Thus, Driehaus is a guy OFA should be targeting.

I made a commitment to visit Schmidt’s office at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, August 10, and to visit Driehaus at 3:00 p.m. In each case, I received a confirming email response that also directed me to a two-page “Office Visits for Health Reform Guide” (PDF).

As you’ll see, the guide has a few amazing claims, with no sourcing, about “the cost of inaction in Ohio”:


* 1,500,000 are uninsured today in Ohio and 1,180 Ohioans will lose their health coverage every week because of rising costs.

* The average family premium in Ohio costs $1,000 more because our system fails to cover everyone.

* Our broken health insurance system will cos...

Thus, Driehaus is a guy OFA should be targeting.

I made a commitment to visit Schmidt’s office at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, August 10, and to visit Driehaus at 3:00 p.m. In each case, I received a confirming email response that also directed me to a two-page “Office Visits for Health Reform Guide” (PDF).

As you’ll see, the guide has a few amazing claims, with no sourcing, about “the cost of inaction in Ohio”:


* 1,500,000 are uninsured today in Ohio and 1,180 Ohioans will lose their health coverage every week because of rising costs.

* The average family premium in Ohio costs $1,000 more because our system fails to cover everyone.

* Our broken health insurance system will cost the Ohio economy as much as $7.1 billion this year in productivity losses due to lack of coverage.


I did my own sourcing and determined that the claims are either flat-out wrong or squishy deceptions.

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1. It may be that 1.5 million Ohioans are uninsured at some time during any given year, which is the operating definition of the Census Bureau, but they are not, as the first point contends, uninsured “today.”. . .

2. The second assertion comes from the far-left and conceptually challenged Center for American Progress. CAP’s alleged average national per-family premium addition due to uninsured care is $1,100; . . .

3. The third claim, also from CAP, is an updated torturing of a 2003 study from the Institute of Medicine, which at the time speculated that “insuring the uninsured could yield $65-$130 billion in better health each year.” Six years later, CAP has almost doubled that figure to $124-$248 billion. . .

Now let’s get back to my OFA field trip.

Since Congressman Driehaus’ office is on the 30th floor of a downtown office building, most of his constituents can’t come to see him unless they pay to park somewhere (as I did). Of all the sites he could have picked as his one and only First District office, he picked one at its furthest southeast end downtown. This doesn’t seem like a guy who’s a man of the peeps.

I got there at 3:25 p.m. You might think that I was worried about being late. After all, the rest of the 3:00 p.m. OFA crowd might have filled up the available meeting room and my precious activist voice might not be heard.

Not exactly.

That’s because I was the first and only visitor ...

Now let’s get back to my OFA field trip.

Since Congressman Driehaus’ office is on the 30th floor of a downtown office building, most of his constituents can’t come to see him unless they pay to park somewhere (as I did). Of all the sites he could have picked as his one and only First District office, he picked one at its furthest southeast end downtown. This doesn’t seem like a guy who’s a man of the peeps.

I got there at 3:25 p.m. You might think that I was worried about being late. After all, the rest of the 3:00 p.m. OFA crowd might have filled up the available meeting room and my precious activist voice might not be heard.

Not exactly.

That’s because I was the first and only visitor from Organizing for Astroturfing, er, America, that day. . .

Because Driehaus was not available, the front-desk person located the congressman’s community outreach/field representative, who told me that he had to be on a conference call shortly. He gave me his business card and said that he would be glad to meet with me at some other time to discuss ObamaCare. . .

I was able to get to Congresswoman Jean Schmidt’s office 13 miles away on time to meet my 4:00 p.m. “commitment.” Ms. Schmidt was not there. . .

So let’s recap: In 15 possible visiting hours on Monday, the two members of Congress had four OFA visitors — two for ObamaCare and two against. I have since followed up with the offices of Schmidt and Southwestern Ohio’s 8th District congressman, Republican John Boehner. They have reported slightly higher turnouts, but they were averaging nowhere near even one person per office per hour overall as of late Tuesday afternoon.

* * *

I doubt that readers are blown away by the grassroots support Organizing for Astroturfing, er, America, has been able to generate.

Now you know that if OFA brags about how many of its people pestered their congresspersons this week to support the president’s statist health care designs, you can subtract at least two alleged supporters, and perhaps many more, from that total. Based on my experience, if OFA tries to claim that thousands upon thousands of its “members” visited their representatives, you have great reason to doubt them. Beyond that, even OFA doesn’t really know if the people who had committed to visiting really did.

I sense an epic fail. How will the establishment media report...

I doubt that readers are blown away by the grassroots support Organizing for Astroturfing, er, America, has been able to generate.

Now you know that if OFA brags about how many of its people pestered their congresspersons this week to support the president’s statist health care designs, you can subtract at least two alleged supporters, and perhaps many more, from that total. Based on my experience, if OFA tries to claim that thousands upon thousands of its “members” visited their representatives, you have great reason to doubt them. Beyond that, even OFA doesn’t really know if the people who had committed to visiting really did.

I sense an epic fail. How will the establishment media report it? Or will they?

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