town halls

Guess Connecticut's Chris Murphy doesn't want to face any more nonscripted events like this

As he tries to explain the trillion dollar, two thousand page health care "reform" bill drawn up by Madame Speaker, Nancy Pelosi  

Now he can't just pretend he didn't solicit any opinion from the public. No, what he's done is try and sneak a couple of quicj town meetings in before anyone notices, probably stack the hall with SEIU/ACORN types, and then claim that public sentiment is radically more in favor of the new health care bill---which is just as bad, if not worse, than the piece of sludge Murphy helped draft in the Energy and Commerce Committee.

So what's a swing district Democrat to do. Give the actual voters less than 48 hours notice your are holding the Town Halls. And hold both in the more Democratic eastern end of the district.  And add a single hour for a "telephone town hall" which we can be sure is going to be stacked with liberal lackeys..

Dear Friends,

I’m bringing the health care reform conversation back to you.

When I held a series of public events in August on health care, I told you that I would host more meetings after the House unveiled the health care bill and before the vote. The House will likely vote on a health care bill within the next few weeks, so I am organizing these events so that I can hear from people in Connecticut about what you think should be done to make health care more affordable and accessible for residents of Connecticut.

I hope you can join me at one of the 2 town halls I am hosting this Sunday, November 1 to talk about health care reform. Due to space limitations, these town hall events will be for residents of the Fifth District only.

I will also hold a telephone town hall style meeting on Wednesday, November 4, at 6:20pm from Washington, DC. To join the call, follow the instructions below.

At all three events, I will address questions and concerns from both proponents and opponents of health care reform.

SUNDAY

WHO: Congressman Chris Murphy (CT-5)

WHAT: Town hall meeting on health care reform legislation

WHEN: Sunday, November 1, 1:30-3pm

WHERE: Avon High School

510 West Avon Road

Avon

 

SUNDAY

WHO: Congressman Chris Murphy (CT-5)

WHAT: Town hall meeting on health care reform legislation

WHEN: Sunday, November 1, 5:30-7pm

WHERE: Lincoln Middle School

164 Centennial Avenue

Meriden

 

WEDNESDAY

WHO: Congressman Chris Murphy (CT-5)

WHAT: Telephone town hall on health care reform legislation

WHEN: Wednesday, November 4, 6:20-7:20pm

CALL IN: (877) 229-8493

PIN: 13348

Now the worst part of this is Murphy is holding these events so as to compete with a) the New York Giants football game ( 1pm Sunday) and the World Series; which features the Yankees ( start time 7:30 Sunday). So if you wanted to ensure a crowd full of wonks that hate sports, well this is when to schedule this. Most of Murphy's regular constituents are sports fans. Too bad for them. But if you are some bleeding heart who thinks valium prevents a suicide squeeze, you're all good.

There's shameless. And then there's Chris Murphy.

We are in the early stages of a war. There may be no military action, no bullets or bombs, but we are in a war none the less. This war is for the soul of America. This war is for the preservation of the principles our country was founded on and which have kept us free and prosperous since our beginning. President Obama and his allies do not like America, at least not as it is and has been. They do not believe that America is the greatest country in the history of civilization. They do not believe in American exceptionalism. They do not believe that we as Americans have a right to be proud of what we have accomplished and to be proud of the good we have done for the world. They believe America needs to be remade. They are wrong.

Obama and friends are wrong about what America believes and what America stands for.

America is a Christian nation. There may be arguments about the particular faith of some of the Founding Fathers, but the majority were undeniably Christians. One would have to “willfully suspend disbelief” to believe  otherwise after reading our founding documents as well as our history. The real history, not the revisionist history. We do not deny anyone the privilege to worship as they choose, or to decline any form of worship. But our country was founded under Christian principles and beliefs.

The God of our founders and the God I pray to is Yahweh, Jehovah God, the God of Abraham and Issac. The God of the Bible. He is not some generic “man upstairs”. He is the Creator of the universe and of mankind. Because of His deep love for us, He gave His son Jesus willingly as an atonement for our sin. He is boundlessly good and has all power. He is Love, but He is a jealous God. He will chastise and correct us as individuals and as a nation if we stray too far for too long. We have strayed far and long and we need to return to Him as a nation. Pray for His mercy, His blessings, His wisdom and His guidance. If ever we needed it, it is now. If you don’t know Him, seek Him and you will find Him.

We do not believe that America needs to be remade, as Obama has stated. We believe that instead we need to return to the ideals of our Founders. We need to return to lower taxes, limited, smaller government, and unfettered personal freedom.

We do not believe that America is arrogant. Strong, confident and proud, yes. Arrogant, no.

America does not stand for wealth redistribution. We are generous, compassionate people with our money, but our generosity is not for Obama to dictate.

We believe that capitalism is the best economic system. Socialism doesn’t work. Marxism doesn’t work. We believe in equality of opportunity, not in equality of outcome. Some people work harder, some people are smarter, some people have better ideas. When those people succeed, the country succeeds. When they become wealthy, the country becomes wealthy. Wealthy people buy things, they build things, they create jobs,  they start businesses, they invest in American prosperity. America would collapse without them. They are not evil and do not deserve punishment.

America does not believe in the punitive taxation of our achievers. We believe in encouraging and rewarding achievement. It is counter productive to tax successful achievers into oblivion. All Americans should pay taxes so that all Americans have a stake in keeping the system honest. Consider that the City of Chicago just closed for a day to save money, with more days scheduled for more savings. A productive business does not save money by closing. Businesses produce wealth by being open for business. The government only takes, while producing nothing. Financially speaking, they are far more efficient and productive if they would just stay at home. We know that poor people don’t get any richer just because money is taken from the wealthy.

America does not stand for federally funded abortion on demand. A large and growing segment of us believe that abortion is wrong. However, the law of the land allows it for now. But using our tax dollars to support it is unacceptable.

America does not believe in a weakened, ineffective military. We do not believe that our military should be used to enforce social experimentation. We believe in spending our tax dollars to equip and train the greatest fighting force ever known to mankind, then praying to God that we will not have to use it. We love peace, but we are not afraid to fight for  liberty. We know that we don’t make weak nations any stronger by being weak ourselves. Being the only remaining superpower is a good thing. A very good thing. We have no desire to weaken ourselves in the interest of “fairness”. Senator Barbara Boxer had the audacity to publicly humiliate a brigadier general for referring to her as “ma’am” rather than as ”senator”. This is symptomatic of the arrogance and ignorance of many of our elected representatives. They have come to think of themselves as royalty. They think wrongly. I know of several fitting monikers for Senator Boxer, but decorum prevails.

We welcome legal immigrants, as we always have. But for those who have no more respect for our country and our laws than to cross our borders unlawfully, we are not welcoming. We certainly don’t believe in giving them the rewards of our hard earned tax dollars in the form of social benefits. We do not support amnesty for illegal aliens. Secure our borders and enforce our laws. English is our language. Learn it if you want to live here.

We do not believe in homosexual marriage. We believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. Period. That does not make us homophobic. That does not make us haters. We also do not support the concept of hate crimes. Any unlawful harm to a human being by another human being is wrong, and should be dealt with under our criminal codes. The fact that the victim may be a part of some minority doesn’t make the crime worse. It is just as wrong to harm a white heterosexual male as it is to harm a black homosexual female. The actions of the law breaker should determine the punishment for the crime, not the race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or other social characteristic of the victim.

America is not a racist nation. There are some racists in America. There are also some murderers in America, but that doesn’t make us a murderous nation. We recognized the evil of slavery, and we abolished it. We have done more to eliminate racial bias in our culture than any other nation. When we disagree with a person of another racial or ethnic background, that disagreement cannot be dismissed by a cry of “racism”. Neither are our police officers inherently racist, as Obama implied during the recent uproar over the arrest of a black Harvard professor by a white police sergeant.

We do not believe that radical Islam is our friend. We do believe that Israel is our friend and deserves our support. We believe that Islamic jihadists that want to kill Americans should be called terrorists and not some ridiculous watered down, politically correct name. They should be considered our mortal enemies, without consideration of how they “feel” or why they hate us. We are not the cause of their irrational hatred of us and what we stand for. We do not need to change so they will like us. We do need to eliminate them.

We do not believe that our President should sit down with tin horn dictators from Iran, North Korea, Venezuala or anywhere else unless there are precursory agreements about the substance and outcome of those conversations. Anything less will be used against us and will be seen as a source of legitimacy and power for our enemies, and as an indication of weakness on the part of America.

We do not believe in a government run health care system. We do not want our personal health care decisions made by the same government that has run Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the Postal Service so ineffectively that they are all on the verge of bankruptcy. Reforms are needed, but the system does not need to be recreated and it most certainly does not need to be placed under government control. This has been tried and has failed in Canada and in Britain. Changing the name to “public option” or “co-op” doesn’t change anything. We don’t want it!

We do believe that as American citizens, we have the absolute privilege and right to attend town hall meetings, speak our minds, and ask questions. We are not un-American as stated by Nancy Pelosi and Steney Hoyer. We are not evil mongers as claimed by Harry Reid. We are Americans doing what Americans have always done – standing up against intrusive over-reaching government and demanding adherence to the Constitution.

We do not believe in the “fairness doctrine”. All Americans are free to express their opinions through any legal avenue available to them. Some are better at that than others. Some don’t care enough to expend the energy. Some  are better able to convince others. Some ideas are better than others. Some ideas are just plain bad. Some ideas are wildly popular and some have very limited or no support. The government’s definition of “fairness” is equality of all ideas, equality of the effectiveness of the presenter, and equality of the acceptance of the idea by Americans. This is nothing but government control of the market place of ideas, and the only way to force that to happen is to silence the best, most legitimate ideas so that the worst  ideas have equal legitimacy. Besides being stupid, this is un-American.

We believe in the 2nd amendment right to bear arms. This is not limited to hunting purposes, in fact it has nothing to do with hunting. The purpose of the 2nd amendment is to allow the citizenry to defend themselves against those who would harm them, whether that be a criminal or a tyrannical out of control government.

We believe that our elected officials work for us – not the other way around. We are their employers, not their subjects. As their employers, we retain the right to fire them when their performance becomes unacceptable. We as citizens loan them temporary power to act on our behalf. The power still rests with the people, not with the politicians. When they forget that, they must be reigned in. It is way past time for some serious reigning in. I would start with President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Senator Reid, then proceed from there. They have clearly forgotten who they work for.

According to the Declaration of Independence, Americans are “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,”. These rights did not come from the government and they cannot be taken away by the government. Any and all attempts to restrict these rights must and will be fiercely resisted.

I am proud to be an American. I am proud of our history, imperfect as it may be. I am proud of what my countrymen have overcome. I am proud of American ingenuity, American inventiveness, American determination, and especially American goodness. I thank God that I was blessed to be born American. I refuse to apologize for being a citizen of the greatest, most generous nation ever in existence. America has done more for many nations than they have done for themselves. American blood has been shed around the world in defense of justice and against tyranny. American dollars have been freely spent to aid those less blessed than we. I will not apologize for the greatness of my country.

Those of us who believe in America’s greatness, Her goodness, Her limitless future and potential, must fight and win this war. We must win it for our children, and for their children. We must win it for the Founding Fathers. We must win it for the thousands who have fought and died to preserve our right to fight and to live free. Generations past have lived up to their challenges. Generations future are depending on us to do the same. It is our turn, and history will judge us. Our generation now has  to stand and be counted.

We must win this war. Our weapons are our words. Our weapons are our votes, our participation in the system our fore fathers designed. Our ammunition is truth – factual information subjected to critical and honest analysis. Write letters to the editor, contact your representatives, attend town hall meetings, email friends…however you choose to participate, get in the fight! You, sitting on the sidelines, is what the other side is counting on. The stakes are too high to allow them victory.

More posts at http://commonconservativesense.com

(Yes, I know that electric trains generally only have a powered third rail. I'm just extending the metaphor.)

One of the most tired phrases in politics is "Social Security is the third rail of American politics."  The problem is that it's true - Bush figured that out by squandering all of his political capital trying to reform it back in 2005.  It turns out that old people vote and they can be easily scared when the spectre of taking away their government checks is brought up.

We face a similar problem with health care.  It's obvious that the system doesn't work, and not just for people with pre-existing conditions and those who lose coverage.  It costs too much and isn't portable.  The lack of a true national market and the employer coverage model is a failure.  Too many people lack coverage and those people stick hospitals with huge bills for admissions that could have been solved with a visit to the family doctor, if they had one.

That being said, there are a lot of solutions better than Obamacare.  We've heard them before on this site and others and they aren't the point of this post.  The problem is that if Obamacare is defeated, no politician in their right minds will touch the healthcare issue with a 10-foot pole.  In persuing the worthy goal of defeating one specific bill, the issue has been demagogued to the point of insanity with threats of "death panels" (Sen. Isakson (R-GA), who put the provision nominally at issue, thinks this is nuts), "keep government away from my Medicare (note: WTF?) and all sorts of hyperbole about the continued "existence of the republic."

And don't think for a minute that every accusation about killing grannies and such lobbed against government can't be lobbed at private insurers.

So instead of a debate on what to do, we have people holding up pictures of Obama with a Hitler mustache shouting down elected officials before they can answer questions.  We have liberals convinced that people who oppose Obamacare are foam-at-the-mouth dittoheads and birthers organized by lobbyists.  And they're partially correct - many (not all) town hall shouters have spouted a lot of nonsense and many are making this personally about the president and anger at losing the last election.  It's embarrasing to people who have real issues with Obamacare who want to and make something work instead of yelling until they're red in the face.

The window for reasonable debate has closed by conservatives who want to make this Obama's Waterloo and liberals who are circling the wagons against a perceived onslaught of crazies.  The next reform proposal from either side will fall into the same pattern.  Eventually, everybody with power to do anything will throw their hands up.

Now healthcare is a "third rail," just like Social Security.  There are other, smaller, third rails to contend with.  Our primary system is rigged to prevent any serious talk about ethanol.  Serious agriculture subsidies reform is stymied because the committees that make ag policy are filled with congressmen from districts that feed off the USDA teat.  We can't have a serious discussion about Israel for long without someone getting called an anti-semite or a zionist likudnik stooge.

The problem?  You can't cut the size of government with all of these third rails in the way.  Everything has to be on the table.

Healthcare isn't just a sixth of the U.S. economy, it's a very big chunk of government spending.  The problem with the deficit hawkery I've heard recently is that it's small bore.  Spending freezes avoid the difficult choices about what exactly we want to cut.  Pork appropriations, non-military foreign aid and arts funding seem like ripe targets for popular cuts, but they make up a vanishingly small part of the budget and won't change the overall fiscal picture.  Survey after survey shows that people think government is too big, but they don't want to cut funding for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security education, defense or anything specific beyond the amorphous "waste."  The only real solution is to slow and reverse the growth of healthcare costs while still providing the care people demand, and we are in the process of blowing it for the next several decades by turning a deadly serious issue over to the loudest, angriest, least reasonable wing of the movement, destroying any hope of comprimise a la Wyden-Bennett.

In the zeal to stop a bad new policy, we have guaranteed decades of the bad old policy.  Good job guys.

I know this might be akin to the Supreme Court using foreign law, and I suspect this guy was far from an economic conservative, but I think this sums up our attitude these days.

"Get up!, Stand up!

Stand up for your rights!"

As it's the end of the week, perhaps we ought to take a minute to look in the mirror and assess how and what we're doing.

Every day, I read the political blogs and every day, I'm getting more dissolusioned by the disconnect between the triumphalism that accompmanies each town hall news report and the video that accompanies it.  Blame the MSM until the cows come home, but I know what I see, and it doesn't bode well for the country or the conservative movement.

Perhaps my perspective is different because I live in a blue state, but we are forgetting that we are trying to convince people, not belittle or scream at them.  As every Code Pink loonie who has ever snuck into a congressional hearing has shown, chanting is not an effective method of political persuasion, only a way to prove to the chanters themselves that they have Done Something.

We need to keep our eyes on the goal: persuasion.  Not showing our numbers, not thinking up the most clever signs, but persuasion.  The people who support Obamacare are our neighbors, however wrong they may be on this issue.  They jump our cars when our batteries die.  They go to happy hour with us after work.  They are members of our families.  They are not  "sheeple" or "Obamabots."  Throwing around names like those are direct insults to people you know and love, whether you know it or not.

Obamacare supporters are just like you and me, except they have different opinions on issues of public policy.  If you want to make a difference, persuade them.  Here are some keys to persuasion and having a debate with people who are just like you and me and not some formless menacing mass:

- Engagement: Ask them if they have healthcare and if they like the coverage they have (they probably do).  Ask them if their employer would drop coverage if a public plan were to be created.  Ask them about major elective surgeries they've had and find out how long you have to wait for them in Canada.

- "Democrats did it" is not an excuse for any behavior.  Didn't your mom teach you that something isn't right just because someone else did it?

- Tyranny, Communist and Nazi are words that need to be banished from your vocabulary on this issue.  Your friends and neighbors have a picture in their heads about what a tyranny or a communist dictatorship looks like, and it isn't America, with or without socialized medicine.  Trying to convince people that the USA will be a socialist tyranny if the bill passes in its current form will only make you look like a nutjob to the kind of people who aren't immersed in the debate on a daily basis because they aren't tuned into the hyperbole the politically active always toss around.

- Facts and Figures:  Bone up, make a cheat sheet.  Keep it in your wallet. The odds are that whomever you're debating/persuading won't have one.  Advantage, you.

- Know the opposing arguments. Check out Krugman and Ezra Klein.  Try to picture them in a room with you making those arguments and think about how you might respond.  It's hard to be a persuader when the only material you read reinforces what you already believe.  Consider yourself an advocate.

- Keep townhalling.  Be a good example.  Think of someone in your past who changed your mind on a big issue and act like them.

Most of all, realize that our opponents are Americans who want the best for themselves, their families and the country.  To behave otherwise is unfair, self-aggrandizing and accomplishes nothing but raising your blood pressure.