Parker County Democratic Blog

The following is a version of a diary that was recently posted by local Democrat Cathryn Sykes on the national blog Daily Kos.

I  recently attended a town hall meeting held by my local Congressional Representative, Kay Granger. It was an education to see a master of half-truths, misdirection and deliberately false implications at work.

I live near Springtown, TX. Some time back, I saw a story in the Springtown Epigraph. A local man was inviting our congresswoman, Kay Granger, for a visit.

Like many people, Paul Moore is concerned with the direction his country is headed. “Morals and ethics have gone to Hell in a handbasket in the last 57 years I’ve been here,” he said. “Some way it’s got to stop.”
Emails and strong talk at the local coffee shop only go so far, he said.
“Are they hearing you in Washington (D.C.)?” he asked. “No.”
Moore feels a direct link to nation’s capital and its representatives is the only real answer to what ails America.
With that in mind, he has invited 12th District U.S. House of Representatives Congresswoman Kay Granger to speak at a Springtown Town Hall meeting from 3 to 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 31.

Though I doubt the the Federal government is to blame for our utter lack of morals, (my personal vote goes to reality shows and South Park) a town hall meeting only five miles away was an opportunity too good to pass up. I’d never followed the doings of Granger closely, so I tried to go with an open mind.

That lasted until I saw her row of handouts, set out on a table by the entrance.

The first thing that caught my eye was the Republican’s infamous  Organizational Chart of the House Democrat’s Health Care Plan. You’ll find a copy at http://republicanleader.house.gov/…

Some of you may recall this thing coming out in July, at the start of three months worth of negotiations, amendments and committee meetings. Granger is still using the exact same chart, despite the fact that it wasn’t accurate then, and it certainly isn’t accurate now.

Ah, but it got better. The next handout was a copy of a “Dear Friend” letter, signed by Granger,  that let us know that Nancy Pelosi’s “public relations shop” has been “hard at work trying to rebrand a nationally unpopular policy by changing its name multiple times.”

What, you thought there were real differences between the PO, single payer and co-ops? No, no. It’s all a matter of “relabeling.”

According to Granger, the Obama administration’s plan was first called a “’single-payer’” system.

That language quickly recieved an overwhelmingly negative connotation. The term public-option was then born…[then]some lawmakers became creative, fending off angry constituents by using other terms to describe the government takeover. Members of Congress have camouflaged the government-run system as “co-ops” or a “public plan with an opt-out.” These lighter, more consumer-friendly terms have still not stuck.

Note the subtlety of this lie. Ms. Granger has never actually said that all these plans are exactly the same, she’s simply implied it. Very strongly implied it.

But it got even better. Next came a handout entitled It’s Still Bad Medicine: 10 Things You Need to Know About Pelosi’s Health Care Bill.

I started reading. Taxes, taxes, taxes…..

“Individuals, including small business owners….making $500,000 ($1 million joint) will be hit with a 5.4% surtax.”

Note the interesting use of the word “making”  instead of the term “with an income of” $500,000. I’m willing to bet that most of the people reading this would assume the $500,000 is the gross revenue of the business, not the take-home income of the owners. A profound difference, no? Don’t tell me that this wasn’t deliberate.

A few more taxes, then a biggie.

….the bill includes the Capps Amendment to authorize government funding of abortions through the public option.

Ah hah! Taxpayers will be paying for abortions! 

Really? Not according to the author of the amendment, Representative Lois Capps.

As I mentioned earlier, under my amendment no federal funds may be used to pay for abortions that are not allowed by current law (the Hyde Amendment, which makes exceptions in the case of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the woman). The only funds that may be used to pay for other abortion services are from private funds generated by the policyholders’ premiums, whether the policyholder is covered by a private plan or the public option.

Again, another very subtle, but very deliberately lie. 

Then came this:

The Pelosi bill doesn’t require Members of Congress to enroll in the new government plan.

Ms. Granger… no one is required to enroll in the new government plan. That’s why it’s called an “option.”

Instead the language says the Members “may” enroll in the public option. In contrast the bill used the word “shall” 3,425 times.

Ma’am, a bill this big is going to use the word “shall” a lot. Are you mad because not a single one of those “shalls” forces you, or anyone else, to use the public option?  (Note that she’s had someone count how many times shall appears in this bill. There’s a certain irony in this…I’ll explain later.)

At this point, my mouth was hanging open, but I had to close it and sit down, since the main event was beginning. I estimate that about 80 people were attending the meeting, which started off with an invocation by a local pastor who left me with no doubt as to his political beliefs, since he called for America to turn away from evil, thanked the Almighty for “divinely” appointing Granger to her position (Pelosi, I assumed, had gotten the Speaker’s chair courtesy of Satan) and asked everyone to “pray for our President, though I don’t agree with him.”

I sat on the front row. A Mr. Moore gave a fairly long introduction of Congresswoman Granger, touching on her work with the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and her co-chairmanship of the Anti-Terrorism Caucus. He also mentioned her trips to Iraq and the fact that she’d brought a lot of defense contracts home to Lockheed and Fort Worth.

All true, all fine…I clapped with everyone else.

Ms. Granger started with a slam of the current stimulus bill, which, according to her, cost over $550,000 per job created in Texas. (No mention, of course, of how many more jobs would have been lost without it.)  She then started on a long, long speech about how Republicans were not being given enough time to study bills, beginning with an example of an recent energy package bill that “was filed at midnight, and sent for a vote” the next day. Besides that, the bill was written in “legalese.” (I gathered that Ms. Granger has no lawyers on her staff and does not know, despite her many years as a legislator, that most bills designed to become laws tend to be written in legal lanquage.) And it would have cost every consumer $3000 a year more in utility costs. (I presume that despite the lack of notice, Granger and her fellow Republicans managed to kill the bill, since I haven’t noticed a $250 a month hike in my utility costs.
Note that she didn’t actually say that Congress had no time to examine the bill…she just let the audience assume that when a bill is filed, that’s the first time anyone in Congress sees it…except Nancy Pelosi, of course, who Granger implied is the person who engineers such shenanigans.

The HRC bill, said Granger,was 1,900 pages long (she’d dumped an eighteen-inch high stack of paper on a seat behind her to illustrate just how big it was) it had been “filed” only yesterday and was due to be voted on within a few days. (No mention, at this point, of long months spent getting different versions through multiple committees and both houses of Congress.)  The HRC bill was going to destroy things that actually worked to hold costs done, like tort reform, because it would “penalize states like Texas that have tort reform” In reality, the bill provides incentives for states that work to develop alternative ways to control tort abuses. Withholding an incentive is not quite the same as levying a penalty, Ms. Granger.

It went on and on.  At one point, Granger declared that the HRC bill would eliminate treatement and medical research for such things as rare forms of cancer….it would only decrease the number of uninsured by 9%….it would cost $1.2 trillion….we wouldn’t have enough people to deliver the increased level of health care mandated by the bill….the HCR “wouldn’t lower costs for consumers” unless it also put a “limit on the care.”

It became time for questions from the audience. We’d had to write them down in advance and put them in a little box, which, of course, allowed Granger to pick and choose which she wanted to answer. Surprisingly, not a single question with a progressive or liberal slant showed up. (Hey, I’d submitted three. Hope springs eternal.)

The questions were read and answered, the answers including slamming Obama for “apologizing” for America…

We are the only superpower left…we have to use that power to protect ourselves.

(Unlike Palin, she at least knows, and obviously agrees with, the Bush doctrine.)

…decrying Obama’s tidal wave of czars “who are not voted on by anyone in either the House or Senate.” (She did acknowledge that other presidents had appointed “czars” though I think her head count was a little off….”41 had one czar, 43 had two”…)

….declaring that government should not run any business, even those it held a majority stake in. She nearly brought the audience to tears relating the story of a local car dealer who’d invested millions in his facility, only to be told he’d have to close down, while his cross-town rival was spared, due to the government “takeover of the car industry.”

I stuck my hand up. Had the government or the executives of the corporations made the decision as to what dealerships to close?

The executives, admitted Granger. But it was because the government took over the car companies. She hurried on to the next question; I had no chance to point out that perhaps dealerships were being closed because fewer people could afford to buy cars.

Some one asked what the term “blue dogs” meant. “Conservative Democrats,” said Granger and proudly added that she knows about 47 in the House who will not vote for the HRC bill. (Names, ma’am, names!)

There was more. The need for more stringent measures against illegal immigrants….I asked if she’d support tougher penalties against those who employ them and she said yes, but only if the government would provide those employers with a foolproof way to check immigration status. (Yep, you have the right to hire a guy on the street corner who speaks no English and has no ID, because the government hasn’t yet provided you with a “check status” service.)
She then got a question about why a bill can change so much as it works its way through Congress and she proceeded to praise the “process” of committee reviews, amendments, and further reviews. “It takes a while, but it works.” 

Interesting! I stuck my hand up again and asked: “Has this health reform bill not gone through that process?”

“It’s an entirely new bill.”

“No one has reviewed or discussed any of it? My understanding is that it’s gone through a House version, spent months in Senator Baucus’s Finance committee, plus other committees…”

She admitted that “parts” of it had gone through the “process.” Still…”It was 1100 pages initially. It’s 1900 pages now.” It had just came from Nancy Pelosi’s office to the floor of the House, she said. 800 extra pages. The implication–such a useful technique!–was that for those 800 pages, there’d been no time for review, amendment or debate.

I never really got a chance to ask my follow-up question: “Then how did your staff get an exact count on often the word shall appears in the bill?”  (Remember that?)

A few more carefully chosen questions, a few more carefully worded answers….Granger praised the “Teabaggers and marchers….”you are what our Founding Father’s had in mind…” then thanked us for coming.

Thank you, Congresswoman Granger. An interesting afternoon….and a terrific lesson in how to twist, shade, distort or even go so far as to totally ignore….the truth.