative from that district. Mr. Latta Sr. was a right-wing Nixon hack; he was on the House Judiciary Committee overseeing impeachment in 1974 and supported Nixon to the end. When Mr. Latta’s successor, Paul Gilmour, dropped dead a few years back, my folks worked tirelessly for his opponent in the special election that put him in office.
Mr. Latta can be charitably described as charisma-free.
cmorenc
OOPS! The block-quote dysfunction of Word-Press strikes again! This snippet was part of the GOP’s disinformation email, and not part of my own commentary about it three or four posts up. I hope that was obvious.
Yutsano
@cmorenc: Nah you’re good. Usually it’s pretty obvious when FYWP does something like that.
@kay: I know this much: parents all over the country breathed a sigh of relief when they could keep their kids on until 26 regardless of health condition. The Republicans will have a very hard sell for justifying reversing that.
sukabi
Kay, my guess is that this whole thing is a big stall tactic… they know they won’t be able to repeal health insurance reform, and the insurance co’s know that as well. In the meantime they’re trying to gum up the works to squeeze every last dime for the insurance industry (which is busy gouging individual policy holders for every last penny) … the result of all this douchebaggery will likely be a public option much sooner than any of them expect…
agrippa
I think that the GOP is putting on a show; throwing raw meat to the fire eaters.
Boehner and Cantor are hacks who know to do such a show.
Yutsano
@sukabi:
Maybe this is wrong of me, and maybe it’s because I expect people in governing positions to, y’know, govern, but I really encourage them to go all health care all the time. It might just keep them from doing any real damage, plus the less they try to muck up the economy the better.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: In that case, let’s just encourage them to follow up the reading of the Constitution with the Federalist Papers. That should take some time.
Joseph Nobles
OT, but Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, has been involved in some sort of shooting incident in Tuscon at a Safeway. No real details anywhere, but Twitter’s going nuts.
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/08/132764367/congresswoman-shot-in-arizona
Apparently it was a political event, and unconfirmed accounts are saying that she was shot point-blank in the head.
Joey Maloney
o/t
Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona has just been shot at an outdoor constituent event in front of a grocery store in Tucson. She was shot point-blank in the head and up to six of her staffers are also reported wounded. There’s no word yet on if Giffords has died or anyone else’s condition.
I just heard this on NPR. The Tucson newspaper’s website has a one-line story.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: Some of the stuff in there just might make the teabagger heads asplode. Oh wait…there may not be a down side to this.
Loneoak
Entirely OT, but I don’t anticipate an open thread for awhile.
This is the dumbest concern trolling I’ve seen in quite awhile. Cartoon birds = terrahists.
mr. whipple
@Joseph Nobles:
OMG.
lllphd
when are the dems going to just haul these folks in on criminal fraud charges??
i mean, this is intentional misinformation, deceptive practices, out and out propaganda. surely someone with the money and legal know-how (so often in tandem) and cajones will take them on.
on a related note, i am sooo hoping soros will sue the living socks and boxers off one glenn beck and faux news for that unbelievably lie-filled slander perpetrated for weeks and weeks, and quite possibly not done yet. don’t know the statute of limitations wherever soros might file, but gotta be at least a year from the time soros became aware of it. we should all watch to see if he takes them on.
we have to start calling these lying liars on their shameful lies. or, obviously, they just keep it up. god knows the rest of the msm to do anything about it.