{"id":1223,"date":"2010-01-24T18:50:15","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T01:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/?p=1223"},"modified":"2010-01-24T18:50:15","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T01:50:15","slug":"yeah-sure-you-betcha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/?p=1223","title":{"rendered":"Yeah, Sure, You Betcha"},"content":{"rendered":"

From today’s IR <\/a>comes an interesting story about the relative integrity of our two senators:<\/p>\n

As health-reform has dominated the national news, Montana\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s congressional delegation has been swamped with constituent mail and telephone calls on the issue \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s certainly not been all positive.
\nU.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, a Republican who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been opposing Democrat-sponsored health-reform bills, reports that 77 percent of the 16,500 calls, letters, e-mails and faxes his office has received in the past six months have been against the Democratic health-care plans.
\nThe other members of Montana\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s delegation \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Democratic U.S. Sens. Jon Tester and Max Baucus, who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a key figure in crafting the reform bills \u00e2\u20ac\u201d say health care has generated more mail and calls than any other topic the past six months.
\nYet both offices declined to categorize whether those contacts are running \u00e2\u20ac\u0153for\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153against\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the bill that Tester and Baucus supported on floor votes last month.
\nTester\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spokesman Aaron Murphy said the 40,200 contacts received by the senator the past six months represent a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153spirited and evenly divided debate,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d while a spokesman for Baucus said the office doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t break things down \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pro versus con\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on its 49,400 health-care contacts from constituents.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Because health care is a very complex issue, people express a bunch of different views, all in the same call,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Ty Matsdorf.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even Craig Wilson, MSU-Billings, can’t buy what they’re selling:<\/p>\n

And as for Tester\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Baucus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 claim that they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t categorize the nature of the calls, Wilson isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t buying it.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If it was running for their position, why wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t they release it?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The educated guess is that they are getting more negative (comments) than they are positive.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which begs the question – Just who the hell do they think they’re representing?<\/p>\n

Certainly not Montanans.<\/p>\n

Made me think of this. (I saw the original on Broadway a long time ago – nothing’s changed much.)<\/p>\n

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From today’s IR comes an interesting story about the relative integrity of our two senators: As health-reform has dominated the national news, Montana\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s congressional delegation has been swamped with constituent mail and telephone calls on the issue \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Xq4i-jJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1223"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1223"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1227,"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1223\/revisions\/1227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}