While speaker Pelosi unveiled her final health care takeover bill in the House, I'm here on the road with Fox New's John Stossel holding town hall meetings to urge folks to keep up the fight against a government takeover of health care.

At 7am this morning-- yes I said 7am--345 activists joined us bright and early in Texarkana for a rousing town hall meeting. We were in the district of Congressional Blue Dog leader Mike Ross, and hundreds of folks signed the “Hands Off My Health Care” petition urging Congressman Ross to do the right thing for Arkansas.

Next we arrived in Little Rock, after a two hour drive, where over 800 Arkansas citizens from all walks of life overflowed a large auditorium. We gave out Senator Lincoln's Congressional office numbers and urged the masses to call the senator and make their voices heard.

Tonight we're in Jonesboro for the last of our town hall meetings in Arkansas. John Stossel has been inspiring as he details why freedom is always better than state control.

The media, Speaker Pelosi, and President Obama are attempting to tell America that the conservative grassroots are tired, worn down, and losing interest. Being on the road this week in South Carolina and Arkansas tells me they are wrong. The crowds have been huge. The energy has been electric. The determination is unfaltering.

This morning we wrapped up three days of exciting and successful events in South Carolina as part of our Hot Air Tour to let Senator Lindsey Graham hear from thousands of his constituents on the issue of cap-and-trade. As you may know, Senator Graham joined Massachusetts Senator John Kerry in an op ed supporting the job killing, tax increasing cap-and-trade policies.

So, we brought our AFP Hot Air Tour to the Palmetto State for events in Spartanburg, Columbia, Mt. Pleasant/Charleston and finally Myrtle Beach this morning.

Last night, just over 200 activists braved the driving rain and wind to turn out in Mt Pleasant/Charleston. After signing petitions telling Senator Graham to vote NO on cap-and-trade, just about every activist present pulled out their cell phones and called Senator Graham's offices across the state. In fact, we filled up the message boxes in each office with calls from the activists' at our rally!!

Earlier in the day in Columbia, again in a steady rain, roughly 100 folks turned out to send Senator Graham the same message on cap-and-trade.

After a long drive up Route 17 last night, we held our final event this morning in Myrtle Beach. It was great to meet so many wonderful folks in my home state of South Carolina. We even enjoyed a home-cooked meal at my Mom and Dad's house on Monday night!

More importantly, Senator Graham's office -- after a week of statewide radio advertising from AFP and our friends at the American Energy Alliance and after we poured tens-of-thousands of emails and telephone calls into the state -- said that the Senator is not supporting cap-and-trade at this point.

We've just got to keep the pressure on. Grassroots activism matters. You and I make a difference when we stand up and fight for our freedoms.

The Great Recession of 2008 exposed the dangers that occur when government distorts markets on an economy-wide scale. Banks seized on government guidance to give out risky, sub-prime loans to borrowers that would never pay them back. Without the tax breaks and comparative advantages provided by the government, these loans would never have been granted.

On Wall Street, these incentives induced credit-default swaps: a clever mechanism that provided insurance to investors if their investments plummeted. With this insurance, and the implied promise of a government bailout, the risk of the investment was erased: no more winners and losers, just privatized profit and socialized loss. Both the government and Wall Street invented ways to reduce risk, yet in reality they were creating a balloon of uncertainty, one that dramatically popped in September 2008.

Instead of learning from this crisis, Washington bureaucrats are busy crafting a new one with even more dire consequences. In the Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins described these new artificial incentives as “Washington’s Suicide Mission” where “Washington can save the economy by doing what comes naturally—spending money carelessly, creating massive new entitlements without funding them, dishing out cheap credit to politically favored sectors, telling business people where and how to invest.”

These new provisions, coming out of the Administration and Congress, are now being worked into the healthcare bill. Just as Congress mandated artificially low rates for mortgage lenders, they are now doing the same to insurers in the Senate bill: apply a standard rate to everyone regardless of their health status. With the mandate for all citizens to get health coverage being tweaked recently to lessen the penalties for not complying with this provision, the Senate bill has actually provided a new incentive for people to put off getting insurance until they are seriously ill.

What does this mean? If people have an incentive to put off getting healthcare until they are seriously ill (and ironically when health procedures are the most expensive) the whole argument for universal healthcare and preventative medicine has been erased. While Congress is slowly realizing that forcing citizens to participate in the proposed system is inherently flawed, central planners continue to create new mechanisms to force a new bureaucracy to take hold.

Brace yourselves; it’s going to be a long, wild ride.

Write to tdoheny@afphq.org

Yesterday, as the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee began hearings on the job-killing tax increase called cap-and-trade, we're in South Carolina holding Hot Air Tour events targeted at Sen. Lindsey Graham on this very issue.

The other day in Spartanburg, 215 grassroots activists rallied at the county fairgrounds to ride our 7-story-high Hot Air Tour balloon and to send a crystal clear message to Sen. Graham to oppose cap-and-trade.  The event was extra special to me because I grew up near Spartanburg and my dad, brother and sister were at the rally! Even better, afterwards I took our Americans for Prosperity road warriors back to my mom and dad's house for some serious down-home Southern cooking -- fried chicken, pan-fried okra, sweet creamed corn, deep dish macaroni and cheese, and strawberry cobbler. 

Spartanburg Hot Air Tour Stop

You may have seen the New York Times op-ed that Sen. Graham co-authored with John Kerry, the left-wing senator from Massachusetts, in support of cap-and-trade measures.  Sen. Graham says he believes in free markets and calls himself a fiscal conservative, so how he can support such an enormous tax-and-spend special interest bill is beyond me. And the hundreds of great South Carolina AFP activists I'm meeting on the road feel exactly the same way. 

In Spartanburg, an 81–years-young grassroots organizer and legendary local leader named Walter McSherry pointed out how cap-and-trade will kill over 20,000 South Carolina jobs in the first decade alone while raising utility rates by as much as 80%.  Then, we asked the entire crowd to pull out their cell phones and we filled up Sen. Graham's in-state and Washington office voice mails.  CLICK here for pictures of events in Spartanburg and Columbia this morning. 

As I mentioned earlier, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee gets first crack at cap-and-trade.  CLICK here to take a look at the committee.  If your senator is on the committee, call or email them today by clicking here.  Tell them to vote NO in committee. 

Once we finish in South Carolina (last event is Wednesday morning in Myrtle Beach), I'm heading to Arkansas for town hall meetings on the health care takeover with the newest Fox News personality -- our good friend, John Stossel. 

You can join us Thursday for a special tele-town hall meeting at 2pm EST by calling in to (888) 886-6603 with extension #13556.  John and I will be updating you on the health care takeover and he will tell us more about his new role at Fox News. 

Our town hall meetings are in Texarkana, Little Rock and Jonesboro.  Arkansas has 2 swing senators on health care and the leader of the so-called "Blue Dog" Democrats in Congressman Mike Rogers, so it's a crucial state in the health care battle. 

Health care and cap-and-trade are both just so crucial to the future of our country and our economic freedoms.  Much is at stake in the next few weeks so let's keep up the fight.