I have lingering questions and curiosity about the degree to which the Sept 4 McClintock healthcare town hall meeting was fiction. It's a distraction from what I need to be working on, so if anyone else wants to pick any of this up & run with it, feel free...
[Also see Wednesday's Qs for Tom McClintock post, about what appeared to be a phantom website, a phantom foundation, and a brother that former Calif. controller Steve Westly didn't know he had. (Westly remains unconvinced.)]
Some interesting assertions were made about the Sept. 4 McClintock/TeaParty health care townhall meeting (campaign video here, Keachie photos here) in The Union's letters section last month; I've been trying to fact-check them but have come up short.
On Oct. 14, in Were anti-reformers bused in to skew local public opinion? Donna Carlisi of Nevada City said she had observed the redshirted contingent's performance being stage-managed, and said "It's clear to me that that these folks were bused in...".
(Re the "stage management" allegation, at the end of this (~80 second) YouTube clip you can see what I think she's talking about -
watch the fellow in red, at the lower left, as the clip ends.)
The following week, in Oct 20's Seeing red over claims that town hallers were bused in, Nevada County Tea Party Patriot President Stan Meckler vehemently denied that "these folks" had been bused in: "I know every single person who was in red at that event and they are all Nevada County Tea Party Patriots and local residents, a fact that is easily substantiated with very little effort."
(He did not address the "stage managed" allegation.)
So, where does the truth lie? The Union seemed to be taking the "let's you and he fight" approach and sitting it out, not entirely unwisely.
But I'd like to know.
I'd like to know if Donna Carlisi is a real person; she's not in the phone book, I can't find her in the county records, I haven't found anyone who knows her, and while I contacted The Union and asked them to ask her to get in touch, I never heard from her.
I also want to know whether, as NCTPPP's Stan Meckler alleged, [virtually] every single person who was in red at that event was a Nevada County Tea Party Patriot and local resident, "a fact that is easily substantiated with very little effort". I tried to find out by sending Mr. Meckler a montage of red-shirted-attendee photos and asking him to ID them, but he wasn't willing to do so, understandably citing privacy concerns. But in his letter he had stated that their local provenance "can be easily substantiated with very little effort"; perhaps I was going about it the wrong way? So I asked Mr. Meckler how I could substantiate it with very little effort, and, alas, got a clearly uncooperative reply - it seems that this claim was just rhetoric, not meant literally.
I want to know whether the non-red people who spoke up against the health care legislation (some with some pretty wild storylines) were local residents, or interlopers - which is something Mr. Meckler would likely know, or at least be able to help narrow down. So I asked him if he recognized three such speakers as locals or knew them for non-locals, but he wasn't willing to cooperate even to that extent.
Do you know?
I'm particularly interested in "David Collins", the fellow in the white shirt, who'd railed against Medicare. While speaking he'd identified himself as a "health care worker" who'd worked in San Diego, in Chico and now up here; but when I went up to him afterwards, he refused to repeat his name or to say where he worked or what kind of health work he did. Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital hadn't heard of him, and while there is a Chico surgeon named David Collins, the ages don't match.
I'd had a hunch he was actually Steve Westly's brother David (who McClintock mentions by name in the above video clip), but now that Steve Westly turns out not to have a brother David, that possibility seems rather less likely.
Some interesting assertions were made about the Sept. 4 McClintock/TeaParty health care townhall meeting (campaign video here, Keachie photos here) in The Union's letters section last month; I've been trying to fact-check them but have come up short.
On Oct. 14, in Were anti-reformers bused in to skew local public opinion? Donna Carlisi of Nevada City said she had observed the redshirted contingent's performance being stage-managed, and said "It's clear to me that that these folks were bused in...".
(Re the "stage management" allegation, at the end of this (~80 second) YouTube clip you can see what I think she's talking about -
watch the fellow in red, at the lower left, as the clip ends.)
The following week, in Oct 20's Seeing red over claims that town hallers were bused in, Nevada County Tea Party Patriot President Stan Meckler vehemently denied that "these folks" had been bused in: "I know every single person who was in red at that event and they are all Nevada County Tea Party Patriots and local residents, a fact that is easily substantiated with very little effort."
(He did not address the "stage managed" allegation.)
So, where does the truth lie? The Union seemed to be taking the "let's you and he fight" approach and sitting it out, not entirely unwisely.
But I'd like to know.
I'd like to know if Donna Carlisi is a real person; she's not in the phone book, I can't find her in the county records, I haven't found anyone who knows her, and while I contacted The Union and asked them to ask her to get in touch, I never heard from her.
I also want to know whether, as NCTPPP's Stan Meckler alleged, [virtually] every single person who was in red at that event was a Nevada County Tea Party Patriot and local resident, "a fact that is easily substantiated with very little effort". I tried to find out by sending Mr. Meckler a montage of red-shirted-attendee photos and asking him to ID them, but he wasn't willing to do so, understandably citing privacy concerns. But in his letter he had stated that their local provenance "can be easily substantiated with very little effort"; perhaps I was going about it the wrong way? So I asked Mr. Meckler how I could substantiate it with very little effort, and, alas, got a clearly uncooperative reply - it seems that this claim was just rhetoric, not meant literally.
I want to know whether the non-red people who spoke up against the health care legislation (some with some pretty wild storylines) were local residents, or interlopers - which is something Mr. Meckler would likely know, or at least be able to help narrow down. So I asked him if he recognized three such speakers as locals or knew them for non-locals, but he wasn't willing to cooperate even to that extent.
Do you know?
I'm particularly interested in "David Collins", the fellow in the white shirt, who'd railed against Medicare. While speaking he'd identified himself as a "health care worker" who'd worked in San Diego, in Chico and now up here; but when I went up to him afterwards, he refused to repeat his name or to say where he worked or what kind of health work he did. Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital hadn't heard of him, and while there is a Chico surgeon named David Collins, the ages don't match.
3 comments:
I am adding one more image for you. It is located at:
www.douglaskeachie.com
Thanks Doug. That profile should help with the ID, if we do get one.
I've got the photos up at ncvoices/image, at least for now.
Here's the transcript, BTW. Note the slips...
=============
"Hi congressman, my name's David Collins; I have just two small quick questions -
You talked about the laws that keep us from competing - insurance companies from competing with other insurance companies from other states...
[snip]
Secondly, as a health care worker, working in different systems - I've worked down in San Diego, I've worked in Chico, and I've worked up here as a health care worker now.
I've dealt with Medicare, MediCal, regular insurance companies, the poor who have not, don't have Medicare or MediCal; I've seen abuses, all across the systems here, but what really gets my goat is that all of our senior citizens that have lived their whole life paying for medical insurance, staying healthy doing all these things, whether they've used their medical insurance or not, at 65 - boom - you're off your insurance company, they kick you off it and put you on that 'nice' Medicare/MediCal system, why do they have the right to do that?
If they've paid in their whole life to a system whether they've used it or not, especially if they haven't used it, especially if they've been healthy - and now you're going to kick em off onto some SUB-standard health care? I hate - I like the fact that we have something to help you guys out that are on Medicare and MediCal - but it *sucks*, the fact that you had to be kicked down onto that from your private insurance, but they shouldn't be allowed to do that - why do they get to do that?"
===========
FYI, when I tried to speak with him afterwards, he did say he was not a physician. But that was all he would say.
Oops, I gave a bad URL above, I meant http://ncvoices.us/image/
A small update: being unsolved, this mystery's still chewing at me, so today I tried the most likely (& as-yet-untried) David Collins, who *is* local to GVNC but is in the construction business; but he said no, it wasn't him (plus his voice sounded different.)
So: it's still a mystery.
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