Posted on 11/08/2009 4:15:18 AM PST by Halfmanhalfamazing
From the Heritage Foundation's blog, The Foundry, this study was mentioned during Glenn Beck's radio show this morning:
This Friday, the tax payer funded Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) is hosting a briefing for Members of Congress and their staff on their new study: Online Town Hall Meetings: Exploring Democracy in the 21st Century. The CMF study consisted of 21 townhall meetings where Members of Congress and CMF provided a moderator: “spoke via voice over IP, and constituents asked questions and made comments by typing them. Only off-topic, redundant, unintelligible, or offensive questions were screened, and only questions asked by people who had not yet asked a question were prioritized.”
CMF does not say what qualifies as offensive, but if this summer is any indication that definition would include anything that the Congressman did not want to talk about. In other words, this report urges Congressmen not to actually interact with their constituents, but to avoid them altogether by holding safe townhalls they can completely control. And what did CMF find where the results of these Potemkin townhalls?
Orwell was an optimist.
Congress did a good job of avoiding its constituents Saturday. I called mine yesterday and couldn’t get through. An attempt at emailing returned an “undeliverable.” It’s not that taxpayers were jamming the phone lines or overloading the server; these guys knew what they were going to do and they didn’t want to face their constituents.
That’s ok. These folks can’t duck us forever. I’ve made it my personal mission to boot my local guy out next time he runs for re-election.
Last night's "win" will be a pyrrhic one for the dems. The voters unequivocally told them to vote against it and the blew us off anyway. This will only increase the rage against them between now and 2010.
Will let everybody know.
“this report urges Congressmen not to actually interact with their constituents, but to avoid them altogether by holding safe townhalls they can completely control.”
We’ve come to the point where our representatives no longer want to represent us.
“We’ve come to the point where our representatives no longer want to represent us.”
Yep. They have cohat nvinced themselves tthey know what’s best for us and they are trying to find ways to avoid any interaction because they have no need of hearing our opinions.
If the mob can find someone they want to “talk to” so can we.
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