Thanks to a tip by JohnRH, we learn that the City of Houston isn’t the only organization in the area buying votes with flu shots. Seems the Galveston County Health Department is doing the same. Looks like I’ve got some calls to make…

UPDATE:

It would seem that the Galveston County program is significantly different from the Houston program. First off, the Flu shots are available to all comers, and they are not free. All recipients must pay $20 for the flu vaccine and $30 for the pneumonia vaccine. I just got off the phone with Kurt Koopmann with the Galveston County Health Department who explained the program to me. In addition, the clinics are outside the 100′ marker, and in one instance they had to rent a tent in order to be far enough away. In another location they are in a separate building.

I withdraw my objections with this program. This is the way that the CoH should have done it.

As a follow up to the Vaccinations for Votes drive that the City of Houston was putting on, I looked into where the program is coming from politically and not suprisingly it is funded and sponsored by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation. This foundation was founded in 1972 by Robert Wood Johnson Jr., former President and Chairman of the Board of Johnson & Johnson and heir to the Johnson fortunes. This program is in place in 20 other cities across the nation so this is not just a local thing. Like ACORN’s actions, they are active all over the country. Here is what Discoverthenetwork.org has to say about this foundation:

www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org Date: 11/2/2006 1:13:33 PM

ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION

Route One & College Road East
P.O. Box 2316
Princeton, NJ
08543
Phone :609-452-8701
Email :mail@rwjf.org
URL :http://www.rwjf.org/

* Assets: $8,991,086,132 (2004)
* Grants Received: $3,769,926 (2004)
* Grants Awarded: $359,500,275 (2004)

Established in 1972, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is America’s largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to health and health care. Its founder, Robert Wood Johnson, Jr., spent thirty-one years as President and Chairman of the Board for Johnson & Johnson, during which time he grew that company into the world’s largest health and medical products manufacturer. Robert E. Campbell, who is the retired Vice Chairman of Johnson & Johnson, now chairs RWJF.

RWJF’s grant-making is divided into the following interest areas:

Read more

Do you want to participate in a sociopolitical caricature AND get to meet Sheila Jackson Lee! Of course you do!

According to our first-hand source, the following flyer (here’s a PDF) is being distributed en masse on the campus of Texas Southern University:

Sheila, you had me at “Free Fish.”

I’ll be there undercover, but I’m torn on which disguise to wear. Should I go as “Hey, Save-Some-Fish-For-Everyone-Else Guy” or “Posing-for-Absurd-Photo-With-Sheila Guy?”

Aw, hell, let’s do both.

I sense a disturbance in the Force.

“Now you will die!”

No, not that Force. The political Force.

“Why doesn’t Bush just die?”

Yes, Helen Thomas herself is in Houston to instruct young padawans in the ways of the Dark Side.

The title of her latest book, Watchdogs of Democracy? The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public, makes it clear she’s an equal opportunity critic.

Now she is bringing her observations to the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts.

Thomas left United Press International after 57 years as White House correspondent and now writes a column for Hearst newspapers, including the Houston Chronicle.

She will speak at 11:30 a.m. Thursday. Tickets are $50 for members of the Houston Intown Chamber of Commerce and $65 for nonmembers.

Surely an investment with high returns.

“The bulk of her career, she was a reporter for UPI,” he said. “She is now a columnist. She’s free to express her opinion now, but the years I worked with her, she was a wire service reporter and … she wrote just down the middle.“

Helen Thomas, objective reporter.

THIS JUST IN: From the Harris County Office of Emergency Management, a Helen Thomas alert has been issued for east Houston.

Location of toxic ideas release

Residents are advised to “shelter in place” and remain indoors. Children and pets should not be allowed outside. Radios and televisions should be turned off to avoid accidental exposure. Houston residents who have not already evacuated to New Orleans should remain where they are. The cloud of dangerous ideas is expected to dissipate later today, and emergency crews are standing by to enter the area as soon as it is safe. Applications for Federal Disaster Area funds are pending. Please stay tuned for further details as they become available.

As my colleague Rorschach reported last month, the liberal activist group ACORN has been hard at work corrupting the electoral process with thousands of shady voter registrations. Yesterday, four ACORN employees were indicted:

Four people who worked for an advocacy group signing up new voters have been indicted on charges of submitting false voter registrations to the Kansas City election board.

The U.S. attorney’s office said Wednesday’s indictments name Kwaim A. Stenson, Dale D. Franklin, Brian Gardner and Stephanie L. Davis, who also is known as Latisha Reed.

All four face two felony counts each of “knowingly and willingly” filing false information. The charge carries maximum penalties of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

My favorite Fox News contributor, the lovely and talented Anne Linehan, points out Mayor Bill White’s work with ACORN, including helping the group set up an “Affordable Utility Center” on city property. Anne wonders whether ACORN has put down other roots in Houston city government, and so do I.

Noemie Emery in the Weekly Standard:

We have not yet met, but I feel moved now to write you, in view of the latest assault on your honor, and the cruel blows being dealt you by fate. Your life has been hell since the last election, when those hanging chads in Ohio tricked all those people into voting for Buchanan, or Nader; and the fact that you lost the rest of the country by 3 million votes proved that the fraud had been everywhere. And before that were those baseless attacks by those 200-some veterans, paid off by Karl Rove in l970, on the chance that 34 years later he’d be running George W. Bush for president and needed to soften you up. Everyone knows they had no case whatsoever (beyond the fact you were calling them rapists and killers), just as everyone knows how tasteless it is to mock your lifestyle. Everyone knows how hard you work for your money, how much you deserve it, and how hard to must be to find not one, but two women with quite so much dough. (If you were only a woman, people would see your story as the fairy tale it is.)

It gets even better– read the whole thing.

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