Via Sadly No (themselves via Amanda and Firedoglake), here’s a list of town hall meetings, where you can go to ask your Congresscritter to support health care reform. (NOTE: Times are given in the Pacific Time Zone.)
Don Briggs at DailyKos reports that it is possible to keep the teabaggers from trashing the meetings, so it’s worthwhile to go if you can.
I’m planning to attend Representative David Wu’s town hall meeting this coming Tuesday, in Portland. Are any other Portland “Alas” readers going to be there?
I have in the past condemned the efforts by leftists (e.g., gay rights activists) to disrupt public or private meetings when people voice opinions contrary to their philosophies. So let me expand that to say that I condemn any effort by any group, regardless of their political affiliation, to disrupt such meetings and keep everyone present from having an equal opportunity to petitition their representatives.
From the Daily Kos link:
One Tea Bagger even challenged the constitutionality of a governmental role in health care. So, at these meetings, we should raise the point that the Preamble to the Constitution includes the phrase “promote the general welfare” as one of its key organizing principles.
True. But that means that the Founders believed that establishing the Constitution in the form that they did, with the limitations of governmental powers that are central to its construction, would promote the general welfare. It did not mean that anything that a majority of the Congress and the President at any time feels promotes the general welfare is therefore properly the role of the Federal government or that it is therefore Constitutional.
Posting this is a great service, Amp, but the fact that the times are PACIFIC TIME and not local time has me scratching my head. At the very least you should point that out in all caps in the intro so no one misses it (and not rely on people reading the thing at the bottom).
The Sadly No link you post appears to have all the meetings in local time.
I’ve added a warning in the intro. I’d like to set it up so it automatically reflects the viewer’s time zone, but I can’t find the option for that. :-(
But but but but but we’re supposed to get together and draw cartoons togevver!
Granted, pulling a little “clinic defense” to support at least a civilized discussion on why Congress will sell out the public option has some appeal.
Do you think Medicare is unconstitutional?
PG:
I’m not sure. I’d have to consider the question. I did note that the link said:
Rep. Visclosky responded that MediCare is 44 years old and has not been challenged on constitutional grounds.
to justify it’s Constitutionality. But “has not been challenged” != “has been determined to be Constitutional”.
I also noted this in the post:
Well, first, the only people who call them Tea Baggers are their opponents, who seem to find it appropriate to label these people using a shorthand term for an obscure sexual practice. Second, what they want to do is to register their displeasure with the proposed health care legislation with their representatives at public meetings organized specifically for the purpose of having the peoples’ representatives speak to and hear from the people. It’s not at all public knowledge that disrupting and thwarting public discourse is their objective. That allegation is nothing more than leftist spin. I’m sure you’ll find some clips of some of them becoming overheated, but that’s hardly an organized campaign to thwart public discourse. If you want to dig some up, though, I’ll be glad to match them with clips of leftists doing the same and worse.
The last time I checked, dissent was the highest form of patriotism.
The times posted for Jared Polis in Boulder were off – they seemed to be in Eastern time and also not quite correct. Best to check your own congresscritter’s schedule before going. I found mine by googling my rep’s name and the date of the meeting in the schedule in this post.
I’m not sure. I’d have to consider the question.
I’d be interested in your answer. At the time of Medicare’s being proposed and passed as legislation, the main Constitutional concerns seem to have been that (1) the bill needed to originate in the House, because it involved taxation (the FICA or payroll taxes that fund Medicare as well as Social Security — “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States”); and (2) the requirement that Medicare applicants swear that they are not Communists, which the DOJ eventually conceded was unconstitutional.
Then again, there’s rather a lot of stuff the federal government has done in the last 100 years or so that is of dubious constitutionality if you read the Constitution narrowly. The federal highway system goes way beyond “post roads,” and federal criminal law goes way beyond punishing just counterfeiting, “Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations.” I certainly don’t see how criminalizing the performance of a “partial birth” abortion fits into any specific Constitutional grant of power to Congress.
Well, first, the only people who call them Tea Baggers are their opponents, who seem to find it appropriate to label these people using a shorthand term for an obscure sexual practice.
Obscure name, perhaps, but practice? Oh, Ron.
As I am sure you know and have merely temporarily forgotten, “tea bag” first arose because the protesters themselves wished to refer to the iconography of the American Revolution, particularly the Boston Tea Party, by staging protests that involved mailing tea bags to the federal government (particularly the IRS) and throwing tea bags into various bodies of water. These were self-labeled “tea party protests” and then “tea bag party” (see, e.g., the URL http://teabagparty.org). Some of the protesters themselves, as well as the media covering them, began referring to protesters as “teabaggers,” short for “tea bag party protesters.” Are you really going to try to pursue an argument that this shorthand just came out of NOWHERE?
If you want to dig some up, though, I’ll be glad to match them with clips of leftists doing the same and worse.
Yes, but leftists are less likely to make implicit death threats and carry firearms while doing so. Between some teenagers on a college campus making fools of themselves over the Minutemen, and a grown-ass man waiting for the president while carrying a gun, I think I’m a little more worried about the latter. But that’s just me, I’m sure those college kids were Super Scary to some folks.
RonF,
The WSJ, hardly a bastion of the Liberal Media, reports,
People who want to have a productive discussion don’t yell or name-call. That’s like Marriage 101 or Life Generally 101. I am really surprised that you consider this to be merely “overheated.” If one of my bosses (and I think voters are the bosses of their elected representatives) thought it was acceptable to treat me this way — yelling at me as soon as I showed up; demanding that I answer questions and then yelling “Answer the question!” when I tried to do so; calling me a “nitwit” — I’d definitely complain about it to my other boss, and refuse to meet with the one who had treated me that way until he apologized. And it’s not like my immediate boss is always sweetness and light — when we mess up, he’s hard on us, but he’s basically fair and willing to listen instead of just scream his angst. You know, he acts like a human being who is accountable for his behavior, instead of like a child throwing a tantrum.
Being an employee, whether in the private or the public sector, does not require abandoning all self-respect and expectation of dignity and decency.
Not true. Living in conservaland, heard many people refer to themselves as tea baggers (with apparently no idea of the connotations).
Thanks for this list. It was very difficult to find anything comprehensive like this – just local politicians from outside my district. Fox News reported today that something near 60% of congress is not having any town hall meetings at all. Wonder if this is because of fear of the outbursts, or that they’ve already made up their minds?
“Police confirmed yesterday that a protester “dropped” a gun during a meet ‘n greet with Rep. Danielle Giffords (D-AZ) at a Safeway in Douglas, AZ last week.”
Yes, that 1st + 2nd Amendment is mighty tasty.
Brian,
Probably concern that the town halls won’t give them an accurate gauge of constituent sentiment — the worst full of passionate intensity and all that.
It would be invaluable for anyone up for reelection in 2010 (i.e. all the House and 1/3 of the Senate) to know how big an issue the health care legislation is in constituents’ minds, and how the people who are likely to show up to vote in a midterm (and also in a primary, for the politicians who will face intra-party challenges) would prefer their Rep/Senator to vote on it.
Town halls allow one to speak with those who are politically engaged (likely voters) and who have a preference on the particular subject, which normally would make them very useful. Unfortunately, if the town halls are mostly a mass of ignorant conservatives yelling about keeping government out of Medicare and how they want their country back, with a few union guys outside getting into fistfights, then they’re pretty much all downside with nothing useful to get out of them. Much better to expend the time, effort and money on creating, administering and analyzing a good poll.
My local town hall, today in Wilmar, MN, at the Health and Human Services Building isn’t listed in that widget. 2 PM CST with Congressman Collin Peterson. I’ll let you know how it goes.
So, the town hall I attended today was really very civil, though my Democratic Congressman pissed me off as he always does because he doesn’t have a liberal bone in his body. And the crowd was easily 80% conservatives. I tweeted my way through it with a few thoughts (here, if interested). The main thing that struck me is that the stupid “death panel” myth has some serious traction. But nobody brought a gun, nobody screamed anyone down, there was no chanting, discourse ruled the day. It was the Minnesota-nice version of an angry town hall.