Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Town Hall Meetings + My Response

There are town hall meetings being held around the country so that Senators and Congressmen can explain the health care plan to their constituents. According to one Texas Congressman, they were give a script they are supposed to follow. Bah, humbug, is what I'd say to that.

Many town hall meetings have erupted at the question and answer period, and if you watch Fox News, you've seen some of that footage.

"I look at this health care plan and I see nothing that is about health or about care. What I see is a bureaucratic nightmare, senator. Medicaid is broke, Medicare is broke, Social Security is broke and you want us to believe that a government that can't even run a cash for clunkers program is going to run one-seventh of our U.S. economy? No sir, no," she (a woman at the microphone to Specter and Sibelius in Philadelphia) said.


You can find some such events listed on Tea Party Patriots August events are toward the bottom, with September toward the top.

The constituents are being labeled, of course, as right wing nuts, and at least one person said that the protests were sponsored by the insurance companies. What a laugh. The insurance companies are in bed with the program! Those speaking out are being labeled "politically connected," whatever that means, and, once again, being dismissed.

One of the largest miscarriages of truth that the media has perpetrated recently is the one about the tea party in Columbus, Ohio, August 1, this past Saturday. The Columbus Tea Party, the Ohio Rally for State Sovereignty, was attended by, according to police estimates, 8,000-10,000 people. You can hear Keynote speaker, Judge Napolitano, on Ron Paul's site or YouTube. According to Napolitano (not Janet, BTW!), the temperatures were in the upper 80s and humidity to match, yet thousands of people stood for an hour and a half, before his speech even came up. They listened to what he had to say, and cheered him on.

The miscarriage of truth by the media? They reported 200-300 attendees. Disenfranchisement through being ignored? You decide. The people are rising up in larger and larger numbers, from all political parties, and both the media and the politicians are going to be surprised when the "right-wing nut jobs," take our country back, through the legally appointed means provided by the U S Constitution, and freedom becomes the rallying cry.

In some of the later townhall meetings, speakers who've learned from what happened at earlier ones, have told attendees they are not allowed to ask questions, they can only listen to what the speaker has to tell them about the plan. Here's my response to that.

As a body, all attendees get up and leave. The last person out the door, before turning out the light, turns to the speaker of the day and says, "You aren't listening to us; therefore, we aren't listening to you. But don't worry. We'll be back in touch next voting day." No shouting, no screaming, no protesting. Just a simple statement from our feet, exercising our God-given rights.

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