On Thursday, members of the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee set up an information table outside the Mattituck post office on Love Lane, complete with a picture of President Obama with a drawn-in Hitler mustache.
The T4 plan, according to a LaRouche booklet, was based on "criteria for determining what patients would be considered to have 'lives unworthy to be lived,' and what was the most 'practical and cheap' manner of removing them from being burdens on the health care system -- by death."
LaRouche activist Patricia Noble said Obama's administration wants to legalize physician-assisted suicide in order to cut costs. She said that White House health care policy advisor Ezekiel Emanuel, who opposes state-assisted suicide, and White House economic advisors Peter Orszag and Lawrence Summers are mostly to blame for the proposed policy.
"They're promoting the right to die to save money," she said. "When the problem is bailing out toxic assets."
LaRouche advocates also set up tables on sidewalks in Greenport, Cutchogue and Aquebogue.
Ms. Noble, a retired 56-year-old from Philadelphia, said that other demonstrators went to the South Fork this week, and that they plan to eventually cover the "entire greater New York area."
Ms. Noble said the immediate goal of the LaRouche campaign is to stop the current health care bill from passing. And it's worked so far, she said.
"It hasn't even been written yet," she said. "It's because of what we do around the country."
The LaRouche campaign has existed for nearly four decades, according to Ms. Noble, promoting the ideas of 87-year-old Lyndon LaRouche, a political activist who's run for U.S. president eight times since 1976.
He also spent 15 years in prison starting in 1988 for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and tax code violations.
With offices around the world and a major hub in Germany, the LaRouche movement has attracted thousands of followers to promote a "new world economic order" and to "save the republic," according to Ms. Noble.
But the group has been called a political and personality cult, and organizations like The Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C., conservative think tank, have labeled it "one of the strangest political groups in American history."
Aware of all criticisms, Ms. Noble said she still doesn't hesitate to set up the latest LaRouche protest display, which also features a picture of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi with Frankenstein-style bolts in her head, on any sidewalk anywhere in the country.
"Everyone has a right to speak," she said. "There's not a local law against this ... It's a constitutional right."
Ms. Noble added that the number of people who stop and listen compared to the number who either walk away or want to argue is "about fifty-fifty."
"But I don't argue with people," she said. "If you don't like what we have to say, then have a nice day."
Last Thursday on Love Lane, a woman who was eating a bag of cookies walked by and looked at the display.
"I'm a right-to-lifer," she said. "But I don't know about this."
Someone else came up to the table and starting singing, "War, what is it good for ... absolutely nothing!"
While most other people seemed to just walk by, Mattituck resident Gregory Case, a 62-year-old retired personal care assistant, chatted with Ms. Noble for a while, saying that he swings toward the Democrats, but "in this case, it wasn't the best," he said of the current administration.
"I'm retired and tired of it all," he said, smoking a cigarette.
Others said they took the LaRouche demonstrators with a grain of salt, but they weren't too happy with the current state of health care -- or its future.
"Any public servant gets free health care," said Bob Paquette, owner of the Arcade Department Store in Greenport, who was visiting some friends on Love Lane while the LaRouche demonstration took place. "But I have to pay $500 a month for every employee, and it ticks me off. Meanwhile business is going down."
eschultz@timesreview.com