How about where Obama holds a rally and people are bused in from 140 miles away?
Several readers have criticized the Citizen Patriot’s coverage of last week’s health care rally outside U.S. Rep. Mark Schauer’s office, where hundreds came out — both to support and oppose — President Barack Obama’s reform plan.
The chief criticism was that we failed to mention that some supporters were bused in from around the state.
It is true, and it wasn’t included in the original story, but not because we were trying to slant coverage. The simple truth is it was a difficult fact to nail down.
You’re reading this story today because Tuesday I was able to confirm with the Service Employees International Union that it rented vans and encouraged people to carpool to the event. About 100 SEIU members attended, from as far away as Muskegon and Detroit, said Zac Altefogt, a spokesman for SEIU Healthcare Michigan.
While covering the rally last Thursday, myself and another reporter were told by several opponents of the reform plan that supporters were bused in. But we did not see the buses that night and were unable to pose the question to the supporters’ organizer before our deadline.
We left it out of the Friday story because we cannot print speculation as fact.
At least these guys try to use fact, not speculation. Unlike Obama’s kept-whores in the media.
Guess who will profit from socilaized health care? Obama’s buddies!!
President Barack Obama’s push for a national health care overhaul is providing a financial windfall in the election offseason to Democratic consulting firms that are closely connected to the president and two top advisers.
Coalitions of interest groups running at least $24 million in pro-overhaul ads hired GMMB, which worked for Obama’s 2008 campaign and whose partners include a top Obama campaign strategist. They also hired AKPD Message and Media, which was founded by David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama’s campaign and now to the White House. AKPD did work for Obama’s campaign, and Axelrod’s son Michael and Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe work there.
The firms were hired by Americans for Stable Quality Care and its predecessor, Healthy Economy Now. Each was formed by a coalition of interests with big stakes in health care policy, including the drug maker lobby PhRMA, the American Medical Association, the Service Employees International Union and Families USA, which calls itself “The Voice for Health Care Consumers.”
Their ads press for changes in health care policy. Healthy Economy Now made one of the same arguments that Obama does: that health care costs are delaying the country’s economic recovery and that changes are needed if the economy is to rebound.
There is no evidence that Axelrod directly profited from the group’s ads. Axelrod took steps to separate himself from AKPD when he joined Obama’s White House. AKPD owes him $2 million from his stock sale and will make preset payments over four years, starting with $350,000 on Dec. 31, according to Axelrod’s personal financial disclosure report.
A larger issue is a network of relationships and overlapping interests that resembles some seen in past administrations and could prove a problem as Obama tries to win the public over on health care and fulfill his promise to change the way Washington works, said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a government watchdog group.
“Even if these are obvious bedfellows and kind of standard PR maneuvers, it still stands to undercut Obama’s credibility,” Krumholz said. “The potential takeaway from the public is ‘friends in cahoots to engineer a grass roots result.’”
And how can I keep commies from this list of dirtbags? I can’t.
According to Aaron Klein, a think tank which Obama developed has been linked to Obama’s picks to the socialist party.
Was a far-left think tank partnered with the community activist group ACORN and founded with input from President Obama instrumental in securing the appointment of controversial White House “environmental czar” Van Jones?
A key member of the think tank reportedly was also a founder of a socialist party that, evidence indicates, included Obama among its members.
In March, Jones was named the special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
His appointment drew criticism after a WND report exposing that Jones was as an admitted radical communist and black nationalist leader. The Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck hammered away at Jones’ communist ties.
Months before Obama took office, however, Jones was recommended for the environmental pick in a report by business scholar Chuck Collins, an associate of philanthropist George Soros and a longtime leftist activist linked to some socialist causes.
Collins is director of the Tax Program for Shared Prosperity at Demos, a far-left think tank that has partnered with ACORN and its ally, Project Vote, on several projects. Demos personalities were among ACORN’s top defenders when the organization was accused of rampant voter fraud in 2008.
According to Demos’ own website, while Obama was a state senator in 1999, he served on the working group that founded Demos.
Collins penned a piece that listed his top picks for the Obama administration, including Jones, at the radical Institute for Policy Studies.
Through a socialist party, Obama may be more closely linked to Collins, who recommended Jones.
Researcher Trevor Loudon of the New Zeal blog dug up official newspapers of the socialist-oriented New Party that list Collins as among the party’s founding builders in its fall 1994 edition. Collins is listed with approximately 100 other activists in an article entitled, “Who’s Building the New Party?”
In a controversy never fully addressed by Obama, WND previously reported evidence showing Obama was a member of the New Party, which sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda.
While running for the Illinois state Senate in 1996 as a Democrat, Obama actively sought and received the endorsement of the New Party, according to confirmed reports during last year’s presidential campaign.
The New Party, formed by members of the Democratic Socialists of America and leaders of an offshoot of the Community Party USA, was an electoral alliance that worked alongside the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. The New Party’s aim was to help elect politicians to office who espouse its policies.
Among New Party members was linguist and radical activist Noam Chomsky.
Obama’s campaign last year denied the then-presidential candidate was ever an actual member of the New Party.
Of course he’s going to deny it.
See the link for more to include pics.
