Independence Institute

This new health reform video produced by Colorado's Independence Institute (disclosure: my employer) is a great example of combining original research with short, viewer-friendly animation to convey a clear message about the dangers of greater government intervention in our health care.

It tells the story of Oregon's experience with Medicaid rationing, specifically how organized special interest groups were able to use their lobbying power to give higher priority to providing coverage for more politically correct treatments (eg, substance-abuse, birth control, weight loss) while treatments for others got lower priority or no coverage at all.

This video is a sequel to a similar animated piece on Obama Care that highlighted the dangers of health insurance mandates, using the Massachusetts story and a bus hitting

We need to keep framing the story with honest arguments based in real-world policy examples that are easily accessible to everyday voters. Yes, I'm biased, but this is excellent work from a state-level think tank -- I'd like to see more emulating this strategy.

Promoted and bumped. Excellent grassroots journalism effort around the DNC. -Patrick

If you're interested in grassroots, cutting-edge, new media-style coverage of the Democratic National Convention by savvy local Denver bloggers, you'll want to bookmark the Peoples Press Collective to stay connected to the action. As the Independence Institute's Jon Caldara describes the project:

They are a team of Colorado bloggers who will be armed to the teeth with point and shoot cameras, video cameras, and live streaming cell phones to document all the shenanigans, beat downs, hippie love-fests, and wacky protests going down in the streets. Basically anything the mainstream media won’t be around for, they will. Some pretty big time Colorado bloggers like the Rocky Mountain Right, Rossputin, Slapstick Politics, and Drunkablog have already signed on. They’ve got some cool features on their site like a quick 1 minute DNC preview video, a DNC blog post aggregator, and even a comprehensive schedule of DNC events.

Keen political observers should be interested in following the impact of this coverage on the course of the campaign. How will the DNC and its public perception affect Barack Obama's performance, especially here in the swing state of Colorado? And what about the number one Senate race nationwide between Boulder liberal Mark Udall and Republican Bob Schaffer? Stay tuned....