Comments on: Chamber Of Commerce Want Ad: “Need Economist To Write Study Trashing Health Care Reform”

By: anwaya

anwaya — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:57:01 +0000

I called Alan’s office, they were very receptive.

I don’t know that it has to be individuals, the GOP moves as a herd and acts as a herd, they can take the blame for this as a herd. Who knows what other truthiness-creating the herd’s members have been up to?

By: sad4america

sad4america — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:47:58 +0000

just like Unions lobbying “on behalf” of their members which is also crap because they are wasting money as well. also repubs isn’t best to describe this chamber, it is more the fiscal conservatives from either party. Those darn people that worry about money and trying to keep our country on a solid finacial footing.

By: sad4america

sad4america — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:44:22 +0000

Why do these “middle class” people keep investing in things that they do not comprehend then??? I think if people of all classes would follow the common knowledge not to invest in something they don’t understand everybody would be a lot better off. Of course you have a point if the government wasn’t forcing companies to do push loans (a la Community reinvestment act) the problem would not be as large but hey they meant well.

By: sad4america

sad4america — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:40:27 +0000

of course it doesn’t lower healthcare costs but it does lower health insurance costs. It is sort of obvious. If you were an insurer would you charge someone more if the top amount you had to pay out was $1 million or $250,000??

By: readerOfTeaLeaves

readerOfTeaLeaves — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:21:41 +0000

The other good news in this post is that someone thinks they need ‘more ammo’ to fight health care reform.

I have to admit that seeing them this desperate — since what they are REALLY admitting here is, “We’re so scared sh*tless that we’re willing to put out a $50,000 budget to make our deception look shiny, prettified, and gleaming!” is that some Republicans and Blue Dogs think they need ‘more ammo’ to fight health care.

God, it puts a sh*t-eating grin on my face to think of how much fun it will be to unpack this crock of crap ;-)))

Some of those pushing for health care reform ought to start putting in their orders for pizza and beer right now so that they can fully enjoy the fun of finding the bullshit and lies — and thinking about how to expose them and ridicule them, item by item — when this thing is finally published.

This could actually be quite a lot of fun… ;-))

By: Blub

Blub — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:20:40 +0000

sadly, I think you’re right. Self-perpetuating, self-justifying behavior by trade associations and the like probably explains much of what is going on here and is consistent with long-standing rethug tactics of infiltrating and then coopting conservative-ish NGOs into their own schemes.

By: readerOfTeaLeaves

readerOfTeaLeaves — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:17:29 +0000

That’s notable, it means that members of Congress – we can safely presume Republicans – suggested that the Chamber write a bogus study that they can wave around on the floor during a debate. Essentially, the modern Congress is not as interested in facts as they are in fact sheets.

Honestly, I don’t think that I could count the number of times that I have seen this done with “environmental reviews” in which the producers ignored data, misrepresented data, MISCOUNTED data, or basically labeled black=white “for purposes of this report’ in their definitions section or their glossary.

Some of it is ideologically driven.
Some of it is driven by fear of making a living, since generally corporate interests pay handsomely.
Some of it is driven by people so damn stupid they couldn’t operationalize a variable if it hit them on the nose. And to even do that, they’d have to know what a ‘variable’ is in the first place.

This is a long-time-tested activity.
It’s worked for years.

The good news is that this needs to be exposed so that people can see it for the craven, dishonest, delusional, fear-driven bullshit that it is.

By: Blub

Blub — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:13:46 +0000

I don’t buy it. Even greedy bubble makers need to be able to offer quality an affordable (to them) healthcare to their workers. Even when I was an investment banker, I valued quality healthcare plan as a perk of employment. These days, even large companies are turning to shared-cost arrangements and they are losing people and competitiveness to those decisions. Nah, this is about the Chamber getting coopted by rethugs and rethug ideology completely independently from their dues-paying members. Unfortunately, few of those members pay much attention to the lobbying work of the innocuous-sounding organizatio. to which they send their checks and renewal forms once a year.

By: masaccio

masaccio — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:08:25 +0000

Good point. Sometimes I think the Chamber exists to support its staffers and a small industry of paid consultants. Interestingly, the trade associations supporting the pretend study have been running ads against the public option. Take a look at this.

By: nonesuch

nonesuch — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:59:50 +0000

The more you learn about how Washington works, the more you have to laugh.

Yeah, if this shit were not so freaking serious. Frankly, I can not find any humor in the way Washington works, though I wish I could.