Sore Winners Troubling
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Gary [email protected]
That’s when somebody loses at something, and then makes excuses or blames somebody else for their own performance. It’s not a pretty sight, and I suppose, if we were all honest, most of us would admit we’re all sore losers to some degree.
Let’s face it. Nobody likes to lose.
But following the recent election there seems to be at least a few people in the area who are sore winners.
That’s a phenomenon that’s a lot less common and a lot more immature.
Seems somebody is taking aim at Republicans who dared support Democrat David Kolbe in the last election.
For the unfamiliar, Kolbe lost, handily. His opponent, Curt Nisly, won with nearly 70 percent of the vote.
But instead of celebrating the victory in a civilized way, apparently some of Nisly’s supporters are willing to spend more than a little time and effort to harass Republicans who voted for Kolbe.
When you give money to a political candidate, it gets reported. Campaign finance reports are public records, of course.
Someone actually took the time to get a copy of a campaign finance report of someone who donated to Kolbe. Then they blocked out a section and replaced it with big letters reading, “How did that Republicans for Kolbe work out for you??”
Then they mailed it to the person who donated.
Now, I’m not sure what this is supposed to accomplish. Is this supposed to intimidate? Is this supposed to embarrass? Is this supposed to belittle? Is this supposed to insult?
While I can’t be sure of the intent, I can say with a high degree of confidence that it’s a pretty childish thing to do.
And besides, they need an editor. They weren’t even clever enough to pull off the proper jargon. They left out the word “thing” and the whole sentence is cast in the wrong tense.
You know.
It’s, “How’s that hope and change thing workin’ out for ya?”
Not, “How did that hope and change work out for you?”
For cryin’ in a bucket, people, if you’re trying to insult someone, at least take the time to get the grammar right.
But seriously, this kind of behavior is a little troubling to me. If somebody is willing to go to these lengths to be cruel and hurtful, they must carry a fairly significant level of disdain for anybody who doesn’t see the world their way.
But how much disdain?
I mean, if a little mail-in harassment doesn’t do the trick, what’s next?
Will these folks start making lists of people who had yard signs for their opponent, find out where they work and target that business with boycotts?
Will they attempt to purify the Republican party by blacklisting anybody who doesn’t toe their line.
Nah, surely not.
This probably is not an organized effort. It’s just a couple of disgruntled folks, who, after their little hijinks, will once again become, ah, gruntled.
At least that’s what I hope. Because this kind of thing never bodes well for the political process.
It’s certainly not a good way to attract the best and brightest candidates to become involved in politics. And it drives an already apathetic voting public farther and farther from the polls.
So to the folks sending out the snarky little barbs to their fellow Republicans, I just wonder, “How’s that political retribution thing workin’ out for ya?”
*****
Jonathan Gruber is a really smart guy.
He’s a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also, by most accounts, was one of the key guys in crafting the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare.
The New York Times reported that he helped design the Massachusetts law Obamacare was based on. He helped the White House lay out the foundation of the law and eventually went to Capitol Hill to help Congressional staffers draft specifics of the law itself.
He was paid $400,000 for his trouble.
So the guy is pretty much as big an Obamacare insider as there is.
About a year ago he spoke at a University of Pennsylvania health care conference and a video of his comments surfaced last week.
Basically, he said the only way to pass Obamacare was by hiding the truth from voters who were too stupid to understand they were being duped.
OK, that’s a paraphrase. Here’s precisely what he said:
"This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO [Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. OK, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed … Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass. ... And it’s the second-best argument. Look, I wish ... that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”
So, basically, the public was knowingly misled to get the thing passed. But that’s OK, because voters are too stupid to know what’s in their own best interest.
The net effect of this video surfacing will likely be zero, but it is instructional to know just how little respect our policymakers have for the American people.
And really, this isn’t surprising at all. Of course they had to deceive us.
Think about it.
If President Obama would have said, “Hey I have this great new idea for a health care law. You may or may not get to keep your doctor. You may or may not get to keep your current health care plan. The cost of your health care insurance – at least in the short term – will rise. The law will create one of the biggest redistributions of wealth in the history of our country. It will cost $3 trillion over 10 years and add $2 trillion to the national debt. And when we’re done, there’s still going to be 20 million uninsured people in America. Oh, and by the way, if you don’t get on board, you’re going to be fined by the IRS. That’s right, we are going to fundamentally transform health care in this country. Yes we can!”
Do you think that law would have passed?
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That’s when somebody loses at something, and then makes excuses or blames somebody else for their own performance. It’s not a pretty sight, and I suppose, if we were all honest, most of us would admit we’re all sore losers to some degree.
Let’s face it. Nobody likes to lose.
But following the recent election there seems to be at least a few people in the area who are sore winners.
That’s a phenomenon that’s a lot less common and a lot more immature.
Seems somebody is taking aim at Republicans who dared support Democrat David Kolbe in the last election.
For the unfamiliar, Kolbe lost, handily. His opponent, Curt Nisly, won with nearly 70 percent of the vote.
But instead of celebrating the victory in a civilized way, apparently some of Nisly’s supporters are willing to spend more than a little time and effort to harass Republicans who voted for Kolbe.
When you give money to a political candidate, it gets reported. Campaign finance reports are public records, of course.
Someone actually took the time to get a copy of a campaign finance report of someone who donated to Kolbe. Then they blocked out a section and replaced it with big letters reading, “How did that Republicans for Kolbe work out for you??”
Then they mailed it to the person who donated.
Now, I’m not sure what this is supposed to accomplish. Is this supposed to intimidate? Is this supposed to embarrass? Is this supposed to belittle? Is this supposed to insult?
While I can’t be sure of the intent, I can say with a high degree of confidence that it’s a pretty childish thing to do.
And besides, they need an editor. They weren’t even clever enough to pull off the proper jargon. They left out the word “thing” and the whole sentence is cast in the wrong tense.
You know.
It’s, “How’s that hope and change thing workin’ out for ya?”
Not, “How did that hope and change work out for you?”
For cryin’ in a bucket, people, if you’re trying to insult someone, at least take the time to get the grammar right.
But seriously, this kind of behavior is a little troubling to me. If somebody is willing to go to these lengths to be cruel and hurtful, they must carry a fairly significant level of disdain for anybody who doesn’t see the world their way.
But how much disdain?
I mean, if a little mail-in harassment doesn’t do the trick, what’s next?
Will these folks start making lists of people who had yard signs for their opponent, find out where they work and target that business with boycotts?
Will they attempt to purify the Republican party by blacklisting anybody who doesn’t toe their line.
Nah, surely not.
This probably is not an organized effort. It’s just a couple of disgruntled folks, who, after their little hijinks, will once again become, ah, gruntled.
At least that’s what I hope. Because this kind of thing never bodes well for the political process.
It’s certainly not a good way to attract the best and brightest candidates to become involved in politics. And it drives an already apathetic voting public farther and farther from the polls.
So to the folks sending out the snarky little barbs to their fellow Republicans, I just wonder, “How’s that political retribution thing workin’ out for ya?”
*****
Jonathan Gruber is a really smart guy.
He’s a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also, by most accounts, was one of the key guys in crafting the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare.
The New York Times reported that he helped design the Massachusetts law Obamacare was based on. He helped the White House lay out the foundation of the law and eventually went to Capitol Hill to help Congressional staffers draft specifics of the law itself.
He was paid $400,000 for his trouble.
So the guy is pretty much as big an Obamacare insider as there is.
About a year ago he spoke at a University of Pennsylvania health care conference and a video of his comments surfaced last week.
Basically, he said the only way to pass Obamacare was by hiding the truth from voters who were too stupid to understand they were being duped.
OK, that’s a paraphrase. Here’s precisely what he said:
"This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO [Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. OK, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed … Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass. ... And it’s the second-best argument. Look, I wish ... that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”
So, basically, the public was knowingly misled to get the thing passed. But that’s OK, because voters are too stupid to know what’s in their own best interest.
The net effect of this video surfacing will likely be zero, but it is instructional to know just how little respect our policymakers have for the American people.
And really, this isn’t surprising at all. Of course they had to deceive us.
Think about it.
If President Obama would have said, “Hey I have this great new idea for a health care law. You may or may not get to keep your doctor. You may or may not get to keep your current health care plan. The cost of your health care insurance – at least in the short term – will rise. The law will create one of the biggest redistributions of wealth in the history of our country. It will cost $3 trillion over 10 years and add $2 trillion to the national debt. And when we’re done, there’s still going to be 20 million uninsured people in America. Oh, and by the way, if you don’t get on board, you’re going to be fined by the IRS. That’s right, we are going to fundamentally transform health care in this country. Yes we can!”
Do you think that law would have passed?
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