Racism. It’s at the heart of every disagreement with “progressive” policy reforms. Meet Diane DeVillers of Eugene, who lays it all out in today’s issue of the Eugene Weekly:

There is not as much confusion about the health care issue as we are led to believe. Much of the resistance is all about not wanting President Obama to succeed. The town hall haters, gun-toting radical right wingers, have been steaming since our President was elected. It has taken them this long to finally have the nerve to tell America how much they hate the fact that a black man won the election. It is all about being racist.

While the sane people in America try to get health care reform, the minority is trying to mislead and ruin any attempt for this bill to pass. This includes the whole Republican party… Their loyalties are only to themselves. The majority of people elected this president, so they need to get used to it.

…

The majority of Americans want health care reform, so the Democrats should just do it, any way they can…

Everyone in the room should yell back for them to be silent and let the discussion continue.

(more…)

Radley Balko calls this “the most thorough, clear elucidation of the problems with U.S. health care” that he’s seen. I’m inclined to agree, even if I don’t necessarily buy the author’s prescriptions (no pun intended) for fixing the problem.

It’s a long read, but well worth it and a far cry from the usual “death panels” and “racists” bilge that the right and left have been tossing about in the last few weeks.

As some of you may know, I’m in D.C. this summer interning at The Weekly Standard. Anyway, I’m working on a story about the recent revelation that the Fund for the Public Interest, the fundraising arm of the U.S. PIRG (of which our beloved OSPIRGs are a part), settled a $2.15 million class-action lawsuit for underpaying its canvassers and organizers.

Well, today I called both the Fund and the PIRG offices, and I was pleasantly unsurprised when, on the second call, the receptionist said, “Didn’t we just talk?”

“Wait, isn’t this the U.S. PIRG?” I asked.

“Both numbers redirect here.”

Oh, but of course they do. Just like how the Oregon Students Public Interest Research Group and the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group share the same office and phone number. Bigger pond, same damn fish.

(It’s probably pertinent to point out that the Fund doesn’t mention the U.S. PIRG anywhere on its website. It mainly touts itself as a partner with the Sierra Club and the Human Rights Campaign.)

Well, tonight saw President Obama’s “health care forum”. The ABC network has come under a great deal of criticism for its perceived kowtowing to the Obama Administration and refusing to sell ad time to the dissenting Republicans (can you imagine the outrage had the players instead been Fox News and President Bush, circa 2004?). The Republicans are calling the whole thing an “infomercial“. Media Matters is calling Fox News a bunch of hyporites (I guess whether “turnabout is fair play” or “he who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster” is a more appropriate slogan for the left’s sudden enthusiasm for uncomfortably close ties between the government and the media depends on which side of the aisle one hails from…). Meanwhile, reports indicate that ABC employees donated to the Obama campaign by a factor of roughly 80:1 ($124,421 to Obama, $1,550 to McCain) and Michelle Malkin is howling about “astroturfing“. Other statistics (“damned lies…” and all that…) indicate that 89% of Americans are more or less satisfied with their health care, raising the question of why exactly it’s so urgent to push through health care reform right now — as others have mentioned, maybe fixing Medicare first would provide an encouraging example of Obama’s brilliant ideas on health care — or is Walter Reed a harbinger of state-run health care (actually Walter Reed is state-run health care…)?

But never mind all that. The masthead says “a conservative journal of opinion” and, since we’re not getting any of that sweet, sweet, free stimulus money (and since we find the idea of the government bailing out newspapers utterly repugnant– sorry journalism majors), I thought I’d call attention to Cato’s crucial coverage of what’s poised to be a total health-care debacle — one of positively federal proportions. In any case, you can find an informative live-blogged response to the President’s err…  “highly adversarial” appearance on ABC here.

And in case you don’t give two squirts of piss about the de facto socialization of health care in this country, I invite you to instead discuss this article, which seeks to establish whether or not the “FreeCreditReport.com band” is “legit” or not. But I’ll never respect you again.

California set to abandon the use of textbooks in schools in favor of “internet aids”:

Gov Schwarzenegger believes internet activities such as Facebook, Twitter and downloading to iPods show that young people are the first to adopt new online technologies, and so the internet is also the best way to learn in classrooms.

I think there may be a logical fallacy skulking around in there somewhere.

How can the world’s fifth largest economy not have enough money to be able to outfit schools with textbooks? I’m sure it has nothing to do with out of control entitlements spending. Nope. Nothing to see here. It’s a revenue problem, you see.