Fri
Sep 21 2007
02:25 pm
Dem prez candidates surrender on health care
By: Virgil Proudfoot

It looks like all three of the front-running Democratic presidential candidates have now done what today's Democratic politicians do best: surrender. Barbara Ehrenreich says it as well as it can be said:

(link...)

Democratic presidents won two world wars, but now they're too timid to even fight a bunch of insurance companies. You'd think that, as a trial lawyer, Edwards would at least have the cojones to step up to the fight, but his healthcare plan is no different from Obama's or Clinton's. They all want to preserve the failing employer-based private system, and they want the federal government to force you and me to dig further into our pockets to further enrich the insurance rackets. They promise government assistance to help out the poor, but experience tells me that's the part of the plan that will disappear after the election.

Maybe the Republicans are right. Maybe Democrats are too timid to fight a real national threat: insurance companies whose denial of claims kill five times the number of Americans who were killed on 9/11, and they do it every year. The Dems' response: we'll get the taxpayers to give them more money.

Once again, Kucinich is the only candidate willing to fight the real enemy, but he's disqualified because he has a lot of bad hair days.

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Hammersmith's picture

If you think this was something...

Submitted by Hammersmith on Fri, 2007/09/21 - 4:12pm.

wait till you see what they eventually do on Iraq.

Treehouse's picture

AARP responds

Submitted by Treehouse on Tue, 2007/09/25 - 7:48pm.

I'm a member of AARP so I wrote and asked them why Kucinich was not invited. Here is their response. Does anyone know why he might not have met the four criteria? They say he did not respond to the invitation. I'd like to know what really happened.

Thank you for your inquiry regarding the participation of Congressman
Kucinich in the AARP/IPTV Forum that was held on September 20 at the
Adler Theater in Davenport.

On July 2, 2007, Congressman Kucinich's campaign was sent a
registered letter inviting him to participate in the event. The
letter was accompanied by criteria that were set by AARP and IPTV for
participation in the forum. Criteria include:

* Have filed an FEC Form F-2, "Statement of Candidacy," with the
Federal Election Commission;
* Have publicly announced an intention to run for the nomination of
the Republican or the Democratic Party for President of the United
States;
* Have a Campaign Office inside the State of Iowa; and,
* Have employed at least one paid campaign staff representative to
perform full-time campaign duties in the State of Iowa on behalf of
the candidate since at least August 1, 2007.

During the weeks following his campaign's receipt of the letter of
invitation, Congressman Kucinich's office had no communication with
AARP or IPTV. The campaign did not acknowledge receipt of our
invitation, nor did he or any of his campaign staff indicate any
interest in participating in this forum. We did not hear from anyone
about the forum until a story appeared in the Quad-City Times stating
incorrectly, that Congressman Kucinich had not been invited to
participate.

To our knowledge, Congressman Kucinich did not meet all four of the
stated criteria that would have enabled him to participate in the
forum by the designated date.

Thank you for your interest.

Sincerely,

Sivamani
Member Communications
Member@aarp.org

Carole Borges's picture

He didn't have an active office in the state...but so what?

Submitted by Carole Borges on Tue, 2007/09/25 - 9:29pm.

This covers both events that excluded him and his reasoning about why. He is right, too. AARP if they cared about seniors and health care would be advocating for every voice that speaks out intelligently on the matter to be heard.

(link...)

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