The Health Care Plan 

Nobody Could See

"You actually want to *read* my 1,364 page health care reform plan? Why?!"

Hey, Remember When Hillary Put Together A Secret Task Force To Reform Health Care & Then Went To Court To Hide The Details From The Public? 

Washington Examiner political reporter Byron York does!  

In 1993, the newly-inaugurated President Bill Clinton chose his wife to head his administration's most important domestic initiative, health care reform. Hillary Clinton proceeded to create a task force that seemed more determined to keep secrets than to restructure health care.

"The culture of secrecy is such that the White House refuses to provide a full list of consultants brought in to aid in the effort," the New York Times reported in February, 1993, just after the first lady got started. Clinton later went to court rather than reveal the most basic details of the effort. Story after story about her work used phrases like "wall of secrecy" and "shrouded in secrecy" and "frantic, secretive process." 

When the task force collapsed in defeat, columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that "it was the first lady's secrecy and righteousness in trying to push through her 1,364-page bill that doomed the effort."

By the end of the Clintons' first year in Washington, the new White House became ensnared in the first of the scandals that would last through Bill Clinton's presidency. Hillary Clinton was deeply involved, sometimes in the original offense, like Travelgate, and sometimes in the legal and political pushback, like the Lewinsky scandal. The Clinton trademark was withholding information from investigators.

It was only after intense public pressure that the Clinton White House reluctantly released the names of the people on the Health Care Panel crafting the reform legislation:

Ending It's Secrecy, White House Lists Health-Care Panel 

After much criticism of the secrecy surrounding the work of his health policy team, President Clinton today abandoned his effort to conceal the names of more than 500 people who are developing his proposal to guarantee health insurance coverage for all Americans.

After finding out who was crafting the new health care reform, the next step was to find out what was in the plan itself. But the Clintons refused to release even the most basic details. 

 In an attempt to actually force the Clinton White House into transparency on the public policy it was making, the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons [AAPS] filed a lawsuit based on the Federal Advisory Committee Act [FACA].  

And thus did Hillary Clinton go to court to prevent disclosure of the facts about the new health care reform effort she was leading.  

Incidentally, the Federal court narrowly ruled in Clinton's favor, that she was a government official, even though nobody had elected her to any kind of office.  So the details of the health care reform she was making could remain secret. 

Yes. Really. That actually happened: 

"Court Rules First Lady Is 'De Facto' Government Official"

"The court found I'm a de facto government official. 

So I don't have to show the public my health care plan." 

At this stage of her career, we are learning absolutely nothing new about Hillary Clinton. She has always been a secretive, transparency-dodging control freak.  

She's right at home on the Progressive Left, which never openly declares what it is it's trying to do.  

The Progressive movement truly does believe Americans are stupid children that need to be lied to, tricked or coerced into doing what they want them to do.  Elites run from transparency because actually informing the public what they're up to and what they're planning for the rest of us just gets in the way of all the 'progress' they want to achieve.  They don't tell you because they truly believe you don't need to know.  

The Fraud Who Legitimized 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot!' : Shawn Parcells

The Curious Case of Non-Forensic Non-Pathologist Non-Nothing Shawn Parcells

How Did This Fraud Manage To Insert Himself On Center Stage Of The Michael Brown Case? 

Parcells begins his presentation around 15:29 of the video

What if I told you a guy with no formal forensic training managed to pass himself off to the entire nation as a forensic pathologist & used a nationally televised press conference to sell a false narrative that drastically affected a divisive racial case that resulted in half of a town being burned down and looted?  

Yes, this actually happened.  It happened in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.  

Parcells' presentation begins at around 15:29 of the video linked above.  He doesn't speak long, but then again he didn't have to.  He makes two main points in that presentation: 

1. In his 'expert' opinion, Michael Brown was likely shot in the back and 

2. In his 'expert' opinion, Michael Brown was shot down while he was standing still with his hands up in the air.  

A moment that should live in media infamy

Parcells did his damage in August, operating with impunity because nobody at the time investigated his background.  It wasn't until late November, more than three months later, that the lies began to be uncovered. 

CNN first began asking questions about Parcells in this November 27th report: 

Link: Is 'Professor' Who Helped With Brown Autopsy Who He Says He Is?

On Dec. 2nd, Radley Balko at the Washington Post posted this damning report on Parcells that laid bare just how badly the entire country had been taken in: 

Link:  The saga of Shawn Parcells, the uncredited forensics ‘expert’ in the Michael Brown case

As it so happens, the very first words out of Parcell's mouth at that nationally televised press conference was a lie:  

"First of all, I'm Professor Shawn Parcells." 

Not true. Parcells has never been on the faculty of any college or university anywhere.  Washburn University in Topeka Kansas, where Parcells claims to be an Adjunct Professor on his LinkedIn page, says he has never been on their staff in any capacity.  

It turns out to be a certified forensic pathologist, one must have a medical degree before undergoing formal forensic training.  Parcells has reluctantly admitted he does not have any medical degree. How reluctant was this admission?  Read this exchange he had with a CNN reporter: 

When CNN visited Parcells in his Overland Park, Kansas, home, he presented a photo of himself onstage at what appears to be a graduation ceremony at the New York Chiropractic College. 

“I got a master’s degree in anatomy and physiology, with clinical correlation,” he said. 

Asked where his diploma was, he replied that it was on the way. “It’s coming,” he said. “They mail it to you.” 

The next day, at another on-camera interview, the conversation went like this: 

CNN: So that master’s degree in New York, you have that degree?
Parcells: I will have it next month, yes. 

CNN: I don’t mean the piece of paper. I mean have you been conferred that degree? 

Parcells: Yes, I will. Next month. 

CNN: Right now, as we speak, you have that degree? 

Parcells: No, I do not.

Don't miss the full import of what happened here: a complete fraud got up there invested in an national audiences eyes with medical science acumen he didn't really have and he used that false respect to add credibility to a racially inflammatory false narrative.  

Al Sharpton does what Al Sharpton does: he gets there first and then uses the national media to rush the most racially inflammatory version of what happened out the door to the public.  We expect that.  We've seen it enough times now to know how this works.  

But what Parcells did was far worse. He took that racially inflammatory narrative and he gave it the forensic science 'stamp of approval', which is exactly the last thing that should have been done.  

It *looked* as if a respected, credentialed forensic pathologist has just backed up Dorian Johnson's account of the shooting of Michael Brown.  The moment Parcells stated that Brown 'could have been' shot in the back, and then raised his hands up to show the position he believed Brown's hands were in during the fatal hail of bullets, Dorian Johnson's lies got a huge credibility boost in front of a national audience.  

One can only wonder as the nation watched half of Ferguson go up in flames or be looted, if Parcells even spent a second reflecting on his role in selling the 'hand up, don't shoot!' myth. 

Andrew Breitbart's Dream: 

An Army of Citizen Journalists

Jim Geraghty won the ACU Journalist of the Year award at this year's CPAC.  In a column he put up today at National Review Online, he gives the speech he wished he'd given at that moment, and in the column he gives a great and touching tribute to the late Andrew Breitbart:

In this tribute, I think Jim put his finger on the one thing that made Andrew inspirational to so many.  He never was about "Look what *I'm* doing!" or "Look how awesome *I* am!"  Instead his attitude was always "Look what *you're* doing!" and "Look how awesome *you* are!"

Andrew didn't want to build a large following for himself.  What he wanted was to build an army of citizen journalists and then unleash it on the DNC Media.  He knew how to empower people. 

As Geraghty points out, Andrew had a deliberate habit he engaged in: when people approached him with news tips and story ideas, just passing it along, handing it off to a professional, Andrew would turn it around on them: "No, you're the one that should write that! You can do it!"

Too often I think Conservatives & people who care about what's happening to this country sit back and wait for the Professional Conservative Media to write that story or deal with this or that issue.

"Don't wait for the 'professionals'! You can do it! You write it!" 

I'm sure Andrew appreciated being approached and having people share their ideas for great articles with him.  But he didn't want to become this leader who borrows ideas from other people. That creates passivity.  "No need for me to get involved, I'll just pass this idea off to one of the big important professionals."  Andrew was all about getting people off the sidelines and into the game.

And the tragic thing  is that, for me, it took him dying to finally make me take that step.   I was happy sitting on the sidelines, cheering him and others on.  I liked it there.  There was no real effort involved.  Nobody says mean things to you way up there in the stands.  All the calumny is directed at  the people who are actually in the game.  The Big Professional Conservative People are the targets of all the controversy so you stay where it's safe and cheerlead to give them moral support.

And when Andrew passed I spent two weeks examining myself, wondering "Now that he's gone, who do I cheer for? Why the hell am I still sitting up here just watching after all this time?"

Nobody volunteers you to get out of the stands.  "Hey you, get out there and start playing!"  You run out onto the field because you want to be there.  You want to get involved. You want to make a difference.  You have to have that passion within yourself.

And Andrew understood this.  When passionate people came to him with their ideas, he understood what would happen if he allowed them to just hand off their 'game' to him.  They would get passive.  They would start to lose their passion.  Their involvement in things would never extend beyond contacting him or some other Big Conservative Media Person  and handing off the ball.

Andrew's vision for the New Media he was building wasn't a handful of Big Conservative Media People in the game while millions cheered them on from the sidelines.  Andrew's vision was far different: an army of millions of citizen journalists covering stories the DNC Media deliberately distorted or ignored.  An army of passionate, relentless fact-checkers blowing up every attempted smear and hatchet job launched by political activists masquerading as reporters.

That's why he made a habit of stunning people with the encouragement of "No, YOU write it! You can do it!"

It has been forgotten in the early days of the American Republic, citizen journalists abounded.  You didn't have to go to a university and take a journalism course to launch a newspaper and write about the events of the day.  People just did it.  Nowadays some people play up how bad that was, and there were abuses to be sure. But as time passed journalism became a professional thing, and this allowed the Old Media to start playing gatekeepers and lapdogs to the powerful.

The power of the Internet, Talk Radio and Cable TV broke the information logjam that allowed the Old Media to control the national conversation and sell false narratives to the public.  The Old Media is still mad as hell about it, and this FCC takeover of the Internet by the State is just the latest attempt they're making to go back to the days they could control the flow of information.

But it's too late.  Once people taste this kind of freedom, they'll never roll over and hand it back.  The New Media has been launched.  They can't stop the signal.

Andrew's dream is coming true. An army of informed, involved citizen journalists that can't be controlled or bought off  or scared off.  There is hope for freedom and liberty in this country still, as long as just one person stands up and fights for it.

@PettMyMaddie @KurtSchlichter They think @AndrewBreitbart is gone. He's not gone. He's right here. He's millions now.
— Dread Pirate Cates (@drawandstrike) February 28, 2015