Media Matters, the defender of liberal media, jumped into the developing controversy and debate over White House Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle’s unsolicited White House emails to federal employees. Media Matters scolds and makes fun of CBS News and Fox News for highlighting the issue, calling the claims “pure speculation”. Ironically, Media Matters doesn’t deny that the unsolicited emails have been sent but rather they defend the emails by saying, “it appears they are sent out to everyone on the whitehouse.gov mailing list.” Well, duh. That’s the problem. Why are federal employees on the whitehouse.gov email list? And why are federal employees being hounded to do the White House’s political bidding for a trillion dollar entitlement program?
Building support for President Barack Obama’s health reform package by sending consecutive emails to federal employees’ official government email inboxes and instructing them to forward the emails to their “friends, family and online networks” is not only unethical but possibly illegal.
Media Matters also complains that the story has no anonymous quotes from frustrated federal employees in order to prove the story. Which is a fair point. I’ll give them that. So here are two anonymous quotes from State Department employees that didn’t sign up for the White House emails but are still receiving political musings from Nancy-Ann DeParle and the White House:
Anonymous Quote #1:
” I didn’t sign up for this. Why do I have to bother with political fights from work. This is inappropriate and distracting to REAL issues.”
Anonymous Quote #2:
“I have been receiving these emails at my state.gov address, unsolicited e-mails such as the one below on a near weekly basis. Kinda threatening dontcha think? Budget problems if it doesn’t pass?”
Department of State employees receive hundreds of official government emails every day on pressing issues like the Israeli-Palestinian issue or the Iranian nuclear weapons issue. Should they have to worry about partisan political emails threatening budget complications if Obama’s bill isn’t passed?
DeParle’s language in one email flatly states that there will be budget problems for federal agencies if the Obama bill isn’t passed. DeParle uses scare tactics that are clearly meant as threats:
“No ifs, ands or buts about it — if we do nothing to reform our broken health care system, costs will continue to skyrocket and break the budgets of American families, small businesses and the Federal Government,” read the March 12th email from DeParle.
Since Media Matters is trying to dismiss the issue as “pure speculation”, here are 2 examples of the emails. Decide for yourself:
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