My First Town Hall

Well, I attended my first town hall meeting today. My mom informed me last week that Sen. John McCain was holding a town hall at her church and asked if I would like to attend. I told her I would, but that I wouldn't use her name if asked, since many of my political views differ from her church family. We both chuckled and I started thinking about what I would ask Sen. McCain, who I happen to have a tremendous amount of respect for. I have really been trying to bring to light the need for corporate money to be removed from our political process, so this seemed like the perfect forum to bring that up. Sen. McCain, along with Sen. Russ Feingold, sponsored campaign reform legislation that was passed in 2002, and he had asked then candidate Obama to use public funding only during the last presidential campaign.

As the week went on, my brother and I were talking about legislation we had seen Sen. McCain proposed legislation regarding internet regulation, and this changed my approach completely. If you are not familiar with this legislation, it is S. 1836, commonly referred to as the "Internet Freedom Act". Don't worry, the bill is all of 1 page, and simply asks for regulation of the internet to be taken from the FCC and given to the telecommunication companies that currently provide all of us access to the internet.

The question is how does this mean internet freedom? Currently, you are reading a blog posted by me completely free of charge. I will link this blog on my Twitter page and my Facebook page, also free of charge. If the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) gain control of this, what is to stop them from charging to host blogs such as this, or to develop their own search engine and blog system and slow the access to Google entirely? You may say, "I would switch providers.", but don't you think the others would be doing similar? Next thing you know, our last viable means of totally free communication could be gone. This is completely unacceptable to me, and I would think it would be to those of you whose only interaction on the internet aside from e-mails is the same free services I am referring to.

So now, I have a two part question. Sen. McCain has said in the past election cycle the internet is not one of his strong suits, so why then is he proposing this legislation? Could it be the telecommunication industry lobbyists, who are currently one of the largest contributors to his campaign? This makes a perfect segue into the second part of the question. "Sen. McCain, given your record of campaign reform, do you not think it is time to propose legislation to remove corporate funding entirely from the political process, and return control of our leaders to the American people"?

I enter the town hall about 1/2 hour after the doors open, and about an hour before he is scheduled to arrive. I greet a couple of people I know from the church, a discussion about mandatory health care sparks up, and I begin the process of refuting rhetoric and propaganda with facts and truth. Soon enough, these folks have to go "check on things before we get started". I'm familiar with that evasive maneuver. I take my seat and begin watching people mill around, listening to their dialogue to get a sense of the crowd I am in. A lady walks down the aisle with a "Palin in 2012" T-Shirt on. Another lady is handing out fliers about how our First Lady spends millions on staff, not to count her stylists, etc. It is becoming obvious this is not a very diverse crowd. As the room fills up, I get up and take a look around. The crowd is predominantly senior, almost exclusively white, and they are ready to spread the company line. How will this be an exchange of ideas, if we all think the same? I think of the analogy "preaching to the choir", and it seems appropriate as we are sitting in a church.

Sen. McCain comes in to a resounding applause, and after the formalities of thanking the host and the local Mayors and Representatives in attendance, we begin. Sen. McCain has placed two large boards on wither side of the stage, which is made up of the aforementioned local Mayors and other similar folks, who I guess were too important to sit in the crowd. On one board was bullet points about our current deficit, with the standard right wing attacks on the Stimulus and the current budget. On the other, which is titled "What We Should Do?" (I'm not sure why the question mark on a statement, but I digress) with typical right wing health care reform bullet points. Sen. McCain begins his speech, and for a moment, I had to check and see if the campaign was over, as it sounded like he was still campaigning against his President. Then I remembered the audience, and I realized it was like warming up the crowd at a concert. When the questions finally began, it was "How can we stop this bill from being passed?", "How can we stop this uncontrolled spending?", blah blah blah. Then a young lady (I know, I was surprised to see one too) asked about his position on alternative energy in Arizona, like solar, since we have over 300 days of perfect sunlight a year. He quickly shifted the answer to the need for more nuclear power, and how the other forms of proposed energy would only make up 25-35% of what is needed. He did mention he believed their has been an environmental effect on our climate, and I guess I should be thrilled he even mentioned that.

I had my hand raised after each question, then decided just to leave it raised, but to no avail. There were questions about e-mailing leaders and getting no response, and how can we feel our voices are being heard. The answers to these were essentially keep it up, attend tea parties, and make sure you vote. He even stated at one point that is was the last vote that has us in this position. Now THAT was disappointing, but typical in today's climate of the non-stop campaign, where the end of one election only signals the beginning of the smear campaign that leads to the next election. He mentioned at one point that, in Arizona, voter registration was flat among Republicans and Democrats, but Independents have gone up measurably, and he said Republicans over the last 8 years allowed spending to get out of control, and therefore people are irritated with both parties. He said if neither party starts listening, we will see Independent candidates gain more support. That was the most encouraging point of the whole event. As a lifelong Independent who believes both the left and the right have lost their way, this would thrill me to no end.

There were a couple of people who wanted to state dissenting positions on government run health care, and one on the cost of the wars we are fighting, but each of them really stumbled through their dialogue, making their point fade as soon as the words left their mouths. The anti-war guy, who held up a sign at the end which read "You can't win an occupation", was quoting bad numbers and struggling to stay on one stream of thought, and while I felt bad for him at first, after the first moments, I wished he would just give up, as his ramblings were only fueling the fire, not dousing it. Give him credit for being there, as he had to feel more out of place than I did.

The answers to all of the questions were vague at best, with no specifics given on anything. "I assure you I will fight for that every day", "Make sure you get people out to vote next time" and similar answers were the norm. When it ended, I saw him lingering at the front of the room, shaking hands and such. I thought I would try and go ask him personally my questions, which I felt were not only topical, but relevant, even in this crowd. As I got close, he was ushered out the other way.

It was almost two hours of my time from the time I walked in. Two hours I will never get back, and two hours I could have gathered the same information watching Glenn Beck's rhetoric on Fox News. Is this really a town hall, or a rally? Is it not simply a free campaign event for whatever he is going to run for next? I left realizing if you want your voice to be heard, you can vote, but any dialogue between elections is falling on deaf ears, unless you have a lobbyist or a PAC (Political Action Committee) who is contributing large amounts of money to a campaign. I checked my bank account, and to no surprise, I don't qualify for either. Once again I realize money is the only language they truly hear.

I urge all of you to go to www.change-congress.org and follow the efforts to reform campaign funding of our leaders and restore this country to the people it was founded for. In the meantime, I will continue to use this free internet for as long as I possibly can, and maybe I will see you at the next town hall meeting