Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Elected Officials Are Voted Into Office To Represent Their Districts...right?

Wrong!
Representative form of government went out when America died...
but it was good while it lasted!

Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) addressed an intimate group of Netroots activists during their annual Netroots Nation gathering in Pittsburgh this weekend. Mr. Massa reiterated his support for a single-payer health care bill. He discussed the risks he takes for wanting to support such a measure in his "right-wing Republican district."

According to Swing State Project, Mr. Massa won his 2008 race by 2 percentage points. The district's voting pattern index (PVI) is a Republican +5 seat. The National Republican Congressional Committee has the upstate New York congressman in their sights for 2010 along with 69 other House Democrats as reported by Politico. The transcript is below, and check out the corresponding video above.

MASSA: I’m not going to vote for 3200 as it’s currently written. Step one, I will vote for a single payer option or a bill that does have a medicare coupled public option, which we don’t have right now. If my town hall meetings turn into the same media frenzies and ridiculousness, because every time that happens we lose. We lose another three million people in America. They see that happening and negate us.

PARTICIPANT: It changes America.

MASSA: Every time that occurs. So what happens in my town hall meetings frankly is important, because I am in one of the most right wing Republican districts in the country, and I’m not asking you guys to go back to wherever and send people to me. This is a generic statement of what can I do? Well that’s one thing we can do.

PARTICIPANT: So if we got your meetings to sixty forty, you’d vote…and there was single payer in a bill you would vote for it?

MASSA: Oh absolutely I would vote for single payer.

PARTICIPANT: If there was sixty forty sentiment in the room?

MASSA: Listen, I tell every audience I’m in favor of single payer.

PARTICIPANT: If there was eighty twenty in the room?

MASSA: If there was a single payer bill?

PARTICIPANT: And there was a single payer….

MASSA: I will vote for the single payer bill.

PARTICIPANT: Even if it meant you were being voted out of office?

MASSA: I will vote adamantly against the interests of my district if I actually think what I am doing is going to be helpful.

(inaudible participants' comments regarding the "interests" of the district statement from Mr. Massa)

Massa: I will vote against their opinion if I actually believe it will help them.

_____________
In case you didn't get it there is a message here...
And the message is:
"If you don't vote these people out of office they will vote you out of your right to vote."
This is exactly what has happened here. So-called Representative Massa has put his own self-interests above those of his constituents therefor dictating policy just as they did in the Soviet Union under Stalin, et al.

1 comment:

Rightwing Cowboy said...

You pretty well summed it up, Norm:
"And the message is:
'If you don't vote these people out of office they will vote you out of your right to vote.'"
Here's a guy who should be sent a dead fish. He was not elected to go against the desires of his constituients.