Yeah, I agree that town hall meetings are important since it is the medium by which the townspeople can exchange ideas with. The democrats must be more careful in choosing their words. Fighting their constituents is unwise to do. They must be more united and exhange ideas better.

Groups of all kinds “astro-turfed” the turnout at the hearings — for the same reason that interested parties often do — not just to apply face-to-face pressure on public officials, but more importantly to make news — big news if possible, and TV news in particular, the better to pressure wavering officials.

The turnout at Congressional “town halls” is much the same thing. In a quiet summer, these events would be populated by handfuls of mostly reliable people sympathetic to the Members and “astro-turfed” by his/her office through friendly senior groups, local political committees and what not in order to produce a crowd that would not be embarassingly small. Plus a few easilt managed cranks, who get kicks out of saying whacky things at public meetings. Most would wind up with 50-100 people and scant news coverage except what the member’s office could scrounge up.

This time, there being a big and divisive issue, some opposition groups have “astro-turfed” bigger turnouts. For all that, most haven’t been all that much bigger. If August ends with 20,000 out of 300 million people having attended one, I’ll be surprised. But that’s not the point. The point is — and this is why I brought up the analogy to other, similar public events — to make news that will multiply may times the impact of the turnout. And this has been wildly successful, with meetings generating massive local and national coverage and igniting a furious debate about some aspects of the proposed reforms.

The notion that a handful of people asking polite questions at these events to House members who each represent 600,000 people and accepting the talking point answers give out would help generate much in the way of enlightenment or true debate about the ever-changing five or six bils under consideration is, at best, naive. Frankly, such “civil discussion” would be ignored — by the press, Congress and the White House.

In a continental nation of 300 million people, “debate” to have any meaning must reach a large number of those folks through the media — old and new. Thats why demonstrations and protests have long been commonplace — even deliberately provocations to cause arrests in the interest of attracting more TV cameras.

This is part of American politics, too. Meanwhile in news reports, op-eds and editorials, TV specials, thousands of blog posts, and so one, there has been a lively discussion about every aspect of the proposed plans. And now, there will be $150 million in TV ads paid for by Big Pharma boosting reform because the drug companies already have their deal to make even more money (how that “bends the cost curve” is a mystery). And they’ll be joined by others, pro and con.

The bottom line is this: a handful of noisy protesting constituents have put this issue and all the questions surrounding it front and center in the minds of tens of millions of Americans, when it was by no means certain that that would be the case in August before Congress returns to act.

Our right to petition our government doesn’t end with sending emails to our Representatives, which they mainly ignore (I’ve sent three waves of eails to my Rep. and two Senators and have yet toi receive a reply from any). If a member of the supposedly “popular” house can’t suffer through being berated once in a blue moon by some of his/her constituents on an issue that rows them up, they really ought to get real jobs. Believe me, House of Representatives member is hardly hard work — except for the need of the third who represent potential swing districts to campaign all the time.

I can’t figure out why you think I’m clueless about this. I don’t deny that people get worked up. I work for a public agency that charges tolls and fares, which were recently raised. What I’m saying is that getting worked up about those things at BS public hearings held by agencies like the one I work for isn’t the same thing as what’s going on at town hall meetings on health-care reform. Those meetings are BS because the organizations holding them are doing it for show and aren’t going to change their course of action no matter what anyone has to say.

Are you even reading my comments?

There’s no significant organized effort involved in the disruptions of school board or MTA meetings. It’s just a bunch of pissed-off people, pissed off about an easily understood issue that almost no one would be happy about. Who’s not getting their say, anyway? The “please rase my rent” or “please charge me higher fares” coalitions? Try responding to what I’ve actually written and not something else that comes from I don’t know where.

That, or show me where I’ve denied that people get worked up at public meetings in New York, with direct quotes from my comments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edkncVniQgA

The guy doing most of the yelling is the Green Party candidate for mayor. I guess he didn’t get the memo either. Members of Congress should quit whining, if for no other reason than that it will turn even more voters against them.

Hear hear.

Speaking of childish morons you know the guy who got on TV yelling at Dingell? He’s in the Detroit paper today:
http://www.freep.com/article/20090811/COL27/908110332/Man-who-let-Dingell-have-it-is-pushed-into-health-care-spotlight

Apparently he was so incensed that Dingell was taking advantage of an “apparently disabled” woman to push health care reform he simply blew his top. According to this article Dingell refused to even answer his question and just told him to sit down.

For the record Marcia Boehm is actually disabled. She has several graduate degrees, including a Masters in Social Work, and is currently a Profesor at Madonna University in suburban Detroit. You don’t take advantage of Marcia. And if Mr. Mike Sola had been paying attention he would know all this, because it’s part of the health care spiel Marcia gave right before Dingell got up to speak.

I’m not sure calling this guy’s actiuons un-American was a great idea, but I honestly have no idea what the proper response is to a guy like Mike Sola. This guy uses his son as a prop, but a disabled woman who dares to disagree with him is merely being used by the left? What can you say to that guy?

Preferably in terms that are JPG-aproved…

I can agree with all of this. The only problem is that the first sentence doesn’t apply. The article didn’t call anyone un-American. It read: “Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.” There is a difference. That difference may be lost on many people, and foreseeably so, thus it was still a (politically) stupid (if not necessarily wrong) thing to write.

2nd point: these town hall meetings are what they are, the only real opportunity for most regular folks to speak to their reps on the issue, to be heard. and to hear their reps talk about what’s going on. Anyone who shows up to do this decently deserves that chance. Anyone who main goal is to prevent such exchanges by acting like a childish, petulant moron should be removed.

Reps should handle such cases by remaining poised and simply asking the rest of the crowd to show, by a vote of hands, whether they want such folks removed for disrupting the meeting and hindering the opportunities of other folks there.

“Santorum was among dozens of members of Congress who ran gantlets of demonstrators and shouted over hecklers at Social Security events last month.”

Happy to help.

These town halls are political theater, not a vehicle for shaping policy. No town hall discussion was going to change Santorum’s vote on SS. No town hall discussion was going to change Dingell’s vote on Healthcare Reform. In both cases you have frustrated constituents who feel, quite rightly, their voice is not being heard by their representative and they get loud. It’s certainly not productive, but it’s not un-American. Quite the contrary.

So Gerry, surprisingly we disagree again. I was not outraged in 2005 and and I am not outraged now. The 2005 protesters were not un-American. Neither are the protesters last week.

BTW – President Obama agrees and is back-pedaling from Nancy and Steny as fast as he can.

This specifically regarding a discussion that is described as follows: Health care is complex. It touches every American life. It drives our economy. People must be allowed to learn the facts.

To compare this to rents or fares going up or a school board doing something that everyone already knows is stupid (your example, John Burke) is false equivalence. Public hearings on fare increases and such are BS from Jump Street and everyone knows it. And what’s the opposing viewpoint – “I want to pay more”?

The problem isn’t that people are opposed to the proposed health-care legislation. It’s that there is a concerted effort both to mislead and to shut down debate on an important and complex issue. It ain’t fares or rents or dopey school boards.

And if people went beyond asking pointed questions and expressing opposition to SS reform in 2005 to the point of lying and shutting down the discussions, shame on them, too.

Democracy can be a rough business. Apparently, some of our House members have been isolated from it. It will do them all some good.

Dead straight, WHQ–there is a difference between debate and stopping debate.

If anyone Democrat, Progressive, Conservative, Republican, Libertarian or whatever was involved in 2005 in trying to stop the debate and discussng, they were wrong and they were un-American.

So MW, sorry to disappoint your “gotcha”.

Here’s a gotcha for you–are the people you seem to be supporting who are attending these meetings for the sole purpose of obstructing/shutting off debate right or wrong?

If you are really outraged at what you perceive as that behavior from 4 years ago, you should be outraged now.