Reports the Denver Business Journal:
Several hundred people appeared at a rally to stop national health care reform efforts Tuesday afternoon at the state Capitol.
The campaign, called Hands Off Health Care, plans rallies across the state to raise opposition to health care legislation under consideration in Washington.
Speakers included Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank, and Jeff Crank, Colorado state director of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy organization.
Caldara took aim at the so-called “public option” lawmakers are considering, which would create a government-run insurance plan that would provide an alternative to private insurance for those who don’t qualify for Medicaid, Medicare or other government-run policies.
Many Republicans charge that creating such a plan would lead to a government takeover of the health care reimbursement system, resulting in rationed care and long waits for medical attention…
Many participants carried signs with messages that read: “Stop Obamacare scam,” “Stop health care takeover” or “Free market solutions only.”
A press release issued by ProgressNow Colorado, a progressive group that favors the health reform efforts, dismissed the rally as “yet another right-wing protest” organized by national interests.
Michael Huttner, founder of ProgressNow, said the effort was funded by “out-of-state millionaires” who also funded tea parties and anti-stimulus protests in Denver earlier this year.
“They are attempting to gain electoral advantage by bashing everything the President does, and scaring up local residents to create the false impression that their ‘anger’ is shared by the public,” Huttner said in a press release.
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I haven’t seen anything on this rally, so I have two questions for anyone who was there.
1. Does this group (Caldera, Crank, etc.) agree there is a healthcare issue and simply disagree with the current proposed solution (which is their right)?
2. If they think there is an issue, did they offer any solutions during their rally that would provide reasonable, affordable coverage for the vast majority of the citizens?
Tort reform and portable insurance.
The Independence Institute is not a think tank, it is a propaganda shop, a Libertarian talking-point factory. As Libertarians, they are against government, period. If they are taking their protest to the streets, then it is a sign of weakness, that they can’t get their message out through media channels, and that they are actually worried about the reform momentum the Democratic Party is starting to generate.
I posted here yesterday to encourage people to pay attention to this rally. It is ideologically incoherent that the Independence Institute and American’s for Prosperity would be sponsoring an anti-healthcare reform rally, without going the full monty demanding the end of medicare. I was kind of hoping for some guerilla theater, like a bunch of anti Medicare signs to clarify that these are right wing, libertarian anarchists.
Who is “Americans for Prosperity”?
This is part of the Tea Party astroturf network, well funded through right-wing channels. Open Left has some video of the Americans for Prosperity packing a town hall meeting in St Louis sponsored by Senator McCaskill.
And Now you have Cholera:
I cheer your video.
It’s too bad that many nations are doing better than us in so many ways. Our decline has matched the rise of Republican/Libertarian ideologues taking hold of Congress and the presidency.
“We’re Number One! We’re Number One!”
No, we aren’t. OK, maybe military expenditures.
And everything to do with opposing the President and the Congressional majority.
Caldara is now officially a joke.
I’d bet a number of the several hundred who turned up are on Medicare. They see no contradiction.
Sad.
no public option for you. If you like your health care the way it is, then guess what? Nobody is going to pry it from your cold, dead hands.
(too far???)
How many of them are on Medicare?
But considering the righties have been shouting from the mountaintops that this new health care plan will kill elderly people – sick or not – I wonder what portion of the crowd would not have shown up if they knew their Medicare was safe.
The obvious hypocrisy of righties continues to boggle me although it shouldn’t by now.
I often wonder how many the press means when they say that. Is it 300? Is it 1200?
Estimating the turnout at today’s rally:
KCNC Channel 4 Denver: “several hundred”
Denver Post: “hundreds,” “a few hundred people”
Denver Business Journal: “Several hundred people”
Can’t any of you reporters take a stab?
The Denver Post reporter doesn’t even ask the rally organizers how many attended, like the Post did when Michael Moore appeared at the Capitol. The Post said then that “organizers estimated [the crowd] at 2,000” when Moore appeared. OK, cut the organizers’ estimate in half and you get a 1,000. (Or double the amount the police say were in attendance, as a rule). More people probably turned out to hear Moore promote universal health care than they did to protest it today.
Don’t get me wrong. That’s not a bad turnout from the photo. But it’s no 4/20 rally…
Probably 150 when the cropping & blocking by posters/flags taken into account. 150+ is “hundreds” if you round to 200 🙂
While this was happening. Several hundred is a gross overexageration. 200 is pushing it.
I’m yet again confused by this jargon. If these boys are so pro-free market, they why would they be against competition?
It is time to IMMEDIATELY dismantle medicare, medicade and social security.
Do you think if Caldera and Crank advocated that they would have had a single blue-hair at their event?
Caldera gets 15 hours of radio time a week which the government gives him and he/Independence Institute do not have to pay for that time. That is not fair. That is not free market, that is government monopoly of the 50,000 watt “blow torch of the Rockies.” Only the government in charge of granting that monopoly was controlled by the same party which lost last year, totally. However, broadcast licenses do not expire when the party which granted them loses.
The Democrats won both houses of Congress and the Presidency; in Colorado, Democrats won the governor’s office and the state legislature. All the republicans have left is control of the public radio airwaves…..and that is all they need. …..I predict the repubs will defeat health care reform and win big in 2010…….
radio is setting the agenda and mobilizing the base….it is brilliant and the dems think they are “too smart” to care about talk radio……
Just look at the Air America and NovaM fiascoes. Gross mismanagement (often by the same people in both), internal politics, and often, just outright stupidity.
Couple all that with Dems/Libs being a herd of cats, and it’s apparently doomed for failure.
OTOH, cons love to be part of a group of like thinkers and told what to think, so conservative talk radio has a hug audience. Goebbels would love them.