We in the reality-based community have long acknowledged the important role played by the Heritage Foundation in laying the groundwork for the Affordable Care Act.But too many do not know that, after years of delay and denial, when Heritage out of modestydeclined to take credit for the brilliant success of its own plan, another pillar of the wingnut-industrial complex would step into the breach and help carry this plan to victory on what is now widely acknowledged to be a truly massive scale.I refer, of course, to the Cato Institute, that venerable Koch-infested beacon of shrunken government for the poor and states’ rights for the rich.“How," you might ask, "could an Institute founded by Charles Koch in his own image in 1974—and whose board of directors he and his brother actually sued in 2012 because it was too libertarian—have helped engineer the greatest expansion of federal benefits since the Great Society?”Well, it seems that the Cato Institute and their "director of health policy studies", a Republican wonk named Michael F. Cannon who The New Republic named “Obamacare’s most relentless antagonist”, thought that they had found a devious way to subvert the ACA:convince red states to let the federal government run their exchanges.
i guess it's true God really doesn't like ugly, these guys have tried to buy our gov't deny us health care, fair wage, pollute because they don't want to spend the extra money to keep their workers and the rest of the country safe from their carcinogens.
in their effort to achieve this anti American endeavor they have gone 180 degrees and the exact opposite has manifested within in their skulduggery, they also say God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform are you insured if so it's time now to vote big money down.
Fortunately, the legislation did allow the feds to set up exchanges if the states failed to do so. And that's where the Cato Institute stepped in to save Congress from itself.According to Cato's Cannon, he personally spent much of the past few years traveling on junkets to dozens of state capitals, where he told right-wing state legislators not to set up their own exchanges.The details of this crusade are still a little hazy. On the one hand, it was a hard, truth-telling road. “It was very lonely out there,” he solemnly told The New Republic.On the other hand, Cannon admitted in his own piece, he had a little help from his friends, namely those at FreedomWorks, ALEC, Americans for Prosperity, the State Policy Network, countless “mini-me” state-level right-wing thinktanks, and, uh, oh yeah, the Tea Party (mad props!)At first, the legislators were skeptical, Cannon says. “Why shouldn’t we have our own exchanges?” they protested. “Then we’ll have control! States’ rights!”But Cannon schooled them otherwise. The whole thing is a big federal plot anyway, he told them. Doing an exchange yourself would only give you the illusion of control. In short: Take the red pill!
"we the people" control with our votes problem is too few exercise that right 2008 and 12 have shown us what we can do if we just show up.
