PEOPLE WHO LISTEN TO GLENN BECK, LISTEN TO LIES

I've had people come to this blog and praise Beck for having the courage to tell the truth. Except those people who have stated that don't bother to check the "truth" that Beck feeds his gullible audience. PolitiFact does the hard work of investigating the veracity of what Beck says, and more than once, we discover that Beck is a dissembler at best and a bald faced liar at worst. What matters to him, it appears, is ratings and telling lies to keep his audience listening.

UPDATE:

On the right side of this blog you can read how Sean Hannity also contributes to lies, falsifications, and deceptions that constitute what passes as "news" on Murdoch's propaganda arm of the GOP.  FOX is the most popular cable news station, it is true.  But look at how FOX makes fools of their loyal viewers, who apparently swallow without questioning all the allegations spread deliberately to further the GOP's cause, which is to delegitimize Mr. Obama's presidency.  The utterly astounding fact in this quagmire of FOX's dishonesty is that  FOX "News" fans blame Mr. Obama for deceiving the American people over his agenda.

 


PolitiFact does the work.  Here the link.

Beck claims universal health care is driving Massachusetts' deficit


On his Nov. 2, 2009, Webcast, Glenn Beck rattled off a list of Republicans he thinks are just too liberal for his party, including Sen. Lindsay "Grahamnesty," Minnesota Gov. Tim "Cap-and-Trade" Pawlenty, Sen. John "My Hero is a Flaming Progressive" McCain, and Sen. Olympia "Health Care" Snowe.

And then there's former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who Beck said "opened the tent and gave you government health care that is now bankrupting the state.""That was my problem with the Massachusetts Romneycare," Beck said, referring to a three-year-old mandate that requires everyone in the state to have health care. "I remember saying to him, 'Mitt, you're not king. You're not going to be there forever. You opened the door, the progressives came in.'"

In many ways, the Massachusetts health care model mirrors a plan lawmakers are considering on Capitol Hill, so we wondered whether the mandate could be the budget-buster Beck claims it to be.

First, a few words about the Massachusetts plan. When Romney became governor in 2003, he was looking for a way for Massachusetts to make health care cheaper and more accessible. "People who don't have insurance nonetheless receive health care. And it's expensive," he told National Public Radio in 2006. "We're spending a billion dollars giving health care to people who don't have insurance. ... And my question was: Could we take that billion dollars and help the poor purchase insurance? Let them pay what they can afford. We'll subsidize what they can't."

Thus began Romney's plan for an individual mandate, a requirement that nearly everyone have health insurance, even those who are unemployed. Though Romney vetoed eight parts of the bill, including a provision that would have fined small businesses that failed to comply with the mandate (the legislature overrode that veto), the basics of his original vision remained intact throughout the legislative process. Commonwealth Care is a program that helps low-income consumers pay for plans while Commonwealth Choice acts as an insurance exchange for individuals and small businesses. The program is subsidized by taxpayer dollars and federal funding.


Today, about 96 percent of the state's population has health insurance, either through the state program, their employers or by other means, which ranks Massachusetts first in the nation in terms of percentage of people with some form of coverage. Nevertheless, Commonwealth Care has had its share of criticism. Some critics say it's been a boon to the insurance industry, while others complain that some consumers are paying even more for coverage, not less, as state lawmakers initially hoped. (In fact, Massachusetts has some of the most expensive health care per family in the country, according to some studies.) Another complaint: Commonwealth Care has taken a significant bite out of Massachusetts's bottom line.


Indeed, the program has been quite popular. Initially, the state projected that 215,000 people would eventually be enrolled in the program at the cost of $725 million. By 2007, enrollment had reached 80,000 and six months later, the number had doubled to 158,000 people. In 2008, enrollment peaked at more than 177,000 people. Currently, the state is expecting to spend about $880 million on Commonwealth Care in the coming budget year; that's about 3.3 percent of the state's $27 billion budget. So, while the program has become more expensive, it has not been the budget-buster that Beck suggests. We asked experts whether the state would still be facing a $5 billion deficit if the program hadn't been put into place, and the resounding answer was "yes."

While Beck's audience listens to his disinformation, they continue to become more and more uninformed and more easily led into the abyss of ignorance and fear.

Good luck with that.