-By Warner Todd Huston
HHS pushes “Health Reform This Year”
Where is the Obama administration’s sense of propriety? Apparently it’s wrapped up in victory-at-any-cost mode if the website for the federal government’s Health and Human Services is concerned. For, if you go to the HHS.gov website, you’ll see a banner that advertises for a political issue, instead of a legitimate government “service.”
There you’ll see a banner/button pushing the political cause of nationalized health care. Worse, clicking on that button takes you to a faux petition style email page where you can “state your support” to the president for his “commitment to health care reform.” This is basically the president giving the public a fake place to tell him to support his own cause. There is also a link to healthreform.gov which is little else but an Obama issue advocacy campaign website and not really a legitimate government site at all.
In fact, the whole deal smacks of the Obama permanent campaign and dangerously mixes political rhetoric and an actual, official government service website. In truth, what we have here is an official government website turned into a political issue advocacy site for an issue that has neither been written into law, or even debated in Congress as of yet.
So, the questions become these: should a citizen go to an official government website and see issue advocacy? Or, rather, should one go to a government website and see what the government is currently, legally offering as services to the public? Aren’t Americans being mislead here? Aren’t Americans being massaged into accepting that a government agency should be allowed to become an actual player in advocating for new policies instead of just following what they are currently, legally allowed to offer?
In truth a government agency should restrict itself to what is currently in its legal purview instead of actively advocating for new powers.
Finally, how high would the din of outrage be from the left if a government agency during the Bush administration had been turned into his own private lobbying agency to the American people? The whole thing is shady in the extreme and proof that the Obama administration has no idea where to draw the line between government and mere politics.
Here is a screen shot of the site:
(H/T AllanF)
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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