Stacking the Deck in the Health Care Debate
How Several Meetings Were Actually Rigged Rallies, Not Town Halls
At two recent town hall meetings, several observers reported that they were denied entrance. Two people in two western states have similar stories.
The Grand Junction Meeting
Tickets for the town hall events were available online and a Grand Junction woman who only identified herself as Helen says she was able to get two tickets.
“I was notified on Thurs. evening that I had been selected to receive two tickets to attend this meeting on Sat. I had to go to the high school on Friday and pick them up and I had to show two forms of ID. I stood in line on Friday for an hour and received my tickets, No. 888 and 889.”
Helen received her tickets and went to the high school. She continued her story.
“We drove to Central High and as we approached the parking lot, there were thousands of people (yes, indeed) one side was loaded with anti Obamacare and there were a few hundred on the other side. The police directed us where to park and by now, we are getting pretty excited about being part of this event. We walked up to a gate and showed our 2 (yes, 2)ID's and our tickets and waited in line with about 200 other people,” Helen said.
However Helen said the result was not what she had expected, “Groups of people were by passing this line and walking right up and through the school doors while the rest of us were waiting for our turn to go in. Thirty minutes later three law enforcement people came to the line and said, ‘Go home, you can’t get in. The gym is full.’”
“We are all looking at one another and saying, ‘But we have a ticket.’” Helen said. “They said, ‘We don't care you can't get in.’”
Helen was angry and said she and the others began asking questions. “What is going on here? We had to go back to the gate we came in and they pad-locked it. Quite a few of us hung around not believing what had just happened and making various negative comments about it. It wasn't until Sunday, we read, heard, discovered that the gym was already full of people who had been given tickets by some of the state’s VIPs.”
“We were out of luck,” Helen said.
The Bozeman Meeting
Kathy in Bozeman, Montana told a similar story about President Obama’s meeting in Montana.
“We found out that they (the President’s staff) would be holding the Town Hall at the airport. Our airport is actually located outside of the tiny town of Belgrade in a very remote location. Nothing is around there. They chose to use the most remote hangar at the airport,” Kathy said, adding, “You could not pick a more remote location.”
Kathy added that her suspicions were aroused when she discovered an irregularity in ticket distribution, “Thursday morning about 600 tickets were passed out. However, 1500 were printed at a Local printing shop per White House request. That means 900 tickets just disappeared.”
On the day of the event, Kathy said those who were opposed to the president’s health care plan were forced to leave the airport hangar area by a large crowd of pro-Obama supporters.
Kathy added that the pro-Obama crowd was made up mostly young, Service Employees International Union workers, “The SEIU crowd was very organized and young. About 99% were under the age of 30 and they were not locals! They had bullhorns and professionally made signs. Some even wore preprinted T-shirts.”
Kathy concluded that the health care debate is not a genuine debate, “It was very obvious that it was meant to be totally controlled by the White House.”
People rally against Obama's health care reform.
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