Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Congressman Garrett's Website of Misinformation

You may have noticed that my research about the reality of proposed health care reform has caused me to dig deeper into the positions, statements and information being disseminated by Representative Scott Garrett. Its become increasingly clear to me that he really is just a shill of corporate campaign donors who benefit from maintaining the status quo, regardless of the negative impact it has on his actual constituents.

If you check his website you notice a disturbing skew to everything. In the health care section http://garrett.house.gov/Issues/Issue/?IssueID=5208, he posts a report from the Lewin Group, as if this was some non-biased source of information, but the reality is that this company is fully owned by United Healthcare - a huge insurance company.

Then you take a look at the "Health Care Comments" on this page, which supposedly represents the emails from his constituents. However, there is not a single email in favor, even though the majority of Americans do favor health care reform. Really, not one email?

Probably the most misleading section is one titled "Reading Guide for Reform" http://garrett.house.gov/UploadedFiles/Pelosi_HC_Bill_Reading_Guide_102909.pdf. This is essentially the contents of the email that Garrett sent out to his constituents, and was easily dissected in my earlier post as being full of misinformation. What's really disturbing is that this is clearly a prepared "talking points" document for Republicans, so they have a list of alarming (but untrue) statements with which to get misinformed voters riled up. Apparently, but not surprising, Garrett doesn't have the integrity to stand up to those in his party that are trying to push this drivel.

With this lack of honesty about such an important issue, I really don't understand how this congressman can sleep at night.


PS Apparently I'm not the only one noticing Garrett isn't really being honest - there is a good deal of content about his reckless positioning at this informative web site http://blogthefifth.blogspot.com/ !

2 comments:

  1. Freepers now claim Garrett as one of their own. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2389627/posts

    Claims Obama needs to show birth certificate.

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  2. I'm not surprised that Garrett would at least try to seem supportive of birthers. Obama has the same birth certificate proof that just about every Hawaii native does - the short form image, since all the paper long forms were destroyed in 2001.

    I also find it interesting that freerepublic.com accomodates these people who are desperately looking for something to undermine Obamas legitimacy. As in most of these conservative "forums" and AM talk radio shows there is no room for hearing reasoned arguments from the other side, its just an echo chamber for people with the same wacky viewpoints. At least freerepublic is honest about it:

    "Despite the wailing of the liberal trolls and other doom & gloom naysayers, we feel no compelling need to allow them a platform to promote their repugnant and obnoxious propaganda from our forum"

    ReplyDelete