NH State Rep: Let Cancer Patients Hold a Bake Sale to Pay for Treatment

New Hampshire State Representative Jeannine Notter (R-Merrimack) was videotaped during a committee hearing telling cancer patients to drum up "community support" via bake sales to pay for treatment. This was during a hearing for HB 440, a bill that seeks to remove New Hampshire from federal health care reform and join the lawsuit against it.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/2/4/941309/-NH-State-Rep:-Let-Cancer-Patients-Hold-a-Bake-Sale-to-Pay-for-Treatment

Or $500,000 or whatever it is now to get cancer treatment.

Maybe they could sell pot brownies.

These stupid republicans.

"Let them eat cake" philosophy got some very wealthy, stupid French leaders beheaded.

These people are just horrible fuckers.

which enabled him to make such decisions.

when it comes to decisions that affect many people, that the politician always chooses what the people want. We are seeing many cases of awol politicians who are just doing what they want once they get into office.

That's it...this is a Democratic Republic...where the people vote to choose someone to represent them...the problem being that once that person is in office they can do anything they want based on their perception and personal agendas.

And, even if they lied during the campaign...it falls under the definition of Free Speech.

You should meet some of their Skool Bord!

This person is *NOT* out of the mainstream of
political thought in Merrimack, NH :(.

Tesha

and hold them accountable for all their actions come re-election.

We have to be open-minded about this.

I guess that they really ARE that heartless. :(

For repubs, there will always be money for bullets, bombs, and shit that goes boom, to hell with any money that would help the people.



The repub healthcare plan: Die early :(

that a person can see before a person thinks, wow, if we spread the cost out through smart taxation and got single-payer health care, we wouldn't have to put up with our neighbors going publicly begging to get their kid some cancer treatment.

Plus, no more shitty spaghetti dinners with canned Parmesan cheese powder down at the Moose! BONUS.

where we have to raise money to pay for medical care? What is wrong with this picture?

until we accept that as the core difference and stop viewing them as evil not to mention accusing them of such then we won't be able to address this difference. We keep pushing them away every time we attack them for what we view as reprehensible then we wonder why they won't engage in the conversation.

It isn't that they are heartless they simply don't view forcing everyone to share the financial load of health care as a legitimate role of government. It is our job to persuade them otherwise.

They are simply sticking by their view of the appropriate roles within society. To them the desperation of an individual who needs help does not provide a obligation on government. In their eyes that obligation is on each individual in the local community to choose to assist. We can view this as heartless all we want, but the reality is that it doesn't mean they are not sympathetic to the needy. They just have a different view of an acceptable way to meet those needs.

It is important to understand this distinction because we cannot hope to convince them that government intervention is a better method for doing so when we are turning them off from even having the conversation by assuming they are evil and heartless. They could be just as sympathetic and willing to work through their church for example to help those in need, then we turn around and call them evil for not being willing to do it through government. In that case, how can be blame them for tuning us out? More critically though is the fact that in such a scenario we become the bad guys in the eyes of the fence sitters who are sitting back watching this exchange.

Is why they're full of it. Their means of being evil and heartless is willful ignorance, and they've gotten away with it far too long here.

That is a perfectly logical reason why it should be done through government as opposed to private charity, because only government can do it. However, there is a big difference from being willfully ignorant and believing that private methods such as charity are the appropriate way to address such issues, and we do ourselves no favor by allowing emotional responses to them acting on behalf of their perspective. It isn't ignorance willful or otherwise. It is privatization, ours is different than theirs. However, we can't force ours upon them so if we want to convince them ours is correct then we have to start by not creating a hostile situation in which they aren't going to listen to us in the first place. This gets complicated by the fact that doing so also pushes toward them the fence sitters who see the situation as us attacking them and then end up siding with the perceived victim.

How you approach and deal with them is just as important as what you have to say. If we had the numbers to drag them kicking and screaming it would be different. However, we tried that with health care still couldn't get what we wanted because we didn't have numbers and got beat down in the election as a result. We must accept the reality that we can't do it alone, that means we have to go hat in hand looking for help.

Blinded by greed, avarice, hatred and stupidity - what is important to them is that their "community" does'nt pay for "our" community. They get away with this because we've given them too many passes on affiliation with the human race already.

You turn them off of your message by putting them on the defensive from the get go. Why would you expect them to listen or any third party viewing the exchange to take you seriously?

Here's the reality, we can continue attacking them because it makes us feel better and they keep ignoring us because what we want goes against their view of the appropriate role of government. As an alternative we can engage in an honest and civil discourse in which we discuss why each side believes actions in question may or may not be an appropriate role of government. The later having a chance of making progress, the former continues to make us the bad guy both in terms of making us appear as the aggressor and enabling them to paint us into the picture of oppressor. You pick which one you want, and keep in mind we can't do it alone. We simply don't have the numbers.

The downside of the path I think we should take is that it means accepting that they are not mindless zombies but instead are intelligent enough to hold views based on a legitimate position of prioritization and have the ability to recognize when actions exceed the limits their priorities sets forth. As opposed to their just being evil and cruel. Plus we would have to treat them as respectfully as we would like ourselves to be treated, which I realize is a deal breaker for many on our side.

However, for the sake of argument lets look at two terms you used. Because doing so points out where we are making the mistake.

First you mention psychopath. A disorder characterized by lack of empathy. Now ask this question is it lack of empathy or lack of willingness to use a specific approach to illustrate empathy. That's the key because these people can empathize they just don't believe in utilizing the same mechanisms for resolving that situation that we do. This is illustrated by the topic of this discussion. A psychopath would not have suggested any means to provide assistance. While the bake sale is certainly callus that in and of itself illustrates empathy. Especially when you account for what individual was really saying which is people need to turn to their local communities for assistance thus allowing the private sector to determine worthiness of each situation.

Secondly you mentioned dictators. Well here's an interesting question which is more like a dictator someone who refuses to help another person or someone who supports forcing others to help. If you are paying attention to what the word dictator means, the answer should obviously be the later. There are a lot of negative terms we can come up with for conservatives, many of the being the four letter variety, however dictator is not one of them. Note we are talking about conservatives as an ideology or movement not the morons they keep putting into power who go off the rails even by the so called conservative standards and do seem to be working to achieve dictatorial powers. Conservatives as a movement are all about the individual, you don't get much less dictatorial than individualism. Their unwillingness to dictate some aspects for the betterment of society as a whole, in line with benevolent dictator concept, is our grief with them.

So unless you have some other qualifier for evil you want to consider, then I hope we can drop that because these are people who have just as much of a legitimate claim on having their views and desires represented in our nation as we do. Which is why it is critical we learned to speak to them not at them. If for no other reason so we turn the by-standards away into the arms of the opposition. What we have to do is engage them so as to show the undecideds and with any luck a few of the cons why our views are more appropriate for the nation as a whole.

Sometimes I wonder if we are not so convinced that we are right that we can only explain the possibility that someone might disagree with us via some mental illness. If that is really where we have allowed ourselves as to get too then any hope to influence others and forward our agenda may be lost.

They are corporate whores to the medical and insurance companies. Their god is the dollar and they want exclusive access to their god, human life and suffering be damned.

When an average citizen in a "third-world" countries have better access to the same quality medical care only the wealthy in this country can really afford, something stinks.

And when they are "sympathetic and working through their churches," please post.

the banksters.

What they are not OK with is raising taxes at the top to provide the 90% with a basic safety net.

That IS evil. It's a fundamental kind of evil, and it spawns many evils in turn.

instead of with chickens now?

any lower, one of them opens their mouths again. There truly is nothing beneath them.

453 (IIRC) members - we pay em' $100/year, and we definitely get what we pay for. The current bunch may represent a new low, but we've had some that would be tough to out-stupid.

A typical bake sale, what does that rake in, $100-$200 at most? This is insanity. She might as well just tell you to give up and die.

Today's Worst. Person. In The World!!!

I love the spot where I live - pretty, rural, nice garden space, neighbors you can't see - but the last election turned the politics into a nightmare. I guess if it gets too bad we can sell out and move across the river to Vermont.

Take a ride up to Mt. Cube (Orford), and behold the canonization of Meldrim Thompson, conservative icon.

It wouldn't surprise me if she did say something like that to a cancer patient.

them.

they need to go. go. go.

After all, marketplace of ideas, voting with wallets, etc.

opt for the Egypt type protests