Pelosi was right: Democrats had to pass the bill so people could find out whats in it A former spea

[riversedge]

I have never seen this quote explained so well (but sure see it posted most days by RW vile folks). Never see this ending — away from the fog of the controversy.”



Nancy Pelosi was right: Democrats had to pass the bill so people could find out what’s in it
A former speaker’s vindication.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/18/14957708/pelosi-pass-the-bill


Updated by Matthew Yglesias@[e-mail]


Mar 18, 2017, 9:00am EDT

One of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s most infamous quotes was something she said during a 20-minute speech to the National Association of Counties’ 2010 legislative conference. Congress was considering the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and the endless, breathless coverage of the contentious process, Pelosi explained, was preventing people from appreciating the significance of its contents.

“We have to pass the bill,” she said, “so that you can find out what is in it — away from the fog of the controversy.”

Conservatives — abetted by dozens of political journalists who should have known better — immediately seized on a truncated version of the quote. Pelosi was really expressing her confidence in the underlying merits of the bill, but it became instead a shorthand for the allegedly dodgy process through which Obamacare was passed.

But Pelosi never said the bill was enacted in secret or under cover of night, because it wasn’t. She said it was enacted in a fog of controversy. The controversy, naturally enough, focused on the most contentious aspects of the bill rather than on the most broadly popular. Much of it was about misunderstandings or misconceptions — claims that the bill contained death panels or did nothing to restrain health care costs — rather than on the Affordable Care Act’s concrete benefits.

Once the bill was in place, Pelosi was saying, people would come to value and appreciate its contents. She was mocked for this relentlessly for years. But everything that’s happening this winter shows she was right all along.


Republicans aren’t even challenging the “patient protection” part..........................

[Warpy]

1. Most journalists won't do their jobs

so Pelosi was absolutely correct in this matter. People would never be told the truth by the journalists who knew who was cutting their paychecks. They just spread disinformation because they knew few people would read the bill for themselves.

Corporate news is not our friend, has never been our friend, will never be our friend. Broadcast news is the worst of the lot, and that's what tired working people rely on to inform them.

Once the Fairness Doctrine was abolished, it was all over for the Fourth Estate.

(and yes, I'm angry)