What Gov. Rick Perry’s Support For Texas Secession Has Wrought

by David Horsey SEATTLEPI.COM

An organization calling itself the “Texas Nationalist Movement” is gathering supporters at the Texas capitol to:

". . .deliver a petition to Restore America by Demanding our Sovereignty or we will be forced to call a vote for Secession . . . the Texas Nationalist Movement has a petition with 1 Million signatures directly calling for a vote of secession.

We are calling for an orderly process that will allow our federal government to fall back in line with the Constitution. We are reclaiming our states rights and our individual rights.

. . .either we restore America, we will live in a Marxist dictatorship, or we will secede and start over again." (video of event at DMN Trail Blazers)

The organization’s petition echoes the meme that everything from -- Social Security to Medicare to the Federal Reserve Banking system to the federal highway system to a public health insure option to the 1965 Voting Rights Act -- violates the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The petition calls for Texas officials to “immediately move for the restoration of the complete and unadulterated Sovereignty of Texas, explicitly adhering to the 10th Amendment wording of the U.S. Constitution,” or “move immediately for complete Secession from the United States of America.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry so incited an April 2009 anti-tax (and largely anti-Obama) "tea party" with his anti-Washington and states' rights rhetoric attacking Pres. Obama's Economic Recovery Stimulus legislation that the audience began to shout, "Secede!" Later, in response to reporters' questions, Perry said,

"At some point Texans might get so fed up they would want to secede from the union. There's a lot of different scenarios. ...if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that..."

Perry added that when Texas entered the union in 1845 it was with the understanding it could pull out. Perry got that wrong, however; Texas negotiated the power to divide into additional states at some point, but Texas did not reserve the right to secede.

After Gov. Perry made a big fuss in March and Aptil threatening secession in rejecting $555 million in federal stimulus funds to expand unemployment benefits for unemployed Texans, by July Perry was forced to ask the federal government for a $170 million loan to cover unemployment insurance. Perry is expected to request a total of $650 million, around $100 million more than he originally rejected, to fund the state unemployment program.

Perry once again threatened to invoke the “state’s rights” protections in the 10th Amendment and secession in late July in protest to health insurance reform supported by Pres. Obama and a large number of Texans. (see Gov. Perry Threatens 10th Amendment Again To Reject Health Care Reform)

In this video of a press conference supporting Texas State Rep. Brandon Creighton's Concurrent House Resolution (HCR50) of Texas States’ Rights submitted in the 2009 81st session of the Texas legislature, Governor Rick Perry declares Texas' sovereignty from the U.S., saying that,

"...We think it’s time to draw the line in the sand and tell Washington that no longer are we going to accept their oppressive hand in the state of Texas. That’s what this press conference -- that’s what these Texans are standing up for. There is a point in time where you stand up and say enough is enough, and I think Americans, and Texans especially have reached that point."

The press conference was attended by members of the Texas Nationalist Movement, a secessionist group led by Daniel Miller. Miller was formerly president of the violent anti-government organization called the Republic of Texas. Media Matters Action Network released a memo outlining Texas Governor Rick Perry's ties to the Texas Nationalist secessionist group, whose former Republic of Texas leaders are responsible for numerous acts of domestic terrorism. "From bomb threats, to kidnapping, to planning attacks using biological weapons, the Texas Nationalist Movement has a long violent history that cannot be ignored," the Media Matters memo concludes.

The Republic of Texas is a group of secessionists that claims annexation of Texas by the United States was illegal and Texas remains an independent nation under occupation. The issue of the Legal status of Texas led the group to set up a provisional shadow government for the sovereign nation of Texas on December 13, 1995.

The movement had been discredited after two of its members, Jack Abbot Grebe Jr. and Johnie Wise, were convicted in 1998 of threatening to assassinate several government officials, including President Bill Clinton, and the group, while still active, had remained largely out of public view.

Activists within the secessionist movement claim over 40,000 active supporters; however, there has been no public support for an independent Texas -- at least until Governor Perry breathed new live into the movement with his recent public statements of support of a sovereign Texas.

Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring over 800 on on April 19, 1995 in the worst act to domestic terrorism in U.S. history, was a member of one such group. (picture right)

This is what the Republican Party of Texas has come to -- expressions of support for Texas secession from the United States of America.

Southern Republicans, Particularly Texas Republicans, It Seems, Have Seceded From Sanity.

Who Is Funding Health Care Opposition?

More than three out of every four Americans feel it is important to have a "choice" between a government-run health care insurance option and private coverage, according to a public opinion poll released last week.

The poll by SurveyUSA puts support for a public option at a robust 77 percent, one percentage point higher than where it stood in June.

In asking its question SurveyUSA used the same exact words that NBC/Wall Street Journal had used when conducting its June 2009 survey. That one that found 76 percent approval for the public option

AARP: 8 Myths About Health Care Reform

And why we can't afford to believe them anymore [AARP Magazine]

Americans spend more on health care every year than we do educating our children, building roads, even feeding ourselves—an estimated $2.6 trillion in 2009, or around $8,300 per person. Forty-five million Americans have no health insurance whatsoever. These staggering figures are at the heart of the current debate over health care reform: the need to control costs while providing coverage for all. As John Lumpkin, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Health Care Group for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, says, "There is enough evidence that it is now time to do something and to do the right thing." The key is to focus on the facts—and to dispel, once and for all, the myths that block our progress.

The 8 Myths:

Myth 1: "Health reform won't benefit people like me, who have insurance." Just because you have health insurance today doesn't mean you'll have it tomorrow.

Myth 2: "The boomers will bankrupt Medicare." If you're looking to blame the rise in health care costs on an aging population, you'll have to look elsewhere. Our fee-for-service payment system, in which doctors are paid by how many treatments they prescribe, rather than by the quality of care they provide. Some experts say this fee-for-service payment system encourages unnecessary and wasteful over treatment.

Myth 3: "Reforming our health care system will cost us more." Think of health care reform as if it's an Energy Star appliance. Yes, it costs money to replace your old energy-guzzling refrigerator with a new one, but over time the cost savings can be substantial.

Myth 4: "My access to quality health care will decline." Just because you have access to lots of doctors who prescribe lots of treatments doesn't mean you're getting good care. In fact, researchers at Dartmouth College have found that patients who receive more care actually fare worse than those who receive less care.

Myth 5: "I won't be able to visit my favorite doctor." Mention health reform and immediately people worry that they will have fewer options—in doctors, treatments, and diagnostic testing. The concern comes largely during discussions of comparative effectiveness research (CER): research on which treatments work and which don't. But 18 organizations in a broad coalition, including AARP, NFIB, Consumers Union, and Families USA, support CER—and believe that far from limiting choices, it will instead prevent errors and give physicians the information they need to practice better medicine.

Myth 6: "The uninsured actually do have access to good care—in the emergency room." It's true that the United States has an open-door policy for those who seek emergency care, but emergency room care doesn't help you get the right information to prevent a condition or give you help managing it. Plus, hospitals have no way to recoup the costs of treating the uninsured, so they naturally pass on some of those costs to their insured patients.

Myth 7: "We can't afford to tackle this problem now." We may be in the middle of a recession, but as Robert Zirkelbach, spokesperson for America's Health Insurance Plans, says, "the most expensive thing we can do is nothing at all." If we do nothing, the Congressional Budget Office projects that our annual health costs will soar to about $13,000 per person in 2017, while the number of uninsured will climb.

Myth 8: "We'll end up with socialized medicine." Some experts favor a single-payer system similar to Medicare or the health program offered to federal-government employees. Yet all the proposals being discussed today would build on our current system, Feder says—which means that private insurers and the government are both likely to play roles. Says Lumpkin: "There are many ways to solve our health care problem, but we will come up with a uniquely American solution, and that solution will be a mixed public and private solution."

Related Links:

• AARP: Health Care Reform: The Assault on Truth

Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele: Protect Medicare By Privatizing It

Updated Friday, August 28, 2009 @ 10:43AM

NPR [7 min 42 sec]

Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele opposes government-run health care insurance programs, as do most members of his party. In an exchange with National Public Radio's Steve Inskeep, Steele grew upset (4:45 into the audio clip) when Inskeep questioned the apparent contradiction in his arguments -- Steele argues both that the government shouldn't run public health insurance programs and that the Medicare public health insurance program must be protected. (That is, the part of Medicare already privatized by Republican controlled congresses over the past decade.)

Steele is attempting to argue that there is nothing contradictory about protecting Medicare by stopping the president from making Medicare operate more efficiently while also insisting that the government-run Medicare program is a failure and calling for it to be privatized.

At the beginning of this week RNC Chairman Michael Steele wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post, declaring the Republican Party to be the new protectors of the government run Medicare public health insurance program. He also this week appeared on Fox News and said:

... that Medicare is "a very good example of what we should not have happen with all of our health care." Asked to respond to Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D-NY) argument that "if you like Medicare and you don’t want to make any cuts to it, then you’re basically defending a single payer system," Steele attacked Medicare implying that the government run Medicare public health insurance program should be privatized into the private health insurance industry:

I mean the reality of it is that, you know, this single payer program known as Medicare is a very good example of what we should not have happen with all of our health care.

... Government cannot run a health care system. They’ve already shown that. Trust the private markets to do it the right way. If there are reforms to be put in place, let’s deal specifically with those reforms.

The partial privatization of Medicare, that a Republican controlled Congress and the Bush Administration pushed on seniors as part of the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, is costing U.S. taxpayers billions. It is the Privatized Medicare program (known as “Medicare Advantage” or “MA” plans) that Steele seeks to not only protect from reform, but also pushes to expand.

Under the "privatized" Medicare Advantage (MA) program, created by a Republican-led Congress in 2003 with the support of President Bush, the government buys private insurance coverage for Medicare patients in lieu of paying for health services directly. Republicans argue that by buying private insurance policies for seniors the government both saves money and delivers additional care to Medicare patients, including dental and eye services not covered under the traditional program. Those additional benefits, combined with a heavy dose of marketing, have made the program enormously popular. This year, a record-high 10.5 million seniors — or 23 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries — are enrolled in MA plans, according to a June report from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, or MedPAC, an independent panel that recommends Medicare reforms to Washington policymakers.

Despite Republican arguments that private Medicare plans operating under MA could eventually save money, the cost to treat the average patient in the MA program is 14 percent higher than the cost to treat the average senior under traditional Medicare.

A part of that additional cost, consists of funds used for MA plan administration overhead costs, marketing and profits and not direct health care services for beneficiaries. RNC Chair Steele, in his "protect Medicare argument," is actually arguing to protect this "privatized Medicare" program that subsidizes private health insurance industry profits, management bonuses, overhead and marketing.

The argument that private Medicare plans, subsidized by the government, are necessary to keep Medicare sustainable is belied by the fact that private plans cost taxpayers more than if the same coverage is provided under the standard public Medicare program where public money is not siphoned off into private profits, management bonuses, overhead and marketing.

Republican defenders of the privatized Medicare Advantage program on Capitol Hill have successfully thwarted most Democratic attempts in recent years reduce Medicare costs by reigning in the costs and abuses in the privatized Medicare Advantage program.

New York Times - Medicare Audits Show Problems in Private Plans : Tens of thousands of Medicare recipients have been victims of deceptive sales tactics, found they lack of coverage they thought their insurance policy provided and have had claims improperly denied by private insurers that run the huge new Medicare drug benefit program and offer other privatized Medicare Advantage program options, a review of scores of federal audits has found.

The Under the House health reform bill, which has already passed through the Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and Education and Labor committees — the three panels with jurisdiction over the issue — the privatized Medicare Advantage payments would be pulled back under public administration over several years in an attempt to eliminate the 14 percent cost overhead where public money is not siphoned off into private profits, management bonuses, overhead and marketing. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cuts will save taxpayers $156 billion over 10 years.

The White House has taken a different tack. As part of its 2010 budget proposal released in February, the Obama administration aimed to control MA costs by creating system that would require plans to bid competitively for regional contracts under MA. Those plans bidding higher than the regional average would nonetheless get paid only the regional average.

At an AARP-sponsored health reform forum last month, President Obama promoted his proposal saying, “We’ll eliminate billions in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies in the Medicare Advantage program — giveaways that boost insurance company profits but don’t make you any healthier.”

President Obama's also commented at that AARP-hosted town hall that, "I got a letter the other day from a woman. She said, 'I don't want government-run health care. I don't want socialized medicine. And don't touch my Medicare.' I wanted to say, you know, that's what Medicare is: a government-run health care plan that people are very happy with."

The lady that wrote, "don't touch my Medicare" was likely referring to her Medicare Advantage paid private health insurance policy. Those opposed to health insurance reform have been telling seniors that Democrats will eliminate or drastically cut health care coverage for those seniors that have a Medicare Advantage paid private health insurance policy. This is the fear that GOP Chair Michael Steele is attempting to stoke in his rhetoric about "protecting Medicare."

If the Democrats are successful in their efforts to reform the privatized Medicare Advantage program, it could mark a set-back to the decades-old Republican push to fullly privatize Medicare. In October 1995, for example, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) took the podium at a Blue Cross/Blue Shield conference in Washington and promoted a health reform strategy he knew would be music to his audience. Labeling Medicare “a centralized command bureaucracy,” Gingrich proposed to shift the popular program from “a government monopoly plan” to a fully privatized “free-market plan.” [Washington Independent]

RNC Chair Michael Steele has been advocating this week in his media blitz to protect the “free-market" privatized Medicare beachhead established in 2003 when the Republican congress and Bush White House worked together to enact the Medicare Modernization Act.

Related Links:

• The Medicare-Isn't-Government Meme, Part 3 GOP Chairman Michael Steele loves Medicare but hates government
  
• Bush's Parting Shots to the Old and Sick, Part 1: A Gift to Privatized Medicare
• Bush's Parting Shots to the Old and Sick, Part 2: A Wing and a Prayer for the Dying
• Why Bush's Medicare Drug Plan is Just Plain Wrong
  
• The Public Cost of Privatized Medicare: How Medicare Advantage is hurting Medicare beneficiaries
• As Medicare goes private, the press just stands by
• Bush's privatization agenda for Medicare
• McCAIN WANTS TO PRIVATIZE SOCIAL SECURITY
• Advocates hope Obama shifts from private Medicare plans
• Bush Medicare plan robs seniors
• Narrowed the scope of services that can be provided to poor people under Medicaid’s outpatient hospital benefit
• Bush Plan to Privatize Medicare: Limiting Patient Choice of Doctors in Iowa