Douglas Turner: Angry citizens protest government run amok
Democratic Rep. Louise M. Slaughter isn’t holding town meetings on health care because she is “scared to death somebody will get hurt.” The genteel Democrats knew how to cope with irritating people in the Clinton days. The Democrats’ event enforcers simply threw them out.
That’s what happened to the surprised owner of the lone voice of protest a decade ago in Buffalo’s HSBC Arena when President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore came to a rally in the midst of Clinton’s impeachment trial.
The man’s quick ejection was not mentioned by the Clintonfriendly national media. What a difference from today! The cascade of stories about the current town meeting upheavals is partly the result of the new media: cellphone cameras, blogs and ideological radio and TV.
Another difference is the sophistication and range of activity applied to these protests. There is no doubt that Democratic supporters of any meaningful change in health care are being “Swiftboated.” A former insurance industry public relations executive turned whistle-blower named Wendell Potter said “greedy” corporate foes of reform have made an art of scare tactics.
“Words matter,” he said, “and the insurance industry is a master of linguistics and using the hot words, buzzwords, buzz expressions that they know will get people upset.” Slaughter, D-Fairport, brought Potter here last week for a round of press conferences.
The range of activity generated by the Republican Party, its corporate friends and right-wing talk shows is breathtaking. From bands of beefy white protesters carted from town to town, homegrown agitators, even to a man who openly toted a loaded gun outside President Obama’s New Hampshire town hall meeting.
But the finely honed tactics of industry opponents do not by themselves explain the intensity of citizen protests that have prompted Slaughter and Reps. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, and Chris Lee, RClarence, to shun town meetings on health care.
Some of the anger comes from constituents who are terrified by unemployment, by retirement accounts that evaporated and by fears of runaway inflation and unprecedented government borrowing.
Suddenly, post-war generations who never knew real want, who never touched poverty, are looking to government for solutions. And many of these scared people all at once realize they no longer control their government at all — local, state or federal.
Shielded by massive campaign chests raised by lobbyists, officials are more inclined to do what they want, not what constituents think they need. Without anybody realizing it, a system of representative government became a fabric of arrangements among wealthy factions carried out over the heads of ordinary people.
The impunity, the official arrogance, runs from Mayor Byron W. Brown stonewalling petitions to release public documents, to the State Senate paralyzed for weeks in gridlock, to U. S. Senate Democrats and Obama shaping health care legislation in secret meetings with special interests.
What else but conceit would prompt Democratic leaders to propose end-of-life counseling in their health care bill but completely ignore the pressing issue of lawsuit, tort reform and doctors’ soaring malpractice insurance premiums?
Where many citizens look for help, they see official narcissism. Where they look for signs of integrity in the new Democratic leadership, they watch Obama breaking a core campaign promise about once a month. They see two Democratic Senate committee chairmen get certificates of innocence from the “ethics” committee after getting special deals from well-connected mortgage bankers.
So the special treatment many elected officials quietly give themselves and their powerful friends is being met with a bit of disruption, dare we say, anarchy, in the back-country. In addition to the hired goons at these meetings, there are fearful, disillusioned, very angry citizens who now think the deck has been stacked against them.
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