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October 15, 2009· scvtalk.com · WordPress (SCVTalk 3.0) · Wayback capture

McKeon shares ’survey’ results from Town Hall meeting on Health Care

I knew the results wouldn’t be pretty (at least from a liberal blogger’s standpoint), but I didn’t know they’d be this ugly:

McKeon Constituent Survey Results

A reader survey accompanied this post in the original. It is not preserved here — interactive features are recorded, not reproduced.

Here’s what McKeon had to say about the Town Hall and the results:

I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to those who had a chance to attend my health care town hall meeting on September 26th and for those who filled out the health care survey. Your input is invaluable to the legislative process and helps me better understand the views of the diverse constituency that makes up the 25th Congressional District.

We had a very informative debate, and I’m pleased that so many of you with different points of view were able to express yourselves. We heard from over 40 people during the three hour meeting; and while the conversation was passionate, it was also respectful, and I appreciated that. The surveys have been tabulated, and I’m eager to share the results with you now. Thank you for your patience as we have worked through this process.

Anyway it was an interesting event and I’d like to see McKeon hold more of them. You just don’t get the same type of energy from his town hall conference calls.

 

Comments (17)

  1. navigatorOctober 15, 2009 at 2:23 pm
    Hey Jeff. How would you describe a government run program in terms other than government run?
  2. TomOctober 15, 2009 at 2:37 pm
    Considering how these questions were skewed toward pro-GOP responses, I wouldn’t be too concerned about the results. And, as much as McKeon was trumpeting Obama being out-of-touch with the public, ‘ole Buck shouldn’t ignore the mood of the town hall which was anti all politicians, not just the Dems or GOP. BTW, was anyone else as disgusted as I was when McKeon intro’d his wife as being the mother of his 6 kids + 30 grandkids and the audience applauded as if this irresponsible behavior was some kind of accomplishment. Hey Buck, ‘ya ever heard of overpopulation? Contraception? Can you imagine what the response would have been if his last name had been Mckeonez?
  3. Timothy MyersOctober 15, 2009 at 2:57 pm
    Malthusian in the house!
  4. FredOctober 15, 2009 at 4:51 pm
    this irresponsible behavior was some kind of accomplishment. Hey Buck, ‘ya ever heard of overpopulation? Contraception? Irresponsible behavior? Overpopulation? Are you serious? You believe that tired old nonsense of that crackpot philosopher, Paul Ehrlich, that has been refuted time and again? What would have been the better course for Buck? To limit himself to just one child ala China and killed the rest? Should he had been forcibly sterilized like most historical eugenicists want for the “religiously zealous?” By the way, who do you expect is going to pay for that government ran health care you all are clamoring for? Be thankful folks like Buck and his 30 grandkids and myself with my four kids will be around to supply the taxpayer base to fund your care. If we take the atheist European route of despising children for some eco-wacko philosophy of overpopulation, you all will be running out of money real fast.
  5. BrianOctober 15, 2009 at 4:52 pm
    Please support your local health insurance company! Overweight 4 month old? Pre-existing condition! CARE DENIED!!! Keep the profit in ‘for profit’ health care!
  6. TomOctober 15, 2009 at 6:03 pm
    Where are we going to get all of the natural resources, starting with water, to handle the population increase? Or is the OC method of recycling sewage water to be the new definition of clean water? And how happy is everyone going to be when Interstate 5 becomes a solid row of subdivisions from Castaic to Bakersfield? By religious zealots, are you implying McKeon is a member of a religious sect intent on overpopulation to increase their numbers? Did we just time warp into the 19th century? As for healthcare, keep the government out of it, including Medicare & Medicaid, but put in place the necessary restrictions to prevent greedy insurance, pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies from bilking the American public out of every last penny before they die. And while we’re on the subject of personal fiscal responsibility, isn’t it about time we ended the socialist program of public education? Why are the people without kids getting stuck with the bill? And if the never-ending increase of property taxes for education wasn’t enough, we find out the money wasn’t even spent on education, but on multimillion dollar theaters at COC and two local high schools. Are you kidding me? Enough with the personal empire building on the backs of the public. If there’s any idea/concept from the past we should revisit it is “if you incur the expense, you pay for it”.
  7. Fred ButlerOctober 16, 2009 at 6:14 am
    Tom, Infrastructure problems are way different than saying overpopulation by irresponsible reproduction is the cause. I thought I was fairly clear what I meant by “religious zealots.” You’re jumping to some erroneous conclusions. I agree with both your points on health care and public education. In fact, we homeschool. So, the smarter thing to do is to allow my family to take the tax money we pay into the public system and spend in on our children’s education.
  8. IndyOctober 16, 2009 at 8:57 am
    Fred, here’s a ‘heads up’ . . . with live on a ‘fixed rock in space’ . . . so our resources are indeed limited. It’s one of the reasons the average cost of living keeps going up . . . it’s not just ‘waste and fraud’ government. At present, we’re currently adding 200,000 net people per day to this planet . . . which already has about 6.7 billion up from 4 billion just in 1980. I do understand, however, how religious conservatives have clouded this issue by ‘character assassinating’ anyone like Erhlich for bringing up the topic especially when people like Buck have been told in his religion that ‘God will provide’. Well, ‘here on earth’, we as humans provide for each other . . . More to come.
  9. IndyOctober 16, 2009 at 8:59 am
    The part of the stats that Buck didn’t include was simply: ‘What till you get sick and see how your health care company does then’ . . . . As we saw with Blue Cross cancelling out ’sick members’ much in the same line of attack as the credit card industry, all supported by big time lobbyist giving billions of dollars to ‘our leaders’. . . . including some to Buck . . . I can see why Buck left this question off his partisan survey. We need a public option right now. Indy
  10. TCROctober 16, 2009 at 9:49 am
    Indy, your arguments don’t fit together. If you’re concerned about overpopulation on our ‘fixed rock in space,’ you really shouldn’t support healthcare for anyone. The shorter our lifespans, the more people who get to use the planet. It’s very similar to increasing the average speed on highways so that more cars can pass through the same section without building extra lanes.
  11. IndyOctober 16, 2009 at 1:34 pm
    TCR, At first your logic appears rational . . . but it assumes that we as the ‘human race’ can’t ‘plan for our common future in a rational manner’. Why would you want to degrade the ‘quality of life’ to people on this planet by denying health care? Likewise, why is shortening one’s lifespan as you suggest to be a goal when it needn’t be? That again is the issue with those that don’t see the most basic concept of economics that be ‘scarcity’ that requires ‘trade offs’ . . . in this case, the ‘quality of life’ versus the ‘quantity of life’. You did address this in a manner of speaking but your suggesting reducing quality for more quantity. Do you think most folks living here in SCV-land would agree? I wouldn’t. Unfortunately, most of our ‘leaders’ can’t articulate that trade off and thus sadly end up giving you only ‘half’ the issue . . . usually the benefits without noting the cost . . . thus the issue of overpopulation appears unnecessary since the political assumption in play is just good ole American folklore . . . ‘work harder, work longer’ . . . but as we see, we’re working longer and harder and getting less due to scarcity . . . People are getting this message interestingly through rising ‘tax rates’ but even that is euphemized into ‘slogans’ like ‘anti-tax’, ‘anti-government’ versus the actual rising cost of resources due to more people demanding more of less. Thus, to summarize, under your suggestion, we have more people and less quality like less health care. I’m only here to demonstrate that the ‘choice’ exist . . .
  12. FredOctober 16, 2009 at 6:35 pm
    I do understand, however, how religious conservatives have clouded this issue by ‘character assassinating’ anyone like Erhlich for bringing up the topic especially when people like Buck have been told in his religion that ‘God will provide’. It’s not character assassination. Erhlich’s junk science has been debunked time and again. He’s like an 800 hotline psychic. The intellectual elites label it “science” so as to garner some credibility when he goes on CNN. Well, ‘here on earth’, we as humans provide for each other . . . From the naturalistic world view you seem to advocate, why? Sounds rather inconsistent.
  13. IndyOctober 16, 2009 at 6:52 pm
    Fred, Junk science? What in particular are you referring to? Saying it’s junk science is character assassination from where I’m typing. But please, let me know what major issues you feel are junk and I’ll respond to them. I’ve studied this topic for 30 years and I seen nothing of ‘junk’ in Erhlich’s thesis. As far as our efforts ‘here in earth’ to provide for our needs, this is different that many religious conservatives who believe that ‘God will provide’ thus they dismiss natural resource constraints on this planet thus they dismiss the overpopulation issue in kind. The only world I’m advocating is the one we both live on.
  14. FredOctober 17, 2009 at 1:48 pm
    Junk science? What in particular are you referring to? Pretty much all of his written body of work. It debunks itself. He’s the Sylvia Brown of the secular left. In the late 60s he is making all these dire, hysterical prophetic announcements about how the world would be so overpopulated in the 80s, mass starvation would kill millions. It never happened. Didn’t even come close. So basically you have invested 30 years of your life following a false prophet. You’re really no different from the religious right you ridicule. As far as our efforts ‘here in earth’ to provide for our needs, this is different that many religious conservatives who believe that ‘God will provide’ thus they dismiss natural resource constraints on this planet thus they dismiss the overpopulation issue in kind. Yes, because the reality of things is that the earth has the resources to sustain a thriving population many times over. The true farce is the notion that overpopulation will deplete all of earth’s resources when in fact the opposite has been demonstrated time and again to be the truth. You still missed the gist of my question. If you are a big follower of Paul Ehrlich, then you must follow his views of eugenics he advocates, correct? Forced sterilizations, and the like? So with this particular Ehrlich philosophy through which you filter you view of reality, why should we care about what happens to our fellow men? Take for example Indonesians dying in a tsunami, a natural occurring phenomenon. From your perspective, what’s the point in investing millions of dollars for humanitarian aid when all we have is natural selection running its course? I know why I care, but why should someone from the Ehrlich camp care?
  15. IndyOctober 17, 2009 at 5:06 pm
    Well, Fred, even today we’re seeing as many as 15,000 people a day die of starvation of which about a third of those people are kids. If we take that number per day over say the 40 years since Erhlich’s book came out on overpopulation, that’s what, over 200 million people? So indeed, Erhlich’s prediction has sadly come true . . . Even today 1 billion people lack access to clean water while 2 billion lack proper santitation. As far as the world’s resources, the water issue above is interestingly enough but the energy resources like oil will be collapsing just when we’ll have more people on this planet than any other time. So your statement about unlimited resources doesn’t map to the ‘fixed rock in space’ we live on. I do like the reference to forced sterilizations . . . from here: http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uk/2996311.html Peter Robinson: Sort of. I understand that it’s not actually enforced evenly, but nevertheless in at least–the principle is one child per family. We know that there are some forced abortions, some forced sterilizations, we also have some data that suggests that certain–that sometimes you can pay off an official to get him to turn a blind eye to a second child and so forth. Nevertheless, that’s their stated policy. But you suggest they didn’t need to go that route. What else could they have done? Paul Ehrlich: Well, if they’d started 15 or 20 years ago or even today say, for example, doing things that would even slow down the time of marriage, the age of marriage more, that might have been a much more effective way to get the same–the trouble is, when things get so bad the politicians recognize them, you get the kind of solutions that have not been thoughtfully looked at by demographers, ecologists, sociologists, and so on. You know, what are you going to do with all these–with a preference for boy children? The problem may stabilize around that in some sense eventually. It appears that Peter notes that Paul ‘But you suggest they didn’t need to go that route.’ But indeed, many religious conservatives dislike the 1 child policy in China choosing to believe that can feed over a billion people when it’s become clear do to scarcity that they cannot. And just like many of the Chinese don’t believe in resource constraints, they reject scarcity like you do. But how long should we wait as the human race to resolve this issue? Is 15,000 people a day dying enough? Finally, your comment about humanitarian aid well, you need to take that up with the leadership of the Republican party who complains that the US spending of less than 1% of the federal budget is ‘too much’ . . . have you written or contacted McKeon to see if he’s up for increasing aid as noted? And if we continue to see the world population expand by 200,000 net daily, how much more federal dollars would be required to meet that expanding demand? I know you care and so do I but not accepting the reality of scarcity, the basic premise of economics, is not answer.
  16. IndyOctober 17, 2009 at 5:43 pm
    Here’s a site that counts the people dying from starvation: http://www.starvation.net/
  17. IndyOctober 17, 2009 at 5:45 pm
    From this site, the average starvation death rate is: It is estimated that 10,536 people starve to death each day. http://www.ourdailybreadmissions.org/Food%20Bank%20Country%20Information.htm

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