Bad Deeds for 7-30-2009

Glenn Beck Has Meltdown Over Protecting Turtles And Otters That Don’t Carry Guns – It’s a challenge to keep being surprised by what Glenn Beck says, but watch the video at the link. Beck declares that funds to protect turtles and otters would only be worthy if they carried guns to protect The United States, and proceeds to start screaming about whether there’s a powerful turtle and otter lobby.

Pete Sessions is Against Earmarks Except His Own That Profit His Former Aide – Pete Sessions — the chief of the Republicans’ campaign arm in the House — says on his website that earmarks have become “a symbol of a broken Washington to the American people.” Yet in 2008, Sessions himself steered a $1.6 million earmark for dirigible research to an Illinois company whose president acknowledges having no experience in government contracting, let alone in building blimps. What the company did have: the help of Adrian Plesha, a former Sessions aide with a criminal record who has made more than $446,000 lobbying on its behalf.

Boston Cop Calls Henry Louis Gates a ‘Banana-Eating Jungle Monkey’ in Mass E-mail – Boston police officer Justin Barrett sent a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe, complaining of the Globe’s coverage of the Henry Louis Gates arrest on July 16. Of Gates, Barrett wrote: “He is a suspect and will always be a suspect. If I was the officer [Gates] verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC [pepper spray] deserving of his belligerent non-compliance.” Barrett then went on to berate the author of the Globe article to which he objected.

Republican Scare Tactic (and Lie): Health Care Reform Will Kill People – Republicans are trying to rally opposition to President Obama’s health care plan by suggesting it will literally kill people. One GOP legislator said the reform plan is a way to advance assisted suicide.

Earlier Tuesday, President Obama fielded a question at a town hall hosted by the American Association of Retired Persons: “I have been told there is a clause in there that everyone that’s Medicare age will be visited and told to decide how they wish to die,” a woman named Mary hailing from North Carolina asked the president.

Here’s some of the lies that Republicans have told:

REP. VIRGINIA FOXX (R-NC): “Republicans have a better solution that won‘t put the government in charge of people‘s health care, that will make sure we bring down the cost of health care for all Americans, and that insures affordable access for all Americans, and is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.”

REP. PAUL BROUN (R-G): “A lot of people are going to die. This program of government option that‘s being touted as being this panacea, the savior of allowing people to have quality health care at an affordable price, is going to kill people.”

RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: “People at a certain age with certain diseases will be deemed not worth the investment, and they will just—as Obama said—they‘ll give them some pain pills and let them loop out until they die and they don‘t even know what‘s happened.”

Republican Representative Falsely Claims That Health Care Will Put Senior Citizens on Lists to Die – Last Friday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) joined radical conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on his radio talk show for an interview:

GOHMERT: “We’ve been battling this socialist health care, the nationalization of health care, that is going to absolutely kill senior citizens. They’ll put them on lists and force them to die early because they won’t get the treatment as early as they need. […] I would rather stop this socialization of health care because once the government pays for your health care, they have every right to tell you what you eat, what you drink, how you exercise, where you live.”

They will make up and repeat any lie to help their big-business insurance buddies.

Insurance Company’s Profits Win Over Your Health – One Blue Cross employee earned a perfect score of “5” for “exceptional performance” on an evaluation that noted the employee’s role in dropping thousands of policyholders and avoiding nearly $10 million worth of medical care.

WellPoint’s Blue Cross of California subsidiary and two other insurers saved more than $300 million in medical claims by canceling more than 20,000 sick policyholders over a five-year period, the House committee said….

The committee investigation uncovered several rescission practices that one lawmaker called egregious, including targeting every policyholder diagnosed with leukemia, breast cancer and 1,400 other serious illnesses. Such investigations involve scouring the policyholder’s original application and years’ worth of medical and pharmacy records in search of any discrepancies.

Same Firm That Worked for the Tobacco Industry is Now Lobbying Against Health Care – The new anti-health reform front group known as the Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights, is being managed by the lobbying firm known as the DCI Group. After being contacted by ThinkProgress about its sponsorship of CPPR’s press conference last week, DCI Group staffers acknowledged that they coordinate PR for the front group. Not be confused with Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, another front group opposing health reform, CPPR has been organizing lobbying efforts against health reform and publishing op-eds across the country with misinformation about the public option.

Tom Synhorst, a former staffer to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Bob Dole, joined fellow right-wing operatives Doug Goodyear and Tim Hyde to form DCI Group in 1996. The firm quickly flourished working for the tobacco industry, coordinating a sophisticated astroturf campaign to build public opposition to tobacco regulations. Ironically, before helping to manage this “patients’ rights” campaign, DCI founded “Smokers’ Rights” groups across the country for the tobacco lobby.

Republican Family-Values State Senator Has Affair With 22-Year-Old Intern – A Tennessee lawmaker resigned from the state Senate on Tuesday after his extramarital affair with a 22-year-old intern was revealed by an investigation into an extortion case. Stanley’s legislative proposals were largely focused on pro-business issues, but he also sponsored failed measures to ban gay couples from adopting children. He also spoke out against funding for Planned Parenthood because he said unmarried people should not have sex. Stanley is a married father of two, so he probably thinks it’s OK.

Oil Speculators “Played a Significant Role” in a Sudden Spike in the Price of Oil – The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is now admitting that oil speculators “played a significant role” in a sudden spike in the price of oil in the summer of 2008. That summer oil reached $147 per barrel, and, at that time, the CFTC claimed the price increase was due to the forces of supply and demand. Bart Chilton, one of the agency’s four commissioners, now says that analysis was based on “deeply flawed data.” (In other words, regular people suffered so a few could make big money at our expense.)

Regards,

Jim