Niki Tsongas Town Hall Meeting – First Hand Account
Special thanks to Ted Tripp for giving me permission to use this first-hand account of the recently concluded Town Hall meeting led by congresswoman Tsongas. From his account, she acquitted herself well; she is not apt to change her support for national health care deform however. Will post the pics later; sorry I have been very busy and posting has been difficult. Things will improve on this site shortly however. (P.S.see pics below.)
Last Saturday I attended a town hall forum on healthcare set up by
Congresswoman Niki Tsongas. There were about 400 people inside the hall
and another 600 or so outside who couldn’t get in.The police allowed signs inside and I would say the split of those
attending was 3-1 against ObamaCare. When Tsongas entered the room, she
announced that she would take questions from the microphone about 10 feet
in front of her. There was a mad scramble to form a line and if you didn’t
have an aisle seat, you didn’t get a place in line.The crowd was raucous and unruly, drowning out Tsongas when it wasn’t
satisfied with the answers. It was close to an angry mob telling her we
didn’t want government taking over our healthcare system. Those who made
statements against ObamaCare got huge applause from the audience; those
who spoke in favor got jeers and boos. I was surprised at the anger and
ferocity of the comments, considering that this is Massachusetts.Three questioners stood out. One woman asked Tsongas: If this is such a
great healthcare plan, why did you opt out of it? The questioner got a
standing ovation from the audience that went on for awhile. Tsongas dodged
the answer in a long, drawn out diatribe. A second questioner said he was
a former Marine (big applause from the audience) and was 66 years old. He
said he was in good health and had rarely used his health insurance over
the years. Then he said he was worried that 10 years from now he might
come down with a brain tumor. He wanted to know if ObamaCare would pay the
$500,000 for his operation such as the one Ted Kennedy just had? He added
that he felt he had a lot of productive years left and he didn’t want some
government agent telling him he couldn’t have the operation. He also got a
standing ovation. The third questioner just basically told Tsongas: Why
don’t you just go back to Washington and first fix Social Security,
Medicaid and Medicare, and then maybe we will trust you to talk to us
about healthcare.The meeting was surreal at times. Tsongas handled the attacks quite well,
but her aides looked very uncomfortable. Her chief aide turned red in the
face, as his blood pressure must have gone up by 20 points.One of the detail cops who was older said he hadn’t seen anything like
this since the 1960s.One of the better signs was “ObamaCare – It’s To Die For.”
Tsongas got the message, but we must keep up the heat. For more
information about the meeting, see [ http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_13026303
]http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_13026303 and watch the video. It shows one of
the three questioners I mention. The video does not show the more raucous
part of the meeting.
Power to the people; keep it up national patriots!!!!!
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Supposedly, Barney Frank has been holding his town hall meetings at his office in Taunton Ma., which is pretty convenient because he can throw the dissenters out. I'm wondering if he has any ACORN or SEIU purple shirt thugs walking around in there ready to confront us senior citizen "Nazi trouble makers."
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