You thought he was saying "hope and change", he was saying "rope and chains."

[Mike Cruz]

Lol, you might as well join the cult and extract your brain from your skull... not like you are using it it anyways...

[think]

Proof that these groups are fake??? You just spout a bunch of crap without backing it up. In your mind people like me are always in bed with big business and never have America's best interest at heart. It's always a conspiracy with libs like you.

I thought you'd never ask

Sorry I didn't quote my sources as I have started threads here pertaining to these groups. Please feel free to refute these sources since you claim I am making things up. But hey, I use to believe that many of these groups were legitimate so I understand your anger if this is all news to you.

Here are your "grassroots groups" supporting the ANTI health care demonstrations:


1.The Lewin Group.

The Lewin Group is a subsidiary of United Health. United Health is one of the largest insurance companies in America. Two entries from Wikipedia show United Health's ties and troubles:

......
Lewin Group

The Lewin Group is a policy research and consulting firm that provides economic analysis of health care and human services issues and policies.[21] The organization has existed for about 40 years and has maintained a nonpartisan reputation through its many ownership changes that have occurred over the years.[22] The Lewin Group was purchased in 2007 by Ingenix, a wholly-owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, but maintains editorial and analytical independence from its parent company.[23] Democratic and Republican politicians have cited Lewin Group studies to argue for and against U.S. healthcare reform.[24] For example, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden uses Lewin Group estimates to cite the feasibility of his Healthy Americans Act.[25] Representative Eric Cantor, the House Republican Whip, has referred to the organization as "the nonpartisan Lewin Group" without disclosing that it is owned by UnitedHealth Group.[26]

......


Resignation of McGuire

On October 15, 2006, it was announced that McGuire would step down immediately as chairman and director of UnitedHealth Group, and step down as CEO on December 1, 2006 due to his involvement in the employee stock options scandal. Simultaneously, it was announced that he would be replaced as CEO by Stephen Hemsley, who has served as President and COO and is a member of the board of directors. [12] McGuire's exit compensation from UnitedHealth, expected to be around $1.1 billion, would be the largest golden parachute in the history of corporate America.[13]

McGuire's compensation became controversial again on May 21, 2009, when Elizabeth Edwards, speaking on The Daily Show, used it to support her argument for a public alternative to commercial insurance[14]. Edwards stressed the importance of restoring competition in health insurance markets noting that at one point, "the President of United Health made so much money, that one of every $700 that was spent in this country on health care went to pay him":

Estimates of McGuire's 2005 compensation range from $59,625,444 [15] to $124.8 million[16], and the revenue of United Health Care was then $71 billion. It has therefore been suggested that Mrs Edwards may have meant to say that one of every $700 that was spent on United Health Care premiums went to pay McGuire.

[edit] McGuire's Settlement With SEC

On 6 December 2007, the SEC announced a settlement under which McGuire was to repay $468 million, including a $7 million civil penalty, as a partial settlement of the backdating prosecution. He was also barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for ten years.[17][18][19] This was the first time in which the little-used "clawback" provision under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was used against an individual by the SEC. The SEC continued its investigations even after it in 2008 settled legal actions against both United Health Care itself and its former general counsel.[20].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnitedHealth_Group

You will find 7 well known republican congressman including Charles Grassley, Newt Gingrich, John Boehner, and 4 more all quoting the Lewin Group as their health care expert in less than one and one half minutes in this short short video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CbEt...om=PL&index=12



2. Conservatives for Patients Rights

Conservatives For Patients Rights is the product of Rick Scott. Rick Scott, a lawyer and an investor with George W Bush in the Texas Rangers, went on to purchase many hospitals as CEO of Columbia/HCA industries. He was forced to resign and the company was fined the largest amount in US History:

Richard Lynn "Rick" Scott (born 1953) is a businessman in the healthcare industry. He is also the founder of Conservatives for Patients' Rights (CPR) which advertises against expanding the U.S. government's role in regulating the healthcare system.

Scott founded the Columbia Hospital Corporation in 1987. With Columbia HCA Chairman Thomas J. Frist, the brother of Senator Bill Frist, the company merged Columbia with Hospital Corporation of America in 1989 to form Columbia/HCA. Ten years later, Scott was ousted by the company's board of directors in the midst of the nation's biggest health care fraud scandal in which the company ultimately plead guilty to the nation's then largest Medicaid and Medicare fraud and paid a record fine of $1.7 billion dollars. [1][2][3] In 2001, Scott co-founded the Solantic Corporation, which operates walk-in medical care centers. He also owns Continental Structural Plastics, North America's largest industrial composites molder.

In 2009 Scott founded CPR, a group opposed to President Barack Obama's health-care policy goals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_L._Scott

[1]

You can check these sources for Rick Scott as well if you think Wikipedia is controlled by the evil liberal media. Hell you can start off with Rick Scott defending himself on Fox News even:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L2dukgFqhY

Other sources for Rick Scott and his involvement with Columbia / HCA:

http://www.modernhealthcare.com/arti.../SUB/303099993

http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/09/news...tune/index.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/us...s/02scott.html

Here is the actual case. Rick Scott is not mentioned by name but it's clear as day the company paid $1.7 billion in fines and penalties:

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2003/June/03_civ_386.htm



3. Americans For Prosperity

Americans for Prosperity is back by Koch Industries:

Funding

On its website, Americans For Prosperity states that "AFP gets its support from individuals and corporations which share its vision." However, it does not disclose which corporations fund its operations.[23]

Kevin Grandia, of DeSmogBlog, who has researched funding the AFP states on his blog that:

The AFP is the third largest recipient of funding from the Koch Family Foundations, behind the Cato Institute and the George Mason University Foundation. Before 2003, when the AFP was still named the Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation, it received $18,460,912 in funding. 84% of that funding came from the Koch Family Foundations ($12,906,712) and the Scaife Family Foundations ($2,510,000). Koch Family Foundations is funded by Koch Industries. According to Forbes, Koch Industries is the second largest privately-held company, and the largest privately owned energy company, in the United States. Koch industries has made its money in the oil business, primarily oil refining. Presently, it holds stakes in pipelines, refineries, fertilizer, forest products, and chemical technology. Americans for Prosperity is also connected to oil giant ExxonMobil. According to ExxonSecrets, between the years 1998-2001, Citizens for A Sound Economy and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation received $380,250 from ExxonMobil.[24]

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...for_Prosperity

Koch Industries in Source Watch

Koch Industries, (pronounced "coke"), is the largest privately owned company in the United States with 70,000 employees and annual sales of $100 billion in the fiscal year ending December of 2008. [1] (Cargill comes in second for privately owned companies.)

.....

Pollution

Koch Industries is also a major polluter. During the 1990s, its faulty pipelines were responsible for more than 300 oil spills in five states, prompting a landmark penalty of $35 million from the Environmental Protection Agency. In Minnesota, it was fined an additional $8 million for discharging oil into streams. During the months leading up to the 2000 presidential elections, the company faced even more liability, in the form of a 97-count federal indictment charging it with concealing illegal releases of 91 metric tons of benzene, a known carcinogen, from its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Republican Ties

If convicted, the company faced fines of up to $352 million, plus possible jail time for company executives. After George W. Bush became president, however, the U.S. Justice Department dropped 88 of the charges. Two days before the trial, John Ashcroft settled for a plea bargain, in which Koch pled guilty to falsifying documents. All major charges were dropped, and Koch and Ashcroft settled the lawsuit for a fraction of that amount.

Koch had contributed $800,000 to the Bush election campaign and other Republican candidates.

Alex Beehler, assistant deputy under secretary of defense for Environment, Safety and Occupational Health, previously served at Koch as director of environmental and regulatory affairs and concurrently served at the Charles G. Koch Foundation as vice president for environmental projects. [2] Beehler was later nominated and re-nominated by the Bush White House, to become the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Inspector General. [3]
[edit]
Lobbying

The company spent $3,528,750 for lobbying in 2006. $820,000 was to outside lobbying firms with the remainder being spent using in-house lobbyists. [8]

In February 2005, the Hill reported, "Top White House official Matt Schlapp is joining the Washington office of oil-and-gas conglomerate Koch Industries, the latest example of high-level administration and congressional staffers making post-election leaps to the lobbying world." Schlapp had headed the White House’s Office of Political Affairs. At Koch, Schlapp will be the executive director of federal affairs, directing Washington lobbying. [4]

Elizabeth Stolpe, previously in-house lobbyist for Koch Industries, is now Associate Director For Toxics & Environmental Protection at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Political Contributions

Koch Industries is the single largest oil company contributor to both Republican and Democratic candidates for Congress. These contributions total $1,065,750 to the 110th US Congress (as of the third quarter), the largest of which has been to Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) for $42,950. Rep. Tiahrt, for his part, has consistently voted with the oil industry on energy, war and climate bills. [5]

Contributions like this from fossil fuel companies to members of Congress are often seen as a political barrier to pursuing clean energy. More information on oil industry contributions to Congress can be found at FollowtheOilMoney.org, a project created by the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization Oil Change International.

Koch Industries gave $948,000 to federal candidates in the 05/06 election cycle through its political action committee (PAC) - 17% to Democrats, 82% to Republicans. [9]

Koch Industries and Coal

In 2005 Koch Industries acquired the American pulp and paper company Georgia-Pacific, which now operates as a subsisdiary.[10] Georgia-Pacific owns and operates the following mills[11]:

* Naheola mill in Pennington, Alabama, which began operations in 1958. Currently, the principle products from the Naheola mill include both plate stock and cup stock for use in the food service market.
* The Crossett mill, located in Crossett, Arkansas, produces bleached paperboard grades, including folding carton, plate stock, bleached linerboard, and various cup stock grades.
* The recently acquired Brewton mill, located in Brewton, Alabama, produces folding carton, blister packaging, and skin packaging grades.
* Fort James Muskogee Mill Power Plant is a coal-fired power station in Muskogee, Oklahoma that provides power to Georgia-Pacific's Muskogee paper mill.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...stries#_note-0

Need another source? How about AFP themselves?:

David Koch
Chairman
David Koch is the executive vice president and a member of the board of directors for Koch Industries, Inc., based in Wichita, Kansas. He helped found Americans For Prosperity, and also serves on the board of directors for the Reason Foundation and the CATO Institute. David was the Libertarian Party candidate for vice president of the United States in 1980. He received his bachelor's and master's degree in chemical engineering from MIT.

http://afpmo.com/index.php?static=455

4. Freedom Works

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey has resigned from DLA Piper, saying a firestorm over his ties to a conservative nonprofit opposed to health care reform has hurt the firm.

In an interview, John Merrigan, a DLA Piper partner who chairs the federal affairs practice, said Armey, who had been a senior policy adviser, made the decision to leave. The nonprofit group, FreedomWorks, has been associated with disruptive protests at town hall meetings on health care reform.

Armey's association with FreedomWorks, and his ties to DLA Piper, have been repeatedly raised on liberal blogs and by left-leaning commentators. For instance, ThinkProgress, a blog run by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, reported that "Armey's FreedomWorks is actively organizing against health care reform. Indeed, Armey's lobbying firm represents pharmaceutical companies, such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, that oppose comparative effectiveness research in the health reform plan because such a program may cut into revenue for branded drugs."

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202433072520

This isn't the only reason Dick Armey had to leave DLA Piper. Rachel Maddow was the news person to bring to light that Armey used Freedom Works to do the bidding of his clients at DLA Piper. This is the investigative reporting that found Dick Armey crossing the line to abuse his non profit group and forced him to resign. (9 1/2 minutes but if you want to learn what these groups did and do it is well worth it):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JvSS4RY-Xw

There you have the grass roots organizers for the Tea Party Protests. Tadah!

[JMJ]

There you have the grass roots organizers for the Tea Party Protests. Tadah!

Actually the initial grassroots efforts were small groups with no real "organizers" I was one of them in my town. We started protesting the local Federal Reserve long before Freedom Works came along. Freedom Works is co-opting along with FOX.

[think]

Actually the initial grassroots efforts were small groups with no "organizers" I was one of them in my town. Freedomworks.com is co-opting along with FOX.

I understand there are others.

Many fans of Ron Paul are involved and they truly represent the grass roots kind of groups involved. I don't agree with Ron Paul on much including health care reform but I respect his honesty and integrity. In some areas like the Iraq war, civil liberties, and auditing the Fed I am in firm agreement with Ron Paul.

The corporations have hijacked this movement through these front groups with it's sole intent is to kill any health care reform. I am sorry your cause has been hijacked.

[JMJ]

The corporations have hijacked this movement through these front groups with it's sole intent is to kill any health care reform.

They are going to get exactly what they wanted as well. Baucus' plan looks to the the front runner and it's nothing but a pure give away to the insurance companies and pharma co's. Forcing or fining the population into corporate profits.

[think]

They are going to get exactly what they wanted as well. Baucus' plan looks to the the front runner and it's nothing but a pure give away to the insurance companies and pharma co's. Forcing or fining the population into corporate profits.

The Baucus Plan is not liked on either side and is only a testament to his loyalty to the health insurance companies for which he stands:

Wendell Potter: Public Option Essential, Baucus Plan An "Absolute Gift" To Health Insurance Industry (VIDEO)

Speaking before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee Tuesday, former health insurance industry executive-turned-whistleblower Wendell Potter warned that if Congress "fails to create a public insurance option to compete with private insurers, the bill it sends to the president might as well be called the Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_287733.html

[JMJ]

The Baucus Plan is not liked on either side and is only a testament to his loyalty to the health insurance companies for which he stands:

That's part of the game though." We don't really like this plan but it's the only compromise we could come to." Sorry about your luck America. Profit over people.

meanwhile

Supreme Court appears poised to allow corporate contributions

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...,2613959.story

[Area52]

Can you spell it?

Innocent enough typo.
Can you read "arrogant".

[fab]

Can you spell it?

it

[draggar]

I thought he said dope and reigns?

Of course, Bill Clinton said grope in range.

I think George Bush said mope and feign?

[mjnels]

I'll admit these two take things to the extreme sometimes, making it sound much worse than it really is, but really, if you want to see a group of nut jobs, try flipping to MSNBC/GE to watch the biggest clown on cable news today, Ex sports commentator turned master journalist overnight; "Keith Olbermann" and his army of demented side kicks that he calls "guests", who do nothing but spew the same hate and Liberal spin that he does.

And when you get bored with him and that lady (forget the name) who sounds and looks like a dude, You can watch Chris Mathews, who not only doesn't listen to a damn thing his guests are saying, but rarely allows them to get a word in.

Just look at these numbers, Fox has nearly 3 1/2 times the viewers MSNBC has, and it's because of clowns like these and their Liberal bias of reporting the news.


Cable News Ratings for Tuesday September 15, 2009: Fox News 25-54 Primetime Demo Nearly Equals Combined Competition’s
Posted on 16 September 2009 by Bill Gorman

Live + Same Day Cable News Daily Ratings for September 15, 2009

Fox News 25-54 Primetime demo of 928k nearly equals combined competition’s demo of 933k.

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 1,640,000 viewers
CNN – 610,000 viewers
MSNBC –462,000 viewers
CNBC – 186,000 viewers
HLN – 321,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 3,426,000viewers
CNN— 1,044,000 viewers
MSNBC –1,164,000 viewers
CNBC – a scratch w/113,000 viewers
HLN – 643,000viewers

MORE>>>>

http://tvbythenumbers.com/category/r...ews/cable-news

heh yea like i said, dont particularly care for most of MSNBC's programming either.. and Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow sort of seem like the other side of extreme... i have noticed their guests on MSNBC tend to agree with them much more... at least on Fox they argue sometimes. but most cable news broadcasts suck ass.. there is the internet now and no need to rely on these traditional media forms really... i just watch them for entertainment/background noise.

i like Shepard Smith's show on fox though.. he is one of the rare few that just reads the news without too much commentary.. and when he does make comments i find them pretty clever...

[fab]

Lol, you might as well join the cult and extract your brain from your skull... not like you are using it it anyways...

More genius! Please read the rules of the forum, since you are violating them!

[Adatise]

Actually it was "hoping for spare change"

Good pun. I got a great belly laugh out on your joke. Thanks.

[mjnels]

More genius! Please read the rules of the forum, since you are violating them!

ah c'mon man... that "rules of the forum" stuff is silly...this is the internet dude lets just all hold hands and smack each other in the face at the same time.. throwing somebody the 'rules of the forum' thing simply because they said you didnt have a brain is weak..

[fab]

throwing somebody the 'rules of the forum' thing simply because they said you didnt have a brain is weak..

He wasn't referring to me.

[mjnels]

He wasn't referring to me.

that makes it even funnier. welcome to the world wide web!

[fab]

welcome to the world wide web

Thanks, nice to be here!

[Area52]

Just sounds like someone spounting ideas without solutions. Much like people were accusing Obama of doing. Here is another great video you can check out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUPMjC9mq5Y

I also find it pretty funny that when bush was in office, republicans said the protesters were stupid kids who were treasoners and now that they are doing it, its patriotic. Total hypocrites.

If you had listened, you would know that he does have a solution.

Your video is liberal propaganda. Probabaly a twenty something trying to get some points for a college video editing course.
I could do the same with a documentary about the top people in the democratic party.
Just pick and choose what footage to use to portray those people in the worst possble light, just as that person in your video did.
On top of that I could probably produce it with very little editing. LOL. No decent person with common sense is going to be fooled by that kind of gimmickry.

Look out Obama. Where has this guy been hiding? And a sense of humor.
Mason Weaver at San Diego Tea Party.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be-xl6ehrA4

Here's Mason Weaver at the 9-12 rally. The thread was about him. right. I think he makes alot of sense.
But since somebody turned it into a 9-12 rally thread (or was that a Beck thread), here goes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9plu...eature=related

[think]

If you had listened, you would know that he does have a solution.

Your video is liberal propaganda. Probabaly a twenty something trying to get some points for a college video editing course.
I could do the same with a documentary about the top people in the democratic party.
Just pick and choose what footage to use to portray those people in the worst possble light, just as that person in your video did.
On top of that I could probably produce it with very little editing. LOL. No decent person with common sense is going to be fooled by that kind of gimmickry.



Here's Mason Weaver at the 9-12 rally. The thread was about him. right. I think he makes alot of sense.
But since somebody turned it into a 9-12 rally thread (or was that a Beck thread), here goes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9plu...eature=related

He wants to cut taxes. Other than that please tell me what other issues he is discussing....

[Gerry]

The Baucus Plan is not liked on either side and is only a testament to his loyalty to the health insurance companies for which he stands:

Ditto!

I thought you'd never ask

Those are some dangerous (in the form of trustworthiness and believability) and corrupt groups and people you mention.