The White House has admitted that it erroneously sent out hundreds, perhaps thousands of unsolicited emails to people who had not signed up to be on Obama’s email list.
The White House said Sunday night that it will change its e-mail sign-up procedures after some recipients of a health-care e-mail complained that they had not asked to receive updates.
“We are implementing measures to make subscribing to e-mails clearer, including preventing advocacy organizations from signing people up to our lists without their permission when they deliver petition signatures and other messages on individual’s behalf,” spokesman Nick Shapiro said in a statement Sunday night.
It’s bad enough that they are politicizing the White House to the degree that they are, but to spam people who don’t even want to see their propaganda, and belittle Major Garrett for asking about it…disgusting!
The White House Spam Excuse Doesn’t Hold Water With Me.
Now I’m no e-mail guru like David Axelrod, whose company ASK Public Stgrategies was once called “the gold standard in AstroTurf organizing”, but this explanation doesn’t smell right to me. Normally, you can’t get on an e-mail list unless you specifically sign up for it. Merely sending a comment to a web site, with your e-mail attached to it, does not put you on that site’s mailing list (this blog is an excellent example of how that works, as are most other blogs).That’s true even if someone else posts your comment with your address. It doesn’t matter who puts your information there, unless there is a specific opt-in procedure, the site is engaging in shady spammer practices.
Fox News has posted several breathless updates to the story, including a statement, yesterday, from the White House. As I caught up on this story, I realized that I hadn’t gotten any emails from the White House since 5:25 pm yesterday.
Is it possible that the White House has frozen outgoing emails while it investigates this story? I emailed them to find out, but I haven’t heard back!
“The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option. There never have been,” he said. “So to continue to chase that rabbit I think is just a wasted effort.”
Conrad and other negotiators on the finance committee are instead pushing a system of nonprofit insurance cooperatives, as an alternative to the public plan.
“Co-ops are very prevalent in our society,” Conrad said. “They’ve been a very successful business model.”
The question I have is, how would these co-ops differ from the public option? Back in June,when the co-op idea was first circulated, Michael Tanner, a senior fellow specializing in health care at the Cato Institute suspected that Senate Democrats were not interested in Republican support:
“If it’s a co-op model, I suspect if it was sufficiently independent of government to make Republicans happy, the Democrats wouldn’t be happy,” Tanner told CNSNews.com. “The left wing of the Democratic Party would walk away, which is very insistent upon single payer, or certainly insisting on a robust public option and is not going to accept something watered down this much.”
The only rationale Democrats might have, then, for moderating their plans might be to “go far enough to make the [moderate Democrats] comfortable,” Tanner said. “[T]hat, I think, is their real target.”
“There’s no reason to do a co-op or any other option if it’s not somehow managed by government,” he said. “We have 1,300 insurance companies, and now we’d just have 1,350.”
Schumer seemed to concur, saying the plan would have to “achieve the same goals as a conventional public plan.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NY, told reporters Thursday that a system of nonprofit cooperatives could pass as a “public option,” or government-run health care, depending on how they are set up.
“We’re going to have some type of public option, call it ‘co-op’, call it what you want,” Reid said, adding that Democrats are working on “some verison of a co-op that may satisfy everyone.”
I think we have to watch closely “how the co-ops are set up”, because we all know that the “same goals as a conventional public plan” would be a single payer health care system.
Basically, what the White House is doing is giving up the name “public option” and replacing it with the Orwellian “competition”. My guess is that the ruse will work for a little while, especially because few if any members of the MSM will call them on their ploy.
Secretary Sibelius is, as usual, wrong. You can turn things over to the private sector and get lower cost, better service, and more efficiency. The President already admitted that last week when he reminded us what a horrible operation the Post Office runs compared to FedEx and UPS. Perhaps the Secretary needs to pay more attention to what her boss is saying on the campaign trail.
No, the Democrats haven’t given up yet. They’re watching the polls tilt against them, so they’ve given up one meaningless set of provisions and stopped using the phrase “public option”. They haven’t given up their quest for government-run health care complete with rationing boards. They won’t give that dream up easily. It is, after all, the progressive Holy Grail.
MORE:
A couple of weeks ago, Gibby struggled to answer a simple question about the President’s stance on co-ops:
Do not believe that the public option is going away. Do not believe that the Democrats are going to give up on universal healthcare. They are not. They are going to change the language and keep the same goal and plan. It may take them longer, but they will continue pushing forward.
Now we are at the hour of danger. Republicans, wanting to appear reasonable, might cut a deal and go with co-ops. If they do, they are voting for a government take over of healthcare.
An administration official said tonight that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius “misspoke” when she told CNN this morning that a government run health insurance option “is not an essential part” of reform. This official asked not to be identified in exchange for providing clarity about the intentions of the President.
House Democratic officials say a public option will remain in their version of a health reform bill, even now that the White House has acknowledged it may be dropped later.
“This is just for the Senate,” a House leadership official said about the administration’s concession on a public option. “There is no way it passes the House the first time around without a public option.
Edmund Haislmaier pointed out a few weeks ago at The Foundry:
If by health care “co-op,” Congress means allowing private associations to collectively buy health insurance for their members or operate a health insurance exchange, or allowing people to buy health insurance from a non-profit, member-owned private insurer, then those would be positive, pro-consumer developments.
However, simply slapping the word “cooperative” onto a new “insurer,” but then specifying that the government — not the policyholders — picks the board of directors (as Sen. Schumer wants), or that taxpayers will subsidize it, or that it has to pay doctors and hospitals at Medicare rates, would just be an exercise in trying to disguise a “public plan.”
A few days ago, I asked, “where are the buses?”, since ObamaCare opponents were being accused by the Obama administration, Reid, and Pelosi of being bused in astroturfers, fronting for special interest groups (all of whom, ironically have been bought off by Obama). I though it odd/weird/strange that they would accuse us of doing something their side is known to do all the time.
Well finally, some buses were caught on tape, and unsurprisingly…. I mean, I can’t stress enough how DUH!, no kidding? unsurprising, and frankly unnoteworthy this actually is. Why am I even doing a post about it?
Via HotAirPundit, here’s the ACORN bus leaving the Arlen Specter townhall, yesterday:
This video shows the Town Hall protesters shouting “Don’t come back” as the buses leave, this is brand new video…
You can clearly see the people wearing red ACORN shirts on the bus…
Here’s a screenshot of a woman on the bus with an ACORN shirt:
Of course, there will continue to be much more of this as the left (reportedly ‘taken by surprise’ by the anti-ObamaCare fervor), prepares a massive astroturfing counterattack:
The AFL-CIO has allocated $15 million for mobilization and communication. Individual unions plan to advertise in states with moderate Democratic lawmakers. The Service Employees International Union is sending members to more than 400 events this month, including an “ambulance tour” across Montana, home of Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, a key player in the health debate.
“America deserves an honest, civil discussion on how to fix our broken health-care system,” said SEIU President Andy Stern.
And who better to supply an honest and civil debate, than a payed off astroturfing mob of union thugs. Just ask Kenneth Gladney:
The lefty playbook: it’s always been nasty and hypocritical, and now it’s getting kinda stale.
You’ve probably already seen this, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Madame Speaker’s rank hypocrisy on the subject of protesters, whom she recently called “UnAmerican”, and “astroturfers” when they were dissenting from ObamaCare.
Do liberals recognize the hypocrisy? Are they embarrassed by it?
The reason I ask, is because every time a Republican gets caught doing something wrong, somehow the whole conservative movement gets smeared by it. Because we believe in family values, for instance, we’re all hypocrites if a Republican gets caught in an affair. This is rule #4 from Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals:
Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
Never mind that the vast majority of us are quick to condemn malfeasance on our own side, those are the left’s rules for us, and of course they’re impossible to live up to.
What about when a lib gets caught lying, being incredibly dense, corrupt, and/or hypocritical as Pelosi does nearly every time she opens her mouth. What do we hear from the left?
*Crickets*
MORE:
See Zombie for an excellent pictorial of the left’s frequent depictions of Bush as Hitler throughout his tenure as President. I remember ridicule, and disgust in reaction to this from the rank and file on the right, (Oh, another ChimpyMcBushHitlerHaliburton sign, yawn). But President Bush, and other Republican leaders had little to nothing to say about it that I can remember.
So again, we are confronted with the left’s rank hypocrisy as they feign shock and outrage when it’s discovered that one or two anti-ObamaCare protesters have waved Obama/Hitler/Nazi signs. Please people. Bush put up with that crap for eight long years. And you know it. Even more disgusting is their attempt to smear conservative protesters as Nazis, themselves.
In case you haven’t yet heard about this latest WH brouhaha, here is what happened yesterday in the WH briefing room, with Garrett’s update on the Greta Van Susteren Show, last night:
As of 1:00 ET this afternoon, Garrett had still not received a response from Gibbs.
We can’t let them win. If they win with Beck, they’ll be emboldened to go after even more people.
Apparently Beck has said a thing or two that has upset lefties…go figure. Like there’s something eyebrow raising or objectionable about calling Obama a racist given his track record, whatever. The brownshirts are out for blood:
Obama’s Green Jobs Czar, the convicted felon and self-declared communist Van Jones, has direct ties to the organization that’s trying to shut down Glenn Beck. Jones’s group has hired a big Hollywood PR firm and they are pressuring Glenn’s advertisers to stop advertising. If not, they’ll lead a boycott.
Here’s a list of companies that are already boycotting Glenn Beck:
SC Johnson:
Fisk Johnson Chairman & CEO
Phone: (262)260-2000
Petrell Ozbay
Senior Global Public Affairs Manager
Phone: (262) 260-2114 pmozbay@scj.com
Progressive Insurance:
Glenn Renwick, President & CEO- (440)461-5000
Newsbusters has more on Color Of Change’s crusade to run Glenn Beck off the air:
When you add it all up, a current member of the Obama administration is co-founder of a group trying to get a conservative talker off the air, and is being assisted by a powerful New York PR firm.
Which makes the Obama administration’s denials to the contrary all the more ludicrous. His lies about his past support for single payer are beyond ludicrous at this point. They’re pathological. And it’s getting tougher and tougher for Democrats in congress to keep a straight face and pretend that their support for a public option isn’t de facto support for single payer.
Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey does his usual superb job in breaking down a USA Today post fact-checking the President on his town hall meeting in New Hampshire yesterday. Conn Carroll over at The Heritage Foundation put together a great fact check as well.
But the analysis I found most interesting was a discussion forum over at Politico, where a moderator asked a panel of experts whether the public option is the first step towards a single-payer system. And while some of the respondents were clearly partisan, there were several academic experts on the panel. Take a look at some of their responses:
Many Democrats are on record saying that it IS the first step toward a government-run single payer-type system. President Obama, himself, has repeatedly expressed his support for a single payer system.
So it should be no surprise that Americans have come to think that the current legislation is a step toward single payer. Apparently many Democrats think that it is, and they are driving the bus.
– James G. Gimpel, Professor of Political Science, Maryland
Duh.
By the way, it is worth noting the ridiculousness of the public option idea if it is intended as anything but the first step to a government-run, single payer system. The idea that a “government option” is needed to keep the industry honest or provide consumer choice is as nutty as suggesting that we need government-run restaurants and grocery stores to keep competition honest.
– Bradley A. Smith, Professor, election law and campaign finance
The public option is indeed a major step toward a government-run, single-payer system, as the result of scale economies in health insurance. But no, the current proposal is not the “first step.” The first, second, and third steps already happened long ago (Medicare being the most significant one). Government already runs a substantial chunk of health care, deciding via its control over the purse strings what procedures and which doctors many people go to. Some experts believe that the “tipping point” that would lead to major withdrawals by private insurers, and thus a near-total government control over the system, would occur at around a 60% government share, and we are already close to that point. The public option now being touted by President Obama likely would push us over the tipping point.
– Charles W. Calomiris, Professor of Financial Institutions, Columbia
There’s plenty more at Verum Serum. The whole lot needs to be flagged and reported to: flag@whitehouse.gov, I guess.
Donald Douglas has an excellent report on the Adam Schiff town hall, yesterday in CA. 3000 people showed up at the Alhambra Public Library, most of them anti-ObamaCare protesters:
Can anyone watch this, I don’t care who you are, and not come away a little creeped out and dubious that the White House’s motives with it’s snitch website are as pure as they pretend?
“We’re not keeping a list…we’re not keeping a list…we’re not keeping a list….that’s ludicrous! We’re not keeping a list…..did I mention we’re not keeping a list?”
I do believe he doth protest too much.
Here’s the thing I don’t get, and most thinking people don’t get:
Why would it be necessary for the White House to ask American citizens to snitch on other Americans to report what the White House deems “fishy” emails and websites, when the White House has has a press office that should be able to follow what is said in the new media on its own? The whole thing seems fishy to me, and doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.
Yeoman 1st Class Timothy Gilbert, assigned to Headquarters Company of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (NMCB 74), donates blood during a blood drive for his six-year-old daughter at the Naval Construction Battalion Center base chapel. Gilbert’s daughter has been diagnosed with atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor and is receiving chemotherapy at Tulane Childrens Hospital.
You can read more about Yeoman Gilbert and his daughter, Timia, here.
Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Ryan G. Wilber courtesy of United States Navy.
These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero. We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived
This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.
This poor 17 year old girl ran away to Florida from her Muslim home in Ohio because she had converted to Christianity, and her parents found out. She’s in fear for her life because her father has threatened to kill her, and now, an Ohio court will have to decide whether or not to send back to her parents.
Listen to her tearful pleas:
Could that interviewer have been any more dense? Has she never heard of honor killings? She was frustrating that poor girl to tears with her ignorance.
TX Congressman Eugene Green is concerned about troublemakers coming to disrupt his town hall meetings, so he means to ensure that the folks attending are actually from his district:
That’s cool, I guess. I’m not sure it will prevent angry citizens from attending his meetings since there are probably plenty of them in his district, but whatever.
