The Town Hall Meeting

This weekend, I joined about 200 of the local senior citizens (and a few others) by attending a town hall meeting held by my United States Congressman, Rush Holt (D-NJ).   These public meetings give the Congressman a chance to report what he sees first hand when he goes to work in Washington, and it gives the constituents and chance to voice concerns and ask questions.  The meeting also gives me a chance to see how passionate real live people are on issues and how seriously an actual Congressman takes them. I recognize this pertains directly to my Congressman, who is likely not your Congressman also, so I’ll only comment on the national issues. On many levels though, he does speak for many national Democrats so it should be relevant for most.  Among the wide range of topics discussed were:

• Universal Healthcare: Holt noted that our version of universal healthcare, Medicare, has just over a 1% overhead.  This means that 99 cents of every dollar spent on Medicare goes toward its real purpose – healthcare! This is hardly the case with privatized healthcare. With every person in the US spending at least $6,000 on healthcare per year today, Holt wryly stated that, “we should be able to provide pretty good service for $6,000 a year.”

• Election Reform: I was pleasantly surprised to see the true passion a lot of people had for this issue since it is not something I hear much about otherwise. Several people voiced their complete dissatisfaction with the current electronic voting process and they really worry, rightfully so, if they can trust the outcomes of certain elections.  Holt is a serious supporter of requiring a paper audit trail for all elections.  He summarized the importance of this issue by saying that all of our rights in a democracy derive from our ability to fairly elect our representatives.

• 2008: One woman railed about how it is dangerously early to discuss the 2008 Presidency at the rate that our media does today. Holt agreed and said he was basically tired of people asking him who he supports.  He was very concerned that our country is looking for that next great leader to come along and just solve all of our problems, while we should really be taking more initiative to do so ourselves at a personal and at a local level.

• Impeachment: An elderly woman asked where impeachment proceedings stood and if they are realistic (now things heated up).  Holt said that he was glad she brought it up because he planned to ask everyone where they stood on formal impeachment.  Then he did so by a show of hands and about 80% of the room was pro-impeachment as several people shouted Cheney’s name and Bush’s name.  Holt pointed out the obvious problem – if you impeach one you still have the other and he seemed resigned to the fact that it would be impossible to impeach both of them, to which several people responded, “who cares – just do it.”  Holt did seem convinced that Bush had likely committed a high crime by suspending Habeas Corpus and Holt was disappointed and even astonished that more Americans were not completely offended by Bush’s actions here (you gotta love our complacent electorate).  Despite his apparent leaning toward impeachment, Holt seemed quite concerned that impeachment hearings would be framed as partisan bickering and would allow Bush to rally his Party behind him.  I disagree with this. If the President did in fact break a law (something I don’t claim to be able to prove that he did), he should be impeached just as Clinton was.  And if Bush’s Party chooses to buy a ticket on the Titanic, then I wish them well in their next career.

If you have never taken the opportunity to see your Congressional Representative speak in such a format, I really recommend it. It’s easy to read on-line what people think about politics but to see it in person is entirely different and well worth seeing. Hopefully I've expressed that here.

Comments

[granny]

Good story!

[Michel]

If by impeached like Bill Clinton you mean acquitted by the Senate, then I disagree. :)

[George]

Thanks Granny.

Michel, Either way, Bush has a higher power to answer to one day and there will be no acquittal there, I am quite certain about that! It is interesting to see that this has all come down to congressmen actually discussing impeachment with constituents though.