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"Manchester mayor was clueless on health care"
www.seacoastonline.com - Opinion: Letters - September 5, 2009
9/2 - To the Editor:
On August 31, 2009, I attended a health care town hall meeting in Exeter convened by Mayor Frank Guinta of Manchester.
Anyone who sincerely wanted to learn more about how the high cost of health insurance is impacting our state or Mr. Guinta's views on how to help our neighbors who cannot get affordable coverage would have left the meeting shaking their heads in disappointment.
Mr. Guinta encouraged the audience in trashing our president, Barack Obama, and our congresswoman, Carol Shea-Porter. Even more alarming, he failed to correct the off-the-wall statements made by many of his supporters at the event. Thus, he was complicit in perpetuating vicious lies about the contents of health care proposals under consideration in Congress.
I was one of two pro-reform persons who got to ask a question. To get a perspective on the scope of the problem in New Hampshire, I asked: "How many people in New Hampshire have no health insurance?" Guinta's reply: "I don't have that figure, but I can get back to you with that."
It is amazing that an elected official who aspires to represent our state in Congress could presume to preside over a health care policy discussion and be completely clueless on the most basic fact: the number of his fellow residents who are uninsured.
The answer is 143,754 uninsured in New Hampshire, according to a State Health Facts report, based on U.S. Census data, from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
By the way, I left my phone number but I have yet to hear from Mayor Guinta.
Joan Jacobs
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Joan Jacobs was reading her question at Guinta's Exeter Town Hall from an e-mail written by Granite State Progress executive director Zandra Rice Hawkins. She was sitting next to union thug activist Judith Stadtman Tucker of the SEIU and Seacoast for Change and behind SEIU Local 509 Massachusetts member Israel Pierre. The three of them were seen standing together as a group outside Exeter Town Hall after the meeting, along with John Thyng of the SEIU and NH Change that Works and others. I'm sure they were laughing about the "zinger" that Jacobs writes about in the above letter, you know that the one fact that no human being (even one running for Congress) knows off the top of his head. Gee, I wonder if we'll see that in anti-Guinta campaign ads? I bet we will, since Dem. progressive chairman Ray Buckley and Zandra Rice Hawkins are kinda tight..., well, when it comes to politics, that is. What Jacobs', ahem, I mean Rice Hawkins's, letter doesn't mention of course, is that Guinta actually went into great detail answering all of Rice Hawkins' -- whoops there I go again, I mean Jacobs' -- questions. Gee, I wonder why? Isn't that what her salary is paying for? Here's a video of how Guinta handled Jacobs' questions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iXNBxNqCwQ. You can see Joan's question start at 3:50 in the video. That lovely stack of papers she's holding includes the e-mail from Rice Hawkins.
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