Dog bites man: the Rapid City Teabaggers "Citizens for Liberty" send out some crazy propaganda to drum up last-minute signatures for the petition drive to refer two innocuous new South Dakota health care laws to a public vote.
Click on the image to view in detail the exaggerations and falsehoods our neighbors are using to pitch an über-conservative paranoid referral drive that Governor Dennis Daugaard himself has declared misguided. Merle Scheiber, director of our state Division of Insurance, as also offered a succinct rebuttal to this referral drive's wrong-headed paranoia.
Among the easily recognizable lies is the poster's twice-made claim that South Dakota's Senate Bill 38 and Senate Bill 43 will create a "single pay" system. Believe me, if any South Dakota legislation promised to create a single-payer health insurance system, you'd have heard all about it here on the Madville Times. I'd be out right now campaigning for it.
The Teabaggers also have the gall to claim that these two meager little South Dakota laws will throw folks on Medicaid and Medicare into some awful federal system "that rations health care according to costs, demographics and availability." Um... (A) Medicaid and Medicare recipients are already in a single-payer federal system, and (B) these same Teabaggers love Kristi Noem, who wants to gut Medicaid and turn Medicare into a private voucher system that would ration care by costs, demographics and availability.
The poster does make a claim I wish were true, that "Passage and enactment of these laws WILL ENDANGER the law suit [sic] filed by our Attorney General." I assume they are referring to the lawsuit filed by the Florida AG against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which our AG Marty Jackley subsequently joined, but let's not bog down Teabaggers with details.
While the Teabaggers don't make their thinking clear on this poster (this assumes they have thinking that they can make clear), I assume the argument is that a judge might look at South Dakota's passage of these two laws facilitating the PPACA and conclude that South Dakota doesn't really think the PPACA is unconstitutional. As Scheiber points out, the PPACA is the law of the land. It remains so regardless of whether our SB 38 or SB 43 are on the books. Challenging a federal law in court does not require civil disobedience (or nullification, or secession) on the part of the plaintiffs.
This poster accompanies some more desperate and deceptive rhetoric from the Citizens for Lie-berty. If I can stomach it, I may parse through the screed in my inbox and offer some analysis later. The text I'm reading just doubles down on the above poster, focusing on hyperbole, fantasies of tyranny and rebellion, and pretty much everything but the facts.
Maybe it's the gaia-revenge theory: http://www.kaj18.com/news/dropped-dead-fawn-knocks-out-power-in-e-missoula/
I went to one of these meetings with Barb and Lane Lindberg and was surprised how anti GOP they were. Most people attending these meetings don't know anything about what is being discussed and are told the GOP dupped them like Obama did with his bill.
They say repeatedly that they like Daugaard, Jackley, Rounds and most of the legislators but they don't sound like they are supporters when the meeting ends and most of the people are really mad. Most of the meeting is repeatedly slamming Jackley and Daugaard and calling the legislators sheep.
This Tea Party arm of the wing seems more anti GOP than anything.
I thought they were nice people but I didn't get much chance to talk with them. Quite a good turnout but came across as terribly unorganized.
Well, they certianly aren't pro-Democrat. :-)
If they are against the Dems and they're against the GOP, then they need to (1) stop voting for Daugaard, Noem, et al., (2) get organized, and (3) run viable candidates to challenge the two-party system next year. "Viable" means they have to know something about what's being discussed and build support networks around the state to make change happen. Telling the truth about health care reform would also be nice.
This is why they aren't respected or listened to in the GOP. They make a lot of noise but in the end most of the Tea Party votes GOP even if the candidate doesn't respect them.