Imagine the glee I felt when I heard that my wonderfully approachable (yeah, right) Congressman, Henry Waxman, was making a rare visit on August 21st to the district he represents. He wants to hear from us, his loyal constituents, at a town hall style discussion at UCLA focusing on the Cap and Trade legislation.
As a citizen, candidate, and voter in Mr. Waxman’s district, I thought that this would be a plum of a chance for Rep. Waxman to hear what’s on my mind.
That is when it got weird.
Firstly, I found out that one had to RSVP to the event to reserve a space. OK, I thought, Henry Waxman’s personal popularity has never been higher and people really want to be around him so his magic can rub off on them. Maybe they expect quite a throng and thus must have crowd control in place to make sure that the event runs smoothly.
I called his office and asked to be put on the list. A staffer told me about the ticketing process, and lo and behold the reservation system was not even being handled by Henry Waxman’s office but out of California State Senator, Fran Pavley’s website. How odd, the headliner, Waxman, is keeping access to the event focusing on his landmark energy bill hidden behind the opening act of a rather anonymous State Senator. I wonder why? Kind of like pitching Bill Smitrovich in “Iron Man “instead of Robert Downey, Jr. and Terrance Howard. Not to knock Mr. Smitrovich’s wonderful rendition of General Gabriel in last years monster film, but it is Robert Downey, Jr. who puts the folks in the seats. What is Mr. Waxman afraid of?
Next, I went to Senator Pavley’s website to follow the RSVP instructions for the event and instead of just having an online page to confirm that I am coming, the page took an “application” for the event and requested certain data about me in the “required fields” such as name, email address, organization, position in the organization and (not required) phone number.
I filled this all in and the page gave me a message that my application was being processed and I would hear back from them shortly.
Ok, so minus salary information and my SS# this was equal to the amount of information I gave on my first credit card application.
In an effort to guarantee a friendly crowd, can Waxman and company be running a voter background check on all applicants to make sure that only high propensity Democrat voters, (i.e. leftist crazies) are let in? I can understand this because NPR reported that the conservative media has been sandbagging Democrats at town halls across the land by sending in wild-eyed “mobs” of conservative God-fearing menopausal home makers to wreak havoc on the meetings by berating legislators for destroying the free market system, liberty, and our medical care system. When Code Pink and Cindy Sheehan did the same during the Bush years it was patriotism, now it’s called mob behavior. Things change fast!
There are many issues at play here. One is that the most powerful elected official from the LA area is either afraid of or smart enough not to face his voters after doing his best to wreck their lives with his two latest pieces of legislation. Another is transparency. When the Democrats took over Congress after the 2006 elections, Nancy Pelosi promised to “drain the swamp” of the culture of corruption. This theme was repeated when Obama took office and promised a “new age of transparency and government accountability.”
Some accountability this is.
Passing thousand page bills in the middle of the night that no one has or could read, rushing the bills through by claiming how urgent they are and then taking a couple days vacation to find the right photo opportunity for the signing… If anything this is the least transparent and most opaque government American’s have had in generations. We have no idea what the Cap and Trade and the health care bills will actually contain once they are written — other than a bunch of horrible things that will make our lives harder and cost us more money.
In order to counter Henry Waxman’s lack of openness, I decided to hold my own town hall meeting at UCLA on the same day as his.
Mine will be from 12:00PM-1:30PM in the Humanities Building room 169 and I will take an audience of people from all political persuasions and address their questions in an open and constructive way.
We will also have a panel of experts to answer questions the people have on numerous pertinent issues.
I hope that these events provide a contrast between Henry Waxman the ELECTED representative of the 30th district of California who is not representing our needs and myself, the NOT-YET ELECTED representative but someone truly representing the district’s constituents and not afraid of them.
I hope to see you there, and do me a favor: please ask me the tough questions that you would want to ask Congressman Henry Waxman, if you could.
TOWN HALL ON HEALTH CARE
WITH
ARI DAVID
Ari will be holding a town hall discussion for the public and the constituents of the 30th district on the issue of health care reform.
Friday, August 21st
Noon – 1:30 pm
Humanities 169, UCLA Campus
405 Hilgard Ave, Los Angeles
Enter UCLA Campus off of Hilgard and park in lots #1, #3 or A
Map of UCLA http://maps.ucla.edu/campus/
Please come and join in this informative discussion with the next Congressman of the 30th district!
www.tinyurl.com/aridavidforcongress
“The first unintended victim of almost every government program is common sense. I would like to bring some common sense back to our political sphere.” – Ari David