On Saturday, Representative Vern Ehlers, the federal Congressional representative for Michigan’s Third District, gave what he termed an “update” on activity in Washington and allowed a total of 45 minutes for questions from the audience. Representative Ehlers described the interest in this year’s town hall meeting as being quite exceptional and said that he will work to either schedule another meeting in the fall or will make 2007’s annual meeting an hour-and-a-half. In previous years, Ehlers said that he had scaled the meeting back due to what he termed a “lack of interest.”
Ehlers began the event giving a fifteen minute overview of “what is going on in Washington,” beginning with the need for people to enroll for the new Medicare benefit—“Medicare Part D.” While giving no specifics of the plan or who would benefit from it, Ehlers told the audience that people need to sign up by May 15 or there would be a penalty, because as he said, it is an insurance program and you cannot have people enrolling only when they were sick. Ehlers then described how “the budget is a huge issue this time of year” and explained that the Congress has successfully cut everything in the “discretionary spending” category with the exception of defense and homeland security. Ehlers also addressed gas prices, which he described as something that Americans “have go to live with” blaming high prices on what he called the “fear factor” that results from political instablitiy in Nigeria, Venezeula, and the Middle East. Ehlers also described how demand for gasoline has increased due to large vehicles in the United States and new cars in China and India and suggested that an increase in fuel economy standards would be a potential solution. The recession was also proclaimed to be “officially over” during his introductory comments, with Ehlers stating that “everyone has a decent job now” although “it may not be the job they prefer” and that this is one of the “big issues” facing Michigan.
During the question and answer period, Ehlers addressed a wide variety of questions from those dealing with peak oil to immigration. In response to a question about NAFTA and CAFTA, Ehlers once again stated that the two trade agreements have been beneficial to the United States while ignoring the thousands of job losses incurred by workers in Michigan due to NAFTA. This discussion of NAFTA was briefly tied to immigration by audience members, although the two interrelated issues were never addressed together by Ehlers. Instead, Ehlers said that he had “a concern about the large number of illegal immigrants” and that it was an issue that affected all ethnicities and that it was too easy to get into the United States on the coasts and through Canada. He claimed that “illegal immigration” is not a new problem and that it has been ongoing for years but that in recent years it has become easier to enter the country, despite the fact that it remains difficult to enter the country illegally. During the discussion Ehlers claimed that he did not have any answers to the problem, specifically in light of the difficult question of what to do with people who have been in the United States for years, but then later confirmed that he supported HR 4437 which offers a very clear approach to the so-called “problem” of immigration by further criminalizing immigrants and their supporters. Ehlers also indicated support for “reforming” the tax system and stating that he opposes the current progressive income tax and instead would favor something like the so-called “fair tax” that would eliminate personal and corporate income taxes and replace them with a consumption tax that Ehlers said was more inline with the tax policies of other countries.
Throughout the event, a small group of antiwar activists with the group Code Pink sat in the audience wearing pink with “no war” slogans on their hats and clothing, signifying the opposition to Ehlers long-term support for the war. While Ehlers conveniently picked over members of the audience seeking to pressure him to stop supporting the ongoing occupation of Iraq, Ehlers was eventually asked a question about his support for the illegal invasion of Iraq. Ehlers said that the situation in Iraq is improving with the establishment of a new government and that the “main problem” in Iraq is that the United States was not prepared for the post-war situation. Ehlers claimed that he raised these concerns from the start of the war, although he offered no specifics. Similarly when an audience member asked him a question about whether or not President George W. Bush should be punished for taking the country to war illegally using distorted intelligence, Ehlers dodged the question by saying that before one could be punished that the premise would have to be proven true, thereby suggesting that he believes President Bush did nothing wrong in the pre-war lead up to war.
From the start of the Ehlers overview, he was generally very condescending towards the audience, repeatedly touting the fact that he is a “scientist” and that he is a “nuclear physicist” and doing so in such a way that projected the notion that he somehow had a superior understanding of every issue, even those that had nothing to do with his educational background. These condescending remarks had their height with Ehlers using a simplistic analogy about how he wished that “energy were purple” so that people could understand exactly how much energy they are using and so that it could be quantified. He went on to describe how he felt that most people—with the exception of scientists like himself—cannot understand energy because it is not tangible. During this discussion of energy the entire discussion focused on personal energy use, despite the fact that earlier comments focused on the need for alternative sources of energy and higher fuel economy standards. Ehlers also reacted quite negatively when someone attempted to pass the microphone to another audience member, with Ehlers describing how he would chose who to recognize to speak because it was his event.
