I did my civic duty last night and attended a town hall meeting in Toledo with Oregon State Senator Jeff Merkley.  I was pleased to see it was a standing room only full house, and stood against the wall for some time until a chair nearby opened up.  Most attendees were residents of south Lincoln County (Toledo is on the south end of the county, so no surprise there), and based on the comments, were liberal Democrats, also no surprise.  Lincoln County is one of the more generally liberal counties in divided Oregon.  As a Constitutional Conservative, I often feel like an alien in a foreign land, but in the people I talk to out and about, and many of my acquaintances, I know I’m not alone in my views and my concerns.

I found myself shaking my head in astounded disbelief over and over again throughout the evening, and I’m sure my blood pressure rose to an unhealthy level.  The meeting was orderly, with a kind of lottery for the opportunity to comment.  Yes, I suspect that an actual open forum may have been louder and more disruptive, but I found this system to be insulting and incomplete.  The format wa,s 1) a voter asks a question, 2) the senator answers the question and occasionally, by a show of hands, asked for ‘feedback’.  Very orderly elementary school.

As a student of psychology and ‘attitude and opinion methodology’ or survey taking, I can tell you that how you phrase the question controls the response.  What Merkley was looking for was not honest feedback; it was spin and opinion shaping.

There was no opportunity for rebuttal, for follow-up questions, for challenges to his position or logic, or that of the constituents.  For example, one woman made the ridiculous statement that she thought “insurance companies shouldn’t be allowed to profit from people’s sickness’.  It, of course, received a hearty round of applause, but what a stupid statement.  No insurance company ever profits from their policyholders requiring expensive and chronic medical care.  I’m an insurance consultant and broker; I know a thing or two about health insurance.  The profit, and therefore the incentive, comes from promoting health and prevention.

Are there aspects of health care that need attention?  No doubt about it.  I feel like the bearer of bad news practically every day in trying to help people find the best insurance product for their situation.  I’m not a salesperson; I am a teacher and guide through the wilderness for most of my clients.  The senator mentioned physician retirements and a forthcoming lack of qualified providers.  I deal often with the reality that good, caring doctors are leaving the profession, not because the are retirement age, but because they can no longer afford malpractice insurance (tort reform), and they are sinking under the regulations and reduced compensation from Medicare and Medicaid (Medicare reform).  Rural general practice physicians cannot afford to keep their clinic doors open.  Seniors, who are reaching retirement age at record numbers, are going to experience a frightening lack of physicians to care for them in their elder years.  The physician equation is just one point of this multi-pronged issue.

As an insurance consultant and broker, my job is to, a) educate my clients about insurance so that they feel confident to make an informed decision; b) understand their situation well enough to narrow down the hundreds of options to those few that will best suit their needs and budget; c) facilitate securing the insurance, and d) following through with any service issues later.  For the vast majority of cases, that service is entirely free to the client.  The federal and state governments are presuming to become my biggest competitors.  Obamacare, as it is commonly known, through the formation of insurance exchanges, is trying to take over my role in the process.  They’re trying to put me out of business.  When has the federal government ever performed better than private industry?

That’s one example.  Another is the typical sentiment from an educator that more money needs to be thrown at a failing education system because class sizes are too big.  Okay, that wasn’t exactly how he phrased his question, but I don’t disagree that class sizes are too big; that was one of many reasons why I chose to homeschool my daughter.  The bigger reason was that I knew I could do a better job educating her than the state could.  Merkley’s response was to end the war in Afghanistan and spend that money instead on education.  More applause from the crowd; more gag reflex from me.  Seriously?  First, throwing more money at a failed system is not the way to fix a failed system.  Second, had any of these people considered the fact that our debt, including unfunded liabilities and entitlements, is now more than 100% of GDP?  We don’t produce enough as a nation in a year to cover just that portion of our nation’s expenditures.  That’s not even including the trillion-plus annual deficit in our non-existent federal budget!  How about this idea?  We end the war in Afghanistan and instead use that money to pay our creditors?

And of course there was the indignant statement that Social Security is not an entitlement; the money belongs to the seniors who have been paying into the system their entire working lives.  Yes. I agree with that statement.  Surprised?  I pay into Social Security every month, and actually I pay more than most because I am self-employed; I pay both the employee and employer portion all by my little lonesome.  I also recognize that it is a government sponsored Ponzi scheme even Mr. Ponzi would be awed by, and at age 47, I have no doubt that the pyramid will have come crashing down well before I ever see a dime from Social Security.

The constituent asked the senator to respond to ‘raids on the Social Security Trust Fund.’  That phrase always causes me to pause, primarily because the word Trust is involved.  His response was total spin (I came so close to losing my Mac and Cheese at this point).  He said there were three options for those funds: a) store the money in an account somewhere and never touch it; b) invest in the safest possible investment, US Treasury Bonds; or c) invest in the riskiest of all investments, stocks.  Well, of course, congress would choose the safest possible investment.  He even acknowledged that US Treasury Bonds are paying next to nothing in returns (Whatever, dude).  Okay, where do I begin?  I must give him credit for his artistry; he was indeed impressive.  The subtle tones and turns of phrases – anyone who questioned or disagreed would have appeared the cad or ignoramus.

Can we consider for a moment that “investing in US Treasury Bonds” is, in reality, loaning money?  Can we also consider that the US Government is a bad risk?.  Our credit rating has been reduced, our debt level is impossibly, unsustainably high, and that the government, short of printing money out of thin air – which has the inevitable effect of significantly devaluing the currency – has absolutely NO WAY of paying those debts back?  How is that possibly a safe investment?  So not only is there NO CASH in the non-existent Social Security Trust Fund, in its place are virtually worthless pieces of paper – IOUs from a government that is nearly insolvent.

Oh, that there could have been an actual discussion and debate of the real issues, instead of magic brownies (I didn’t eat one because I was afraid that whatever was happening to the others would happen to me.  Eeeeeee.) and Kool-aid drinking sheeple.

God help our Republic.

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