Lawson: Boyd robbed on Oscar night

Last week, many Americans were glued to their televisions to watch Hollywood stars such as Zoe Saldana (pictured) and Monique compete for Academy Awards.

Congressional candidate Al Lawson says his opponent, incumbent Allen Boyd, deserved an Oscar for “Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for his portrayal as a Democrat in Congress.”

“Blue Dog Allen Boyd is not a real Democrat,” Lawson said. “But he has played one in Congress for the past 14 years.”

According to Lawson, Boyd has taken some “extreme right-wing positions” while serving in Congress which include:

• Being the only “Democrat” to side with former U.S. President George W. Bush in his failed push to privatize Social Security.
• Voting against the stimulus bill that was needed to create jobs and turn around our failing economy.
• Taking $127,000 from the health care industry in the two months before the Health Care Reform vote and then voted NO.

The St. Petersburg Times’ The Buzz blog reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is still trying to woo Boyd’s vote to send the revamped health care reform act to Senate. President Barack Obama also recently invited Boyd to a private White House reception to ask him to support the bill.

While Boyd continues to defend his vote against the health care reform act, he touts his support for the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act, which calls for a repeal of health insurance companies’ exemption from federal antitrust laws. If approved by Congress and signed into law by the president, the act would ensure that health insurers are no longer shielded from legal accountability for practices such as price fixing, dividing up territories among themselves, sabotaging their competitors in order to gain monopoly power, and other such anti-competitive activities.

Boyd says he backed the bill because it will increase competition in the health insurance market and reduce insurance costs for North Floridians.