John Spratt’s “Suggestion Box”
Despite complaint after complaint from the left-leaning naysayers, America’s “Town Hall summer” has been a rousing reemergence of genuine democracy at a time when our nation desperately needed it. Taxpayers – for once – started driving the debate again, telling Washington politicians in no uncertain terms that socialist medicine wasn’t going to be shoved down their throats on top of all the bad debt bailout trillions.
We honestly didn’t know they had it in them …
Abandoned by Republicans during the Bush years and on the verge of being completely steam-rolled by the socialist hordes of President Barack Obama, we honestly thought the “Silent Majority” had thrown in the towel.
But then they found their pipes, and piped up – and the result was a stunning public reversal of what months earlier appeared to be another socialist slam dunk for the “Obammunists.”
Tonight, the ongoing health care debate comes to Sumter, S.C. in the form of a Town Hall meeting that’s being held on the campus of USC-Sumter by U.S. Rep. John Spratt.
Except is this really a “debate?”
Check out the pre-conditions laid down by Spratt’s office:
…people who want to ask questions will be asked to write their name on an index card at the door and place the card in a box that most closely matches their position on health care reform – for, against, or undecided. During the question and answer session, names will be drawn from the boxes, one by one, and members of the audience will be called on to ask their question.
Huh? WTF?
That’s not voter participation, people – it’s voter intimidation. And frankly, it’s as un-American as the socialized medicine plan that Spratt’s allies are seeking to impose on this country.
No really … when did freedom of speech include the caveat that you had to write down what you were going to say in advance so that taxpayer-funded bureaucrats could decide whether or not you would get the chance to share your views?
And seriously, what happens to the “against” commenters? Does Spratt have a friggin’ fleet of fuel-efficient government vehicles waiting out back to cart them off to some Siberian gulag? This isn’t a Town Hall meeting, people, it’s a staged political stunt. It’s an opportunity for Spratt to manipulate public perception and make it look like a “balance” of opinion exists on an issue that we suspect his constituents are overwhelmingly opposed to.
Part of the reason for this carefully-staged “forum” is the fact that Spratt has managed to carefully tip-toe around the health care issue, and in so doing not inflame the passions of his decidedly moderate Fifth District constituency. Seriously, people, read this piece of incomprehensible “ass-covering” nonsense … and you tell us if you can figure out Spratt’s position on health care. As far as we can tell – HE DOESN’T HAVE ONE.
Unlike South Carolina’s other Democratic Congressman – Jim Clyburn – Spratt can’t just tow the Obama line without consequence. Nor can he fall asleep at his Town Hall meetings and hope to get reelected. Of course, between dozing off and attempting to suppress the expression of his constituents’ beliefs, we’ll take the snoozer any day.
By the way, Spratt’s Sumter Town Hall meeting is at 5 p.m. Wednesday night in the Nettles Building on the USC-Sumter campus (200 Miller Road, Sumter S.C.). He also has a meeting in Rock Hill, S.C. Thursday night at 5 p.m. at the Baxter Hood Center on York Technical College campus, (542 S. Anderson Road, Rock Hill, S.C.).
If you can’t get to either meeting, here’s his office contact page …
Tell Spratt if he keeps trying to suppress speech like this, we might just find a Siberian gulag with his name on it …
Comments
By Brandon on September 2nd, 2009 at 10:31 am
At the risk of sounding like a 60’s radical….
(Return) Power to the People!
By Earl Capps on September 2nd, 2009 at 10:57 am
Brandon, nothing’s wrong with sounding like that. Maybe it’s time we learned to stand up to The Man.
Fight the power.
By Pam on September 2nd, 2009 at 11:16 am
Here is how it will go down…
Spratt and Clyburn will vote for ANY bill that Obama will sign. They do as the party and Obama instructs…
But Senator Nancy Graham will be in the thick of things. he will “save” us once again by brokering a deal…which he has done repeatedly. After the deal is done, he will go on every Sunday morning talk show explaining how he has saved us all from tyranny. All by himself.
Problem is, his deals are crap. Lets live or die as free men, not have Nancy give them away little by little.
Nancy…just vote no. We already had 10 years of John mcCain doing this, and look where it has gotten us.
By Red Bank Bar on September 2nd, 2009 at 11:36 am
Obviously no one who works for Will Folks has ever been to a Joe the Mo Wilson meeting.
Joe can’t be exposed to real questions so his assistant pulls 3 x 5 cards out with written questions and then the assistant paraphrases them (and edits the negative ones) so Joe can remember one of his four or five “canned” responses.
John Spratt has kicked and will continue as long as he wants to kick the arse of any Repugnant who dares challenge him.
By Cooter Brown on September 2nd, 2009 at 11:44 am
Dem folks outta open up a can of whoop ass on dat scalawag bastard!
By bj on September 2nd, 2009 at 11:47 am
You’re hyperventilating! Settle down, it’s like you’ve never been to a Joe Wilson meeting before. Give us a break.
By Matthew on September 2nd, 2009 at 11:56 am
Where does it say you have to write down your question in advance? It only says to write down your name and place it in a box most closely resembling your views. It looks like he’s just going to be drawing names at random from three boxes.
By Pat Hendrix on September 2nd, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Intimidation? Hee, if you only knew the Spratt staff, the notion of intimidation would be laughable. Yes, maybe bad politics, the type used by politicians everywhere, but not intimidation by stretch of the imagination. By the way, did you notice that you had to pay to have access to Demint’s Republican lovefest townhall in Charleston. Nice.
And speaking of Demint, if you want to read some ass-covering bullshit on healthcare, read Demints nonsenical “plan.” Wow, just wow.
By Pat Hendrix on September 2nd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Nice catch Matthew, it was nothing of the sort described by Fits. Shocker, fits was either too dumb or dishonest to reflect the intent.
By fitsnews on September 2nd, 2009 at 12:40 pm
The point is that the “boxes” manipulate the discussion. If there are time for twelve questions, then our guess is they draw four from each of the three boxes – which may not reflect the fact that 400 people put their names in the “against” box compared to 12 people who put their names in the “for” box.
Plus, the only people at these staged events “for” socialized medicine are friggin’ Obama for America organizers, anyway.
Look, a politician with balls doesn’t need “question boxes.” Then again, a politician with balls would have taken a position on this life-and-death issue (literally) a long time ago.
Conclusion? Spratt has no balls …
-FITS
By RememberingBush on September 2nd, 2009 at 1:02 pm
How soon we forget the staged audiences that always greeted Pres. Bush. At least the President Obama and Democrats welcome all sides to their meetings.
By Mike Reino on September 2nd, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Iff you Vant to ask Zee Congressman qvestions, zen vee neet NAMES !!!
By rick on September 2nd, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Ya’ll ever notice that the Obama supporters always start telling you their facts and then deteriorate to party name calling where nothing gets done since everyone is busy calling each other names instead of looking at the issue. Ya got Red Bank Bar starting it with Pat standing behind him yelling about DeMint and then off we go into party name calling. The issue Ladies and Gentlemen is censorship in which the people that elected this individual are now required to let him know in advance what his bosses want to talk to him about so the employee can decide when and how many he wants to talk to. Guess what, he works for you….fu*k his boxes.
Time to bring some reality to the discussion.
By confused on September 2nd, 2009 at 2:51 pm
rememberingbush, thank you for the funniest internet post i have read today. honestly, have you not been paying attention? obama is comical in his efforts to avoid real questions at “town hall meetings.” it’s been all over the news, mainstream and otherwise, for months. helen thomas getting all in a dither about white house control, “worse than nixon”…. any of this sounding familiar?!?
i mean, there’s denial, and then there’s you. come on now.
By SC Moderate on September 2nd, 2009 at 4:17 pm
+1 (BJ, Matthew, Pat Hendrix). I can’t believe there are so many paragraphs on this non-issue. For any republican to level charges of being unfair towards Spratt is laughable IMO. I can understand those who disagree with his positions- but unfair, and using the above as an example….come on?
By James the Foot Soldier on September 2nd, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Mrs. Hendrix stated: “Yes, maybe bad politics, the type used by politicians everywhere, but not intimidation by stretch of the imagination”
Get your facts straight patricia – there are politicans that are taking the time to field EVERY question no matter how long that process would take.
Many democrats have been in hiding during this recess and drawing names out of a box IS intimidation and IS rationing the questions – only fitting I suppose since Obamacare will ration care for America’s senior citizens.
By southernmapart on September 2nd, 2009 at 4:44 pm
There have been NO open Town Hall meetings in the Upstate, by either Dem or Reps. Plenty of staged “meetings” by both parties with very limited notice to a selected few, limited seating and very limited comment opportunity. Usually the media is not given notice of such meetings and can only catch them by word-of-mouth.
Candidates hiding out in the parking lot, or simply not entering the building until time for the “meeting” to begin. Selected persons with previously approved comments are called on first. Known adversaries in the audience are refused any opportunity to speak. Question and answer sessions are cut short.
There has been no “reemergence of genuine democracy.” Just a sorry, backward attempt to shove the fascism-at-the-top, socialism-at-the-bottom new form of government down our throats.
There has been no open debate this summer, only a pretense by candidates to campaign in these so-called Town Hall meetings.
Furthermore, there is less and less real response from elected officials to queries sent to their office. Just the “we got your e-mail” note. Gresham Barrett’s assistant, in response to the complaint of no real response since last fall, said that since the “Bailout” vote last fall their office has been swamped by constituent calls and they have not been able to respond to everyone. He offered a card with his personal e-mail. For what? The damage is done.
By Sand Hill on September 2nd, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Pat Hendrix -
Stop your lies. DeMint’s Charleston Town Hall was free to attend. I went. Stop your lies.
By Red Bank Bar Is A Liar on September 2nd, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Re: Red Bank Bar
“Joe can’t be exposed to real questions so his assistant pulls 3 x 5 cards out with written questions and then the assistant paraphrases them (and edits the negative ones) so Joe can remember one of his four or five “canned” responses.”
You are a liar. This isn’t a misstatement. This is an intentional lie. Joe didn’t have an “assistant” select the questions; they were local elected officials (Randy Hafacre, mayor of Lexington, Tom Davis, state senator, etc.). Questions weren’t screened or “paraphrased.” They were randomly drawn from a single box and read verbatim. No edits could have been made even if Joe wanted it. The card box was in full view of the entire crowd the entire meeting. At no time could the cards have been tampered with or sorted in any way.
You are a stinking liar, and you know it. Joe took any and all questions at random, then stayed after for hours talking with every single person that wanted to talk to him.
Screw you and your intentional lies.
By southernmapart2 on September 2nd, 2009 at 11:29 pm
“There have been NO open Town Hall meetings in the Upstate, by either Dem or Reps.”
The level of stupidity in this comment is incredible. Bob Inglis (who’s going to lose in 2010) held 12, yes TWELVE, town hall meetings in the upstate. Jim DeMint has done multiple town halls in the upstate. John Spratt is holding at least 1 in Rock Hill.
Idiot. At least know what you are talking about before you post stupid crap.
Have you tried to talk to your reps before bashing them with lies on the internet? Have you tried to schedule a personal meeting with Inglis or Barrett (wherever you live)? Do it. You’ll be surprised at just how accessible they are.
But you don’t care about facts. You just want to trash everyone; truth be damned.
I don’t like Inglis, but at least I’m not retarded enough to say he isn’t holding a single town hall. Get your facts straight or shut the hell up.
By rick on September 3rd, 2009 at 8:38 am
Things is gittin tough with the trolls bein called out for falsetudes….lovin it, keep it up. The truth will at least illuminate the discussion.
By RedBank Bar on September 3rd, 2009 at 1:43 pm
I’ve been to many a Joe the Mo “meeting”. He always puts elected or apponted syncophants directly in front of him so any shot of him will not contain anyone opposed to Joe. In the last 18 months, I’ve had two of my quesions paraphrased so Joe could give a canned talking point.
By STFU on September 4th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Get rid of John Spratt and you end up with a cheese dick like Joe Wilson, Henry Brown or Bob Inglis. Have fun with that…
By Daphne on October 19th, 2009 at 8:18 am
Spratt has been in office way to long and has done nothing for Dillon County where our unemployment rate is 17.2%. He wouldn’t even show his face here. I called to find about any townhalls during the recess in August and was told that Spratt would not be having any by his Washington office said he was having surgery. He website said he would not have any. In September he revamped his website and disabled the email contact. This is arrogance. I have voted in this district for many, many years and their has never been anyone run against this idiot. I AM FED-UP WITH DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS, NONE ARE LISTENING.