So, I just returned from a town hall meeting with Congressman John Kline. Wow! He basically ran Jaycie, Max and I over trying to get to the AARP lobbyist who was in attendance. I was the only person under 40 and most likely under 50 for most of the meeting. I swear he called in the College Republicans as reinforcements against the sea of grey hairs. The “listening session” was one hour long. However, for the first 35+ minutes Congressman Kline did all the talking. He asked a few questions of the audiences but did not allow any time for listening. He didn’t seem to like that people in the crowd were against privatization. He accused AARP of stacking the crowd. And he also accused the crowd of attacking him personally. It seemed that he called on a few “plants” in the audience to reinforce his points. Like a 23 year old college student that showed up 10 minutes before the meeting was over to say that he can’t afford to put money in a 401(k) plan because he has $40,000 in student loan debt to repay. So, he wants to be able to put his FICA money into a private account. The audience was quick to rebut his points requiring Congressman Kline put a stop to it. I left feeling like not much was accomplished and that Congressman Kline wasn’t really there to listen. Instead he was there to push privatization and gave up when he could not get the crowd to agree with him. This was the first town hall meeting I have ever been to but I will definitely be going to more!
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Your experience sounds similar to many other “torn hall meetings” around the nation as chronicled by Talking Points Memo. Anyone who’s lining up behind the president is following the same game plan Rove is using for George Bush…stack the audience, put on the show for the local papers, hope they write what you want them to write.
Was there any discussion about Social Security as a disability program? In all the spin being thrown around, it seems no one really addresses the disability side of the equation for payments to disabled workers, their dependant children, etc.
I was just reading about Rove’s push in public policy. It’s fascinating and frustrating to me that more people don’t see through these Republicans
I live in what should be a “blue collar-democratic area” but has increasing turned to the Republicans so I was surprised and pleased to see all the opposition.
Especially the loud cheers when he sarcastically asked if the government should take from the rich to give to the poor. And they say Democrats use the class issue…
Two audience members tried to get him to talk about disability and spousal benefits, but he sidestepped the issue. Betty McCollum spoke to my class a couple of weeks ago and she discussed social security in much different terms.
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