Aug 082009
 

The most offensive part of Kathleen Sibelius’s remarks comes at about 1:20 in this clip. It’s an old, old ploy, but it still stinks in 2009. I’ve seen it played in public meetings on school affairs, and I’ve seen it used in church meetings. I’ve even had it played on my behalf, which is one reason that nowadays I’d rather work for change by standing on the outside and throwing rocks than working within the system.

It works like this: A committee comes up with a plan and presents it to the voters/public/whatever. But the people ask difficult questions, and it sounds like some of them might oppose it. Then comes the ploy: “This committee has worked hard on this. They’ve put in many hours of their time.”

Instead of addressing the issues and engaging the skeptics, they pull the “hours and hours” ploy as a way to silence dissent. Yuck.

And it’s even worse in the case of Congress, because “working hard” for those people means things like coming up with enough ethanol subsidies for his well-to-do constituents to lure Sen. Grassley to support the health care bill. In other words, “working hard” means “working hard to corrupt enough people to go along.”