Why Do These Rich, Old White Guys Still Want to Deny You Affordable Health Care?

The Koch Brothers are at it again and this time they have former-nanny Rep. Michele Bachmann working with them.  Now ask yourself this as you read the posting below, "What does Michele Bachmann think about evolution?" An update from September and an answer at the end.

There are some very wealthy people in this country whose foundations are supporting the crusade against health care reform.  The biggest question I have is why would these people who have all this money like Charles Koch and his brother David, want to prevent most middle-class Americans from receiving health care?  Doesn't seem right. 

My other question is why are these same middle-class Americans so clueless that they go out and protest the very reform that would help them receive affordable health care?  Ask the equally clueless and repugnantly ignorant Rep. Michele Bachmann as she is heading up the protest that is to happen tomorrow in D.C.

In a conference call Wednesday night with bloggers and activists for the advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) called on protesters to “scare” members of Congress into killing the proposed health care reform bill.

If the protesters succeed in scaring lawmakers, Bachmann said that it could cripple efforts to restructure health care for a decade.

“Nothing scares members of Congress more than freedom-loving Americans,” Bachmann said.

Wow, Michele, cripple the efforts to restructure health care for a decade?  So 45,000 United States Citizens who die each year from a lack of health insurance times 10 years equals 450,000 dead citizens. This is what Rep. Bachmann wants--dead Americans.  Rep. Alan Grayson was so very right.  The GOP does want us to die.

My guess is the fools who do show up tomorrow have no idea of the billionaires behind the message.  Charles and David Koch certainly will never have a worry in the world if they or one of their family members became ill.  So, why prevent legislation that can help the average American?  The brothers sponsor a whole lot of anger via their Front Group charitable giving.  See Americans for Prosperity.

I started digging around to see, exactly, who the Koch Family Foundations give money to and, thanks to the efforts of many websites including SourceWatch.org, I found out.  Watch out, it's more shocking than I anticpated.

1. FreedomWorks. Co-chaired by Dick Armey, they have sponsored Tea-Bag parties and town-hall meetings.
2. Citizens for a Sound Economy.  Again, Dick Armey is co-chair.  Supposed to be a Think-Tank, it was founded by the Koch Brothers.  Citizens belongs to Health Benefits Coalition "which lobbies on behalf of the healthcare industry and has spent millions of dollars opposing a Patients' Bill of Rights and other patient protection proposals"
3. Competitive Enterprise Institute.   I can't even begin to describe how crazy these people are.
4. Hudson Institute.  Again, anti-health care reform.  Ms. Kravis' article here was in Forbes.  Serisouly?  Ms. Kravis writes, "Now to the homicide rate, ten times as high in the U.S. as in the U.K. Will insurance cards replace guns? Can anyone credibly argue that health care reform will lower the homicide rate?"  Right-wing Institutes like Hudson and your ilk who promote the insanity of allowing the gun culture to run rampant in our country do promote the homicide rate, Ms. Kravis:  "Marshall Wittmann, former legislative director at the Christian Coalition and now a political analyst with the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, sees the NRA as filling a vacuum left by the decline of the religious right."  And my counter-argument, Ms. Kravis, would be homicide rates would drop if more people had access to health care.  A person whose basic needs are met does not have to resort to crime.

The Koch Family Foundation contributions list continues here at SourceWatch.org.

You don't get to be a billionaire by being overly concerned with those around you or by being charitable.  But to actively participate and sponsor the efforts of trying to deny families who make $40,000 a year the ability to insure themselves and their children? Why?

Now that I've had the time to think about it more since I first raised this question back in September, my answer is as follows.

I believe the Koch Brothers and their ilk are simply scared of allowing the average citizen access to the advantages they received, such as a good education and decent health care, because they live in a constant state-of-fear that one day someone so contemptuously beneath them, someone who grew up with a public education and government sponsored health care, will come along, upend them and take away all their billions.  Better to keep you uneducated, unskilled and at their mercy.

To answer my second question, I see the people rallying against reform, the very people who need help with health care, as helpless in their ignorance.  Pure and simple.  They think by allowing the government to open up the system to include more people (a larger risk pool lowers the costs not raises them) access to insurance, they will lose what they already have.  Like my idiotic neighbors protesting against health care reform the other day.  They're all on Medicare.  You know, that government run insurance?

They are the followers of this country, easily led, easily manipulated, loud of mouth and small of brain.  They listened raptly while Dick Cheney led them into a war of lies and they are listening and, unfortunately for them, believing the lies again.  Or they are incredibly selfish.

Oh, and I am certain they have no idea that David Koch gave $15 million to the Smithsonian for the Hall of Human Origins.  Yep, a hall dedicated to the story of human evolution--the one those Teabaggers don't believe in since the earth is only 2,000 years old. Shows you what David really thinks of his ignorant minions and their misspelled protest signs.  Contempt.

But this time, I am not going to allow this to happen.  I'll be at a phone bank tomorrow calling on my fellow citizens to urge our members of Congress to pass a bill.  One that will make sure people like my husband, who has Multiple Sclerosis, and others like him with chronic conditions have the ability to get affordable health care.

And finally, what does Michele think about evolution?

Bachmann supports the teaching of intelligent design in public school science classes.^[78] During a 2003 interview on KKMS Christian radio program "Talk The Walk", Bachmann said that evolution is a theory that has never been proven, one way or the other.^[79] She co-authored a bill that would require public schools to include alternative explanations for the origin of life as part of the state's public school science curricula.^[80] In October 2006, Bachmann told a debate audience in St. Cloud, Minnesota, that "there is a controversy among scientists about whether evolution is a fact or not.... There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design."^[81

Citations can be found here.