Propaganda piece in local newspaper helps spread teabagger’s lies and misinformation

It’s tough time to a reporter for a local daily newspaper, and for an example you just need to see a story on health care reform published in the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus on Christmas Day called “Health bill bitter pill for activists.”

It’s also a prefect example of a reporter not having the time to not fact check a story, as well as example of how ridiculous the notion of the “liberal media” myth is. Reporters still have to find copy to fill the news hole during the holidays when it’s almost impossible to get hold of sources that are off and not in their offices. They also are trying to get enough copy in the can so they can have a day off, and the news hole is usually bigger because there are more advertising this time of year.

What you usually get as reporters struggle to find copy is this piece of garbage that is basically a propaganda piece. This paper has a history of supporting rightwing causes, and it worked hard promoting the racist, Astroturf tea party held in Brighton this fall. But this piece is unbelievable, and all it’s really doing is promoting a teabagger’s blog. It’s certainly not hard to find a teabagger in Livingston County and someone who is against health care reform. Some balance would be nice, and I find it hard to believe they could not find someone who supports health care reform, considering the majority of Americans support health care reform, it would not have been hard. Talk about a lack of balance in an article.

In the article a Hartland Township resident named Wes Nakagiri claims health care reform led him to become an activist, yet he has a page on the sewer of the internet known as “freedoworks.” Then he makes perhaps the most outrageous claim - and I have heard lots outrageous lies on health care reform - I have ever heard.

He claims that he knocked on doors in his subdivision, and he claims, “In a voting precinct where 40 percent of voters supported President Barack Obama in the 2008 election, Nakagiri discovered only about 28 percent of the same voters support what he calls "a federal takeover of health care."

First, it’s not a “federal takeover of health care.” Perhaps he has not heard of Medicare. But I know he has because his party is using the lie to scare seniors in opposing health care reform that it will kill Medicare.

Second, for him to come up with that 28 percent figure, he would have to have knocked on the doors of the 458 people who voted for President Obama in Hartland Township's Precinct 3, yet he admitted he didn’t. I don’t know how he would have even found out how they voted on a secret ballot, but, he said:

He “knocked on 142 doors in the Dunham Hills subdivision. He found 82 people home; of those, 59 people signed his petition opposing the health-care plan.” Of those 59, how many voted for President Obama? Even if every one of those 59 voted for the President, that would only be 12 percent.

The story says, “Nakagiri started a blog and is in the beginning stages of putting together a local activist group against big government — specifically, the national health-reform proposal — and has already received substantial local support.”

We already have a group like that: it’s called the tea baggers, and in conservative Livingston County is anyone surprised he found support for his “petitions” and his new rightwing group?

Just what Livingston County needs: Another rightwing group spreading false propaganda.