|  NEW YORK – A convicted felon and political consultant with close ties to the Obama administration helped provide a blueprint for the president's health-care legislation, a recently released book exposes.
The book reveals Robert Creamer, husband of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., who was one of Capitol Hill's most visible cheerleaders for Obama's health-care bill, later wrote his health-care platform and declared strategies are not about "policies" – "they are about the distribution of wealth and power."
Creamer also recommended the president "create" a national consensus that the country's health-care system is in a state of crisis in order to push a radical new health-care plan.
The information was contained in the New York Times best-selling book "The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists."
The title, from WND senior reporter and WABC radio host Aaron Klein, purports to out extremists inside the Obama administration as well as expose a radical nexus outside the White House helping to craft key administration policies and legislation. Klein's co-author is historian and researcher Brenda J. Elliott.
Creamer was sentenced to federal prison in 2006 after pleading guilty to bank fraud and withholding taxes while heading Citizen Action of Illinois.
While in prison, he wrote a book titled "How Progressives Can Win."
Obama's chief adviser, David Axelrod, touted Creamer's book as providing "a blueprint for future victories," including on health care.
His book was endorsed by other leading Democrats and by Andy Stern, a close ally of the president who as head of the Service Employees International Union had visited the White House more than any other individual.
"The Manchurian President" found that during Creamer's trial, more than 200 people provided letters of support to the court on Creamer's behalf, including Axelrod and Carol Browner, who is now Obama's energy czar.
Creamer served as a political consultant to multiple Chicago politicians, including the city's mayor, Richard Daley, and its fallen governor, Rod Blagojevich.
A section of Creamer's book, titled "Progressive Agenda for Structural Change," laid out the blueprint for a national health-care plan and recommended the president create a "national consensus that the health-care system is in crisis."
Other Creamer recommendations include:
- "We must create a national consensus that health care is a right, not a commodity; and that government must guarantee that right."
- "Our messaging program over the next two years should focus heavily on reducing the credibility of the health-insurance industry and focusing on the failure of private health insurance."
- We need not agree in advance on the components of a plan, but we must foster a process that can ultimately yield consensus."
- "We must focus especially on the mobilization of the labor movement and the faith community."
Creamer's plan, written in 2006, explicitly proposed that it be carried out in 2009, once a "progressive Democrat is elected President" and once Democrats could count on 60 votes in the Senate.
Creamer wrote: "If we succeed in winning health-insurance reform we will have breached the gates of the status quo. We will demonstrate that fundamental change is possible. Into that breach will flow a wave of progressive change."
In a July 10, 2009, Huffington Post article Creamer wrote that "progressives" needed to remember seven things to succeed. Foremost among them, that "the critical battles being fought in 2009 are not about 'policies' – they are about the distribution of wealth and power."
Creamer wrote that the money to pay for "exploding health-care costs for families" should come from the pockets of insurance and pharmaceutical companies and that they, the companies, will fight to maintain the status quo. |
No comments:
Post a Comment