On Polling

I had a very interesting conversation with a good friend on Christmas, we began talking at the table about health reform. Two of the friends both agreed that the final bill would look 100 times different. I sat there trying to decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Yet my though was interrupted when one went off on some what of a rant on polls. He said the issue was incredibly complicated which of course it is i don't argue with that. But then he proceeded to say that polls don't matter. He said it was meaningless that only 36% of people support this health reform bill because he said, they don't understand it. He said they could not even begin to understand it.

Now think about that. WE have a near 2,000 page bill in the Senate a 2,000 page bill in the house, about 200 new bureaucracies being created to do a million little things, we have all these news regulations and fines. We are required to do A unless we are exempt by letter C which carries a surcharge as described in letter F but is now exempt from all things listed back to letter A and a benefit from letter G. No one can understand it fully he's right about that. The senators don't even understand what they are creating.

It's one of those, "well it made sense in my head" kind of things. Now i would say radio hosts, news anchors, bloggers, and columnists have a clearer understanding of certain details and certain side effects, as does the CBO which the senate won't listen to, and other research institutes.

But having a bill that complex, the fact that people who are polled don't even know the first thing about the bill or can't possibly begin to understand how this works, isn't that a good reason in it self for why we should scrap this, start over and have a new, budget safe, and transparent health bill?

If you can't summarize the bill and let people understand the bill in less than 5 pages then something isn't right. Then that is the signal that you should start over. The problem is not the people blasting away in opposition it's the crooks and cronies in D.C. slapping together a fascistic bill behind closed doors, voting at 1 in the morning and black mailing senators to vote for it.

This whole remark my friend made was self defeating. "People can't understand it. They can't begin to comprehend this bill." So then it needs to be simpler. Because last time i checked it was we the people who ran this place. Our founders decided that we govern. "The federal government is our servant not our master." They answer to us. This is tyranny at its best. The government not listening to its people and attacking the protesters for speaking up against their dictatorial ways.

Washington is the one that needs to change. The polls are relevant. Of course people aren't gonna support something they don't get, because then there is nothing from blocking tyranny, and we are essentially blinded and let like sheep, by the government, to the slaughter.

"Here sir, the people govern."
--Alexander Hamilton

36% of people support health reform. This matters. Kill the bill and start over.