Posted on 09/16/2011 4:22:40 PM PDT by smoothsailing
Bryan Preston
September 16, 2011
Something about Michele Bachmann’s video has been bugging me (and Matt Lewis too) ever since I posted it earlier today. Aside from the irresponsible lunacy of issuing a blanket opposition to “any governor or president who mandates a family’s healthcare choices and violates the rights of parents on these issues” and scaremongering about a vaccine known to be safe, there’s a word she should use in the video but never does. See if you can spot it:
“Whether its Obamacare or Perrycare I oppose any governor or president who mandates a family’s healthcare choices and violates the rights of parents on these issues – especially if the decision-making process occurs behind closed doors, bypassing legislative action, and favors campaign contributors over families.”
Which GOP candidate has had his state-run health care program linked with ObamaCare? Not Perry, since Texas doesn’t have anything like ObamaCare. No, that would be Mitt Romney. But Bachmann doesn’t use “RomneyCare.” Why? Has she allowed herself to become a stalking horse for Romney? If so, on what grounds?
And then there’s the crony capitalist problem. Bachmann has taken a lot of money from pharma companies. One company stands out.
Meanwhile, Bachman has taken somewhere north of $140,000 from pharmaceutical companies. Those donors include Abbott Labs, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Eli Lilly and Bayer. Yet, not a dollar of all that pharma money, from such a wide range of the world’s largest drugmakers, came from Merck. Might Bachmann be going after Merck on behalf of that company’s competitors who also happen to be Bachmann donors?
Why bold GlaxoSmithKline? Because they make the only other viable HPV vaccine on the market, Cervarix.
If it’s fair to levy the “crony capitalism” charge at Perry, then it’s fair to levy the exact same charge at Bachmann, especially after her attacks on Perry.
For the record, I know the “crony capitalism” charge doesn’t apply to Perry and I don’t believe it applies to Bachmann. The stalking horse possibility is definitely in play, though.
Okay, Bud.
Best of luck to your guy, too.
See you at the polls next November, and may our guy win!
Or our gal! What is it Sarah Palin says, ABO! (Anybody But Obama!)
You might want to go back and read my three posts in this thread (out of four total, five including this one about to be posted) that specifically referenced your interest here instead of focusing your attention on non-specific declarations you seem to think will make for a good argument.
The information I provided was about the State of Minnesota, providing a historical context for the State’s participation in the Gardasil vaccination program, and I followed that in post #66 with an account of how Minnesota, Texas, and many other states were a part of a nation-wide implementation of Gardasil programs.
Michele Bachmann was not directly involved with decision making or implementation on the most local of level for Minnesota’s Gardasil program. That’s just plain silly to think I said that.
However, the State of Minnesota, the State of Alaska, and 16 other states at that time were incorporating Gardasil programs at the tax-payers expense. Many other states were gearing up their Gardasil programs at that time but had yet to make it known HOW they were funding it.
The point to be made is that this was a nation-wide movement, one that INCLUDED Minnesota and Texas both plus many more states, and not simply one action allocated to the State of Texas and the State of Texas alone.
If you had actually READ post #66, the second to the last post, (which I had to post slightly later since I had to step away from my computer for a small bit), you would have known at your writing of your last post to me that I was CLEARLY referencing the original author of the original article and had disregarded that idea that a politician should be labeled as a crony capitalist simply because their name is associated with something that occurs in everyday life, and especially when those companies who donated were operating in everyone’s lives ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY. Those kinds of life connections just happen, and having the normal cris-cross of life, especially in a health care action such as this specific immunization which was happening ALL OVER THE COUNTRY THEN, is not the same as unethical or illegal actions.
Had you actually READ all my connected posts, you would have seen my vindication of Michele Bachmann concerning the author’s stretch to make a point for this being crony capitalism.
I feel somewhat irritated with having to come back here and having to explain all these things all over AGAIN when you could have just read everything to begin with before coming back with some kind of ax to grind. If you had read everything and not had preconceived ideas of what you could pick at, we could all have gone all with life.
As it was, I had to take the time AGAIN to provide information yet AGAIN to clarify to you that we need to look at the Gardasil issue in its entirety, as a part of what was going on nation-wide, not just in Texas. ALL the states were jumping on the Gardasil bandwagon at that point. Some were using tax payer money to bring Gardasil into their state health systems; some like Texas were trying to keep their programs at a local level using private funds.
It wasn’t WHETHER the states were incorporating Gardasil into vaccination schedules - they ALL were - Furthermore, it wasn’t whether the manufacturer would get money or not from Texas. They were getting money from ALL the states that had already implemented their programs and were about to do so.
Gardasil was on the national scene, already at or about to be in all states. The only difference was that some states chose to fund their Gardasil programs with tax payer money, and some opted for keeping the program local using private funds, something that would normally be considered conservative — except in THIS circumstance apparently.
So there it is AGAIN. It’s taken additional time for me to go over this again, (I really would have preferred you to have just read the various posts), but then again, thank you for the opportunity to get this insight and information out to people here yet AGAIN.
Please read post 83 which was sent sent your way.
However, since you needed everything reviewed, I figured it might be better to re-post this to you in the hopes you might actually read it this time.
________
Does Michele Bachmann Have a Crony Problem Too?
Friday, September 16, 2011 11:03:57 PM · 66 of 83
casinva to dusttoyou
(dusttoyou’s comment)
Whether Michele did the dirty with the pharmas is not half the problem of her impulsiveness, which could be “Biblical” deadly in Oval Office
(My comment)
I saw your remark earlier before I needed to leave but wanted to come back and let you know I think you hit the nail right on its head.
Even though Michele Bachmann (and I’m sure other politicians as well) got campaign donations from some of the same companies that would have benefited from Minnesota’s federally-tax-funded Gardasil program at that time... and from the Gardasil immunization programs that were popping up all over the country during that time period, that does not appear to be the problem she is facing or that even appears to be concerning enough to look at. Her problems stem from her obvious alliance with Mitt Romney and her self-imploding campaign.
I think it’s good to know Minnesota and all the other states during that era were in the process of including Gardasil into their state’s health departments and clinics, many of them, as in Minnesota and Alaska, on tax payer dollars. That needs to be understood so that no one politician or state is scrutinized without the overall historical picture of the time. And minus information that donations were in fact done unethically or illegally, it’s hard for politicians to accept donations without SOMEHOW touching a part of life in which that politician lives.
But it’s FAR different when desperation (or something else) reveals character traits that just won’t do for someone holding the position of President of the United States.
Thanks for sharing your wisdom!
Hey, PP....
Try to understand what the “opt out” in the TX thing meant.
With “opt IN”, folks would have to pay $360 for the three injections.
With “opt OUT”, those who chose to stay in were covered by health care insurance.
The “opt out” was to keep the people from having to spend so much of their own money in helping to prevent the HPV for their children.
That said, I agree with others here that Bachmann has gone over the edge with this and should just shut off her campaign and mouth. She is a really shrill person, ala Pelosi, who thinks that yelling makes her a winner. Loser!
Good posting. Shows that Gardasil and Cervavix (Bachmann’s choice) would do essentially the same in reducing the HPV and cervical cancer in females.
Someone posted an article a couple of days ago on a topic-related thread that indicated that Alaska was getting Federal dollars in 2007 to support the Gardasil injections there. ....Same year that Rick Perry promoted the same.
That makes me wonder why Sarah Palin blasted Perry for this, when it was being done in Alaska while she was still Governor there. ....?????
PP said: and a man who believes that he has the right to mandate how our doctors treat our illnesses?
Also, you and others should stop referring to the lobbyist for Merck as Perry’s aide, since he was a FORMER aide.
You speak just like the Dem strategists that appear on many of the Fox News programs. Spin, spin, spin....
casinva.... Your post #66 was great and right on the mark!
Looks like somebody beat me to posting “this kind” of story...
Yeah but I see your wife is already at it.
For someone who doesn’t like FR you sure spend a lot of time posting anti-Bachmann threads.
I am not worried about other “thinking” posters seeing my faux pas as burdensome as your general misconceptions of reality per Ms. Bachmann’s contributions involvement with pharmas, which is not as troubling as her impulsive bashing, using pisspoor information against Perry.
Gradually the idiotic rants, like your’s, from ronpaul, Bachmann and strung-along Palin fans will fad as those pretenders fall off the Primary wagon. That return to FR sanity will be most welcome.
In the interim feel free to continue emulating Bachmann’s uninformed impulsive rantings. They are quite telling.
I’m just mad I didn’t get another $500 of that smooth Merck cash. The Ferrari needs gas, doncha know.
...and Jimmy Carter!
I'm waiting for Obama to endorse Romney.
Where the He11 were You?
At those rallies in Washington against Obamacare. And you?
Actually GSK would benefit just as much from Perrycare type laws as Merck. It’s just that only Merck could exploit them when Perry tried to slip his through.
I'm not sure why Sarah Palin seems to feel that funding a program privately and keeping it out of the federal bureaucracy should be labeled "crony" whereas taking tax-payer money as they did in Alaska (and Minnesota and those many other states) to give to Merck was somehow upstanding, but for some reason, she must want to frame it that way.
Sarah Palin would have understood the national "scene" at that time - that all the states were implementing Gardasil vaccine programs - and one would assume she could have understood that either way, whether the states were paying Merck with private funds or paying Merck with tax payer dollars, Merck got profits from all those state Gardasil programs anyway.
However, while Sarah Palin would have known the events and tides of that day, I don't think the general American population, and even we here on FR, are aware that it was not just Texas setting up Gardasil programs for girls; this was a nation-wide phenomena by all the states. These programs were probably prompted, for the most part, by the research findings, warnings, and recommendations coming from Health and Human Services, the CDC, and national health care agencies and organizations.
Before we start analyzing what Texas, or even Rick Perry specifically for that matter, was doing to set their own state's funding up for their own Gardasil program, I think we need to gain a historical and contextual perspective of what ALL the states were doing and how each of them were funding these programs they all were placing into practice at that time.
And as for Cervavix which came out a couple years later, Bachmann liked the Cervavix (GlaxoSmithKline) better for defending against HPV in young girls, but Bachmann simply showing her preferred choice of HPV vaccinations to be a newer HPV vaccination would seem beside the point for the most part, especially when considering HPV vaccination programs were all over the country by that time anyway. It's just fruitless to try to think we can completely remove politicians from life and people as a whole.
This entire situation needs to be put into perspective and understood in light of what was happening in all the states and with a questioning eye as to whether tax payer money should even have been used for ANY of our states' Gardasil programs, of which we had... have... MANY.
LOL! I thought he had. :)
That is an outstanding article on corporatism by Shapiro. Thanks for the link.
Thank you sir! I’m glad you spotted it.
Could have...I ignore the fool! :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.