The status-quo hates TRUTH TELLERS.
According to the media this morning, Freshman Rep Alan Grayson (D-FL 8, the formerly Republican district around Orlando) has gone too far and is part of the thug-like culture in our discourse. He is an extremist and said outrageous things looking for a short termed pop. He is a fifteen minute fame seeker who is not a professional politician with a future. He is deranged. Unhinged in fact.
This is what the corporate owned media won't tell you:
- Grayson is a trial lawyer who until recently focused on Iraqi war profiteers.
"Mr. Grayson has filed dozens of lawsuits against Iraq contractors on behalf of corporate whistle-blowers. He won a huge victory last month [March 2006] when a federal jury in Virginia ordered a security firm called Custer Battles LLC to return $10 million in ill-gotten funds to the government. The ruling marked the first time an American firm was held responsible for financial improprieties in Iraq." - The Wall Street Journal, April 19, 2006
- Grayson's comments about healthcare reform are based on facts. Since the Clinton reforms were defeated in the 90s over 500,000 Amercians have died because of our crap system of profiting from illness and dying. Of that 500,000 deaths, 100,000 were children. Sounds like a holocaust to me. (Not that is should matter, but Grayson is jewish.)
- Grayson grew up poor in the Bronx "projects." He learned early about bullies when at 11 one threw him under a bus. Obviously, he lived. He went to Harvard and worked his way through undergrad in three years with honors by cleaning toilets and being a night watchman.
- In addition to a law degree from Harvard in the same four years, he earned a master's in Government and finished the coursework for a Ph.D.
- As an attorney, he was a judge's assistant at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals where he worked with Judges Ginsburg, Bork, Scalia, and Starr. Then he joined Judge Ginsburg's husband's law firm, where he represented government contractors. In the 90s he went into business and made millions. The gross theft and graft of the Iraq war brought him back to law fighting against government contractors.
Now Grayson has joined the ranks of the very few Democrats who are willing to step up and say the truth.
Healthcare is broken because of the insurance system.
More insurance is not the answer.
We need single payer.
Insurance needs to go the way of the buggy whip.
Volunteers have begun sit-ins at corporate insurance offices. Just this week 16 were arrested at Aetna in NYC. They need more volunteers and help with bail money.
If you have five bucks, help them be civilly disobedient. Step up and fight or the corporations will win. They are spending 1.4 million every day to bribe politicians like Baucus.
If you have another five bucks to spare, toss it to Grayson and show the cowardly Democrats who are torpedoing reform how good behavior is rewarded. The link takes you to Grayson's ActBlue fundraising page.
This is Grayson kicking ass and taking names on CNN:
My speech has been replayed on CNN, Redstate, Huffington Post, etc, and mainstream media pundits are saying that I'm the Democratic Joe Wilson. Of course, unlike Joe Wilson, I wasn't rude to the President. Unlike Joe Wilson, I didn't break a rule of the House. And unlike Joe Wilson, I actually told the truth. Every single year, over forty-four thousand people in America die because they don't have health insurance. Read this Harvard study. That is the plain truth.
And now the Republicans claim they are going to introduce a resolution "disapproving" of my behavior.
What is this, junior high school? Do they think my feelings are hurt? Just what do these people think health care means? It's not some abstract "issue", we're talking about life and death! And the Republicans, who ran the government in full or in part from 2001-2009, chose to let those 44,000 people die, every single year when they were in power. And George W. Bush, whom the Republicans somehow pretend was not President for the last eight years, just let them die. He even vetoed health care for poor children.
So apologize? I don't think so.
Rep Grayson's Act Blue page has jumped from about 10k yesterday to over 100k at noon EST.
This September cartoon from independent Steve Greenberg also tells it like it is.
Now the rest of the Dems must be forced to to the right thing.
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Chauncey DeVega
Winterene
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the traveler
James and Lois Cowan
Redpossum
Salon.com
Comments
I thought the holocaust comment was improper, to be honest. But I have to agree with his premise, because it is painfully obvious to anyone who has to navigate the damn thing that there is precious little "care" in our current health care system. It IS broken, and it NEEDS replacing, not fixing.
I give the man props for stepping up and saying the unpopular to the unappreciative.
Thumbed/rated/monkey fingered.
I didn't care much for his publicity stunt. The Dems held the moral highground in this debate. But Grayson has made it possible for the media to claim that both sides are equally extreme in their statements. They will jump at that opportunity.
Grayson is very much a proponent of auditing the Fed as Smithie's links show. I did not include that in the bio points in the blog because I am more concerned with healthcare.
Civility is overrated. We need fighters to rally the people. To wake the majority from their stupor.
Brilliance and madness are intertwined.
The disappointing, but predictable way Obama is going with the wars, his own war crimes, Bagram, Gitmo, the Patriot Act, FISA, Cuba, corporate welfare for all with no accountability, mealy mouthing healthcare reform, etc - Grayson in 2012.
I like how he keeps his cool in the face of these stupid arguments.
And shopping across state lines is another joke. They did that with the credit card companies in the '90s and all the banks moved to the states with the most lenient laws. Which made everything far worse. That's why those dicks can charge you thirty percent. The don't have to go by the laws of the state you live in. Only the laws of the state they are based in. That's where all your money goes. We we all be broke forever if things don't change.
http://tinyurl.com/y8veaww
It's funny stuff (as you would expect).
Grayson is colourful, and he seems to be going after the right people. I just don't think the Dems have much to gain from a mudfight. The GOP is very, very good at that game.
As for the proprietors of Custer-Battles, otherwise known as the perpetrators, they should both be in jail. But alas, like most white-collar perps, they will probably be let-off with giving back a portion of their ill-gotten gain.
I didn't much care for Grayson's use of holocaust -- but that raises a question about how many unnecessarily dead bodies constitutes a holocaust -- maybe we should check with the Armenians or the Cambodians before deciding. But otherwise, it's about goddamn time someone on the Left decided to stop pussyfooting with the jungle ethicists on the Right. Here's how I put in on someone else's blog earlier:
One day the Democrats will awaken to the sad fact that the Republicans aren't the least bit interested in Democracy -- else they would be Democrats, too. Nor are they interested in maintaining the Constitution or even family values, for that matter -- else they'd not go ten years without raising the minimum wage, the floor on which the wages of all other workers is based.
What they are interested in is maintaining power at any cost so as to maintain their economic advantage, and the only law these people understand is the law of the tooth and the claw. Until Democrats understand that this struggle isn't about principles or economic philosophy, but only about raw power, they will continue to have a hard time winning the struggle. As these women have discovered, this is as true at the local level as it is at the national level.
All I can say to them is welcome to the jungle.
You talk the talk but also walk the walk.
I have to disengage sometimes or go crazy. I cant believe they are comparing him to Joe Wilson or trying to formally reprimand him.
I enjoyed his blog response, though. And he's quite right: There's no comparison between his speech and Joe Wilson's shouting. Context matters. But if he sticks to the facts, they lose.
Who is Barack Obama?
Even Obama doesn't know.
Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life
A massive slaughter
True it wasn't by fire which is it's main meaning. Maybe we need a new word to describe extensive loss of life and massive slaughter by venal corporate greed and moral cowardice on the part of elected officials.
You warrent a thousand rates for that remark.
Civility leads to concentration camps.
His sense of moral outrage is just what is needed to galvanize the slumbering democrats. he is unlikley to shift republican views, but he can wake up democrats.
tell me this - how big a majority do democrats need to drive this through.
this isn't this summer's debate - it is almost four decades old - and for four decades vested interests have caused the deaths of more americans than died in Vietnam...
check out www.paulgibbons.net/weblog for a humorous perspective on the republican's argument
Paul Gibbons - Writer, Madison
RATED
Can the dems do ANYthing?
I don't think conservatives give a shit about the lives of average citizens. They're consolidating power and money, and those of us who want justice and compassion for all people are getting in the way. They're playing a game called King of the Mountain, and the goal is to get on top and stay there. THERE ARE NO RULES.
They've got all of their selfish and immoral goals swaddled in the flag and religion, but that is camouflage. These are selfish, evil people and they're smarter than they let on.
thanks BBE!
You are RIGHT ON, BBE. "Grayson in 2012" - we are thinking of ordering bumper stickers right now. But as for action, my husband and I are sending him $$$$ - Grayson represents what is needed at this time. Someone speaking COMMON SENSE, fa god's sake.
Thank you for the service of providing Grayson's background. Those dweebs on CNN were just disgusting to watch (not Carville). RATED!