Brainwashing: The Creation of Town Hall Meeting Rabble-Rousers

Conservatives for Patients' Rights (CPR), ever hear of them? They are an extreme Right-wing anti-health care reform lobbying group. The Spin Killer could care less whether they are on the Left or Right, it's a free country. What TSK does not respect is how they use a tremendous amount of distorted propaganda BS to deceitfully manipulate the American people. And Conservatives for Patient's Rights serves up quite a bit of this crap. They are the outfit responsible for organizing and promoting the angry disruptions at health care town hall meetings across the country. How do they succeed in getting these people all worked up to march on over to the nearest meeting and create chaos? This is one way they do it:

First, they promote themselves on other Right-wing websites, such as Sean Hannity's site, in order to  guarantee that they get a Right-leaning subject to come to the CPR website. They tempt the future agitator with the promise of a schedule of upcoming meetings.

Once at the CPR website, the future rabble-rouser is given a list of upcoming town hall meetings. But before they can look at the list of meetings, there is an introduction of sorts to the list. They are presented with town hall etiquette instructions to "come prepared with concise questions and well-researched arguments" and to "be respectful." Gosh, that sounds reasonable enough, what a great organization! All would be okay if it stopped there, but no such luck. Let's see if CPR means what they say about etiquette.

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The future town hall agitator is then told to "View the videos from the Congressional Town Hall meetings where constituents voice their concerns on healthcare reform." Okay, so let's look at the first video they offer from what they say is a town hall meeting, shall we?

Errr, did you see the promised town hall meeting? Negative! That was a demonize Congressman John Tanner propaganda video. But wait, let's go to the next video and we shall surely see, as CPR stated, "...constituents voicing their concerns on health care reform":

Okay, I saw the constituent "voice his concern" about his ID, but where is the constituent "voicing his concern about health care reform" as CPR promised? A Fox News clip of a disruption at one town hall meeting and then commentary by Fox News anchors criticizing Rep. Moran's ID request doesn't accomplish what CPR promised, but it does demonize the congressman.

The rest of the videos CPR offers are more of the same: carefully edited or presented propaganda videos with the sole aim of stoking anger and inciting future town hall disruption. These videos serve no usefulness in preparing the participant with facts about the health care system nor do they serve a purpose of demonstrating  how to "be respectful" at a town hall. And these videos offer no constructive alternatives to Obama's health care reform. They are simply just there as a pep rally to make people angry and incite them to anti-civil disruption. And if the future rabble-rouser is not angry enough, well then, CPR suggests they take a look at a video of Nancy Pelosi to find out "what Nancy Pelosi thinks of you." ANGRY ENOUGH NOW??? Great, here is the list, now get to that meeting!

Why can't Conservatives for Patients' Rights just simply give out the meeting list? Why can't they just stick to talking about the particulars of health care reform? In general, propaganda and spin are used to manipulate people into a position or action that they  might not otherwise take if they knew the truth. It is essentially a con job.

CPR is headed by Rick Scott. Scott previously headed a company that perpetrated one of the biggest medical frauds the country ever experienced. Although he was never charged with a crime, he was fired from his position at that company in the wake of that fraud. Today, Scott profits nicely from the current health care system. There is no altruism here, Obama's health care reform would hurt his pocketbook. Aside from Rick Scott, CPR's multi-million dollar funding sources are from a few entities that remain anonymous. Their public relations campaign is run by the same firm that created the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign. Is CPR set up to protect the financial interests of a few or to protect the health care interests of all Americans?


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