In honor of the MI representative Bartholomew Stupak, I hereby nominate STFUPAC as a new PAC to combat the various misinformation perpetrated by the arrogant, ignorant and the hyperbolic. Educate and inform, honesty and reality are tough weapons in the face of even the most well funded lobbies.
The STFUPAC platform by popular request:
- Numbers over Hyperbole.
What I find odd about the likes of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity is that oftentimes their basic ideological point is quite agreeable. i.e. Keeping the budget balanced, or protecting free (fair) markets. They simply neglect to apply these principles to any relevant topic. Such as the health care or financial service industries. Unfortunately their policy suggestions are upon any reasonable objective review, complete crap. So things like math are kept out of the discussion.
Enter STFUPAC: How do we fix Healthcare? By creating a market in the first place. Why have I never heard it mentioned that we ALL pay into Medicare right now, and yet my coverage doesn't kick in for more than 30 YEARS. What's so hard about understanding that we all pay into our Single Payer system Now.
Yet we have to buy overpriced, crappy, ridiculous, healthcare from monopolies that are exempted from antitrust law while we wait to become too expensive for those corporations to cover.
Why is it not clearly stated that we are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars into Insurance policies that won't cover us when we need them in the last years of our lives. It's only okay to use socialized care when we become too expensive to profit from.
The purpose of a government whether municipal, state or federal is to ensure that a level, coherent playing field is maintained for each member of society and to build the legal and physical infrastructure that is too broad for private entities to effectively accomplish.
- Ideology is Never the whole story. It's nice to say that we are Pro-choice or Pro-life or Pro-peace or whatever we want, but in reality when we deal with Real people who have Real problems in Real life, keep the kid no matter what is not an acceptable response to a woman that is frightened oftentimes alone with an uncertain future and little support from anyone anywhere to help her feel as if she has any real shot at creating a happy healthy home for her child. If Stupak or any other Pro-lifer were to ever Truly consider the REAL options for reducing abortions they would see that simply removing the legal Right to control our own bodies is not really going to ameliorate the Personal and Social REALITIES that surround the practice of abortion.
What DOES affect these realities is sex-education, social support structures such as Planned Parenthood, education about possibilities like Adoption, FAMILY counseling, a Religious viewpoint that includes people that might occasionally make tough personal choices like this and Joins them in weighing their options rather than crushing them with the burden of guilt, shame, and every legal maneuver they can manage to sneak past the Constitution.
- Simple framing of issues, often with the same language as our opponents to present the basic logic of better government. Healthcare should NEVER be referred to as an Entitlement program, that makes it sound like we're spoiled children. It is a deficit reducing act to balance the budget and protect free market capitalism from cronyism and backroom deals. That's so obvious an assertion that it defies credulity to even contemplate debating it yet NO one frames it that way.
- The truth should always be stated clearly succinctly and simply.