Yesterday's tea parties in Jackson, Brighton, and Troy turned out incredible numbers. I knew Troy would be big when a text from Brighton informed me over 4,000 were there. I wonder if Brighton police used their anti-American anti-"annoyance" ordinance yesterday. I'm sure somebody in Brighton had to be a bit irritated by that turn out. Regardless, the word from Troy that I heard was that the group of people was so packed as to make movement difficult, and that Bruce Fealk and his anti-tea-protest of a few dozen protested across the street of Big Beaver (a multi-lane divided road for outstate readers) from the City Hall and that they were allegedly afraid to cross the street and venture over into the sea of protestors as they might occasionally do when trying to infiltrate and waterdown a protest.
No media other than Fox has given a precise number yet, with headlines vaguely downplaying the 10-12K statewide as "thousands attend Brighton, Troy" (Detroit News, which leaves out Jackson which is not in their publication's mainline readership).
Although we weren't able to attend, OaklandPolitics will have more hard coverage on this tonight.
Here are three links to the three roughly 40 minute chapters of the the 2 hour Gary Peters townhall. It's all there except for a small snippet between the chapters for a plugin change necessitated by the movement other members of the media in the media area.
I've posted the final (actually, first, but due to technical issues last uploaded) in the series of the complete September 1, 2009 Townhall on health care reform performed by Congressman Gary Peters.
While much of the townhall gets bogged down in nuance and political trivia, a number of issues do get raised and Peters' was forced to move at least some step toward defining his views, even if finding answers in the video will sometimes get difficult. Peters still claims to not be sure how he'll vote, and that may or may not be true but his slides and some of his answers put him on the record on at least some parts of the issue.
A few things I didn't notice during the past few days, but just picked up on.
Although the story doesn't give us a citation (disappointing, but I'm reasonably OK with it because the story was seemingly balanced, thorough, and other bloggers found the interesting fact that the MacKenzie passing out signs before the event was related to a Oakland County judge), it's clear that it relied on the story we broke here on August 31, the day before the event, on the "escalating e-mails".
The Oakland County Republican and Democratic parties, in dueling e-mails this week, warned their supporters to arrive early to get seats but also called for peaceful protest.
I know of no other source that published the e-mails the day before the event but may be missing something.
Also, take a look at photos 3 and 5 - photos of the Larouches Oakland Politics posted video of immediately after the event on Tuesday night on YouTube. The photos say nothing of who the Larouchers are and gives them way to much photographic editorial attention - at least without mention of their background and no context provided. OaklandPolitics.com feels quite justified in pointing this out early - the Larouchers are extremists who label themselves FDR Democrats and are far from Republicans or 99% of the liberty or conservative movements. They're certainly far away from Democrats too, but to pin them on any one in this debate is inappropriate. High profile debates bring out political extremists and even opportunists who might use the issue as "transitional issue" (that goes back to Marx).
Finally, C & G News' West Bloomfield writer, Eric Czarnik, quoted me in this piece asking specifics about what I saw wrong with the Peters event. Sometimes reporters capture your meaning well, sometimes they mangle by cutting context. Here, the reporter gets it right - in a balanced piece that presents both sides of the issue.
Chetly Zarko, who owns the right-leaning OaklandPolitics.com blog and forum, attended the meeting and was skeptical of Peters’ belief that his plans could avoid adding to the deficit.
“He certainly gave us no explanation for what else he would cut or what taxes would be raised or where the money would come from,” Zarko said.
Zarko added that some conservatives think a public option could hurt the private sector because a government program could compete without having to pay taxes.
On Sept. 1's Townhall last Tuesday hosted by Gary Peters, the question pictured here was considered one of the tougher moments for Peters. The woman's photo appeared in at least one newspaper and the budget question she raised was a significant one. She began with a modest thanks to Peters for hosting the event and even concession that his slide show bullet points were something she thought "everyone could agree with" (some in the crowd reminded her that wasn't true, but I liked her approach in conceding the value of the "wishes" Peters had in his "principles for reform", which was about as specific as he got in outlining what he might or might not vote for). She scolds Peters and Congress for believing any government program could come in "under budget" and points to the fact that households routinely have to live within their means. The crowd gave her a roaring ovation, and Peters responded with a long and airy response.
I see this as one of the best moments of night because of Peters non-answer. First, he tries to go on with an airy response that doesn't much address the budget question - his most specific point was to 'remind' us somehow that very recently the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) amended its budget prediction from increased debt by over a Trillion dollars to something quite less than that. Maybe they did - who cares. CBO is non-partisan, but when the pressure is on the Speaker can pull strings and make threats behind the scenes and predictions somehow change. The claim doesn't address the point Maria made though - government programs don't come in at less than expected costs. History is rife with over-budget costs. And no one seriously believes increasing coverage for 45 million won't cost money - to deny it will is to deny reality and common-sense. Whether those people should be covered REGARDLESS of the cost is the real issue; and then the question is how. Many conservatives point out you could cover the uninsured directly without the need for such a complicated federal proposal, and they argue that if you count the numbers of voluntarily uninsured, immigrants, and wealthy that self-insure the numbers are considerably less. If the goal is to protect people in job transition, I'd suggest a change to unemployment compensation and to increase portability. Increased portability is something most agree on as a goal - ironically - and one superb way of doing that is to increase health savings account capabilities and usage. Add tort reform and actually eliminating the legal barriers of selling insurance across state lines, which decreases competition, and some other patchwork solutions, and you quickly have alot of little reforms that make a pretty good accumulation of improvements.
A second thing that strikes me is Peters' reliance on the argument that "competition is good."
Though this proposal represents a core attack on competition and the market - and some in the media and government have made that blatant - Peters reliance on the "competition" that the cooperatives or public option might create is a fundamental admission that socialism can't be sold as socialism. It is an admission of the victory of the philosophical victory the market has won in the last three decades. Even government programs must be shrouded in the language of the market to slide them through. Obama recognized from day one, though its not clear other parts of the reform movement have because they have overtly attacked the evilness of profit and particularly profit in an area where life and death decisions are made. I've heard proposals to "eliminate for-profits" altogether (and replace them with "non-profits," which merely hide their greed differently, through boards and executives salaries). Of course, eliminating for-profits is socialism.
But I think its remarkable in this answer by Peters how much the reforms must be shrouded in "increased competition". If "increased competition" were truly the nature of these reforms, we'd be talking a whole different set of reforms encouraging and perhaps subsidzing for the poor or employment transitioning health saving accounts and other vehicles or simply portabilizing all insurance and making prices more transaprent and ending the bans on inter-state insurance sales.
The theme of the night was to not really take a position and not really answer questions. We've all seen the political masters do it on the TV talk shows when the rare good question is asked. Talk around it. Get back to your talking points. Ignore the question.
There's actually something kind of endearing about watching a master do it. Bill Clinton was so good at it that you knew you were watching the political artist of his era. We still haven't heard an exact definition of what "change" Barack Obama envisioned in 2008, let alone even a plan on health care from Obama himself. There's an art in leaving no clear target.
Indeed, its hard to blame Gary Peters too much for waffling when his Party's own President hasn't even offered a plan and the entire House process has been a continuously moving target. Even the extreme Bruce Fealk agreed with me on this one thing in the parking lot of the Marty Knollenberg event last week that the whole issue has been too much of a moving target (of course, he'd prefer to ram his vision of justice down the throats of everyone else without compromise, but there's at least something noble in his consistency, albeit foolish and anti-democratic). People get legitimately worried when they don't know exactly what the change will be (at least when we're not in election mode and the details actually do matter), and no one legitimately knows what the actual change here will be. So the debate hasn't really started.
So there was Gary Peters playing the theme of not answering the question last night. At least twice he was press on tort reform - once for a "yes or no answer" - and he wouldn't answer. We don't know really how he'll vote on HR 3200, though we are repeatedly told he has "some concerns" about it and some things he "likes". You know, I oppose it but I can honestly say I have both concerns (probably alot more than Peters) and some "likes" too (I can see the need for some health cost reforms, but there's alot more direct and market-based ways of doing it). Still, as much as I long for real answers, there's something artistic about watching the politician answer questions with non-answers.
He also certainly had some pretty slides - well prepared to hit some of the softball questions he was thrown by plants (see Wolfer's article quoting some of the questions). And in fairness, he fielded a reasonable questions by opponents even though all questioners were pre-screened by use of index card submissions (and we are left to wonder how random that process truly was). The crowd inside was probably close to 50-50% - from the crowd response I thought anti-federalization supporters outnumbered the Peters supporters maybe 51-49, but it was very close. I heard "worst case" numbers of 60-40% from Peters people and would note that the physical distribution of the crowd was 90% Peters in the front and 90% anti-Peters in the back with a hard-to-measure mix in the middle (because the Peters supporters definitely outnumbered everyone early by coming at 4pm but there weren't enough of them to fill the auditorium so they were outnumbered by late comers in the back of the auditorium).Outside, WWJ radio reported 300 people were turned away at the door (at roughly 5pm, ironically - the doors were opened at 430 quite strategically apparently). That crowd was allegedly 4 or 5 to 1 against Peters, and if allowed inside would have most certainly tipped the balance from nearly even or slightly Peters to 65% against him.
The theme of the night was to not really take a position and not really answer questions. We've all seen the political masters do it on the TV talk shows when the rare good question is asked. Talk around it. Get back to your talking points. Ignore the question.
