Never Learned to Read

H.R.3590: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

According to Jenna Wisen(ph), who owns an asphalt company with about 150 employees, interviewed at the Nevada Tea Party rally this weekend, "Nobody's read the whole [Health Care Reform] bill - could say that I can't wear brown on Tuesday. Nobody knows whats in there." It is interesting to note that Jenna also thinks that the bill will bankrupt her because now she will be "forced to" provide health insurance to her employees. She must be a GREAT boss.

I heard this on NPR this morning, and Ina Jaffe's comment after Jenna's tirade, "But most of the people at the rally were pretty sure that whats in there could destroy the health care system and put an end to freedom in America," is quite brilliant. I do, however, really wish that she had taken it further, asking Jenna if she had bothered to find and read the bill, since it is public record and Jenna has a vested interest in knowing what is in there. My guess is that they would have said "I don't have the time." Ina could have then asked, "how do you then find the time to go to Tea Party rallies?" A punch to the Ina's face might have followed.

Tea Party people are, quite clearly, know-nothings about how our government actually works. They can not and should not be taken any more seriously than the random homeless person shouting insults on the street. Not only are they too dumb to go and look for the bill before shouting nonsense about it, they don't have enough shame to realize how horribly dumb they look to the rest of us. These are people who have been told for years that they don't need to listen to experts because their own "common sense" was good enough. Now these people are coming unhinged, and it would be funny if I was the kind of person that could laugh at stupid people.

I don't think of myself as someone who is significantly more intelligent than the average person. I have had more opportunity to learn than most people, true, but most, if not all, of the information that I know is stuff that anyone can learn. Some of it takes a while to learn, but some of it just takes the ability to remember a website, like thomas.gov.

President Clinton helped make this a reality, so the know-nothings are probably proud to not know about this, but it allows anyone, anywhere, access to the full text of legislative branch documents from our government, including bills just signed into law. Unfortunately, our worthless mass media doesn't mention this, or give us the tools to find the bill - like the bill number or the official name. I only learned about thomas.gov because I used to work as a government document reference librarian. So it took a little sleuthing on my part this time, but now you have it with no effort at all: H.R.3590: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

You can also go to thomas.gov and search for bill number H.R.3590, in case that link doesn't work and if you're not a complete idiot.