Our uber-conservative state senator had a town hall meeting on Saturday. It was attended by roughly 30 liberals and 4 conservatives. I gotta say though, he kept fairly cool for a guy who had a whole room full of people ganging up on him.
Here are some direct quotes (to the best of my memory). My italicised responses are my thoughts, but most of them were directed at the senator by various people in the group:
Responding to a question about why we aren't raising the taxes of the richest 2% of people in the state -
"Well, the thing is that we live under the system of capitalism, not socialism."
So "socialism" now means requiring that the richest people in the state pay the same percentage of their taxes as the poorest people do?
"Rich people have worked hard for their money and they deserve to keep most of it."
But I guess poor people don't work as hard for their money. All those wonderful rich people must have started out at the bottom, pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and made a fortune all on their own, huh?
In response to the onslaught of people begging him (some through tears) not to support the creation of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage-
"The purpose the state has being involved in marriage is that it brings two people together to have children."
Then why do we let the elderly get married? And why did my marriage license not come with a mandate to bear children for the state of Minnesota?
"We just need to let the good, common sense people of Minnesota make this decision and not activist judges."
You do NOT put the rights of the minority up for a vote by the majority. What if we had done that with civil rights for black people 50 years ago. And an "activist judge" usually means one you don't agree with.
"When gay marriage passed in Massachusetts, it trampled the rights of the Catholic Church and the rights of parents not to have their children taught tolerance for gay people."
So somehow, since Catholic Charities was no longer able to discriminate against gay people in their adoption policies, that was "trampling on their rights?" As far as I know, they're still allowed to NOT marry gay people in their churches. And I may be mistaken, but are parents in Mass. no longer allowed to send their kids to parochial schools to learn their intolerance?
All in all, it was fun to watch the senator sweat a little bit, but I couldn't help but think we were just talking to a brick wall. The best part of the afternoon was the liberal drinking session in the bar afterwards.
Gotta give a sound "whoot!" to the drinking part. :)
ReplyDeleteThe comment about marriage was meant for procreation is so offensive to some very successful relationships who are childless or childfree by choice. Even some of my most conservative fundamentalist family members don't believe this nonsense.
ReplyDeleteWhat surprised me about his message was his one minute focus on "job creation" and the remaining portion of time that was spent on Gay Marriage and cutting worker's benefits and pay.
Gazelka doesn't seem to be concerned about the rights of the little people, only his rich friends.
I thought we all drank pretty conservatively. The conversation was liberal, however!
ReplyDeleteTaxes. Just a thought. A person making $30,000 a year, pays 10%, $3000. Afterwards s/he has $27,000 to live on. A person making $300,000, again 10%, $30,000. That person has $270,000 to live on. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteThe sad thing is, here in MN the person making $30,000 would have to pay more like 12% while the rich person would still pay only 10%.
ReplyDelete