Loebsack Town Hall In Fort Madison
August 15, 2009 14 Comments
A few minutes ago I returned from a very unrewarding town hall run by Representative David Loebsack of Iowa District Two. Unrewarding for starters because we could not get through the door and stood outside for almost an hour, peering in at what appeared to be seventy or so people, straining our ears to hear questions and answers.
Several times we tried other doors because we heard there was another hall or hallway that opened onto the main room where the event was being held, but we were told we could not stand in that hall or hallway. Others asked as well, and it was surprising there was no effort to make us more comfortable or even welcome. Surely unless Mr. Loebsack is COMPLETELY oblivious to his constituents, he must have noticed at least a dozen people, several of them elderly, standing in the full sun in 87 degree weather.
There seemed to be a few good questions but for the most part Mr. Loebsack didn’t answer them, at least not in couple of succinct sentences. Instead he resorted to the tactic of using the questioner’s topic to wander far afield into areas he wanted to promote. In this sense he reminded me of President Obama and many other evasive politicians.
It didn’t take us long to realize that Mr. Loebsack’s main objective in holding this town hall was to sell the health reform bill. To that end he assured us that we should not believe everything we read online and that if we had garnered a fact online that he refuted then we must not have been reading the bill itself but must have been on a website that gave us misinformation.
In other words, believe what I Mr. Loebsack say, and all else you see or hear is false. After saying this, he assured us that the House bill contains no mandatory requirement nor does it open the door for a mandatory requirement that all citizens have health care. In other words, Mr. Loebsack didn’t mention the 2.5% income tax that would be placed on people without a heath care plan that is acceptable to the government.
After almost an hour we had had enough. We knew Mr. Loebsack was not going to convince us the bill is worth a darn and we felt as if we had wasted our time on a salesman’s tour of a used car lot. We also knew we didn’t vote for Loebsack last time and we are not going to vote for him next time.
Before we left we were spoken to discourteously by another attendee because she overheard us whispering to each other that Loebsack was lying. This woman urged us to listen and learn something about the bill, to which I responded I have skimmed/read much of it. However she continued to loudly berate my husband and when she was through talking and I tried to stand up for us, she loudly shushed me! I don’t know what her political orientation was, and although her criticism of us had a point well taken—perhaps our word “lie” was too strong for that venue—she was certainly imperious and rude.
The most encouraging part of the event for us was the six or seven young–thirty or so– people who stood outside with us and were kind and friendly and clearly weren’t falling for a single word of Loebsack’s bull.
Hmmm…….sounds familiar. Please see this post. It is looking like a Democratic pattern. They are just pissed off that the peasants are rebelling.
http://iowadefensealliance.com/2009/08/09/fundamentals-of-staging-ornery-town-halls/
Great update and glad that the younger generation are not falling for the lies. The woman who was rude to you is living up to her name. I bet it was Liberal.
Heard a VERY different outlook from the town hall, from other people. But I suppose free speech is only heralded if you are agreeing with the man/woman trying to resurrect McCarthyism by labeling everyone who disagrees with you a socialist, by hanging congressmen in effigy, or by belittling the many people that did vote from Loebsack (and he beat Miller-Meeks by what…20 points?:) )
I can’t say what happened at Loebsacks meeting, but if it is anything like Boswell’s last event in Sigourney it was a staged event to make him look good.
Evidently you have failed to read the post and it’s subsequent comments because if you had you would know that no where in them is the word socialist uttered.
And your attempt to belittle the genuine concerns of numerous Americans is truly disgusting. I never thought that a veteran such as yourself would stoop to such lows.
Here’s the key line in the post: “we didn’t vote for Loebsack last time and we are not going to vote for him next time.”
The torch has passed to a new generation and the old regime is no more. You may not like Medicare for all, we want changes. We know the current system is bankrupting America one insurance policy at a time.
I tried hard on this post not to name call and even to call myself out on what was quite possibly inappropriate behavior on my part.
The fact is, I did not hear anything at this town hall meeting to change my mind and vote for Loebsack this time around….but I think I made it clear that I was NOT able to hear everything that occurred and perhaps if I’d been able to get inside the door, my opinions might be different now.
That was really all I was trying to communicate and with as little emotion as I was able to avoid.
Thanks for not engaging in name-calling. I thought you gave a good account of the meeting. Blogs are best when they report original material like this.
So, someone else better write a post about Boswell’s townhall in Des Moines this coming Sunday as I may resort to name-calling
A congressman lieing to the public Surley Not ! They are so full of crap they could sell a deep freeze to a eskimo. I dont trust a single one of them.
A couple of additional thoughts on the Loebsack town hall:
One of the truly interesting things for me was that I really could not tell who the players were without a program! In other words, I simply couldn’t decide who was a Republican, who was a Democrat, who was a conservative, who was a liberal, or who was left, right , or middle, etc. And quite honestly this inability on my part helped “blunt my tongue.”
Just when I thought I might have people pegged, they would often turn around and say something that appeared to me to be completely contradictory to what they should have said if they strictly followed the agenda I THOUGHT they subscribed to.
I have to say I liked the fact that people were not necessarily consistent according to my concept of what their consistency should be. It made me realize how many views there are out there, just how much variety if you will, and how these views may or may not end up under the same tent(s).
Very interesting to watch this unfold, but I am not sure the differences among views are strictly generational unless we can use that term loosely to encompass cultural differences that aren’t based entirely on chronological age. Yes, as Dylan says, “The Times They Are A’ Changin.” That song used to drive my mother up a wall, and now she has passed away. And the words don’t mean exactly what they used to.
I agree that the range of public opinion is always a lot wider than we expect. And lots of people don’t think much about politics so they carry inconsistent beliefs around in their minds, even expressing inconsistencies out loud when they actually do talk politics.
Some of this is based on lack of knowledge, not just lack of clear thinking. For example, today a poll came out showing 6% of Americans believe Obama was born in Hawaii and that’s why he’s not a legitimate President–because Hawaii is not a state!!!!!!!!
Who could have predicted such a range of political opinion?
Jerry, you make a good point.
In an ideal world the voters would be educated and informed and that is a tough task these days what with the state of many of our schools, the media, the internet, etc. I pretty much question everybody and especially myself and appreciate any time anybody can correct me with facts. Too often it seems people try to correct each other with opinions… and you know what they say about opinions….
I heard that Loebsack commented that it doesn’t matter anymore what the Constitution says. I’m not sure if it was at this townhall or another one.
I didn’t hear Congressman Loebsack say anything about the Constitution, although I am sure I missed a great deal of what was said by him and by others..unfortunate, to say the least.
I did notice a large portrait tof George Washington on the wall behind Mr. Loebsack’s head and I was struck by the unavoidable comparison which was not necessarily complimentary to our representative.