The GOP and conservative commentators have honed in on the angry and boisterous town hall meetings of the last few weeks and have portrayed them as genuine demonstrations by informed constituents with valid concerns about health care reform and the policies of the current crew in Washington. A look at the facts, however, shows how bogus these claims are. People are angry, all right, but on their own and not for the legitimate reasons they believe. The people waiting in snaking lines are not a sampling of the majority. They are little more than dupes placed there with scripts in hand by special interest groups that have been founded by members of the GOP, conservatives and by their commentator cronies.
In last Thursday s USA Today, a group of reporters who were covering several of last week s town meetings raised a few interesting points in their article. Some of the most vocal constituents in last Monday s town meeting held by Mississippi s Rep. Gene Taylor (D), were alerted to the meeting by their local chapter of the 9/12 Project, a group started by Fox News own Glenn Beck. This was found to be the case in several other meetings as well. Another group who is pushing attendance and is supplying information is the group FreedomWorks, led by Dick Armey, the former Republican House majority leader. His group s website offers a ‘how to’ package complete with talking points, suggested town hall questions, and a draft letter to the editor.
These conservative politicians and commentators are not encouraging intelligent discourse on the debate. They are telling people what to do, say and think based on their own slanted view of the proposed legislation- just what they are accusing the government under Obama and the Democrats of trying to do. According to the USA Today article, when asked by the reporters where they got the six-page critiques of the House health care legislation, complete with page references, Lenny Emmanuel of Pass Christian, Miss., said he received his by email, but he and others were vague about the source. These people have not read the proposed legislation and they have no way of knowing if what they are being fed is in the legislation, or is even the truth. This is the same type of outcry over false and/or misleading information that was caused by the bogus ‘death panel’ accusations of Sarah Palin. Their frustration over the economy and the recession, which started a full year before Obama took office, is being used and manipulated to further the GOP and conservative agenda.
Is there legitimate anger and frustration among a segment of the American public? Sure there is. They have seen their jobs disappear or be threatened and their financial security and standard of living decrease. But for protest to be legitimate and to be a valid part of the debate, it has to be framed in and based on some kind of fact. Unfortunately the majority of it is not. It is more special interest groups at work, ones whose agendas have very little to do with the welfare of the general American public and has everything to do with ratings, power and a return to prominence.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I had to show ID to vote… where do you live? And what’s wrong with a representative wanting to be sure he is hearing from his constituent and not a fly by night from somewhere else?
I don’t even know where to begin with this article. Perhaps you should read mine where I outline the SEIU bussing in protesters. Even better the recent video of a representative asking his constituitant for ID. We don’t even have to show ID to vote, but apparently we do to question our duly elected representatives. Yeah you can try to claim these people are plants, but truth of the matter is the American public is slowly putting down the six packs and picking up the picket signs. They just don’t like the fact that they are taking a page from the social progressive play book.
Thank you Mr. Emmanuel. You make some valid points and they are fairly peppered at both sides. It makes me angry when people like you are being used to spread what is likely propoganda. You deserve better than that.
The only comment I would have to what you have written is that as an apathetic public, we have gotten the Congress we deserve. Real change comes from us and until we change, Congress is not going to.
As Ms Bramble saw fit to list my name as among the idiots who are protesting without a cause, I will list a few items that have led me to distrust Congress and the idiots in Washington. And yes, it is true, I have not read the numerous pages of HB 3200; but I wonder how many Congressmen have read the thing. Anything reportedly as long as 1000 pages! I hope to pull it up soon and read the entire document, but for now would you trust anything a Congress, perhaps as corrupt as Grant’s was, to do anything responsive? Here are a few absurdities from Congress: 1) Congressmen can be convicted of serious crimes and still receive pensions, i.e. Jefferson, 2) Congress and the SEC were warned about Madoff a number of times, but paid not attention, 3) Three CEOs can fly to Washington in private jets, requesting bailouts, and Congress merely spanks their hands and advises them to return home and come back in respectable means of transportation, 4) Congress can bail out corporations with millions and require no accountability (they fail Business Accounting 101), 5) Congress allows Bush and the paranoid Cheney to send our youths to Iraq for Black Gold, 6) Greenspan’s “oversight” in actually believing banks and bankers will regulate themselves is ludicrous (Has anyone read Hamilton or Ezra Pound lately, the latter was warning us about banks and bankers back in the 1920′s and 1930′s, 7) Former Goldman Sachs CEOs, who have formerly created bubble after bubble with Bullcrap.coms, making millions, then watching the bubbles burst from their yachts, have infiltrated the White House,
Congress has borrowed so much from China that they almost own us, but actually are not anxious to buy any more of our bonds, 9) Our Congress is good, however, at one thing — printing money which is based on nothing (we went off the gold standard in 1962 I believe), 10) Lobbyists have bought just about every Congressman, because our Congressmen have learned they can buy votes and become re-elected, 11) CEOs like Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group, who made $702 million in 2008, will most likely be in D.C. soon requesting help, and will then like the others award the largest bonuses in their Corporation’s history, 12) The federal government sent about 3,900 economic stimulus payments of $250 each this spring to prison inmates who really had marvelous opportunities to stimulate our economy, 13) Congress established Cost Plus contracts which means a company can bid $2,000,000 for doing a job and then bill for $3,000,000 and be paid, 14) Congress, which has almost 80% or more convicted members of various crimes or impriorities, has allowed the Unions to become almost as corrupt and greedy as they are, which has shifted our industry abroad, 15) Neither Reagan nor Gorbachev destroyed Russia, but bureaucracy and corruption destroyed Russia, etc. Need I go on? Are my fellow Americans angry? You damn right we are! We’ve had enough. And incidentally, that was the first Town Hall meeting in Moss Point, MS to which I have ever gone. I’ve just been a law-abiding citizen, a U.S. Marine (Korea), and contributing taxpayer for something like 50 years, in clinical pathology for 40 years; and I assure you I have paid dearly in taxes. And no, I am neither Democrat nor Republican, as I have voted as honestly as possible depending on the candidates, as best I could judge. Moreover, am I against a universal healthcare plan? No. If I thought Congress could handle anything as massive as that, I would vote for it tomorrow; but I suspect when I do read the entire HB 3200, I will find a document written so ambiguously that no one will be able to interpret it properly, effective, and efficiently. As Will Rogers claimed, “I don’t make jokes. I just watch Congress and report the facts.” And though politics is not my normal interest, because of the inept Congress, I have been forced to leave my usual work. And by the way, if you opt to see other violations of conduct by our legislators read my forthcoming collection BLUE RAIN (Ramparts, Inc.) which is a collection of poetry, prose, interviews, photography, and graphics, with an entire section titled “Goodbye, America!” due out in October. Lenny Emmanuel (A.B., B.S., M.A., M.B.A., A.B.D.)
I find it incredibly ironic that you sit there and accuse people who are frustrated with the government on the grounds that they are special interest plants and not basing protest on “some kind of fact.” All this to say that “legitimate protest encourages intelligent discourse.”
And there you sit, ma’am, a person whose articles exist almost entirely to demonize people who disagree with you. How many positive articles have you written? Are you encouraging intelligent discourse?
Do you honestly believe that liberals didn’t have “dupes” and special interest plants during the Iraq War in 2006? Protest today is just as “legitimate” whether you agree with it or not. Protest is, as we heard quite often during the Bush years from liberals, the “highest form of patriotism.”
Keep spewing your hatred, Ms. Bramble. It’s so uplifting to us all…