Lamar Smith held his town hall meeting in Schertz on Monday.  It was a jam packed event.

Here are the links to the news stories about the event and some pictures.

http://www.kabb.com/news/   its under Health Care Reform Town Hall

http://www.mysa.com   look in the slideshows Charles Gonzalez health care town hall and Lamar Smith health care town hall

http://www.kens5.com/latestnews/stories/KENS20090824-lamarsmithtownhall.111b9bbab.html

http://www.ksat.com/video/20537133/index.html

http://sanantonioteaparty.org/event-pictures/?album=1&gallery=9

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Take Action on Health Care Reform!

Please take immediate action. Call the bipartisan “gang of six” and tell them not to cave in to the pressures. Let these 6 know your feelings on the Health Care Reform.

Listed are both their district and DC office numbers. Thanks for your continue work.

Sen. Max Baucus
406-657-6790
202-224-2651

Sen. Jeff Bingaman
505-988-6647
202-224-5521

Sen. Kent Conrad
701-258-4648
202-224-2043

Sen. Charles Grassley
515-288-1145
202-224-3744

Sen. Mike Enzi
307-682-6268
202-224-3424

Sen. Olympia Snowe
207-786-2451
202-224-5344

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) (AP Photo)

The proposed law does not say, however, exactly how or with what authority a grant recipient would go around measuring weight loss of community residents, or their use of “proper nutrition” or whether they had increased their physical activity, among other mandates in the bill.

Further, the Kennedy health care bill does not say which “national network of community-based organizations” is eligible to participate.  Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said that it is possible that the controversial group ACORN could qualify for the available grants.

“I don’t believe so, but they could be,” Dodd told CNSNews.com, in an earlier interview. “I just don’t want to say categorically it’s the case.”

“I’m not saying yes or no, I just don’t know. I don’t think it’s a blanket thing that anyone applies necessarily,” he said. “There would have to be criteria by which an organization qualifies to receive those grants.”

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is a national network of community-based organizations. It has been scrutinized in recent years over allegations of  voter registration fraud. In Nevada, criminal charges were filed against the group in May that said ACORN illegally paid for the registration of voters before the 2008 election.  ACORN has denied the allegations.

ACORN has also been criticized because of its partnership agreement with the U.S. Census Bureau to help in the 2010 Census count.

Devon Herrick, a senior fellow at the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), in an e-mail to CNSNews.com, speculated that grants for “Creating Healthier Communities” could be misused by organizations that do not promote healthy living.

“I’m only speculating, because the bill does not make it clear,” Herrick said. “You will have to ask the Senate HELP Committee staff for a definitive answer. [But] my concern is the grants would be misused to reward political organizations whose mission has never been to promote healthier lifestyles.”

Herrick said he doubts that efforts by community-based organizations will result in healthier neighborhoods, adding that he expects entities such as schools and non-profits to use the grants if the Senate provision is included in the final bill.

“I’m not convinced community-based initiatives will result in healthier communities,” he said.

“But if provisions for healthy community grants ultimately pass, I would like to think the funds would be used by schools [to create new after-school programs] and by non-profits, such as YMCA, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, etcetera,” Herrick said, “and for actual programs that encourage physical activity and teach healthy living.”

The NCPA’s senior fellow’s comments were in response to CNSNews.com’s inquiry to provide an interpretation of the “community transformation grants provision” and whether organizations like ACORN would benefit. He was also asked to provide examples of which organizations would qualify.

“My hope is that the funds would go to organizations who have been promoting healthy lifestyles all along,” Herrick told CNSNews.com.

Michael W. Chapman contributed to this report.

The Cato Institute has some great things on their site about health care reform. Take a look

http://healthcare.cato.org/

ELDERLY SWING AGAINST OBAMA PLAN

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

Published on DickMorris.com on August 11, 2009

The most ominous signal yet for the Obama health care plan emerged in the poll by Scott Rasmussen released today. While public support for the plan fell to a new low (42% support, 53% oppose — down five points in two weeks), the elderly emerged as the strongest opposition group. Those over 65 rejected the plan by 39-56 while almost half — 46% — said they were “strongly opposed” to it.

The group that supports the plan most strongly is those likely to be least affected, voters under the age of thirty, 67% of whom support the proposals.

The Democratic Senators and Congressmen can well choose to ignore polls. Polls go up. Polls go down. They may figure that the public will have moved on by the time they run for re-election, particularly those Senators who are not up in 2010. With four or six years to go in their terms, they can afford a relaxed view of polling data.

But the Democratic Party as a whole cannot afford to ignore a massive defection in the ranks of the elderly, one of its key building blocks. Ever since the New Deal coalition was cobbled together by FDR, the elderly have been a major component. Worried about Republican designs on their Social Security, they vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

But the Obama proposals, which many see correctly as a major cut in Medicare, might be seminal in driving them en masse away from the Democrats.

The Democratic Party is built on six pillars — blacks, Latinos, single women, young people, union members, and the elderly. If legislation threatens one of those pillars, it threatens the stability of the entire partisan structure. And Obama’s health care reform seems to do just that.

With 40% of the savings in medical spending coming from Medicare, the senior citizens of America are coming to see the Obama proposals as an assault on their health care system. Since their needs are fully met by Medicare, they see no need for monkeying with the system and are highly suspicious of any changes. When they watch as their fellow seniors attend town meetings to protest to their Congressmen about these cuts and are labeled “un-American” for their pains, their alienation from the Democrats just grows.

The fissure Obama is driving between his party and the elderly will not soon heal. When the elderly change their voting habits, they tend to do so for a very, very long time. Even Senators who are up in

2012 or 2014 should worry that their votes for the Obama plan could doom their ability to attract elderly support.

As to the young people who back the plan, once they learn that they will have to pay steep premiums for health care coverage, whether they want to or not, their support is likely to cool. Under the bill, for example, those making $30,000 a year would have to pay up to 7% of their income in health insurance premiums before they could get a government subsidy. A $2,100 bill for such a young person might seem affordable to Obama, but perhaps not to them. Thus, the legislation may well come to be seen as a tax on the young, another of the key constituencies of the Democratic Party.

The cost of Obama’s health care changes just keeps growing — financially and politically.