Health Care double talk by David Axelrod

Needless to say, the White House’s top political adviser, David Axelrod’s doubletalk on healthcare is as big as his double chin. On yesterdays Meet the Press David stated that “this is the week where we will have this very important vote”. He further suggested that Democrats will “persuade” enough lawmakers to vote “yes”. Interesting to note is the manner in which the “persuasion” occurs. Lets begin with the administration retreating from its demands to strip the bill of pork deals. The White House originally demanded that all special deals be dropped from the bill. Their new position is that in lieu of dropping the special deals for any one state, that we now allow it, but include all of the rest of the states. Thus, the sweetheart deal for Nebraska, known as the “Cornhusker Kickback”, and costing the American taxpayer $100 million over the next 10 years can now be expanded to the rest of the 49 states. Using Nebraska, which by the way has a smaller population than Phoenix, AZ, as an example we can estimated that the projected 10 year cost for the 50 states to be a little over $17 billion. Maybe now you can understand why the $10 billion is so easy to say when Obama talks about the budget. You must keep in mind though that this is only one deal. We have separate “special deals” for New York, Montana, Connecticut, Florida and Louisiana just for starters. I am just wondering how our very own “blue dog” representative, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, is digesting all of this? So far she says that she is very optimistic that the issue will be resolved in this next week. Does that mean she is: 1.) waiting for Nancy Pelosi to give her the go ahead to vote against it as there appears to be enough votes without hers, 2.) preparing her own list of special deals, 3.) waiting for the newest re-election polls, or 4.) getting the message that we don’t want this “cram it down their throat” legislation.

Let’s get back to the persuasion issue. According to Wikipedia, persuasion is considered to be a form of social influence. It is the process of guiding oneself toward the adoption of an idea, attitude, or action by rational and symbolic (though not always logical) means. While on the other hand there is bribery and Wikipedia defines bribery as, a form of pecuniary corruption, and an act implying money or gift given that alters the behavior of the recipient. According to Black’s Law Dictionary, bribery is the offering, giving, receiving or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or other person in charge of a public or legal duty and is considered a crime.

The White House defines special deals as nothing more than persuasion, while the Congress defines them as reaching across the aisle in bipartisanship.

Common sense would lead us to decide that persuasion, as expressed by David Axelrod, the White House and Congress is really bribery. Or am I wrong. You be the judge.