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Tea Partiers: The (Distorted, Screaming) Face of Conservatism

Terrance Heath — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:44:02 -0700

This is one of those things you just have to see to believe. Chances are you've seen it posted elsewhere, but it bears replaying over and over and over again. Here's the face of conservatism today, for ya — mocking and screaming at a man with Parkinson's disease.

At an anti health reform rally in Columbus yesterday, Tea Partiers demonstrated why they should be taken seriously as a populist movement by heckling a man who carried a sign claiming he suffers from Parkinson's.

A video shows the man sitting down in front of a group of protesters. "If you're looking for a handout, you're in the wrong part of town! Nothing for free here, you have to work for everything you get!" says one guy. Then, some khaki-clad dick saunters over, flings some money at the protester and smarmily says "I'll pay for this guy. Here you go. Start a pot." He circles back around to scream, "I'll decide when to give you money!" Someone yells something about communism. Someone else screams, "No more handouts!!!"

If only the health bill created some sort of panels where experts could decide if diseased commie scum like this guy are deserving of care ...

If you can stomach it, the video clip is after the jump.

I can only imagine what they'd have to say to someone like Jerome Mitchell a shy African-American teenager who , who was dropped by his health insurance company — Assurant Health, formerly Fortix — when it targeted policyholders with HIV to drop their coverage.

Previously undisclosed records from Mitchell's case reveal that Fortis had a company policy of targeting policyholders with HIV. A computer program and algorithm targeted every policyholder recently diagnosed with HIV for an automatic fraud investigation, as the company searched for any pretext to revoke their policy. As was the case with Mitchell, their insurance policies often were canceled on erroneous information, the flimsiest of evidence, or for no good reason at all, according to the court documents and interviews with state and federal investigators.

The revelations come at a time when President Barack Obama, in his frantic push to rescue the administration's health care plan, has stepped up his criticism of insurers. The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote later this week on an overhaul of the health system, which Obama has said is essential to do away with controversial and unpopular industry practices.

Insurance companies have long engaged in the practice of "rescission," whereby they investigate policyholders shortly after they've been diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses. But government regulators and investigators who have overseen the actions of Assurant and other health insurance companies say it is unprecedented for a company to single out people with HIV.

Actually, we don't have to guess what these folks would have to say to someone like Mitchell — who successfully sued his insurance company — because Andy Serwer already paraphrased it: they'd say he deserved it.

Jerome Mitchell, who successfully sued Fortis/Assurant to reinstate his coverage, learned he had HIV at 17. I'm sure there are some people who would argue that Mitchell shouldn't have had premarital sex and that catching HIV and subsequently being denied coverage are the "deserved" consequences of his behavior.

Alternately, I suppose you could argue that people like Mitchell should be denied coverage because Nancy Pelosi wants to use a common Congressional procedure to help pass the health-reform bill. The first argument, while abhorrent, at least acknowledges some of the human consequences of failing to pass health-care legislation. The latter is petty beyond belief.

The latter is, indeed, petty. But unfortunately, it is not beyond belief. People who'd mock and ridicule an old man with Parkinson's find it very easy to do so, especially after warming up on a motherless 11-year-old.

What's that you say? It's unfair to judge the Tea Party movement based on one video from a very, very small protest? OK. So, here's more.

What's that you say? Tea Partiers are independents? Not conservatives? Not Republicans? Steven M. applies the "Walks like a duck" rule pretty convincingly.

From an NPR story this morning about a rally against the health care bill at the Ohio office of an Ohio congresswoman (my transcript; audio only):

Nearby, 60-year-old Steve Krempasky says he's been unemployed for two years. He's a truck driver, but his wife works, so he's got health insurance. He's wearing a shirt that mimics that iconic silkscreened image of Barack Obama from the campaign, except this shirt features George W. Bush and the phrase "Miss Me Yet?"

Krempasky says he does miss the former president.

"Right now it appears that the government, especially the president, is not listening to what the people have to say."

Look, it's simple. Teabaggers are Republicans. "Independent" teabaggers are Republican-leaning independents. Nearly all of these people deeply admired George W. Bush as a steely-eyed rocket man fighting terr'ists and Democrats, and most of them never really stopped admiring him.

(Krempansky's only half right. Congress and the administration are only half listening to "what the people have to say," because the people are saying that they want reform and that this reform bill doesn't go far enough.)

The Tea Baggers at this protest seem to have a near pathological, and perhaps even congenital, inability to put themselves in the shoes of the man suffering from Parkinson's disease. They even appear to have a co-morbid inability to consider how their treatment of him might look to the camera. Either that, or they just don't care if they appear to be heartless. (After reading about the progression of Parkinson's disease, I can only imagine the effort it must have taken for this man to make it to the protest.) Never mind putting themselves in Jerome Mitchell's shoes.

The irony is that many Tea Partiers may find themselves in exactly that position. A ProPublica post about Mitchell's case notes that many insurance companies engage in "aggressive rescissions," to rid themselves of policyholders whose illnesses and chronic, lifelong conditions cut into profit margins.

Stephanie Mencimer at Mother Jones notes that about 40% of the Tea Partiers are over 50, and after walking among them discovered many who would benefit from the very reform legislation they seek so desperately to defeat.

While Meckler was standing in front of the Cannon House office building forecasting a Tea Party explosion if a law should pass, Dale Chiusano, a resident of Bethesda, Maryland, sporting an "I choose liberty" sticker, walked up to me and started complaining that his health insurance company had kicked his 22-year-old daughter off the family plan during her senior year of college. Like so many tea partiers I've interviewed over the past year, Chiusano was already the beneficiary of government health care, having spent 30 years working for the federal government. Now retired, he still gets to keep his federal insurance plan, but he was outraged to discover that he had to "pay through your nose" to get his daughter a private plan during the gap between college and her first job.

I pointed out that the health care overhaul would have saved him a lot of money by allowing his daughter to stay on the family plan until she was 26, a fact he hadn't known. Not that this information changed his mind — "you can't have the federal government managing the family life!" — but people like Chiusano might feel differently once they see for themselves how the bill affects their pocketbooks.

Meckler claimed that the bill's benefits were illusory. "Nobody will see any new insurance for four years, but they will see higher taxes," he insisted. That's incorrect: Many of the bill's reforms will kick in almost immediately (PDF), including the provision allowing young people to stay on their parents' insurance plans until age 26. Medicare recipients, who seem disproportionately represented in Tea Party rallies and town-hall meetings, will also see tremendous benefits right away.

The bill will end copays and deductible charges for preventive care, close the "donut hole" in Medicare's prescription drug benefit (which forces the elderly to pay high out-of-pocket costs), and creates a $10 billion temporary fund to help offset the costs of insurance for people who retire before turning 65. That last benefit is likely to be a huge boon for Tea Party activists, but they'll also benefit from provisions requiring insurance companies to cover everyone regardless of their preexisting conditions. Aging Tea Partiers are much likelier than young people to need such protection.

Without health care reform, some of those very protestors yelling and tossing money at this man — whose sign read "Got Parkinson's? I do and you might. Thanks for your help" — might find themselves among the human consequences of a failure to pass health care reform.

What about the legislation itself--what does it accomplish? On a concrete level, it expands health insurance to as many as 30 million Americans who are currently not covered; on a symbolic one, it makes clear that the government--not the market--is responsible for healthcare. Those are no small achievements.

That may be the biggest handicap progressives have had in this health care reform debate. The number of uninsured Americans far outstrips the our individual capacity to reach into our wallets and offer a few dollars for the care they need, or even the ability of charitable organizations and community activism to extend coverage to all of the uninsured. Needless to say, the number of uninsured Americans far outstrips the will of private insurance to cover them vs. the will to increase their profits. For many progressives, then, the inclination to care about and the desire to do something about the millions of Americans without health care coverage ends up outweighing even opposition to a reform bill that is less than is should be and less that what Americans need.

Though I would never wish it on any of them, the very men who berated him and toss to dollars at him may yet develop Parkinson's, which the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke says affects people over the age of 50. The man who said to him "You have to work for everything you get," may very well find himself having trouble talking one day (as is common with Parkinson's). Without health care reform, he might find himself no longer able to work or find work, after a lifetime of working for everything he got, and paying for insurance premiums.

The young man who reached into his wallet for money to toss at him may, 20 or 30 years from now, notice a tremor in his hands that progresses to trouble balancing and instability on his feet. (Which is probably why the reform supporter with Parkinson's had to sit rather than stand in front of the Tea Partiers.) Those symptoms might also progress into difficulty chewing, swallowing and speaking. Never mind being able to work.

Both, if they developed Parkinson's might find themselves among those who become severely disabled. They might find themselves among those whose condition outlasts their insurance companies' ability to profit from covering them. They might find themselves among those whose illness makes them unable to work and thus afford the care they need, let alone meet basic needs like food and shelter.

If they do, chances are they won't meet the guy they mocked and ridiculed that day, but I'd bet money that he'd treat them better than they treated him.

I truly hope they don't develop Parkinson's or any other illness or condition. But if they do, I want them to have the health care they need, even if they can't afford it themselves. I'll stand up to make sure that they have it. I'll cast my vote for political leaders who will make sure they have it. I'll even gladly pay more taxes to make sure they, every other Tea Party protestor out there that day, the man they ridiculed, and every other American has access to the quality, affordable medical that they need.

So, would the man who was the object of their derision that day. After all, that's what he was doing.

In some ways, the faces of health care reform opposition and supporters were revealed in that moment captured by news cameras — two very different faces of America came nose to nose. Given that we all might someday need medical care we can't afford, and that isn't profitable to insurance companies, if you get sick which face of America would you rather see?

Conservatives in Denial Over Health Care Reform

OurFuture.org Staff — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:26:54 -0700

Tea Partiers: The (Distorted, Screaming) Face of Conservatism

Terrance Heath — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:44:02 -0700

At an anti health reform rally in Columbus yesterday, Tea Partiers demonstrated why they should be taken seriously as a populist movement by heckling a man who carried a sign claiming he suffers from Parkinson's.

A video shows the man sitting down in front of a group of protesters. "If you're looking for a handout, you're in the wrong part of town! Nothing for free here, you have to work for everything you get!" says one guy. Then, some khaki-clad dick saunters over, flings some money at the protester and smarmily says "I'll pay for this guy. Here you go. Start a pot." He circles back around to scream, "I'll decide when to give you money!" Someone yells something about communism. Someone else screams, "No more handouts!!!"

If only the health bill created some sort of panels where experts could decide if diseased commie scum like this guy are deserving of care ...

If you can stomach it, the video clip is after the jump.

Previously undisclosed records from Mitchell's case reveal that Fortis had a company policy of targeting policyholders with HIV. A computer program and algorithm targeted every policyholder recently diagnosed with HIV for an automatic fraud investigation, as the company searched for any pretext to revoke their policy. As was the case with Mitchell, their insurance policies often were canceled on erroneous information, the flimsiest of evidence, or for no good reason at all, according to the court documents and interviews with state and federal investigators.

The revelations come at a time when President Barack Obama, in his frantic push to rescue the administration's health care plan, has stepped up his criticism of insurers. The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote later this week on an overhaul of the health system, which Obama has said is essential to do away with controversial and unpopular industry practices.

Insurance companies have long engaged in the practice of "rescission," whereby they investigate policyholders shortly after they've been diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses. But government regulators and investigators who have overseen the actions of Assurant and other health insurance companies say it is unprecedented for a company to single out people with HIV.

Jerome Mitchell, who successfully sued Fortis/Assurant to reinstate his coverage, learned he had HIV at 17. I'm sure there are some people who would argue that Mitchell shouldn't have had premarital sex and that catching HIV and subsequently being denied coverage are the "deserved" consequences of his behavior.

Alternately, I suppose you could argue that people like Mitchell should be denied coverage because Nancy Pelosi wants to use a common Congressional procedure to help pass the health-reform bill. The first argument, while abhorrent, at least acknowledges some of the human consequences of failing to pass health-care legislation. The latter is petty beyond belief.

What's that you say? It's unfair to judge the Tea Party movement based on one video from a very, very small protest? OK. So, here's more.

What's that you say? Tea Partiers are independents? Not conservatives? Not Republicans? Steven M. applies the "Walks like a duck" rule pretty convincingly.

From an NPR story this morning about a rally against the health care bill at the Ohio office of an Ohio congresswoman (my transcript; audio only):

Nearby, 60-year-old Steve Krempasky says he's been unemployed for two years. He's a truck driver, but his wife works, so he's got health insurance. He's wearing a shirt that mimics that iconic silkscreened image of Barack Obama from the campaign, except this shirt features George W. Bush and the phrase "Miss Me Yet?"

Krempasky says he does miss the former president.

"Right now it appears that the government, especially the president, is not listening to what the people have to say."

Look, it's simple. Teabaggers are Republicans. "Independent" teabaggers are Republican-leaning independents. Nearly all of these people deeply admired George W. Bush as a steely-eyed rocket man fighting terr'ists and Democrats, and most of them never really stopped admiring him.

While Meckler was standing in front of the Cannon House office building forecasting a Tea Party explosion if a law should pass, Dale Chiusano, a resident of Bethesda, Maryland, sporting an "I choose liberty" sticker, walked up to me and started complaining that his health insurance company had kicked his 22-year-old daughter off the family plan during her senior year of college. Like so many tea partiers I've interviewed over the past year, Chiusano was already the beneficiary of government health care, having spent 30 years working for the federal government. Now retired, he still gets to keep his federal insurance plan, but he was outraged to discover that he had to "pay through your nose" to get his daughter a private plan during the gap between college and her first job.

I pointed out that the health care overhaul would have saved him a lot of money by allowing his daughter to stay on the family plan until she was 26, a fact he hadn't known. Not that this information changed his mind — "you can't have the federal government managing the family life!" — but people like Chiusano might feel differently once they see for themselves how the bill affects their pocketbooks.

Meckler claimed that the bill's benefits were illusory. "Nobody will see any new insurance for four years, but they will see higher taxes," he insisted. That's incorrect: Many of the bill's reforms will kick in almost immediately (PDF), including the provision allowing young people to stay on their parents' insurance plans until age 26. Medicare recipients, who seem disproportionately represented in Tea Party rallies and town-hall meetings, will also see tremendous benefits right away.

The bill will end copays and deductible charges for preventive care, close the "donut hole" in Medicare's prescription drug benefit (which forces the elderly to pay high out-of-pocket costs), and creates a $10 billion temporary fund to help offset the costs of insurance for people who retire before turning 65. That last benefit is likely to be a huge boon for Tea Party activists, but they'll also benefit from provisions requiring insurance companies to cover everyone regardless of their preexisting conditions. Aging Tea Partiers are much likelier than young people to need such protection.

What about the legislation itself--what does it accomplish? On a concrete level, it expands health insurance to as many as 30 million Americans who are currently not covered; on a symbolic one, it makes clear that the government--not the market--is responsible for healthcare. Those are no small achievements.

If they do, chances are they won't meet the guy they mocked and ridiculed that day, but I'd bet money that he'd treat them better than they treated him.

So, would the man who was the object of their derision that day. After all, that's what he was doing.

Will Health Care Reform Kill the Tea Party?

OurFuture.org Staff — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:39:13 -0700

Glenn Beck: Conservatism's Snake Oil Salesman, Pt. 1

Terrance Heath — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:02:45 -0700

(Or "CPAC: Sideshow and Snake Oil, Pt. 2")

The circus sideshow that was CPAC folded its tent and left Washington weeks ago. However, its apparent ringmaster and chief snake oil salesman still sweats, struts, and sobs across the "stage" of conservative media — that medicine show never stops rolling and never stops hawking its "solutions" to Americans who are in desperate need of something to ease their economic aches and pains, and heal their political maladies.

And like the medicine shows of old, Glenn Beck — and others like him — peddle magical "miracle cures" that either poison directly by filling the body politic with toxic bile, or indirectly by distracting us from actual solutions, and aren't intended to "cure what ails us" so much as to make us think that we feel better even as the illness progresses. Case in point is Beck's latest attack on the very idea of social justice.

Last week, the conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck called on Christians to leave their churches if they hear preaching about social or economic justice, saying they were code words for Communism and Nazism.

In attacking churches that espouse social justice, Mr. Beck is taking on most mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, black and Hispanic congregations in the country - not to mention plenty of evangelical churches and even his own, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Mr. Beck said on his radio show on March 2, "I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words."

"Am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If I am going to Jeremiah Wright's church," he said, referring to President Obama's former pastor in Chicago. "If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish. Go alert your bishop."

Perhaps it was inspired by churches and religious leaders having the temerity to stand up to him and confront his rhetoric this past December — having been offended by his use of Christian imagery and Christianity itself to promote a message they believed "outside Biblical narrative." Still, Beck cleverly attacked what might be considered a political "buzzword" without defining it, except by employing other broadly-used and ill-defined buzzwords. So, it might help to start with what Beck neglected to provide.

"A More Humane World"

What exactly does social justice mean, anyway?

Social justice is the application of the concept of justice on a social scale.

The term "social justice" was coined by the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli in the 1840s. The idea was elaborated by the moral theologian John A. Ryan, who initiated the concept of a living wage. Father Coughlin used the term in his publications in the 1930s and 40s, and the concept was further expanded upon by John Rawls' writing in the 1990s. It is a part of Catholic social teaching and is one of the Four Pillars of the Green Party upheld by the worldwide green parties. Some tenets of social justice have been adopted by those on the left of the political spectrum.

Social justice is also a concept that some use to describe the movement towards a socially just world. In this context, social justice is based on the concepts of human rights and equality and involves a greater degree of economic egalitarianism through progressive taxation, income redistribution, or even property redistribution, policies aimed toward achieving that which developmental economists refer to as more equality of opportunity and equality of outcome than may currently exist in some societies or are available to some classes in a given society.

It other area's of its site, NETWORK goes on to define '

That's a definition from Wikipedia. But one that hits closer to home, and closer to Beck's target, comes from NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby:

NETWORK envisions and works for a more humane world, one of justice and care for the common good. We act in solidarity with justice activists throughout the global community.

Our work is firmly rooted in our Catholic social justice tradition, which encompasses Scripture, Catholic Social Teaching and the lives of Jesus and people of faith who have followed the Gospel call to act for justice. We believe that faith has a public dimension. As the Church teaches us, "Every citizen... has the responsibility to work to secure justice and human rights through an organized social response." Economic Justice for All , #120

In a democracy, the first step down the road of forming a just society is voting with a well-formed conscience. But that's not the only step; this journey does not end at the ballot box.

The next — just as critical — part of the journey is to stay involved in the process, to work with our elected officials in order to hold them accountable. Policies and laws that support the common good should be maintained and strengthened. Policies and laws that tear at the fabric of our common good should be remediated or eliminated altogether. These actions are going to be hard for elected officials to accomplish in the face of pressure from special interest groups. That's why elected officials need the continued support and involvement of Catholic voters throughout their terms in order to give them the political strength required to get the job done.

Network then goes on to us direct quotes from scripture and documents from the U.S. Catholic Bishops (I particularly like the use of Exodus 23:9 to support comprehensive immigration reform) to support its mission, which includes a laundry list of issues likely to set Beck off (again).

Just and fair treatment for immigrants
Affordable housing
Healthcare for all
Retirement security
Food security
Wage equity
Peace in Iraq through economic development
Fair and just global trade and responsible investment
Fair and just taxation
Investment in human needs domestically and globally

What's more surprising — and likely infuriating — to Beck, a former Catholic, is that in its "Platform For the Common Good" (PDF) NETWORK puts social justice work into two categories: "Government Action Needed" and "Individual/Community Action Needed." In other words, it recognizes that social injustices need to be addressed both by community/individual action and the government action.

And while Beck is now attempting to walk back from his previous remarks — telling his viewers that social justice "in which you empower yourself to go out and help the poor" is alright — he's likely to trip over the tenets of both his former and current faiths. Mark Silk, a religious blogger, points out that even the Mormon church preaches the very kind of social justice that Beck (a Mormon convert) is telling people to "run away" from.

Not to belabor the point, but the Judeo-Christian tradition from which Beck's Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints springs expects the poor to be provided for as a matter of public law. And indeed, in the days when the LDS Church ran its corner of North America as a theocracy, that's just what it did.

In other words, churches and religious institutions already engage in and encourage congregants to work for social justice in their individual activities. My own mother, a devout Baptist, has been active in her church's food bank for years — even running it for a period of time, as well as her church's mentoring program for young women and young mothers, etc.

A great many churches have such ministries as a part of their work. But what organizations like NETWORK recognize, and Beck's own church recognizes, is that there are matters of social justice that individual action or even community action cannot address effectively due to their limited scope and the scheer size of the problem. NETWORK's "Platform for the Common Good" include some examples:

Better regulate corporations and financial institutions; institute financial reform and transparency
Enhance workers’ rights to join unions without fear of harassment and to negotiate first contracts within a reasonable time period
Work to lessen income disparities and to reform tax policies that favor the wealthy and corporate interests
Fund after-school programs, jobs for youth, and continuing education (GED, ESL) for adults
Ensure that convenient, safe public transportation is available in all communities
Address employment needs of groups with high unemployment
End discrimination in all institutional forms

Either Beck and his ilk don't believe that the above need to be addressed, or that there is no injustice in the conditions they are intended to address. Perhaps there is simply no injustice in Glenn Beck's world, because nothing is an injustice. But at least some of Beck's co-religionists believe there is.

The difference between Beck's world, and the one that religious organizations that preach and practice social justice is as basic as the difference between right and left.

Neither Left Nor Right

The idea of social justice is the exclusive property of the left or the right, but another definition of social justice highlights a distinction between the two approaches to social justice — and ultimately underscores how Beck abandons both.

A general definition of social justice is hard to arrive at and even harder to implement. In essence, social justice is concerned with equal justice, not just in the courts, but in all aspects of society. This concept demands that people have equal rights and opportunities; everyone, from the poorest person on the margins of society to the wealthiest deserves an even playing field.

...The far left would argue that there are certain basic needs that must be offered to all. These include things like truly equal education and safety in all schools and programs that would help all children have the financial opportunity to attend college. Far left groups, often termed socialist even if they differ from true definitions of socialism, further argue that a just society cannot be had unless everyone has access to food, safe shelter and medical care. The way to achieve this is through taxation and government implementation of programs that will guarantee these things for all people.

The right political stance equally endorses a just society, but may criticize those who make poor choices and feel that while equal opportunity should exist, a government should not legislate for this. In fact it is argued that social justice is diminished when governments create programs to deal with it, especially when these programs call for greater taxation. Instead, those who have more money should be encouraged to be philanthropic, not by paying higher taxes, which is arguably unjust.

The distinction here is that on the right there is no way to ensure that action will be taken. For example, one may cut taxes and "hope for the best" — that charitable donations will increase and thus the need for social justice will be addressed without government action — but there is little that can be done if the increased income is, say, invested in derivatives or socked away in tax shelters instead. In other words, it only works if the everyone believes that we have some degree of responsibility to and for each other. It does not, however, jibe with the exalted pursuit of self-interest above all else.

On the left, government may act without having to wait for a individuals to take action in sufficient numbers to remedy the problems that need addressing — if indeed sufficient numbers of individuals ever do, that is. Government may also be more impartial and less discriminating in terms of who receives help, evaluating people on basis of need, whereas the right has recently displayed a nearly paralyzing concern that the "wrong people" might be helped, resulting in fewer people receiving needed help over all. (The debate over "moral hazards" and the mortgage relief debacle are one example.) In fact, on the right, it is a greater injustice for the government to take action, since it must do so with tax revenue.

On one hand, where there are issues of social justice that are beyond the scope of individual and community action, the government may act. On the other, where there are issues of social justice that are beyond the scope of individual and community action, they government may not act. And in Glenn Beck's works, where there are issues of social justice that are beyond the scope of individual action, neither the government nor the community may act.

The difference is that between a world with the possibility of community and a world without community.

That's the snake oil Glenn Beck and others like him are selling to an America suffering all the symptoms of financial crisis — blight, foreclosure, homelessness, hunger, joblessness.

That's the poison that Beck and others are selling: that none of us is responsible to or for anyone else, and that we'll get out of this crisis without having to be.