Town hall meeting have traditionally been reserved for the legal residents of the town and their representatives. I don't believe that system is broken. However once you allow outsiders to dominate
and in many cases take over “local” meetings; well then the concept collapses and you have the staged
crap being broadcast all over the media. I believe that that Washington would love to ride itself of town hall meetings. It is one of the few venues left in many communities where locals have a RIGHT to speak their mind. Funny how the right to assembly and the right to free speech is being swept under the carpet. Apply common sense and limit non resident attendees at meetings. However if a resident wants to rage at town meeting, well so be it. If the town fathers don't like the idea of citizens speaking their mind; then I suggest those town “fathers” find something else to do.

Common sense is dead and SENSATIONALISM rules everything in the RUBBERNECKER APPROACH
of today's Media kings.

You also do not know anything about health care. The U. S. cannot produce enough nurses now and has to import them from the Philippines. All nationalized healthcare means is that more nurses will be from the Phillipines and fewer native born nurses. The rich white boys have been pissed for years that nurse anesthetist or pharmacy make more money than they do while attending second tier public university.

One of the dirving forces in health care reform is the hatred of the science illiterate elite has for those middle class people who have found well paying careers in health care.

Maybe you should try read DailyKos or the Huffington Post. The posters are uniform in their hated of well paid physicians and their love of nationalized healthcare. And many realize that what the Dailykos is proposing todayis what the Democratic Party will be supporting tomorrow.

And last, look up the protesters from the first Bush Inaugural. It took over 5,000 police to keep the ANSWER protesters off of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Townhalls only work if your trying to actually get feedback from the public, or you are trying to get elected. During election townhalls the other party really isn't much interested in attending, and if its to get honest feedback, the politician really does not have to talk and give speeches, just listen and give a short, direct answer or promise to make the answer along with the question that was asked available later on his/her website for everyone to see after they have had time to ponder it. Having some Congress member and support staff get on a stage and try to yammer their sales pitch isn't what a townhall meeting is.

That's a lie.

My guess is that since none of the elite, white progressives work in healthcare or really know anyone who works in health care, that they just do not care.

Completey stupid statement unsupported by even a shred of evidence, but at least he said it was a guess.

If the government is successful in cutting costs while expanding demand, that means that healthcare workers will have to work harder while receiving less in pay.

Your dumb opinion only. Nothing to support such a claim.

You should try reading the progressing bloggers such as Matthew Yglesias or Ezra Klein. They are very open about using the proposals to move the U.S. to a single payer, government run sysytem.

And, of course, the proposed legislation turns the entire US health care system over to Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias. You also provide no evidenced of your claim about Klein and Yglesias.

Are you claiming that the Code Pink or Act Up or ACORN would not have tried to disrupt any appearance by President Bush that they could have attended?

This is how you run four right-wing boogey men into one sentence. Very clever, actually. President Bush didn't allow those who disagreed with him into his town hall meetings.

Unions members and professional activist are now trying to shout down the people attending the town halls. Are you really claiming that Congressman are not asked at every appearance about why they are exempting themselves from the program? Are you really claiming that no one asks about benefits from illegal aliens.

You should try reading the progressing bloggers such as Matthew Yglesias or Ezra Klein. They are very open about using the proposals to move the U.S. to a single payer, government run sysytem. They are also very open that the U.S. is spending too much on end of life care and that the government should be in charge of deciding whether it is cost effective or not. Or all the claiming that the current proposal is not single payer, everyone of the left seems to support single payer and centralize control much more than what Congress is proposing.

Also, no one in the Obama Administration is bothering to explain how they will maintain open borders (also know as comprehensive immigration reform) and maintain a public funded option. Democrats and progressives seem to refuse to decide whether they want a high level of government services (like the small, white Nordic countries) or to have open immigraiton. No country has managed to produce both. David Axelrod and President Obama know this but still seem intent of trying to be the first.

If the government is successful in cutting costs while expanding demand, that means that healthcare workers will have to work harder while receiving less in pay. My guess is that since none of the elite, white progressives work in healthcare or really know anyone who works in health care, that they just do not care.

Great strategy. If the town hall meetings get canceled then the rabid right wins, because their goal is to break down communications between the public and our representatives.

The job of our representatives is to defend the Constitution, not WE THE PEOPLE. Allowing town hall meetings to continue, even in the face of threatened violence, is defending the Constitution. WE THE PEOPLE can defend ourselves, and if we can't, then we can call the police.

You forgot one more item to prohibit from town hall meetings… GUNS!

Please stop lying. You have no proof for anything you said in your comment.

First of all, there were no “howls from the left” because they were not allowed into Bush town halls. If by chance one of them did infiltrate the meeting and by miracle got to ask a question, that person was immediately shouted down, or worse, physically removed from the meeting.

The rest of your comment is pure nonsense and requires no additional rebuttal.

If we're not going to cancel them, here's another suggestion. Let anyone in who is a resident of the applicable district (or state, in the case of Senators) but completely bar the media and don't permit the attendees to bring in cell phones, recorders, video cameras, etc. Just make it a personal, one on one discussion between the voters and their elected representative. If they can't make it onto the headline of the news for weeks on end, let's see how many of these “concerned activists” still show up.

But there is a vast difference between someone booing because the speaker said something they didn't agree with, and organizing a group to disrupt a meeting so that no one can even hear what is being said. The first can be defended as simply letting the representatives really hear what the people think. The second cannot. It is nothing more than being a bully – and it doesn't matter which side does it.

My Representative holds a meeting in every town in his district every year. I've attended dozens in several different towns, and I've never seen any news media cover one of them (other than a single reporter leaning on the wall, bored out of his or her skull). But I've never been to one where he wasn't challenged on what he said, either. I've also seen a large number of people who would simply be left out of an online meeting. What, exactly, would be different in an “online townhall” and simply emailing the office? People go to townhall meetings because they want the personal touch. I've been able to personally deliver research and petitions at townhall meetings. Whether or not they did any good, I can't say – but they got to the man they were intended to reach.

This is a long way of saying, no one should be afraid to express their opinions, and no one should be afraid to hear them. But let's not confuse organized thuggery for anything other than what it is.

I don't see how online town halls would be effective unless questions were screened by a disinterested third party (if there any of those left), otherwise the politician's staff would just cherry pick the questions.

My idea, and maybe this is off-the-wall, is to have more town halls and not less. If politicians repeatedly refuse to answer questions it will become apparent and eventually they will be more open and engaging. Any attention-seeking behavior by protesters will eventually be diluted and less newsworthy, ie they will become old news and will have less motivation to be disruptive.

One would think that the Democrats in Congress would learn how to answer the questions about excluding themselves from the program, about how they are going to control costs while increasing enrollment, and what they are going to do about illegal aliens.

Since the real goal of the healthcare debate is a single payer system (for all but the very rich), open borders, unlimited immigraiton, and the destruction of healthcare as a good career field, I would say that the progressives are too afriad to answer real questions.