Today, in the U.S. Congress, while Republican lawmakers teabagged outside the Capitol with the manipulated, misled and mostly racist and ignorant teabaggers who associate health care reform with the Jewish Holocaust of World War II(??!!!), fascism, Nazis, concentration camps, Hitler, McCarthy, and God knows what else, Alan Grayson spoke the truth on the House floor. Grayson is hard at work for the people he represents.
Update on yesterday teabagging event in Washington. Investigative reporters and bloggers learned that yesterday's event was sponsored by Koch Industries, a firm whose owners give large donations to right wing causes. It provided 40 buses, free transportation, signs and doughnuts for participants. In other words, yesterday's teabagging was yet another ginned up and fake populist, grassroots movement.
Unfortunately for far too many Texans, our lawmakers are either too out of touch, lazy or corrupted by greed to even read the health care reform bill. The Party of No, Never seems to be far more comfortable partying in a wacko world of lies, fear and hate.
All Texas Republicans are opposed to health care reform with or without a public option. They are opposed to competition and the freedom to choose one's insurer. Texas Republicans prefer to protect the profits of the health insurance industry rather than address the needs of their constituents in their home districts.
The uninsured dead in Texas district by district follows below the fold.
Where are our Texas leaders who possess both the guts to stand up to the big moneyed and powerfully influential insurance industry and, at the very same time, possess a heartfelt and deep understanding of the pain and suffering of those who have died because they cannot afford health care insurance?
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) has become a breath of fresh air and the outspoken voice for progressives. He's become our new hero challenging Republican obstructionists -- and the Democrats who enable them. He tells Democrats to remember: you don't beat Republicans by being a Republican. He reminds us what a civilized society really is all about, and what the true American heart has always been about.
His newfound acclaim is well earned. He's been asking questions of banking and government hacks as a junior member of his Congressional committee hearings since February.
· He questioned CEO Edward Liddy on the AIG cover-up.
· He questioned Citi Group's CEO, Vikram Pandit, about government's assumed liability of Citi group's 250 billion dollars worth of "toxic assets".
· He Grilled Fed Vice Chair Donald Kohn about the The Fed's balance sheet that has expanded by $1.2 trillion since September 1, 2008. That's over a trillion dollars right before the Bushies left office.
· He sparred with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke at a hearing in July. The Florida lawmaker laughed in Bernanke's face during an exchange in which the Fed chairman said "I don't know" in response to a question about what foreign central banks do with $550 billion in loans from the Fed.
. He and Ron Paul have written to Chris Dodd, asking that the confirmation of Ben Bernanke be postponed until the Federal Reserve releases documentation that will allow the public and the Senate to have a full understanding of the commitments that the Federal Reserve has made on our behalf, (Barney Frank (House Financial Services Committee Chairman) predicted in August that the House would pass legislation to audit the Fed this fall). If this bill passes, the audit will be the first time the central bank has been independently audited.
· He amended the de-fund ACORN bill to include the names of contractors guilty of fraud. According to Rep. Grayson, the Defund ACORN bill is written so broadly that it literally compels the de-funding not only of that group, but also the de-funding of, and denial of all government contracts to, any corporation that "has filed a fraudulent form with any Federal or State regulatory agency." By definition, that includes virtually every large defense contractor, which -- unlike ACORN -- has actually been found guilty of fraud. As The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim put it: "the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.
· He wrote a bill, the Pay for Performance Act, which caps executive pay.
. He told Republicans to "get out of the way' in regards to health care reform.
The Grayson Effect - may it spread like melted butter.
He makes me proud to be a democrat. It can be exhausting sometimes; and then someone like Grayson comes along and injects much needed fight into the rest of us. I'm hoping his outspoken efforts rub off and others will follow his lead. He actually talks about caring about people you don't know, about having humane goals, which don't always involve profit margins. The Republicans with their shallow Randianism have ceded this ground of rational empathy.
Wouldn't it be good to have someone in Washington fighting for the people instead of what we from Texas currently have in the Senate and most of The House? I am jealous of the people in his Florida district! I'm stuck with John Cornyn, Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Culberson. All the three of them ever say is 'NO'.
Let's elect some Democrats. I wish we could clone Alan Grayson.
Not only do Republicans hope that the uninsured will die quickly if they have the misfortune to get sick, Republicans also don't care or even remotely get what America wants.
The Party also rejoices when America loses, as we witnessed with Chicago's failed bid for the Olympics.
And now that President Obama has been honored with the Noble Peace Prize today, well, who would have thought? The GOP is predictably apoplectic. Hell, what else can one expect from a bunch of bratty bullying 13 year old sore losers who rail against anything that is not about them?
And thank you, Sir, for apologizing to the dead. It is well about time someone had the decency to stand up.
I would like to share a little personal information about the horrors of socialized medicine. My husband's family lives in France. One of my brothers-in-law needs back surgery. Because he is in pain he wants it done quickly. He has two options.
The Public Plan: $75.00 co-pay, no choice of doctor, waiting period.
The Private Plan: $150. co-pay, he chooses his doctor, no waiting period.
If my brother-in-law and his family could not afford the private plan they would still get whatever care and treatments they need at very affordable rates. A catastrophic illness would not cost them their entire savings, house, cars and everything they own, either.
We obviously have a very serious problem in the U.S.
There is no reason, knowing what we know about insurance companies and their $400. billion in annual profits, that we cannot have the same here in the good ol' U.S. of A.
No reason at all. So, what's the problem Congress? What the hell is the problem? You all get the best government run tax payer funded health coverage that money can buy at very, very affordable costs. Your premiums cost approximately $40.00 per month. The average American family with employer provided health coverage pays from $200.00 to approximately $1200 per month. Those without employer provided insurance pay even more. And, despite the fact that we pay significantly more for our plans, we receive fewer choices than you do.
(Are you Right Wingnuts SURE you wanna keep up with the game of "Gotcha ACORN"? - promoted by boadicea)
Representative Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) told Salon's Glenn Greenwald,
The amount of money that ACORN has received in the past 20 years altogether is roughly equal to what the taxpayer paid to Halliburton each day during the war in Iraq,"
Representative Grayson picked up on the legislative overreach in the rushed legislation and pointed out that in the extraordinary attempts to de-fund ACORN, Congress passed a law that may de-fund many unintended contractors. He asked the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to sift through its database to find which contractors might be caught in the ACORN net.
Wouldn't it be amazing if a hundred years from now historians wrote about the ACORN scandal and how the resulting panic had the unintended consequences of dismantling the military industrial complex?
