"Fred" looking a lot like the original "Fred", Mr. Rogers!
Last night I went to a town hall meeting with Representative Fred Upton. It was the last of his 18 meetings. There were somewhere between 75-100 people that showed up for this meeting. The Sturgis city hall room was packed. Representative Upton wanted all of us to call him “Fred”. He’s just one of us, even if he is a millionaire. He was dressed like Mr. Rogers in his fashionable cardigan and appeared fairly low on that charisma scale. As my pictures show, you might be wondering if they were separated at birth. Fred may seem to lack charisma but he has been awarded a very powerful position in the House of Representatives as he is now chairmen of the House Energy and Commerce committee.
“Fred” opened by letting us know that this was a time for him to “listen” to his constituents. He wouldn’t be answering a lot of questions but he would be taking notes down so he could respond later. He began the night by telling us that the financial situation in our government is far worse than first suspected. No mention was made of course of those big tax cuts given out in December. He said the deficit numbers for the 2012 Obama budget were actually larger than what President Obama projected because the CBO, which he let us know is not biased, basically came up with different numbers that were far more alarming. As he continued his little speech it was quite obvious that he wants us to be prepared for the big hammer that is going to fall on all of our heads because they (the responsible Republicans in Congress) must do what they have to do to get this budget under control. He made sure to slam Representative Nancy Pelosi because she was terrible because she wouldn’t let the Republicans have any say what so ever on anything. He also wanted us to know what a breath of fresh air Speaker John Boehner is because he wants everything to be transparent. There will be no secrets and the Democrats will be invited to all the tea parties! He let us know that there would be an open forum with microphones where we could ask our questions. He wouldn’t be answering those questions but would give a small response at the end.
Fred Rogers looking a lot like Fred Upton!
The first man had a question that I just can’t remember because all I could hear was a pep rally for Ronald Reagan. When I heard the white haired, old man sing the praises of Ronnie, I felt my ears implode and I wondered if this was going to be a Republican pep rally. Thankfully, it did not end up being a rally for Republicans. There were many questions asked which showed me that we have distinctly different viewpoints even in Sturgis. Sturgis is a Republican area. The questioners seemed to be from people from all sides of the political spectrum. There were environmentalists and other people concerned about carcinogens at the meeting who don’t like Fred’s bill to amend the Clean Air act. You can see the bill here.
https://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h910/show
There were other concerns about the nuclear power plants in Michigan and one in particular that is a similar model to the GE one in Japan. There were also questions about hazardous waste from the nuclear plants and the government subsidy of these plants.
Many people were concerned about the continuing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya. One Vietnam veteran spoke about how we were taken into a trumped up war in Vietnam and these current wars as being similar to that. He wanted to know why we are there in what the mission is and if it was “accomplished” as President Bush said then why are we still there. Another gentleman wanted to bring all of the troops back from all of the countries that we are in and establish them in bases here. He said our economy would be booming if those guys were spending their money here and not in places like Germany. He said they could protect our borders and we’d have a lot more jobs here because they would be spending their money here. So, I was wondering how many troops we have in Germany and I came across this article. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/8406938/US-troops-in-Germany-banned-from-wearing-uniform-in-public.html
Our guys sometimes are nothing more than sitting ducks. They don’t make the policy. They just enforce it. I didn’t hear about this on any newscast lately. Here is a chart put up on Wikipedia that shows the number of troops we have and then how many are overseas. I saw another figure on Wikipedia that is closer to 400,000. Regardless, it looks as though we have about a half a million soldiers around the world ready to police it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Overseas_Troops.gif
Of course many people had concerns over jobs. These questions ranged from protecting the middle class to incentives for businesses to CEO pay compared to the common worker’s pay. My question was like all of the above rolled into one. I questioned why there is so much talk about the trouble with Social Security, etc. when in December Congress passed the tax bill that made it so I pay 2% less in Social Security. It doesn’t make sense to me. If it’s such a problem, why would you make it a bigger problem? It seems to me a good way to destroy a program. I also was concerned about the endless supply of money for wars and there is not enough money for domestic spending for things like education. It seems to me all the real tax breaks go to big business and the wealthy. If more and more money is going to war, less and less is coming back to the states. There were some in the audience that mentioned the “Fair Tax” which Feed seems to like. You can find out more here about this issue. http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer I don’t know enough about this tax but it was mentioned a few times so knock yourself out figuring out how you would do under this tax. There is a calculator there so you can see how it would impact you.
There were many more questions from the cost of cleaning up meth lab houses, which is very draining on our tax dollars, to DOMA, the economy, health care, to the new proposed bridge to Canada, and even the “bridge” card. One man was very upset at the abuse that he was seeing with the bridge card. He claimed he had “court documents” that prove that a person was using the card to buy drugs like crack. He went on and on about this abuse and how he has tried to get this person put in jail for their crimes but to no avail. He even wanted the congressman to look at those papers to see what he could do. I know I was sitting there wondering what papers this guy could have in his possession. He ended his long tirade to let us know that the “offender” of these terrible crimes was none other than his WIFE! Yes, all of his credibility went out the window with that disclaimer. Every ex-whatever must have been thinking about that ex-husband or wife that is so full of revenge that they want to put their ex-lover in JAIL! It was the comic moment of the night as everyone split a gut with laughter when he said it was his WIFE!
The night was interesting and I was glad that it wasn’t a pep rally for Republicans. I am glad I went to the meeting. However, I really didn’t get the feeling that “Fred” was doing all that much listening in the sense that it would change anything he chooses to do. He spoke at the end and mentioned that some of the questions were state issues and he said we could get in touch with our state representative for those issues. He wanted to clear up the issue about his “Clean Air” bill. He basically sugar coated what it would and wouldn’t do and let us know that we must do these things to get business to stay in this country and not go to China. He told us he has been to China and they don’t have any standards so it’s better if we lessen our standards and get the businesses here because we would be doing our part to save the world. It was some kind of funky logic to me. I don’t think Fred will be saving the world any time soon with this but I’ll give him credit for at least putting together a “listening” tour, even if it seemed to me that he was more interested in spreading those latest “Republican” talking points around. I will say this in Fred’s defense, when I have contacted him through email or phone; I always eventually get a response to my concerns. They may not be what I want to hear, but he does send a personal letter that is not a form letter. So, Mr. Rogers came to Sturgis and now he’ll go back to D.C. armed with all of his “notes” about our questions and he will join his buddies on Capital Hill and put his expensive suit back on, so he can fit in with that crowd! To really get the flavor of who our congressman is all about, here is his voting record. http://www.ontheissues.org/MI/Fred_Upton.htm
Here is an interview with Fred. He doesn’t look so much like Mr. Rogers here. He is dressed in his Washington garb.
