Crossposted from Flopping Aces

A group called Americans United for Change is running more lies as attack ads to help the Democrats.  The group was formally called Americans United to Protect Social Security and are beholden to the Reid’s and Pelosi’s in this country:

According to a Jan. 24 Associated Press story, the group has received $500,000 from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a large labor union representing government workers. The AP also quote unnamed officials of Americans United as saying “Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California met with potential donors in Los Angeles earlier this month, underscoring their personal interest in the group’s efforts .” The group’s executive director Karen Olick had been chief of staff to Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California. For the record, Americans United spokesman Brad Woodhouse told FactCheck.org: “We are not advocating for or promoting the Democratic party agenda - we are promoting progressive issues.” The group does not formally disclose its donors.

And the MoveOn’s:

While the group will not have to disclose any of its donors because of its nonprofit status, the primary funders for Americans United will include MoveOn.org and a host of big unions

They also have a sitting board member who ran one of the Communist groups inside this country:

According to the Progressive Strategies website, prior “to founding Progressive Strategies, [Mike] Lux was Senior Vice President for Political Action at People For the American Way (PFAW), PFAW Foundation, and the PFAW Voters Alliance. Lux serves on the boards of several other organizations including the Arca Foundation, Americans United for Change, Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, Center for Progressive Leadership, Democratic Strategist, Grassroots Democrats, Progressive Majority and Women’s Voices/Women Vote.” 

So MoveOn, Pelosi, and other liberal dingbats have all signed on to get this group the cash it needs to start producing ads attacking Conservatives, almost all of them being inaccurate and misleading:

Americans United — formerly Americans United to Protect Social Security — will kick off its effort with a $1 million national cable ad buy seeking to highlight the “culture of corruption” that allegedly pervades the nation’s capital.

Produced by Jim Margolis, a partner in the Democratic media firm GMMB, the ad runs through a list of negative items it wants viewers to associate with Republicans — from high gas prices (an image of Halliburton is shown) to ethics problems (images of Rep. Tom Delay, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and former vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby are shown) to Hurricane Katrina (cue image of the now infamous “Brownie”).

And you can count the latest ad in that same camp:

Americans United for Change drew flack Wednesday from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for its ad that says the Kentucky Republican “sided with the big insurance companies” when he voted against the $35 billion expansion and reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Actually, America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group representing 1,300 insurance companies, supported the SCHIP reauthorization.

Brad Woodhouse, the group’s president, defended the ad when Politico asked about the inaccuracy.

“McConnell said he was looking out for private insurance companies and not wanting to discourage people from buying insurance from private insurers,” he said in a voicemail message.

If an ad attacks a politician for his support of the veto and says that this same politician chose to support the veto because he sided with big insurance companies, but in reality those big insurance companies support the SCHIP increase…how is this a honest charge then?

It’s not. 

But that wont stop the ad because this is all they know.  Spreading innuendo, mis-characterizations, and lies as fact in their attempt to get the White House in 2008.  This time they try to spin the yarn that Republicans don’t care about the needy when in fact this bill increase helps people whom were never intended to be in this program (adults), who make up to 80 grand a year, and who are here illegally.   They chose to add all this money to it because they knew Bush would veto and the Republicans would not override the veto.

It’s politics. 

And in the end the only people who are going to get hurt are those this program was intended to help. 

But just like the people of Iraq, the Democrats care little about who gets hurt, just getting back into power.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin takes some liberals to the woodshed:

First, let’s bust the cherished myth that Respectable Liberal Blogger Ezra Klein is as brilliant as he, the nutroots, and his respectable conservative friends think he is.

He is proudly touting the discovery of a blog post I wrote about my experience with Maryland’s individual health insurance market in 2004. He excerpts this part:

I have commented before on the problems with central planning in health care. I certainly am not convinced that a government-run system is the answer, but I do agree with Krugman that there are serious problems with our health insurance system, particularly in the market for individually-purchased (non-group) coverage.

After my husband quit his job earlier this year (to become a full-time stay-at-home dad), we had a choice. We could either buy health insurance from his former employer through a program called COBRA at a cost of more than $1,000 per month(!) or we could go it alone in Maryland’s individual market. Given our financial circumstances, that “choice” wasn’t much of a choice at all. We had to go on our own.

We discovered that the most generous plans in Maryland’s individual market cost $700 per month yet provide no more than $1,500 per year of prescription drug coverage–a drop in the bucket if someone in our family were to be diagnosed with a serious illness.

With health insurance choices like that, no wonder so many people opt to go uninsured.

What he fails to excerpt is the rest of the post:

In the end, we decided to purchase a very high-deductible plan (sold by Golden Rule Insurance Co.) coupled with a tax-sheltered Medical Savings Account (MSA). We couldn’t qualify for the preferred rate because Golden Rule says I am underweight. Hmph! In any case, while Krugman and most Democrats don’t seem to like MSAs, in our case we were glad they were an option.

Update: The Times reports that the proportion of Americans without health insurance is on the rise. The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, says the proportion has remained steady. (Both are right; it depends on which timeframe one is talking about.) The WSJ editorial writers suggest:

States like New York could do a lot for [those who cannot obtain health insurance] merely by getting rid of the state insurance regulations that make a basic policy roughly 10 times more expensive than it is in neighboring Connecticut. Better still, Congress could save poor New Yorkers from the tyranny of Albany by putting an end to our Balkanized and anachronistic 50-state insurance market and simply decreeing that there shall be nationwide commerce in health insurance. They could then buy policies issued in saner states or over the Internet.

Thats not stopping the liberals from crying hypocrisy even though she decided to go with private insurance rather then have the government take care of her (as most liberals want). 

Then she takes on an issue that we here at Flopping Aces have argued over with the liberals in the comment section quite a bit lately:

Other left-wing blogs have zeroed in on the Frosts’ reported inability to obtain affordable insurance after their car accident.

Well, yes, it sucks. But Earth to liberals: That’s how insurance works–if you don’t buy it before you need it, you shouldn’t be shocked if it’s impossible to get after you need it.

Yet, somehow, I’m the HYPOCRITE for acting responsibly by considering alternative health insurance plans before anyone in my family required catastrophic care. As I wrote in my post, I wasn’t too happy about the choices at the time, especially the most expensive plans, but instead of expecting Big Nanny and American taxpayers to be our insurer, we made the decision to shell out for an inexpensive, high-deductible plan. (Yes, such plans do exist.)

Thats the point.  Lib’s have been commenting that the insurance rates are so high and the family couldn’t afford them because they are viewing this problem AFTER the accident.  If they had been responsible, and chosen to do without a home remodel or a SUV, and instead put that into the insurance (which they most definitely could have afforded prior to the accident) then they wouldn’t have had to have the taxpayers pay for them.

But that’s libs for you.  Why be independent when you can get the taxpayers to pay for it.