Archive for ◊ August, 2009 ◊

20 Aug 2009 More Barack Obama Astroturf Shenanigans
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*First-hand Witness to Staged Obama Town Hall Meeting in Belgrade, Montana*

(Note: I used to live in Bozeman, Montana so I can verify many of the facts stated in this author’s account. I also am very familiar with Belgrade, Montana as I used to drive there all the time, and as a pilot I have also been out to the Galletin Airfield (BOZ) on many occasions so I’m familiar with its layout and proximity to Bozeman–it really is out in the middle of nowhere. and approximately 25 miles away from Bozeman.)

August 18, 2009

By now you have probably heard that President Obama came to Montana last Friday. However, there are many things that the major news has not covered. I feel that since Joe and I live here and we were at the airport on Friday I should share some facts with you. Whatever you decide to do with the information is up to you. If you chose to share this email with others I do ask that you DELETE my email address before you forward this on.

On Wednesday, August 5th it was announced locally that the President would be coming here. There are many groups here that are against his healthcare and huge spending so those groups began talking and deciding on what they were going to do. The White House would not release ANY details other than the date.

On about Tuesday Joe found out that they would be holding the “Town Hall” at the airport. (This is only because Joe knows EVERYONE at the airport) Our airport is actually located outside of Belgrade (tiny town) in a very remote location. Nothing is around there. They chose to use a hangar that is the most remotely located hangar. You could not pick a more remote location, and you can not get to it easily. It is totally secluded from the public. FYI: We have many areas in Belgrade and Bozeman which could have held a large amount of folks with sufficient parking. (gymnasiums/auditoriums). All of which have chairs and tables, and would not have to be SHIPPED IN!!

During the week, cargo by the TONS was being shipped in constantly. Airport employees could not believe how it just kept coming. Though it was our President coming several expressed how excessive it was, especially during a recession.

Late Tuesday/early Wednesday the 12th, they said that tickets would be handed out on Thursday 9am at two locations and the president would be arriving around 12:30 Friday. Thursday morning about 600 tickets were passed out. However, 1500 were printed at a Local printing shop per White House request. Hmmmm…….900 tickets just DISAPPEARED. This same morning someone called into the radio from the local UPS branch and said that THOUSANDS of Dollars of Lobster were shipped in for Obama. Montana has some of the best beef in the nation!!! And it would have been really wonderful to help out the local economy. Anyone heard of the Recession?? Just think…with all of the traveling the White House is doing. $$$$$ One can only imagine what else we are paying for.

On Friday Joe and I got out to the airport about 10:45am. The groups that wanted to protest Obama’s spending and healthcare had gotten a permit to protest and that area was roped off. But that was not to be. A large bus carrying SEIU (Service Employees International Union) members drove up onto the area (illegal) and unloaded right there. It was quite a commotion and there were specifically 2 SEIU men trying to make trouble and start a fight.

Police did get involved and arrested the one man but they said they did not have the manpower to remove the SEIU crowd. The SEIU crowd was very organized and young. About 99% were under the age of 30 and they were not locals! They had bullhorns and PROFESSIONALLY made signs. Some even wore preprinted T-shirts. Oh, and Planned Parenthood folks were with them…..professing abortion rights with their T-shirts and preprinted signs. (BTW, all these folks did have a permit to protest in ANOTHER area). Those against healthcare/spending moved away from the SEIU crowd to avoid confrontation. They were orderly and respectful. Even though SEIU kept coming over and walking through, continuing to be very intimidating and aggressive at the direction of the one SEIU man.

So we had Montana folks from ALL OVER the state with their homemade signs and their DOGS with homemade signs. We had cowboys, nurses, doctors you name it. There was even a guy from Texas who had been driving through. He found out about the occasion, went to the store, made a sign, and came to protest. If you are wondering about the press…..Well, all of the major networks were over by that remote hangar I mentioned. They were conveniently parked on the other side of the buildings FAR away. None of these crowds were even visible to them. I have my doubts that they knew anything about the crowds. We did have some local news media around us from this state and Idaho . Speaking of the local media…they were invited. However, all questions were to be turned into the White House in advance of the event. Wouldn’t want anyone to have to think off the top of their head. It was very obvious that it was meant to be totally controlled by the White House. Everything was orchestrated down to the last detail to make it appear that Montana is just crazy for Obama and government healthcare. Even those people that talked about their insurance woes……..the White House called our local HRDC (Human Resource and Development Committee) and asked for names. Then the White House asked those folks to come. Smoke and mirrors….EVERYTHING was staged!!!!!!!!!!!

I am very dismayed about what I learned about our current White House. The amount of control and manipulation was unbelievable. I felt I was not living in the United States of America , more like the USSR !! I was physically nauseous. Joe and I have been around when Presidents or Heads of State visit. It has NEVER been like this. I am truly very frightened for our country. America needs your prayers and your voices. If you care about our country please get involved. Know the issues. And let Congress hear your voices again and again!! If they are willing to put forth so much effort to BULLY a small town one can only imagine what is going on in Washington DC . Scary!!
Bozeman , Montana

18 Aug 2009 Want Real Health Care Reform? Here Are Some Answers
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[WARNING: Portions of this first paragraph are tongue in cheek. The rest of this post I'd like you to take seriously.] On July 22, 2009 Senator Orrin Hatch sent me an email asking me to share with him my ideas on healthcare. Fortunately for him, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time so I decided to give him a well thought out answer. I didn’t even care if he took credit for my ideas as long as they were implemented. I began paying close attention to all of his interviews looking for even a hint that he had decided to include my advice. Nothing! When it became apparent he had no interest in finding real solutions and identifying the real problems to health care reform, I decided to take credit for my ideas and post them on my blog. Here’s what I sent to him:
Dear Senator Hatch;
The healthcare solution lies in two primary facets. Reduction in costs and enhancement of opportunities

REDUCTION IN COSTS

  • Litigation has crippled an already gravely ill healthcare system. Although the bill is sent directly to the doctor, the cost of a his/her liability insurance is not paid for by the doctors — it’s paid for by each and every one of us–the patients, through our healthcare costs. It doesn’t matter whether you are on a pay as you go plan, or are making monthly premium payments, your healthcare costs are higher because doctors have a high litigation insurance bill to pay. We can stop this by limiting damages awards and forcing the loser of the lawsuit to pay for the costs of the litigation. Fewer people will take the risk of suing a doctor or medical facility if they have more to lose than they do to gain.
  • Medical equipment sales are brisk because every facility feels like they each have to have the latest and greatest diagnosis and treatment equipment in order to compete on the open market. Consequently, primary and secondary care facilities have duplicates of the same equipment as other facilities, and since they all purchase that equipment on credit, you and I end up paying higher healthcare costs as a result. I wish I could say I have a the solution to this particular problem because it is one of the factors that needs to be addressed as we attempt to lower healthcare costs. But unfortunately I have not come up with one (yet).
  • Illegal immigration has created a problem in this great nation that is crippling our economy on many fronts, and it has been difficult to get our elected officials to recognize this or care enough to do something about it. Chris Cannon lost his job in large part because he did not properly represent his constituents in this area. Illegal immigration increases our healthcare costs. Illegal aliens know and understand that no one can be turned away from a hospital emergency room no matter what their financial circumstances are or their lack of ability to pay. Consequently, it is the emergency rooms where the illegal aliens go to receive their healthcare. As a direct result of this government mandated policy, many medical facilities in the border states have had to close their doors and go out of business as a result. Bankruptcy became their only option. Those medical facilities that have managed to stay open do so by increasing the healthcare costs for the rest of us.
  • Arrogance and waste by the medical staff are another factor that contributes to high costs in healthcare. Nearly every hospital staff is trained to open a package of bandages, bandage you with one of them, but they charge you for the full contents of the box, even though next time you need a bandage, they open a new package and use just one. They do this with every product and service they provide you. I have been self-insured most of my adult life. I paid cash for my first three children’s births. When my wife had to have an emergency appendectomy, I paid cash for that as well. When my son was admitted into the hospital for a ruptured appendix, I again paid cash. As a result, I have always had a vested interest in protecting my healthcare dollar. That’s when I discovered this particularly nefarious hospital policy. Because the bill is [usually] submitted directly to the insurance company and the insurance company pays in full, no one ever questions this policy or their bill. However, in the cases of my wife’s and son’s hospitalizations, I never left their sides the entire time and I kept a tally of every single item they used in their treatment (including medication) as well as the amount of time spent in their care by the nursing staff and doctors. Each time I received the bill, the overbilling was fraudulent. I talked the hospital and doctors down to a reasonably sized bill. This kind of activity goes on daily in the majority of hospitals across the country. We have to put a stop to this fraudulent activity in order to bring our costs back down. Which also brings me to my next bullet point…
  • The current insurance system increases costs rather than decreases them. Doctors charge the insurance company the maximum amount allowable for each treatment (or even for a basic doctor visit for a wellness care visit), and the insurance passes those costs on the the consumer (businesses or individuals–whomever pays the premium), no questions asked. Well we need to get into the habit of asking more questions. In fact, doctors should automatically lower their cost of an office visit for anyone who does not go through an insurance company and instead pays them on the spot by cash or check (0r PayPal).
  • And let’s not forget the problems that big government brings to the party in increasing the already high cost of healthcare. Egregiously high taxation by our government is another large cost added to our final bill (and there are people who actually think government running our healthcare is a good thing–why???). When a doctor or a medical facility pays 35% to 50% of their income to the Federal Government, the doctor isn’t going to lower their personal standard of living, instead they pass the those taxes directly on to us–the consumer. So we can’t really blame this part of the high cost of medical care on the doctors or hospitals. The blame rests squarely on the shoulders of a government that seeks to expand it’s size and take away our freedoms and liberties. We know from reading the US Constitution that smaller government and less taxation is better for our freedoms and liberties and better for our economy (and if only you and your fellow legislators would read it and actually follow it once in a while, we’d all be better off).
  • Another aspect of our high healthcare costs is the high administration costs both hospitals and doctors incur in the course of administering the various insurance plans, and government mandated taxes. There’s a plethora of other administrative third party mandated tasks added on which also increase our healthcare cost. While these combined administrative costs may not be the single largest contributor, they certainly don’t do anything to solve the problem.
  • It is my personal opinion based on years of my personal experiences, that both the pharmaceutical firms and the insurance companies are the bane of the healthcare industry’s existence (from a consumer’s perspective anyways). I suspect that the lobbyists from the Pharm industry are likely some of your larger campaign contributors (I haven’t checked OpenSecrets.org lately so I don’t know for sure), so you probably have less incentive to address this part of the problem than we all would hope. Having worked in the Medical Services Department of a pharmaceutical firm, I happen to know that drug companies work as follows: They find a natural healing compound (herb, bark, blossom, etc.) that grows naturally somewhere in the world and then they turn their scientists loose to synthesize the compound so they can put a 7 year patent on it and make huge dollar amounts by charging us an arm and a leg (while foreign countries get changed much less for those same drugs). In many cases, prescription costs here in the US can take the bulk of many seniors monthly checks. The problem with these synthesized compounds produced by the pharmaceutical companies is that they are not naturally metabolized by our bodies and cause harm to our kidneys and liver and eventually cause renal failure in a significant statistical segment of those who ingest those “legal” drugs. What the pharm companies and the FDA won’t tell you is that there are natural remedies that do a better job in the healing process without causing damage (in fact they are doing their best to try to regulate natural compounds so they can sew up the market and prevent consumers from using any health remedy without their approval and taking a piece of the financial pie). As a direct result of this deception, more people are introduced into the healthcare system (more money for Doctors and the pharmeceutical industry) so they can sell more medication and end up putting patients on dialysis to help them live longer (and they can make even more money). What a racket!
  • The FDA is supposed to oversee and protect us from unscrupulous food manufacturers. In fact, it is the FDA that needs supervision. And because proper oversight of the  FDA is lacking, our lack of proper nutrition in our produced foods is a major contributor to the poor health and medical issues most people suffer in this nation. The FDA allows the nutrients, enzymes and phytochemicals to be taken out of our foods (because they process the foods at high temperatures) and then sold to us in grocery stores supposedly having sufficient nutrition to keep us healthy (at least that’s what the labels tell us). Just like scurvy, cancer is a disease that can be prevented by proper nutrition. The food pyramid is a crock and they know it. The FDA does not protect the health of the American citizen. It protects the profits of the various industries they oversee. Overhauling this agency is the first step to returning the population of this nation back to a state of health that will automatically reduce their healthcare costs and in many ways fix the healthcare problem in American (although making it somewhat less profitable for those engaged in undermining our health).
ENHANCEMENT OF OPPORTUNITIES

  • First let’s make one thing perfectly clear. In my personal opinion, having quality health care is not a right or a privilege. It’s nice to have available to us, but it is no more a right than being wealthy is a right. Both are dictated by our circumstances. That being said, here are a couple of things that I believe will provide a better chance for Americans (who are willing to be contributors to society rather than a drain) to have proper and affordable health care.
  • Encourage the tax-free creation of accounts (not insurance) which individuals can contribute to and draw from for regular medical visits, and then require that doctors give significant discounts when visits are paid for out of these accounts. Then allow the proceeds the doctor receives from those accounts to be tax-free income. I promise that you will see a significant reduction of costs while at the same time a significant increase in American citizen’s ability to receive medical care. Allow for businesses, churches, and charities (no government entities) to create accounts for their employees and members. Insurance is just a middle man that can be eliminated from the equation altogether. You’ve heard the adage: “Want to save money? Eliminate the middle man.” If people still choose to have insurance, they retain that freedom in this free market solution.
  • Grant individuals the right to seek out health care (using the aforementioned accounts) from ANY SOURCE they desire whether it be a shaman, medical doctor, holistic health practitioner, masseuse, or chiropractor. You’ll be surprised how well an unregulated free market system fixes the ills that the government created when they (the government) got involved in the business of licensing who could and could not practice medicine. And because it opens up the market, it creates healthy competition, which in turn lowers healthcare costs, and isn’t that the real problem we’re trying to solve in the first place?
These are my proposals. Please don’t let Bennett’s “Socialist Healthcare Lite” pass upon the failure of the current bill in the Senate. Come up with something sane that incorporates the ideas I’m proposing to you here. Or just drop it all together, and let the free market fix the problem.
Sincerely,
Monte Bateman
17 Aug 2009 Barack Obama Brings In Astroturf Protesters
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This is a report from one of our Independence Caucus members in Colorado who sent us this first person report:

Just got back from protesting POTUS in Grand Junction — quick report:

Started 10 am on 8.15 with freedom rally where 3,500-4,000 people showed up. If any counter protesters, they didn’t speak up or have signs. Congressman Chaffetz (UT) gave great speech. He took picture & recorded crowd saying NO to Oamacare on his cell phone to post to other members of House.

Then our side had press conference at 11:30 cause media had to turn in all their equipment to be inspected by Secret Service. We had lunch and then took to streets around HS where ~1000 of our side lined one side of the main street into the HS, 500-600 OFA/SEIU astroturf & green crowd lined the other, but some of our group had to line up on a third of their side because we ran out of room on our side — reports that they had more was false; we out numbered them about 2:1 at the only place the media bothered to look. Several hundred more of our side went to the town’s visitor center so BO would see them demonstrating as he left the airport & lined another route to HS in case he came the alternate.

FYI, very few R who applied got ticket into TH & some who did had their tickets rescinded or were turned away at the door. Most BO supporters had been bused in from out-of-town — they needed all the Dem’s still supporting BO in GJ to fill the gymnasium, even some of them were from out-of-town. They had HS Band ready to play at the corner of the street we we’re on, but he went in the back way — they used band as foil to draw the protesters — so be aware of that tactic for future. Once he was inside someone came out and let the band go after they had been waiting there in uniform and formation for about over hour & a half to play as he entered HS — our side felt very sorry for the kids, the other side just keep jeering.

One point our side stopped chanting as the other side did most of the time and we all shouted the Pledge of Allegiance together — opp were dumb-founded, just stood there silent many with surprized or puzzled looks, even opp leaders didn’t know how to respond, but they didn’t join us.

When we learned he came in back way from our members on alt route, our locals discretely spoke to small groups on our side since we had a few infiltrators; we started leaving in groups of 10-20 & re-grouped at the back entrance 3 blocks way, joining the 60-70 there from the start. We lost some of our side with this move mostly seniors because they were worn out from having been at am rally and then out in the heat at the HS entrance for another 2 couple of hours. We heard from sheriff’s deputy who is relative of one of our 912ers later that when most of our side was gone, opp loaded up buses or got into cars (minority who drove themselves) and left GJ.

We continued to wait over another hour for the TH to end and the motorcade to drive right past us. As they were loading vehicles we started chanting “SILENT NO MORE.” But everyone was so disgusted with him sneaking in the back, dissing the band & stacking the attendees that by time the lead motorcycles drove past us about 1/3 block away, we were chanting “No You Can’t” and when limo came into view the chants disintegrated into loud prolonged booing until the last vehicle was at least a block away. The people who originally lined on the alt. route to airport were still there protesting on his trip back, not sure what they yelled since we could see them, but not hear them — opp didn’t know about these back streets since they were from out-of-town & media didn’t follow us so they reported everyone went home by 4:30 pm.

We have video though so I’ll post link when uploaded. Considering we only had a week to set up events and get the word out, we’re really proud of the turnout and all the intrepid souls who went to multiple events that day.

I want to share story of WWII vet in his 80’s who came to the rally from 10-11:30am, went to press conference 11:30-noon, then stood on the first street with us from 3-4:30, walked with his cane & large “Don’t Tread On Me flag” the 3 blocks to back entrance, and stayed standing until motorcade disappeared. Some of us offered to help him during the afternoon because he was looking frail and worn out, but he refused help — he said he could hold the flag and walk using his cane himself. He said he was so upset about what is being done to his country that he fought and almost died for that he was going to do whatever he could and endure whatever he had to help us take our country back. Those of us who heard him were inspired that he if could make, then we certainly could manage a little more heat, exercise and chanting to finish the day and continue fight over the coming months. All of We the People on our side in Grand Junction yesterday were Proud to Be Americans Exercising Our Rights and Standing Up for Our Country! God Bless America!

The media may not be covering it, but Colorado’s Majority (along with some from Utah & NM) is SILENT NO MORE!
Lug Wrench Lu

P.S. Link to good set of GJ pictures from Chuck B below.