Also posted at the Alliance for Retired Americans Blog

This week, Peter Peterson [net worth $2.8 billion] and his foundation convened a closed-door meeting of Wall Street billionaires and millionaires at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Building in D.C.

The Billionaires for Wealthcare thanked Senator Mitch McConnell for his outstanding obstructionism by showering him with real cash. Anticipating his ‘no’ vote on health care reform, the Billionaires offered him an advance on contributions from Big Insurance.

Insurance industry executives at the Billionaires wanted to make sure Senator McConnell was given a very public show of support from his financial supporters.

Video interviews from today’s health care rally in Washington DC.

Republican Scott Brown and his supporters greeted the Billionaires for Brown with cheers and a few shoves on the last days of the Massachusetts Senate campaign. After joining Scott in Worcester on Sunday, the Billionaires helped him greet the hoi polloi at the Boston Garden and rally his rabble in the Boston suburbs.

With videos

Today, a chapter of the grassroots group of billionaire health insurance executives, the Billionaires for Wealthcare, headed down to our nation’s Capitol. Why? To thank the teabaggers assembled by Michele Bachmann and most of the Republican party for their support – protesting so hard to preserve the right to put profits over people.

Two nights ago (September 14), Rachel Maddow, on MSNBC, during coverage of the DC tea baggers demonstration against health insurance reform, played a satirical clip called “Billionaires for Wealthcare,” in an attempt to give the alternative point of view to the demonstration. Just after the clip she made the point that Billionaires for Wealthcare had found the “antidote to the fact-free scream-and-holler syndrome that has disabled the debate about what to do to fix health care.” And that when people talk about a plan for putting Republicans in concentration camps, creating death panels for old people, and using mysterious interpretations of the Tenth Amendment to declare health care unconstitutional, “maybe singing satirical songs to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic is the most appropriate way to counter that.”

Well, I, and I’m sure many others found the clip and Rachel’s point very amusing. But I also found myself thinking that such satire wasn’t going to persuade tea baggers or discredit their fables among those who find them plausible. They’ll just look at “Billionaires for Wealthcare” as another attempt by smart-ass, over-educated “liberals” to discredit their legitimate concerns by marginalizing them, and by insulting the tea baggers themselves. So, I guess I don’t think satire is the best way to answer the tea baggers’ increasingly ridiculous claims about pending health insurance reform legislation. I think a much better way to counter that is for the Administration and its supporters to stop promoting legislation that is so complex and difficult to read and understand that any silly story can be circulated about it, and also for them to explain the reasons why the health care legislation they are backing will solve the problems it is supposed to solve. Yes, I am saying that a more “rational,” though not unemotional, and also simpler approach to communication of health care reform, is the way to counter the tea baggers’ “screaming and hollering.”