Rutherford County Democrats met tonight in Smyrna to talk about the importance of reaching out and communicating to our family, friends and neighbors.

Mike Cowger did a quick overview of what information you can access here on the RCDP website.

AFL/CIO Labor Coordinator Jack Irby spoke briefly about the bankruptcy of General Motors and resources available for the unemployed.

Ethan Link (pictured) spoke about the importance of health care and how Change That Works needs your help organizing grassroots support for needed health care reform.

Link spoke briefly about a former Tennessean who is working hard in television commercials to oppose health care reform. Rick Scott is the spokesman for a group calling themselves Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPR). Scott’s role in America’s health care crisis started here in Tennessee and led to one of the largest fraud settlements in U.S. history and his ultimate resignation from the largest health care company in the nation.

Here’s more on the real Rick Scott, the man conservatives have chosen as the best person they could find to represent their opposition to health care reform.

Carefully omitted from his official profile is the fact that under Scott’s leadership, Columbia/HCA plead guilty to a massive array of fraud charges - which resulted in a fraud settlement of $1.7 billion dollars, the largest in U.S history. Columbia/HCA systematically defrauded taxpayers, charging Medicare $15,000 for Tiffany pitchers and other luxury goods, “exaggerating the seriousness of the illnesses they were treating,” and engineering a program where doctors were granted partnerships in hospitals as a kickback for referring patients. In 1997, Scott resigned in disgrace.

Republicans have hired Rick Scott to represent their opposition to health care reform because Rick Scott best represents what the Republican Party wants health care in America to look like: defrauding taxpayers and forcing your family into bankruptcy to pay for it.