This will take only a minute of your time.
I received communication from a friend of mine who is on a lot of the “community organizer” mailing lists still after his now-regretful support for Obama’s election. He is concerned because there is a well-organized effort being put forth to slam Joe Lieberman for standing against his party and the Healthcare bill in Congress. They are gathering their troops and heading to the airwaves and the internet to mount a huge campaign against him in an effort to sway him to switch his position so they can pass their healthcare agenda.
Having a rather intimate knowledge of what it is like to have your “friends” organize against you and launch an attack, I feel it is important that (as a nation) we send encouragement to Lieberman in an overwhelming fashion. There is a tendency when the effort against you is orchestrated to begin to feel that this represents the whole. But, if we balance the “noise” coming into his office with our own appreciation, he will be encouraged to hold the line. If not for the almost unanimous outcry from my constituents in support of my opposition to my own party’s push for a tax increase last session; I might have started to believe people really wanted to be taxed more. Sounds silly, in retrospect, but it is the power of organized grass roots and it is a dangerous place to leave Lieberman hanging.
Please join me in contacting Joe Lieberman’s office to tip the scales on behalf of “real” Americans. Partisan politics aside, he has a heavy lift to stand up to Pelosi and Reid and Obama and their well-greased and well-organized grass roots machine. If you want to stop the government take-over of our healthcare system, now is the time to act. Fax, call, do both. I am encouraging you to contact both his DC office and his local office, in case they have already overwhelmed his phone lines.
When you call, keep your message succinct and positive, as this is far more effective. A simple, “Thank you for standing against the public option- I support you!” would do. Please use no threats, no treatise on why you feel this way, and nothing to detract from your core message of “Thank you, keep it up.” Thank you, in advance, for your 10 minutes of help on this. The fight isn’t over yet!
Contact Senator Joe Lieberman at:
Washington, DC Office
706 Hart Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-4041 Voice
(202) 224-9750 Fax
Connecticut Office
One Constitution Plaza
7th Floor
Hartford, CT 06103
(860) 549-8463 Voice
(800) 225-5605 In CT
(866) 317-2242 Fax
Friday, October 30, 2009
Fiscal Policy Nudging Freedom
Fiscal Policy Nudging Freedom
By Senator Pamela Gorman, Arizona State Senate
It is commonly said that tax policy is a form of social engineering. I don’t disagree. But, I believe that statement needs to be expanded to say that all fiscal policy is social engineering. The ways we spend the money we take away from Americans matter, but are often overlooked when considering how the populace will behave.
It all comes down to motivations. What motivates a man to work, to handle his finances responsibly, and yes, to give generously of his time and treasure? It is my long-held belief that the left has a different core belief on this, and while we may all want the same things for the country in general terms (i.e. happy, fed, safe people), we disagree on the path to get there.
As an example, consider a smart man who is working fewer hours than he could. Does he work an extra shift each week so that he can pay more taxes by being bumped into a higher tax bracket? Or, consider an entrepreneur. Does he open a new business in a state that skims off his profits through high taxation? Probably not, as that would be the opposite of smart. Rather, the tax policies guide a thinking man’s behavior and create the government-engineered circumstances that have a negative ripple effect in the economy.
As for spending as a way to engineer society, we need only look as far as recent actions by our federal government for a great example. Congress took our money and spent it on subsidies to new car buyers. So, people bought new cars. Normally, in an economic crisis, people don’t put buying a new car at the top of their “needs” list. But, the behavior was changed by the nudge of the opportunity to get a new car at least partially paid for by other Americans.
In the same way, does a smart man buy health insurance from a private company to offset his healthcare cost risk if he can get better benefits for less through a government subsidized plan? No. That would be the opposite of smart. So the behavior is steered, not by tax policy but by spending policy. The decision to spend money to subsidize healthcare plans has a very direct and destructive effect on the industry. In Arizona, this is already going on with our own state-subsidized Healthcare Group plan and the full blown state-paid healthcare system of AHCCCS. If Obama has his way, we will see this all across the United States.
As the policies of the Obama administration and our current Congress reach further into the realm of possibilities for social engineering through the combined “power tools” of taxation and spending policies, our choices for how we will live our own lives are being limited a little more with each passing day. The reason is that as behaviors are changed to accommodate the path of least resistance to the most basic needs of man, the market for previously desired products, activities, and services shrinks. Eventually, they will just go away entirely.
Indeed, the danger of the social engineering being engaged by our current Democrat-controlled Congress and President Obama may appear at first blush to be mostly about growing national debt and over-bearing government intrusions into our daily lives. But, the sleeper issue that keeps me up at night is the loss of our freedom to choose once infrastructures and industries have re-tooled to adapt to the rush of behavioral changes that evolve from the left’s current and proposed policies. When we lose our choices, our freedom isn’t far behind.
By Senator Pamela Gorman, Arizona State Senate
It is commonly said that tax policy is a form of social engineering. I don’t disagree. But, I believe that statement needs to be expanded to say that all fiscal policy is social engineering. The ways we spend the money we take away from Americans matter, but are often overlooked when considering how the populace will behave.
It all comes down to motivations. What motivates a man to work, to handle his finances responsibly, and yes, to give generously of his time and treasure? It is my long-held belief that the left has a different core belief on this, and while we may all want the same things for the country in general terms (i.e. happy, fed, safe people), we disagree on the path to get there.
As an example, consider a smart man who is working fewer hours than he could. Does he work an extra shift each week so that he can pay more taxes by being bumped into a higher tax bracket? Or, consider an entrepreneur. Does he open a new business in a state that skims off his profits through high taxation? Probably not, as that would be the opposite of smart. Rather, the tax policies guide a thinking man’s behavior and create the government-engineered circumstances that have a negative ripple effect in the economy.
As for spending as a way to engineer society, we need only look as far as recent actions by our federal government for a great example. Congress took our money and spent it on subsidies to new car buyers. So, people bought new cars. Normally, in an economic crisis, people don’t put buying a new car at the top of their “needs” list. But, the behavior was changed by the nudge of the opportunity to get a new car at least partially paid for by other Americans.
In the same way, does a smart man buy health insurance from a private company to offset his healthcare cost risk if he can get better benefits for less through a government subsidized plan? No. That would be the opposite of smart. So the behavior is steered, not by tax policy but by spending policy. The decision to spend money to subsidize healthcare plans has a very direct and destructive effect on the industry. In Arizona, this is already going on with our own state-subsidized Healthcare Group plan and the full blown state-paid healthcare system of AHCCCS. If Obama has his way, we will see this all across the United States.
As the policies of the Obama administration and our current Congress reach further into the realm of possibilities for social engineering through the combined “power tools” of taxation and spending policies, our choices for how we will live our own lives are being limited a little more with each passing day. The reason is that as behaviors are changed to accommodate the path of least resistance to the most basic needs of man, the market for previously desired products, activities, and services shrinks. Eventually, they will just go away entirely.
Indeed, the danger of the social engineering being engaged by our current Democrat-controlled Congress and President Obama may appear at first blush to be mostly about growing national debt and over-bearing government intrusions into our daily lives. But, the sleeper issue that keeps me up at night is the loss of our freedom to choose once infrastructures and industries have re-tooled to adapt to the rush of behavioral changes that evolve from the left’s current and proposed policies. When we lose our choices, our freedom isn’t far behind.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
The Problem with Well Wishes and Good Intentions
The Problem with Well Wishes and Good Intentions
By Pamela Gorman, Arizona Senator
In the governance of people, there is an American ideal that we get what we ask for. We have free elections and heavily regulated campaigns. There is every opportunity to elect people to the roles in public office that will represent the values of the nation. Your vote matters… but it isn’t enough.
At the risk of offending many good people, including my own supporters, I am going to put out some cold hard truths. Your “support” for a candidate is not as strong as you might think, if you simply cast your vote. You need to multiply your vote with the votes of others of like-mind, if you hope to make a difference in the policies that will affect you, your business, your quality of life, your safety, and your freedoms. One vote isn’t a bad thing, but it is relatively worthless when it is up against a legion of other voters who have been rounded up by a well-executed “community organizing” effort from the other side.
So, how do you multiply your vote in an effort to be properly represented? Two things work: money and time. When I am offered help in my campaigns, my inner voice says, “Really? Will that be help in the form of your time or your money?” That cynicism is not because I think people are lying. It is because I realize that they don’t realize that if they want to help, I need either their money or time (preferably both). And, experience shows that most people have good intentions, but lousy follow through. Most people are hard pressed to part with either their money or their time, but those that do are key to shaping a nation and here’s why…
Money buys a campaign the tools needed to get the message out to other voters, so their votes will come in to accompany yours. This is sort of why campaign donations are protected under the constitutional right to free speech. Postage, printing, graphic design, writing, mailing lists, polling, and professional campaign consulting all cost real hard dollars. Being the best candidate in the race and the best man/woman for the job doesn’t pay the bills. Money pays the bills. It is a reality that weighs on every candidate every day. If you don’t have money, you can help raise money from others. But, if you are serious about wanting a candidate to represent you, putting a little of your treasure toward helping them bring in additional votes must be a core of your strategy. Without money, there is no feasible way to communicate the candidate’s ideas or their suitability for the job to would-be voters. It’s a cold hard reality.
Time is finite and not transferrable. We each only get 24 hours in a day. Share even an hour a day or a few hours on the weekend, and most people will be investing an hour a day or a few hours on the weekend more than they ever have before. It is the sad but honest truth. Offering your time requires you to carve out time from some of life’s other activities for a few months. It might mean you don’t finish that scrapbook as fast or get to put in 45 minutes of cardio every day… Election day waits for no man, as I like to say. So, we don’t need your 3rd Saturday in November, when your bunko group is on break. Honestly, we are not trying to be picky, it is just that our elections are already over by then. Campaigns are a human resource heavy business in a time when people have very little time they can give without sacrificing another area of their lives to give it. But they must.
A curious but common problem is also that many people offer to “help” but then find all available duties of a campaign volunteer to be unpleasant or inconvenient. So, in the interest of full disclosure, consider that there really aren’t that many envelopes to be stuffed. Rather, what your candidate needs your time and help with are various hands-on voter contact activities, like knocking on doors in the district. They need folks sitting with a phone and a call list reaching out to potential voters with call after call after call. They need smiling faces outside the polls to talk to last minute undecided voters before they enter the polling places on election day. They need “handlers” to accompany them to campaign events and fundraisers to keep them moving in the crowds efficiently and safely. They need schedulers to be working to fill their calendar with opportunities to meet potential voters. They need pleasant people to stand at craft fairs and community festivals handing out information and asking for votes. If you don’t like people, or work strange hours, they need people willing to go out with a truck full of supplies and swing a heavy fence pole hammer to erect campaign signs around town. Or, blog and utilize social media, if that is your bag…
Time and money are how you change things. Time and money are the way the people “speak” to other voters to bring them to the polls to vote for the candidate who will fight for the policies you care about. Sure, you can hope for change. You can cast your one vote for change. But, while one vote, a lot of hope, and a dollar may buy you a cup of coffee, it won’t win an election.
By Pamela Gorman, Arizona Senator
In the governance of people, there is an American ideal that we get what we ask for. We have free elections and heavily regulated campaigns. There is every opportunity to elect people to the roles in public office that will represent the values of the nation. Your vote matters… but it isn’t enough.
At the risk of offending many good people, including my own supporters, I am going to put out some cold hard truths. Your “support” for a candidate is not as strong as you might think, if you simply cast your vote. You need to multiply your vote with the votes of others of like-mind, if you hope to make a difference in the policies that will affect you, your business, your quality of life, your safety, and your freedoms. One vote isn’t a bad thing, but it is relatively worthless when it is up against a legion of other voters who have been rounded up by a well-executed “community organizing” effort from the other side.
So, how do you multiply your vote in an effort to be properly represented? Two things work: money and time. When I am offered help in my campaigns, my inner voice says, “Really? Will that be help in the form of your time or your money?” That cynicism is not because I think people are lying. It is because I realize that they don’t realize that if they want to help, I need either their money or time (preferably both). And, experience shows that most people have good intentions, but lousy follow through. Most people are hard pressed to part with either their money or their time, but those that do are key to shaping a nation and here’s why…
Money buys a campaign the tools needed to get the message out to other voters, so their votes will come in to accompany yours. This is sort of why campaign donations are protected under the constitutional right to free speech. Postage, printing, graphic design, writing, mailing lists, polling, and professional campaign consulting all cost real hard dollars. Being the best candidate in the race and the best man/woman for the job doesn’t pay the bills. Money pays the bills. It is a reality that weighs on every candidate every day. If you don’t have money, you can help raise money from others. But, if you are serious about wanting a candidate to represent you, putting a little of your treasure toward helping them bring in additional votes must be a core of your strategy. Without money, there is no feasible way to communicate the candidate’s ideas or their suitability for the job to would-be voters. It’s a cold hard reality.
Time is finite and not transferrable. We each only get 24 hours in a day. Share even an hour a day or a few hours on the weekend, and most people will be investing an hour a day or a few hours on the weekend more than they ever have before. It is the sad but honest truth. Offering your time requires you to carve out time from some of life’s other activities for a few months. It might mean you don’t finish that scrapbook as fast or get to put in 45 minutes of cardio every day… Election day waits for no man, as I like to say. So, we don’t need your 3rd Saturday in November, when your bunko group is on break. Honestly, we are not trying to be picky, it is just that our elections are already over by then. Campaigns are a human resource heavy business in a time when people have very little time they can give without sacrificing another area of their lives to give it. But they must.
A curious but common problem is also that many people offer to “help” but then find all available duties of a campaign volunteer to be unpleasant or inconvenient. So, in the interest of full disclosure, consider that there really aren’t that many envelopes to be stuffed. Rather, what your candidate needs your time and help with are various hands-on voter contact activities, like knocking on doors in the district. They need folks sitting with a phone and a call list reaching out to potential voters with call after call after call. They need smiling faces outside the polls to talk to last minute undecided voters before they enter the polling places on election day. They need “handlers” to accompany them to campaign events and fundraisers to keep them moving in the crowds efficiently and safely. They need schedulers to be working to fill their calendar with opportunities to meet potential voters. They need pleasant people to stand at craft fairs and community festivals handing out information and asking for votes. If you don’t like people, or work strange hours, they need people willing to go out with a truck full of supplies and swing a heavy fence pole hammer to erect campaign signs around town. Or, blog and utilize social media, if that is your bag…
Time and money are how you change things. Time and money are the way the people “speak” to other voters to bring them to the polls to vote for the candidate who will fight for the policies you care about. Sure, you can hope for change. You can cast your one vote for change. But, while one vote, a lot of hope, and a dollar may buy you a cup of coffee, it won’t win an election.
Monday, October 26, 2009
They say never to pick a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrell
A recent article in The Arizona Daily Star (written by their editorial staff with no byline) makes an outlandish statement that I simply cannot let go unanswered. In the editorial headlined “Hiding under the bed won't fix the budget” (Oct 26, 2009), they make the following goofball statement: “But after a six-month regular session bickering over the budget and two more months of a special session, no one in the Legislature wanted to do anything about it.” Really, Star? Really?!
If this was a letter from a reader, I could understand the lack of insider understanding or the misunderstanding of the process and the obvious ability to see budget votes online that disprove this statement. But, for this article to come from their journalistic staff? Smells of political activism by a newspaper employee with a specific agenda, to me.
The facts are what they are… The current legislature spent an entire session plus a 2 month long special session wrestling with balancing an unprecedented shortfall, largely created by former Governor Napolitano’s strong arm tactics and all-too-eager minority party members who were able to line up a handful of Republican legislators to help them pass their bloated irresponsible budgets. This legislature not only “wanted to do something about it” but they DID do something about it. The problem is that not a single democrat would agree to any of the necessary cuts. Yes, that is right. Not ONE democrat. Add to this the Governor’s repeat use of the veto power to do away with any cuts that would have helped Arizona go forward with a spending level that more closely resembles the revenues, and you will have a much more accurate view of the budget process and the inevitable unbalanced budget.
The legislature (or to be more accurate, the Republican majority) worked tirelessly to balance the budget and took a courageous move in bringing spending back to levels they should have been before Napolitano’s Democrat-enabled spending spree for the last six years. The votes are there to prove it. Not one budget fix, but several, were passed by the legislature in the last session and special session that followed. The record also shows that the budget went imbalanced when Governor Brewer vetoed several cuts to spending. Her office claims that she did this because she didn't get the legislature to approve her tax increase proposal. But that translates to this screwy logic: Since you didn't give me more revenue to balance the budget, I am going to increase spending. What?! No one called her on it. They just shrugged and said, "Well, she DID feel very strongly about winning the tax increase policy. Guess we could have expected her to veto part of the budget deal she previously agreed to." What? Really?! (more on this in a later post).
So, while I recognize it is an easy poke to accuse the legislature of “hiding under the bed” in a liberal publication like the Arizona Daily Star (affectionately called the “Red Star” by insiders), it is journalistic laziness. I expect you all to fight for a tax increase, vs. cutting bloated government programs. I get it that we have vastly different economic theories by which we base our opinions… But, to say that “no one in the legislature wanted to do anything” about the budget problem is false and ridiculous in the face of indisputable public record.
If this was a letter from a reader, I could understand the lack of insider understanding or the misunderstanding of the process and the obvious ability to see budget votes online that disprove this statement. But, for this article to come from their journalistic staff? Smells of political activism by a newspaper employee with a specific agenda, to me.
The facts are what they are… The current legislature spent an entire session plus a 2 month long special session wrestling with balancing an unprecedented shortfall, largely created by former Governor Napolitano’s strong arm tactics and all-too-eager minority party members who were able to line up a handful of Republican legislators to help them pass their bloated irresponsible budgets. This legislature not only “wanted to do something about it” but they DID do something about it. The problem is that not a single democrat would agree to any of the necessary cuts. Yes, that is right. Not ONE democrat. Add to this the Governor’s repeat use of the veto power to do away with any cuts that would have helped Arizona go forward with a spending level that more closely resembles the revenues, and you will have a much more accurate view of the budget process and the inevitable unbalanced budget.
The legislature (or to be more accurate, the Republican majority) worked tirelessly to balance the budget and took a courageous move in bringing spending back to levels they should have been before Napolitano’s Democrat-enabled spending spree for the last six years. The votes are there to prove it. Not one budget fix, but several, were passed by the legislature in the last session and special session that followed. The record also shows that the budget went imbalanced when Governor Brewer vetoed several cuts to spending. Her office claims that she did this because she didn't get the legislature to approve her tax increase proposal. But that translates to this screwy logic: Since you didn't give me more revenue to balance the budget, I am going to increase spending. What?! No one called her on it. They just shrugged and said, "Well, she DID feel very strongly about winning the tax increase policy. Guess we could have expected her to veto part of the budget deal she previously agreed to." What? Really?! (more on this in a later post).
So, while I recognize it is an easy poke to accuse the legislature of “hiding under the bed” in a liberal publication like the Arizona Daily Star (affectionately called the “Red Star” by insiders), it is journalistic laziness. I expect you all to fight for a tax increase, vs. cutting bloated government programs. I get it that we have vastly different economic theories by which we base our opinions… But, to say that “no one in the legislature wanted to do anything” about the budget problem is false and ridiculous in the face of indisputable public record.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Balloon Boy, Universal Healthcare Inevitability, and other Hoaxes
Balloon Boy, Universal Healthcare Inevitability, and other Hoaxes
By Senator Pamela Gorman, (R-AZ)
I will admit it. I watched the silver saucer balloon in horror for an hour. I prayed. I worried. I squinted at the still image with the smudge hanging below the balloon to see if it looked like a falling object. I monitored the Twitter public feed for updated news… Then, I caught wind of some cracks in the story with this thing and started doing some research online while I waited to see if the little boy would be safe when the balloon landed. I discovered the family’s rather unusual behaviors captured on video and uploaded to YouTube (by them?). The characters involved here subjected themselves and their children to being contestants in a reality show, they chose “Wife Swap” as their chance to shine for all of America, they produced a profanity-rich rap video with the six year old lost boy and his brothers, they host a fringe pseudo-science TV show, and they chase deadly storms as a fun family hobby. Ozzie and Harriet, they are not. My cynical instinct told me that there is a good chance the kid was never in the belly of the backyard science project. I start to think that this is possibly a rouse, but more likely a very common kid thing and “Falcon” is likely fine and either hiding or hanging out somewhere completely unaware of his new fame. I am not so far gone in my cynicism, however, that I immediately thought it was a publicity stunt hoax.
Yet the mainstream press ignored all of this weirdness that Internet users were easily discovering and passing around through social media in real time… They droned on and on, continuing to build the hype that there was a 6 year old boy in peril, high above the Colorado landscape. They talked about random and distantly related things, but never invited their viewers to stray far from the story of their choosing and the video feed of a balloon in the air (only slightly less exciting to watch than a white Ford Bronco driving on a freeway). In fact, even when the boy was found alive and hiding in his own home, CNN didn’t interrupt ‘ol Wolfe Blitzer’s banter to inform their viewers. No, I learned that bit of breaking news on Twitter’s public feed first. Roughly 250 strangers “told me” the truth before CNN got around to admitting the kid was fine and was never in harms way and that this part of the ratings-boosting storyline was over. Later, we learned the little boy did it because his screwball parents had told him to do it “for the show” (the kid blurted out the admittance on national TV- oops- from the mouths of babes, as they say). It was a total hoax.
Hoaxes are interesting. They work. They are created to capture our attention and cause us to take interest in and believe in something we otherwise would not. I am surprised there aren’t more big ones like this to point to in history. Mostly they are for fun or for garnering 15 minutes of fame or to kick off a promotion with a big splashy marketing campaign. But, what if there was a hoax created to change your behavior and attitudes about current events? What if one side of a major policy change created the hoax?
I believe the current message of “Olympia Snowe voted with the Democrats for the Healthcare bill, now they will have their 60 votes to push it through on the floor, it is over, go home, nice try, thanks for coming” is a hoax.
Folks, this is not the time to admit defeat and start cutting your losses and spending time doing evaluations of what went wrong in your activism attempt so you can do better next time. On the contrary, THIS IS GO TIME and you should be stepping up your efforts as this bill makes its way through conference committee and then possibly to the floor for a final vote. The press is all talking about how it is all over but the shouting. Where do you think they are getting that message? Why, in the world, would intelligent engaged people who have seen the Obama machine work the press with skillful finesse for years, suddenly start believing the message? Admittedly, even impressive insiders in Washington seem to have lost their faith. But, maybe they really just don’t have faith in the likelihood of the American people to turn it up a notch here in the final seconds of the game clock…
Picture this. A bunch of political strategists are sitting around a table strewn with soda cans and coffee cups among the stacks of polling data and focus group reports. One particularly agitated team member cuts through the chatter with, “Ok, people. We need to focus here. We are losing this damn healthcare debate and we shouldn’t be. We have the press. We have Hollywood. We have the bully pulpits everywhere it matters in federal government. We are losing because of otherwise disengaged Americans who suddenly have decided to put down their fish sticks and Xbox controls and pay attention to public policy. They are playing this game with us using the internet, a technology we CAN’T control (yet), and we have no way to make them stop. What are we going to do to get these people off the backs of our weaker Democrats so we can get this thing done?!” Then, the generally-quiet-but-often-profound PR genius says, “These people just need to decide to stop trying. They need to believe it is pointless and a waste of their time. They will go back to doing whatever it was they did before they started paying attention to public policy debates and that will be that.” Bada-bing. A hoax is born. The hoax is the false reality that” you have lost this battle because it is all over anyway because of one Senate Committee vote. Go home. Nothing to see here, folks.”
I implore you, do not be duped. It isn’t hopeless until the ink is dry on the bill on the president’s desk after the bill has gone a long way from where it is now. You should definitely be sensing an urgency, though, and fighting louder and harder! This is like 22 seconds on game the clock, you are 4th and goal, and you need a touchdown followed by the recovery of an on-side kick, followed by a field goal … It isn’t easy, maybe statistically unlikely, but there is a chance! It is your game to lose, at this point. You still have the ball. Are you going to try and score? Or are you going to accept defeat before the game ends and just start shaking hands with the other team and thinking about what you are going to order for take out on the way home from the game? I think you should stay and fight for the score. But, that’s just me. This actually matters to me a great deal. How much does your freedom matter to you?
This game isn’t over. The idea that it is somehow “over” is little more than a hoax created by a historically proven very savvy group of White House strategists. Or, perhaps it is just a mirage, unintentionally created, but benefitting the Obama administration nonetheless. In any case, don’t fall for it. The “balloon boy” hoax was a nuisance and a huge waste of our time. But the “go home and give up hoax” is much more dangerous for America’s future. That is because when THIS feel-good-yes-we-can-free-healthcare-for-all balloon finally hits the ground, America will gasp when they realize once again that the thing they were hoping to find inside was never really there. And, the joke will be on us. All of us.
By Senator Pamela Gorman, (R-AZ)
I will admit it. I watched the silver saucer balloon in horror for an hour. I prayed. I worried. I squinted at the still image with the smudge hanging below the balloon to see if it looked like a falling object. I monitored the Twitter public feed for updated news… Then, I caught wind of some cracks in the story with this thing and started doing some research online while I waited to see if the little boy would be safe when the balloon landed. I discovered the family’s rather unusual behaviors captured on video and uploaded to YouTube (by them?). The characters involved here subjected themselves and their children to being contestants in a reality show, they chose “Wife Swap” as their chance to shine for all of America, they produced a profanity-rich rap video with the six year old lost boy and his brothers, they host a fringe pseudo-science TV show, and they chase deadly storms as a fun family hobby. Ozzie and Harriet, they are not. My cynical instinct told me that there is a good chance the kid was never in the belly of the backyard science project. I start to think that this is possibly a rouse, but more likely a very common kid thing and “Falcon” is likely fine and either hiding or hanging out somewhere completely unaware of his new fame. I am not so far gone in my cynicism, however, that I immediately thought it was a publicity stunt hoax.
Yet the mainstream press ignored all of this weirdness that Internet users were easily discovering and passing around through social media in real time… They droned on and on, continuing to build the hype that there was a 6 year old boy in peril, high above the Colorado landscape. They talked about random and distantly related things, but never invited their viewers to stray far from the story of their choosing and the video feed of a balloon in the air (only slightly less exciting to watch than a white Ford Bronco driving on a freeway). In fact, even when the boy was found alive and hiding in his own home, CNN didn’t interrupt ‘ol Wolfe Blitzer’s banter to inform their viewers. No, I learned that bit of breaking news on Twitter’s public feed first. Roughly 250 strangers “told me” the truth before CNN got around to admitting the kid was fine and was never in harms way and that this part of the ratings-boosting storyline was over. Later, we learned the little boy did it because his screwball parents had told him to do it “for the show” (the kid blurted out the admittance on national TV- oops- from the mouths of babes, as they say). It was a total hoax.
Hoaxes are interesting. They work. They are created to capture our attention and cause us to take interest in and believe in something we otherwise would not. I am surprised there aren’t more big ones like this to point to in history. Mostly they are for fun or for garnering 15 minutes of fame or to kick off a promotion with a big splashy marketing campaign. But, what if there was a hoax created to change your behavior and attitudes about current events? What if one side of a major policy change created the hoax?
I believe the current message of “Olympia Snowe voted with the Democrats for the Healthcare bill, now they will have their 60 votes to push it through on the floor, it is over, go home, nice try, thanks for coming” is a hoax.
Folks, this is not the time to admit defeat and start cutting your losses and spending time doing evaluations of what went wrong in your activism attempt so you can do better next time. On the contrary, THIS IS GO TIME and you should be stepping up your efforts as this bill makes its way through conference committee and then possibly to the floor for a final vote. The press is all talking about how it is all over but the shouting. Where do you think they are getting that message? Why, in the world, would intelligent engaged people who have seen the Obama machine work the press with skillful finesse for years, suddenly start believing the message? Admittedly, even impressive insiders in Washington seem to have lost their faith. But, maybe they really just don’t have faith in the likelihood of the American people to turn it up a notch here in the final seconds of the game clock…
Picture this. A bunch of political strategists are sitting around a table strewn with soda cans and coffee cups among the stacks of polling data and focus group reports. One particularly agitated team member cuts through the chatter with, “Ok, people. We need to focus here. We are losing this damn healthcare debate and we shouldn’t be. We have the press. We have Hollywood. We have the bully pulpits everywhere it matters in federal government. We are losing because of otherwise disengaged Americans who suddenly have decided to put down their fish sticks and Xbox controls and pay attention to public policy. They are playing this game with us using the internet, a technology we CAN’T control (yet), and we have no way to make them stop. What are we going to do to get these people off the backs of our weaker Democrats so we can get this thing done?!” Then, the generally-quiet-but-often-profound PR genius says, “These people just need to decide to stop trying. They need to believe it is pointless and a waste of their time. They will go back to doing whatever it was they did before they started paying attention to public policy debates and that will be that.” Bada-bing. A hoax is born. The hoax is the false reality that” you have lost this battle because it is all over anyway because of one Senate Committee vote. Go home. Nothing to see here, folks.”
I implore you, do not be duped. It isn’t hopeless until the ink is dry on the bill on the president’s desk after the bill has gone a long way from where it is now. You should definitely be sensing an urgency, though, and fighting louder and harder! This is like 22 seconds on game the clock, you are 4th and goal, and you need a touchdown followed by the recovery of an on-side kick, followed by a field goal … It isn’t easy, maybe statistically unlikely, but there is a chance! It is your game to lose, at this point. You still have the ball. Are you going to try and score? Or are you going to accept defeat before the game ends and just start shaking hands with the other team and thinking about what you are going to order for take out on the way home from the game? I think you should stay and fight for the score. But, that’s just me. This actually matters to me a great deal. How much does your freedom matter to you?
This game isn’t over. The idea that it is somehow “over” is little more than a hoax created by a historically proven very savvy group of White House strategists. Or, perhaps it is just a mirage, unintentionally created, but benefitting the Obama administration nonetheless. In any case, don’t fall for it. The “balloon boy” hoax was a nuisance and a huge waste of our time. But the “go home and give up hoax” is much more dangerous for America’s future. That is because when THIS feel-good-yes-we-can-free-healthcare-for-all balloon finally hits the ground, America will gasp when they realize once again that the thing they were hoping to find inside was never really there. And, the joke will be on us. All of us.
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