Up North Progressive

You can tell election day is three weeks away. Media are full of ads, signs proclaiming the names of people who want your vote are popping all over people’s front lawns, and the GOP lies are reaching obtuse levels never seen before.

With eight years of GOP manipulating the Affordable Care Act to make it unaffordable, the majority of Americans are interested in single-payer health care. In 2009 during the battle over the ACA in Congress, expanding Medicare to every American became a war cry for the tea party and the GOP to kill “Obamacare”. The AARP came out in favor of Obamacare, which made retired insurance agent Dan Weber create his own conservative senior’s club called the Association for Mature American Citizens. Just like AARP, AMAC sells supplemental insurance plans for people on Medicare. Weber uses AMAC to demonize AARP as a liberal Soros funded front group for taking away for-profit health insurance.

So now that people in 2018 are interested in Medicare For All, AMAC has launched a misinformation campaign to scare voters away.

 

Take the Pledge to Save Your Medicare

Your Medicare is on the ballot in November: The program dedicated to seniors is under attack by socialists.
THE HOUSE BILL: Over 70 Democrats have their name on a Medicare for All bill that would turn Medicare into socialized medicine – European style.
THE SENATE BILL: Bernie Sanders has a bill that has the support of 1/3 of Senate Democrats. In his program, kids would be enrolled in Medicare at BIRTH.
Folks, these bills won’t just change Medicare. They’ll destroy it!
MASSIVE TAX INCREASE TO FUND THE PROGRAM
HEALTH CARE RATIONING TO CONTAIN COSTS
Your Medicare is on the ballot this November.
Take the AMAC pledge to save Medicare. And bring a senior to the polls.
THAT’S HOW WE STOP SANDERS CARE FOR ALL

Providing affordable health care for all Americans will bankrupt the system and then no one will have health care! This is nonsense of course. Overhead costs are so low with Medicare it will save the country money if all Americans participated in it. The fact that it will cost the country less is exactly why insurance salesmen like Dan Weber hate it. There go all the profits for insurance companies! This scary message from AMAC is showing up in social media now and it’s designed to misinform you about the benefits of a single-payer health care system. If you take the time to ask anyone who lives in a civilized country with single-payer health care, you will discover they love it and wonder why Americans refuse to switch when it’s a better way to manage health care.

Also, why “Sanderscare?” Is it because when you say it fast enough it sounds like Sander scare? “Berniecare” just rolls right off the tongue.

Proposal 2, the ballot initiative to end partisan gerrymandering and create a non-partisan commission to draw voting districts in Michigan has received lots of negative attention from Republicans. This is because Republicans worked very hard to gerrymander districts to make it impossible to ever vote Republicans out of office.

The effectiveness of REDMAP is perhaps most clear in the state of Michigan. In 2010, the RSLC put $1 million into state legislative races, contributing to a GOP pick-up of 20 seats in the House and Republican majorities in both the House and Senate.  Republican Rick Snyder won the gubernatorial race, and with it Republicans gained control of redrawing Michigan’s 148 legislative and 14 congressional districts.  The 2012 election was a huge success for Democrats at the statewide level in Michigan: voters elected a Democratic U.S. Senator by more than 20 points and reelected President Obama by almost 10 points. But Republicans at the state level maintained majorities in both chambers of the legislature and voters elected a 9-5 Republican majority to represent them in Congress.

Passing Proposal 2 will put an end to this deliberate rigging of Michigan elections by Republicans. Which is why they are now using the George Soros bogeyman to scare people into voting against Proposal 2.

This flyer is full of falsehoods, but the most ridiculous claim of all is Proposal 2 will lead to George Soros running Michigan’s Secretary of State office. So by GOP logic, Ruth Johnson is a paid puppet of conservative donors like the Koch Brothers, or Robert Mercer, or some Super PAC that doesn’t have to disclose who gives them money. Scary!

Proposal 2 will actually make the process of drawing voting districts in Michigan transparent. It will not gerrymander districts against minority voters (that’s what we have now!). It won’t force people in politics to get out of politics. It won’t draw districts based on “identity politics” and it certainly won’t disenfranchise voters. Proposal 2 will stop all of those things because that is what we have now thanks to politicians in the state custom drawing their districts so they can never lose, even when the majority of people vote against them.

There’s plenty of lies floating around right now to scare you into voting against candidates and proposals that will make things better in the state of Michigan. Take the time to learn the facts before making any decisions. Be an informed voter when you go to the polls on November 6, 2018.