The Evolution of a Town Hall

I had an email from an 8th District Constituent who attended the Schaumburg Town Hall this Week for Congressman Walsh.  As a matter of fact, this was his fourth Walsh Town Hall.  The below is a reprint of the email and goes to show that Joe is realizing his district is more than his band of merrimen.  

"I'm XXXXX and I attended the Joe Walsh Town Hall meeting in Schaumburg last night. This was my fourth one. I attended his very first one in Lake Zurich in December even before he was sworn in. The second was at Harper College. the 3rd was in Deer Park. Last night's meeting was very different from the first two, in more ways than one. The first two were very similar to what I imagine would be a Walsh campaign rally. A real love fest, if you will. Last night was no love fest. He was challenged frequently, sharply, and rapidly when he would put something up on his "power point " presentation that just didn't ring true and was meant to mislead. Also, the crowd wasn't quite so one-sided. In fact, it was about half and half of those in attendance, but about 70 to 80% of the questions and remarks were not Walsh/Tea Party friendly at all. Mr. Walsh showed that he could adjust to the crowd and some of his views were different than the ones he espoused in the first two Town Halls I attended. 

Example #1  In December, he said the "defense budget is untouchable, wouldn't cut a thing as long as there was even one uniformed U.S. service person stationed abroad." Last night, after a few challenges, he said the defense budget was on the table. 

Example #2  I  guess he's heard enough about G.E. not paying taxes and the oil companies getting huge tax breaks, so he sounded like he was going after those also. However, he is of the 'drill baby drill' ilk and on this he has not changed.

As far as money in politics, he has backed off his December motto of "there should even be more money in politics' and now it's " my direct contributions are limited by law" (outlining many of the restrictions placed on direct contributions to candidates) but he unsuccessfully tried to downplay how corporation contributions to outside groups ARE unrestricted thanks to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. The crowd would not let him get away with this sly deception and let him know it. Those who pointed this out were applauded.

One last thing about the issues - his whole theme was the debt, the deficit, the debt, the deficit but the crowd had other issues in mind, especially the Ryan plan - which by the way, he said he didn't agree with everything in it but failed to say what.

Now for my analysis of Joe Walsh himself. I give him much credit for having all these Town Halls and listening to the voices of his constituents. Of course he pats himself on the back vigorously for this but he still deserves credit. Also, he makes the point that those elected to Congress should not necessarily be blamed for "trying out what they believe in." He's a terrific salesman and most of us would have a difficult time doing what he does, as far as the town halls. That being said, his policies are way out there and his Tea Party crowd's "solutions"  are even further "out there" as you can imagine. The ones I spoke with have terrible ideas about taxes and regulations and you'll never convince them otherwise. Fortunately, I think these people are a minority but they are his people, lock, stock, and barrel.

Where Is All That Money Coming From

We took the liberty of borrowing an excellent comment from the Eye on Lake County (www.lakecountyeye.blogspot.com)


Walsh's Chief of Staff (Justin Roth), was a political hack and lobbyist for the Insurance and Bank lobby for many years. On January 5, 2011, Walsh started out as the poorest member of Congress - but has now raised almost $400,000 in the 1st Quarter of 2011. I wonder if Walsh ever explained any of this to his Tea Party followers in The Great Awakening, Barrington Tea Party, Palatine Tea Party, Northern Illinois Patriots, or the 9-12 Patriots. I'm guessing Walsh never mentioned it to his followers. Now you know why Justin Roth is Walsh's Chief of Staff.

Walsh's District Director (David Carlin), is another political hack. He already had at least one big political paycheck in DuPage County - and his connections to Pat Brady and Kirk Dillard made him valuable to Walsh. The Illinois Republican Party (IRP) Insiders think they now have instant credibility with all those Tea Party supporters through Walsh. Nothing could be further from the truth because the Tea Party Leaders are in the dark about the deal Walsh has cut with the IRP. Now you know why David Carlin is Walsh's District Director.

By the way, Walsh lent $28,500 - (supposedly his own money) to his campaign in 2010. You can verify this by looking at the FEC (Federal Election Commission) filings. So how did Walsh do that? Where did all that cash come from?

Walsh is broke. He wasn't even paying his bills. Walsh lost his expensive Evanston Condominium to Foreclosure just a year earlier. His highest ever income was once $35,000 for a single year. Walsh also has a few kids attending some very expensive Universities. So who's paying for that? Where is all this money coming from? Be prepared for more money stories from this clown.

One last item, if you look at any of his FEC filings, you will see what cash was raised, what bills were paid, and how much debt was still outstanding at the end of each Quarter. But if you flowchart the Walsh cash flow, it doesn't add up.

At the end of 2010, Walsh claimed he still had almost $400,000 in debts. And for the 1st Quarter of 2011, he raised almost $400,000 and spent about $100,000 including paying himself back on some personal loans to the campaign, but he also decided to skip out on almost all of the $400,000 in debt he had at the end of 2010. He is now disputing almost all of it.

Here is the website to look up the FEC reports yourself:

http://images.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/fecimg/?C00473579

A BIG FAT LIE

Politico covered the Walsh Interview from this past weekend and deemed Joe a liar.

http://www.politifact.com/

Failure to Pass 5th Grade Math or Fuzzy Math????

Congressman Walsh appeared on network television this past weekend.  During the interview, he was asked 
"Can you really sustain what everyone is calling for just by cuts in public services? Doesn't there need to be revenue-raising mechanisms?"

Walsh replied that the best way to raise revenues is to grow the economy. "You get taxes and regulations off the backs of businesses so that revenues can increase".

According to Walsh and in his own words "Every time we've cut taxes, revenues have gone up. The economy has grown."

Here is a chart from the Office of Management and Budget that tells a different and factual story.

We know members of the Tea Party have taken to distortion in recent months.  Whether is it is blatant lying on the floors of Congress, or steering mis-informed constituents down the wrong path of reality.

One very popular news post picked up this piece Sunday evening.  Over 5,000 comments (we could only wish for that kind of traffic here) and I couldn't find one that labelled our Congressman as knowing what he was talking about.  The majority found him a joke.  

Disgrace...Just An Absolute Disgrace

Time and time again, Joe Walsh has been caught lying to the media and lying to his constituents.  On one hand he says he does not represent his district and then when the camera is on him, he spouts off Tea Party Talking Points for which have little validity.  Now he is spouting to the media that we.... his constituents want him to support a government shut-down.



Well Joe the moderate and progressive voters of your district have this to say:

  NO WE DONT'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

We do agree with you in that we do have a fiscal mess.  However these fiscal challenges didn't occur in the last two years, four years or even ten years.  This fiscal train wreck started with a very flawed "trickle down" economic theory that started over 25 years ago.

We don't have a deficit problem, we have a revenue problem!

The traffic on our blog is really picking up, so while you may choose not to leave comments, we thank you for stopping by and encourage  you to call or FAX Congressman Walsh

Phone: (202) 225-3711

Fax: (202) 225-7830