Everybody In? Nobody Out?
Is that a threat or a promise?
Goodness. Whatever happened to that noble liberal battle cry from days gone by: Keep your politics off my body?
Here’s an email from an attendee of Congressman, Ed Permutter's um, townhall event in Denver over the weekend:
“I just returned from a rally for health care reform held at North High School in Denver. As Erin and I were entering the staging area we were approached by people carrying clipboards. We were told we could not enter without signing our name and address on the form. I asked why they needed this information and was told they must know who was entering the area.This was a tax payer supported high school property hosting public speakers and I was being denied entry unless the clipboard form was completed. I was very uncomfortable with this request and remained outside the chain link fence to listen to the speakers.
The first speaker was my very own repesentative, Ed Permutter who thanked all who had signed the clipboard form and stated that all these signatures would go on to to Washington showing support of the Obama Health Care Plan. I could not believe what I heard. Never was it stated that this form was a support of the health care plan. I just wonder how many people were dooped into signing this when they do not support the bill or do not know enough about it to make a decision.People carrying signs supporting the bill were permitted entry with their signs, those opposing had to remain outside.
Read more about this event, here.
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2 comments:
According to the email you are quoting, it was not a town hall event, it was "rally supporting health care reform." That being the case, what is wrong with making sure that everyone who is attending the rally show that they are supporting what the rally is supporting? And if they don't want to attend the rally, they can form their own rally opposing health care reform.
And it is "duped," by the way.
Joe, thanks for stopping by and thanks for commenting.
I used "townhall event" facetiously so if the intent was misunderstood, my bad. By the way, I checked out Permutter's website and dude is indeed having a townhall event... over the phone. Nice.
I absolutely have a problem with what is going on here whether it was a "townhall" or a "rally".
This rally was held by that district's representative on public property with what I am assuming was funded by taxpayer dollars.
How does that give the right to Permutter's "muscle" to deny entrance to anybody regardless of their position on the issue?
Further, taking the email prima facie, it is disengenuous to not tell people the true intent of taking down their personal information. How do you square that?
And speaking of "muscle", what are those green shirts doing, anyway? Why are they even approaching the people with the signs in the pictures? To engage in debate? Again, this is all public property. It sure looks like intimidation to me.
And thanks for the spell-check, though, I merely cut'n'pasted the email from the linked blog post.
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