When it comes to healthcare reform you can count on Rep. Dana Rohrabacher to take a firm “no” stance, unless the so-called reform is sponsored by the insurance lobby.
So it's a notable moment when a healthcare lobbying group enthusiastically praises Rohrabacher.
It's even more notable when the group praising the Costa Mesa congressman is focused on AIDS.
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This week, the president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) “commended” Rohrabacher.
And it apparently wasn't an accident involving a man who associates with notorious Orange County homophobes like Rev. Lou Sheldon (or felons, but that's another story).
There is an explanation.
Rohrabacher despises the Chinese government more than he cares about AIDS, but the two issues converged. In a recent speech, he blasted China for contributing just $16 million to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS program while taking almost $1 billion from it. He also noted that the U.S has contributed 28 percent of the group's overall funds or $4.3 billion during the last eight years.
“I can't come up with one reason why the American taxpayer should be underwriting the cost of China's public health system,” said Rohrabacher. “The whole thing is a travesty.”
A pleased Michael Weinstein, president of AHF, issued a press release.
“As the second largest global economy, the Chinese government should be showing more leadership on HIV/AIDS than it has over the past decade and it should be shouldering far greater financial responsibility in helping to combat the global epidemic,” said Weinstein. “We thank Mr. Rohrabacher for speaking out on China's chutzpah in taking advantage of the Global Fund in this way.”
Ironically, chutzpah is one thing Rohrabacher–OC's most two-faced, wild-eyed congressional representative–also has in ample supply.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.