California Conservative

All across the nation, TEA parties have drawn big crowds. Speaker Pelosi says that the people attending the rallies aren’t working people, that they’re part of an astroturf campaign. The DNC has run a video calling TEA Party activists and the people attending August’s townhall meetings an “angry mob.”

While there’s no arguing that people are upset with things, it’s wrong for the DNC to characterize the people showing up at the events as angry mobs. The people who’ve attended TEA parties and townhalls aren’t just upset; they’re worried. Mostly, they’re people who just want to be listened to.

What’s got them worried is the amount of money that’s being spent to not create jobs. Another thing that’s got them worried is that legislators don’t truly want to listen. This winter, the DFL announced plans to conduct hearings as part of their listening tour. As I reported here, their intent wasn’t to listen to people but to secretly encourage testimony that re-inforced their agenda that favored tax increases over budget cuts and reforms:

From: Gene Pelowski [mailto:Rep.Gene.Pelowski@house.mn]
Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 10:13 AM
This Friday, February 20, there will be a bicameral hearing held in our region. Senators and Representatives from both political parties will be in Winona from 3:30 to 5:30 PM, Winona City Hall, 207 Lafayette St. The purpose of this hearing is to get testimony from affected programs in every level of government, education, health care or service impacted by the cuts suggested by the Governor’s state budget.

I am writing you to ask that you or a designee get scheduled to testify. You may do this by going to the House website at www.house.mn and clicking on “Town Meetings”.

We would ask you to focus your comments on the impact of the Governor’s budget including what is the harm to your area of government or program. Please be as precise as possible using facts such as number of lay offs, increases in property taxes, cuts in services, increases in tuition, elimination of programs. To be respectful of the time necessary to hear from a large number of constituents it would be advised to use no more than 3-5 minutes to convey your message. If you choose to provide handouts or printed materials, please plan to bring approximately 25 copies, enough for committee members and media.

Sincerely,
Representative Gene Pelowski
District 31A

This is a perfect example of the DFL’s intent to not listen to John Q. Public but rather to find activists who would make statements that the DFL leadership agreed with. That didn’t work then here in Minnesota and it won’t in other states, either.

Lots of people showed up for the hearing. Many people got passed over because the DFL cherrypicked the people they wanted to testify. When the hearing was adjourned, an entire section of the City Hall erupted and asked why they couldn’t talk about cutting spending. Looking back at the subjects that were talked about, it’s clear that the DFL wasn’t going to talk about anything that they didn’t support.

The American people are frustrated because their elected officials would rather manipulate them than listen to them.

Another thing that TEA party activists are upset about is the fact that they’ve asked questions about specific provisions in the various health care bills, only to be told that the legislation doesn’t contain such a provision. Another time, Claire McCaskill was told by an audience member that President Obama was an advocate for a single-payer health care system. When she replied that President Obama wasn’t an advocate for a single-payer health care system, the crowd told her that they’d seen the YouTube of him saying it quite clearly.

Following those types of things, I can’t blame the American people for being frustrated. What good are legislators if their constituents know more about complex legislation than the legislators know? What good are legislators if they spend more time spinning things in their direction than they spend giving their constituents a straight answer?

Couple that with their frustration over seeing the Obama administration borrow and spend money at a faster pace than any other administration by a staggering amount and it’s pretty easy to understand why people are flocking to TEA parties and townhall events.

During my speech at the 9/12 TEA Party, I echoed King’s rallying cry of “NO MORE!!!”:

NO MORE will We The People let you ignore us. NO MORE will We The People believe that all wisdom resides in tiny corridors of Washington, DC or St. Paul, MN. NO MORE will we treat the words from a career politician’s mouth like they were etched in stone on Mount Sinai.

Let’s take a lesson from today. Look around you & see how many of our neighbors, our co-workers & our friends are standing with us. For too long, we haven’t spoken up because we didn’t have the courage to tell our elected officials what we thought.

NO MORE!!!

Conservatives criticized President Bush’s spending habits but nothing like now. Perhaps that’s because his spending, as bad as it was, wasn’t as startling as Obama’s spending is. Finally, we’re demanding that money be spent wisely on things that will create jobs. Without job creation, there is no future. The Great Recession won’t end until jobs start being created.

At the moment, the Democrats seem impervious to calls for fiscal sanity. We tell politicians that we need to create jobs. They ignore us. We tell them that their health care proposals don’t cut health care costs and that they cost too much. They ignore us.

If Congress keeps ignoring We The People, they’ll soon find themselves joining the ranks of the unemployed.

Technorati Tags: TEA Party, President Obama, Townhalls, Congress, Health Care, Spending, Election 2010

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 5:07 am and is filed under Activism, Author: Gary Gross, Conservatism, Health Care, Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.