Philip Dampier, who also writes a Stop the Cap, has posted his personal experience of last night's town hall on his blog. Over at City Newspaper, Jeremy Moule has added his take.
It was clear that many of those attending last night's meeting were upset at "the government". Though they were able to grasp the general argument ("government is evil"), the specifics at times eluded them.
For example, many of those wanting government out of their lives were obviously Medicare-eligible. Either they've chosen not to participate in Medicare, or what they really meant was that they don't want their government-run healthcare extended to others.
The anti-government crowd was also quite interested in Massa's government-sponsored plan. Though Massa stated at the outset that he hadn't accepted the Congressional coverage available to him, he still got a couple of questions about it. At one point, while Massa was explaining yet again that he didn't take the Congressional plan, someone yelled out "but you're a Navy veteran". A fair number of the anti-government crowd was wearing veterans caps, and one of them identified himself as a West Point grad. I assume they never darken the door of the VA, lest they accidentally come in contact with their prime bogeyman, the government.
Finally, to those who were complaining that government-run healthcare would be like a trip to the DMV: from your lips to God's ears. The wait at the DMV is much shorter than the average wait in the Emergency Department, and the crowd is a lot less miserable.
Anyone who's wondering whether Gannett's recent cuts are affecting their coverage of local issues can take a look at today's web coverage of Massa's Mendon town hall. Politico has a report from the meeting. It's about 30 paragraphs long. The Democrat and Chronicle devoted three paragraphs, each containing one sentence, to the event.
The Politico reporter thought that healthcare opponents outnumbered supporters. That wasn't clear to me. The crowd was large, so it was hard to judge.
WHEC's video of the meeting includes a clip of the guy who was so upset about abortion. 13 WHAM also has a report on the event.
Update: Actually, the D&C has more on the meeting, but it's buried in their editorial board blog. The title is "Civility Rules at Massa Town Hall Meeting". Compared to some other meetings, where arrests were made, I guess this meeting was civil. But it sure wasn't the calmest town hall I've ever attended.
I've just returned from Eric Massa's town hall meeting in the Village of Honeoye Falls in the Town of Mendon. I left after 90 minutes of the meeting. For all I know, it's still going on, since Massa said that he'd answer all the questions before he left.
When I arrived about 15 minutes before the scheduled start of the event, cars lined both sides of Route 65 for at least a half mile on either side of the Mendon Community Center. At least a couple hundred people gathered under and around a picnic shelter behind the building, where Mendon officials scrambled to get a public address system working to amplify Massa's voice.
The crowd seemed equally divided between supporters of single-payer health care, and those opposed to government-run health care. Some of the supporters of government health care were identified by signs supporting HR 676. A few of the opponents sported yellow t-shirts and caps emblazoned with wesurroundrochester.com, which marked them as Glenn Beck followers. Why anyone would want to be identified as such is yet another mystery of the evening.
Most of them crowd was able to keep their mouths shut while others were speaking. Unfortunately, some of the health care opponents were unable to contain their righteous fury and frequently barked out a few pet phrases to drown out Massa or his questioners. Common chants were "stop lying" to Massa, and "Free Enterprise" and "Capitalism" whenever government alternatives to private insurance were discussed.
Massa, who had to remind the crowd to be polite a number of times, took the heckling in stride. He began the meeting by displaying the current healthcare bill, HR 3200, and pointed out that he had read the whole thing. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of most of those in attendance. Instead, many had to make do with emails from right wing organizations eager to spread falsehoods about the bill.
Perhaps the most glaring example of that was a gentleman who was actually crying by the time he was done asking his question. He believed, wrongly, that some language had been added to the bill that would allow government funds to pay for abortions. Massa repeatedly and patiently explained that this was impossible, because the Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of government funds to pay for abortions. This has been true since 1976, and, unfortunately, will be true for years to come, but green polo shirt in the front row wasn't going to accept Massa's answer. He thought government funds were going to be used to "kill babies".
Similarly, some poor woman was positive that she would be forced to choose the public option if she changed jobs. Leaving aside the fact that there's no really strong public option in HR 3200, Massa rightly pointed out that she'd have to take whatever insurance her new employer offered if she changed jobs. The same woman had also heard that the bill would allow the government full access to her bank account. Massa pointed out that there was a provision in the bill that all providers would have to take payments via electronic funds transfer.
Most of the healthcare opponents seemed to be a bit stymied by Massa's position on HR 3200, and by his position on other hot-button bills. He opposes HR 3200 as written because it has a weak public option. He voted against cap-and-trade. He voted against the Iraq War supplemental on the grounds that we had no exit strategy from Iraq, and therefore there's no end in sight to our spending there. Any indication of fiscal conservatism garnered wild applause from the conservatives in the audience, yet the same people applauding and yelling for some of Massa's votes were calling him a liar a few minutes later.
All the Rochester TV stations were in attendance at the meeting, along with some print reporters. Presumably, it will lead the 11:00 news. I'm not sure how it will play, but neither of the groups at this meeting will end up happy. Those supporting HR 676 will be dissatisfied because even the most robust version of HR 3200 will not include a single-payer option. The Glenn Beck listeners will be mad because the government will be more involved in healthcare than ever before.
But I'm happy because I'm done straining to hear what Massa has to say over the catcalls of a dozen teabaggers who feel the need to holler every time their elected representative says something they don't like.
Politico has an article about Eric Massa's visit from members of Healthcare for America Now (HCAN). The group, which is pro health reform, delivered 5,000 signatures to Massa's office on Tuesday, and representatives from that group met with Massa on Wednesday.
Massa's in an interesting position on healthcare reform. He opposes the current bill because it does not include a strong public option to compete with private insurers. Because of that opposition, groups like HCAN are lobbying him to vote for the bill. Yet his fundamental position, support of single-payer health care, is consistent with HCAN's, and anathema to the right-wing groups planning a visit to tonight's town hall in Mendon.
Reader Elmer sends this Corning Leader exclusive interview with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Eric Massa.
Massa also met with the Star-Gazette editorial board. Here's the S-G interview.
Finally, the Democratic National Committee has launched a pro-Massa radio ad campaign. Audio and text of the ad after the break:
Text:
Congressman Eric Massa is fighting for New York. He's taking on the lobbyists and the special interests and standing up for us and our families. And he is working every day to make sure we have affordable quality health care.
Congressman Massa fought to expand health care to millions of children - and now Eric Massa is working for health insurance reform that lowers your costs and protects your choice of doctors and plans.
But it won’t be easy. Health insurance companies have made record profits by doubling premiums and denying people coverage.
And now, they and their lobbyists are fighting tooth and nail to stop reform and protect the status quo - and their profits – at the expense of affordable health care for families, small businesses and millions of Americans. But Eric Massa is fighting back.
Call Eric Massa at 585-218-0040. Thank Congressman Massa for standing up for New York families and our health care.
Paid for by the Democratic National Committee. Democrats.org. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. The DNC is responsible for the content of this advertising.
Stlo7 at Rochesterturning did some citizen journalism and counted petition pages in LD-21. That's the district that the Smugtown Beacon reported about.
It turns out that 2/3 of the pages submitted were turned in by Republicans, most of whom work for the Monroe County Republican Party, or Republican officials. In his latest post, Aaron Wicks said the following about Republicans circulating petitions:
But this is not the stuff of political intrigue. It's people helping people -- motivated by a lot of different motives.
That's not how it looks today. Yet more evidence that merely signing your name to your blog doesn't make it more likely that you're credible.
Freedom Works is a group that is supporting the recent protests at Congressional town hall meetings, like the one that's supposed to occur on Thursday in Mendon. Philip Dampier, the blogger behind Stop the Cap, points out an interesting connection:
The group behind all of this, Freedom Works, is an astroturfing group I’ve dealt with before on our municipal broadband issue that I write often about on Stop the Cap! It suckers ordinary citizens into advocating against their own best interests by… well, making stuff up and scaring them. They always hide their true funding backers, pretending to be a “consumer group.”
Municipal broadband isn’t a way for local governments to supply broadband service at the speeds and pricing consumers want, it’s an ‘Obama-engineered socialist takeover of the Internet, as part of his secret campaign for stifling dissent.’ They load mostly retired folks who sit around all day listening to talk radio onto several buses and send them into various places to protest and disrupt.
We endured this nonsense in our successful battle in North Carolina, and those asking some of these people questions quickly learned they had no idea what the specific issues were — they were given basic talking points, a bus ride, and told to chant various slogans which usually had little to do with the issues at hand.
Eric Massa's Thursday night meeting in Mendon will be the target of a group called "ReformNYS". In a message posted on that group's mailing list, a list member posted the following:
Lets give him [Massa] what Arlen Spector just got in PA on the "Health Care Bill"
What Spector "just got" was a bunch of people yelling during his meeting, drowning out the speakers and those who might want to ask questions.
It's worth noting that this is not at all the treatment Randy Kuhl got at his town hall meetings. I attended one meeting where there were silent protesters. At another meeting, a MoveOn representative presented Randy with some signed petitions. Everyone got a chance to speak, and nobody was drowned out.
There's nothing wrong with organizing protests outside town hall meetings, asking tough questions at those meetings, and presenting Members of Congress with petitions. Disrupting those meetings is just a stupid, bullying tactic that can only end badly.
The Smugtown Beacon's Aaron Wicks has responded publicly to the City Newspaper story mentioned in the last post.
Aaron gives reasons why he doesn't think there's a conspiracy afoot by Republicans in petition gathering in LD-21. While doing so, he reports the facts left out of his last LD-21 story, which were reported by City and Moonbat over Monroe, and repeated by me: Wicks did circulate petitions himself, and Republicans were active in circulating petitions in LD-21.
It's a good thing whenever someone responds to criticism. In addition to his recent post, I had a cordial email exchange with Aaron, who seems like a reasonable person. But I still think my main point from the last post stands: revealing your real name and some biographical facts is no guarantee by itself that what you report is more accurate than what can be found in an anonymous blog.