• James O'Keefe's Latest 'Terrorist' Medicaid Sting Goes After Woman For Following Law
    12 replies, posted
[url=http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/james_okeefes_latest_terrorist_medicaid_sting_goes_after_woman_for_following_law.php?ref=fpblg]TPM[/url] [release]Stop me if you've heard this one. A man goes into a public assistance office in Charleston, South Carolina in a kilt, tells them he's a member of the Irish Republican Army and asks for help for 25 fellow Irishmen in a hospital who need Medicaid. A government employee follows the rules and explains the process for filling out a Medicaid paperwork and the qualifications they'd need to meet. She informs them that a federal law intended to protect patient privacy requires her not to divulge any information he's told her. So what happens next? James O'Keefe's Project Veritas releases a deceptively edited video that makes the woman look like a terrorist sympathizer, though it isn't even clear if she knows the background of the IRA. In the edited version, the woman says it would not be in her best interest to divulge anything because she could not afford it and she doesn't want to go to jail. As it turns out, that's what she's supposed to do under the law. To his credit, O'Keefe posted the full unedited video of the "sting" directly after the edited version. Which makes it all the more curious that Project Veritas edited the tape in a way that paints the government employee in a bad light. "Like I said, someone would have to come here and subpoena our information in order for us to divulge any information, because like I said there's something called the Health Insurance Accountability and Affordability Act -- or portability -- and anyway it went into effect several years ago, and that's what we follow," she said in the unedited video. "It is federal law, and they do threaten high fines -- which they don't pay me as much per year as they threaten to fine me -- so it is definitely not in my own best interest to divulge anything to anyone because I cannot afford it, I do not want to go to jail," she said. But even if baiting low level bureaucrats into saying slightly embarrassing things is O'Keefe's goal -- the woman featured in the latest video had to write her own name on her business cards -- he's only been moderately successful. The South Carolina Heath & Human Services employee explains that only U.S. citizens are eligible for Medicaid and says she's not making any promises that the 25 purported IRA members would qualify. "The way it works with Medicaid is if you are just a visitor to the United States you can't qualify," she says. "If they're going to stay in the United States then we could potentially qualify them for emergency services to cover with their hospitalization." She even tells him that the hospital's charity program might be a better bet. The edited video, followed by the longer unedited clip, is embedded below. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjf6yC_t9r8&[/media][/release] Last time I checked the Irish don't wear bloody kilts
haha, no wonder the IRA sucks, they don't even know their own traditions
oh my god i want to beat the shit out of this guy so bad
What the Dosh?
is this guy an idiot?
[QUOTE=thisispain;31234627]is this guy an idiot?[/QUOTE] Seems like it.
i wanna stomp on that nerds glasses
*sigh* Dumb asses
Wow, and I thought James O'Keefe was a jackass already. Seriously, he took a video of a woman acting in a completely correct and rational manner to an obvious prank and edited it to look like Medicaid supports terrorism. And, honestly, what kind of Irishman wears a kilt? For that matter, I don't think I've ever seen a Scottish man wear a kilt, either. This is stupid on so many levels that I'm simply baffled. [editline]Hezzy[/editline] Though I rated funny because I'm imagining a bunch of wounded IRA members flying to Charleston for 14 hours bleeding profusely.
[QUOTE=ASmellyOgre;31239387]I don't think I've ever seen a Scottish man wear a kilt, either. [/QUOTE] You don't know many scottish dudes. [editline]20th July 2011[/editline] though it's really formal dress, not something you would wear to a clinic.
Medicaid is supposed to help anyone who is financially unable to provide for their own care, regardless of who they are. What's the problem?
[QUOTE=MasterG;31234365] Not to mention the guy was so ridiculously over the top, she probably thought it was a prank.[/QUOTE] That's pretty much what happened when he started this mess dressed up as a pimp and his girlfriend as his ho' and went to ACORN for help getting residence. Though he later used it as evidence of ACORN's practices and got its cut of federal spending removed. He also tried to screw with some politician's phones so he can tap them and get shit out of it, then claimed there is payroll schemes in the Census office, then he tried to seduce a CNN correspondent named Abbie Boudreau (yeah you read that right), and got some questionable content to make the Teachers' Union in New Jersey look bad. The last significant thing he did before this was he tried to disguise his organization as a token radical Islamist organization and get NPR on tape to take their donations, to prove it's an "antisemitic" organization, but it got turned down. However he got on tape some bad stuff said from one of the NPR regarding the TEA Party and got some people fired or removed. Most of these O'Keefe is doing to either A. Show waste or questionable conduct or B. Confirm "popular" conceptions of certain programs. He also has a tendency to edit his videos too, but the fallout from their release is often strong enough for the organization to have to do something, even if it is revealed later it was edited. He's a complete political tool though. Not much better than the "left-wing" counterparts his buddy Breitbart holds him over.
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