Marxists, light bulbs, and former Senator Paul Tsongas were among a multitude of topics invoked during Congressman Michael Burgess's town hall meeting in West Frisco last evening. Here at the Leaf, we had other things to do, but thanks to the power of the interwebs, Burgess filmed his entire town hall live on Ustream and posted it to his website. In case he takes it down or moves it, we are posting it here (beware: it's an hour and a half of your life you may not get back, but feel free to skim)
Video streaming by Ustream
We expected the town hall to be the usual rah rah rally that local Republicans tend to get here in Denton County, but it wasn't so at Lone Star High School. It actually had some people who seemed to be Democrats asking questions.
The more liberal citizens made valid points in their questioning, on topics ranging from the destruction of Medicare under the Paul Ryan budget, how vouchers would ensure them insurance in lieu of Medicare, wanting to know why the GOP goes after small items like NPR or the EPA, and the fact the proposed budget is (as one citizen put it) "the wholesale transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich". Burgess did do a fair job of answering questions rationally, however a few points are a little hard to grasp.
When asked about budget cuts and tax hikes, Burgess replied that he believed Medicaid to have fraud of 10%. That seemed like an odd number to us, so we did a quick Google search and came up with an article about the urban myth of 10% fraud. Apparently this number was tossed into the public realm by the General Accounting Office in 1992, with no documentation to support it. An anti-fraud group who helped push that number, and even settled on 6% as their number, has since dropped that number to 3%. But the 10% myth still persists, and was even pushed by Burgess. Burgess's solution to preventing Medicaid fraud is to treat it like Visa or Mastercard does. We weren't really sure what the hell that meant, other than the fact they have employees who look for fraudulent charges. And personally, we really don't want Medicaid to operate anywhere remotely close to how our credit cards do lately-- especially since one citizen stated he filed bankruptcy recently and received a credit card offer at 128% interest.
The fun part of attending or watching these town halls is like watching a tsunami on YouTube. You anticipate it hitting something hard and killing everything in its path, but you can't turn away from it until you see someone swept out to sea. That is what the "conservative" comments were like in this town hall. You had your typical Marxism claims, as the very 1st citizen made against the President. You had your concerns over 2nd amendment rights. You even had your charge that the President is turning into a dictator by going to war with Libya. But then you get down to the good shit.
One woman made more of a speech than a question, and seemed to be a Congressman Ron "Buy Gold" Paul groupie. She spoke of how the federal government owned 650 million acres of land that is rightfully ours and she wanted it returned. Needless to say Burgess just sort of listened and didn't board that bandwagon. Apparently this is a problem, but we aren't sure why. This article tries to explain it. We don't really get it, and kind of dismissed it when we saw Senator Jim DeMint's name. He is even nuttier than Ron Paul.
The largest applause of the night came during a discussion by one concerned citizen about the environment who we gather was pushing for CFL bulbs to be standard. Burgess retorted "what business does the federal government have in telling me what type of light bulb to use?" You would have thought he was Sir William Wallace shouting out against the might King of England, because that light bulb commented whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Really, people? Light bulbs? Really? That is what chaps your hide? Granted, Burgess admitted he looked too pasty under florescent light, but give us a break.
And you probably wonder how Paul Tsongas got into the mix? Burgess cited a 1993 speech Tsongas gave in Dallas about structural debt in entitlement programs and how we would be screwed in 20 years time. We're two years away from that 20 years. Low and behold, he did make such a speech. YouTube has a two minute clip of it--- that he gave at DePauw University in Indiana on April 30, 1993 that just happened to be posted to YouTube only ten days ago? Why would someone post it so recently? We don't doubt Burgess heard the speech, but did he really hear it in 1993 or did someone dredge it up recently? It would seem rather obscure to reference a presidential also ran from the early 90s, so we still think it is suspect.
There you have an hour and a half in a Cliffs Notes blog post. We're kind of glad the Congressman made it over to Frisco and Little Elm, so we can see the true disparity among constituents, as well as what kind of representative we have aside from his Obamacare sound bites on FOX News. Once the voters get past alleged "birther hotels" and the oppression of light bulbs, maybe we can move forward as a country.
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