A lame Chris Gibson town hall gets noticed nationally

From Daily Kos:


A lame Chris Gibson town hall gets noticed nationally
by devtob


Tea party Republican Chris Gibson, NY-20, has voted to end Medicare, against a clean debt ceiling bill, and signed the Grover Norquist anti-tax pledge.

Gibson was challenged about his disappointing record as a Boehner/Cantor parrot at a town hall in Millerton, Dutchess County, and a YouTube from that got national notice from Atrios.

Gibson repeated his Boehner/Cantor talking points and used a Boehner/Cantor PowerPoint to try to bamboozle his constituents.

But it didn't work.

Details, below.

Town halls everywhere are different from two years ago -- far fewer angry tea partiers, far more constituents concerned about radical Republican over-reach.

The video above was obviously edited by Gibson opponents, but still, it was remarkable in a couple of ways.

First, the sharp question about Gibson and Grover Norquist:

Why did you sign the Grover Norquist tax pledge?

snip

You didn't sign this on my behalf, you didn't ask me. We are your constituents, not Grover Norquist.

(Loud applause)

Alan Simpson wants to know who is Grover Norquist the slave of. By association, I would like to know who are you the slave of.

Gibson's reply is not on the video, though one can assume he did not admit to being a tax policy slave of Norquist.

Second, and more interesting, a small business owner in Millerton was no fan of the Gibson-abetted debt-ceiling hostage crisis, and let Gibson know it:

In January, a consortium of five of us got together to save a small business here in Millerton that was 24 small businesses. It took an awful lot of compromise to pull that off, a lot of folks in town that had influence with the man that owned the building went to bat for us, and a lot of us that were in the businesses had to make some cuts in order to make it work.

Since then, we've got it up and running. July was our best month ever, until you guys pulled your (debt ceiling) shenanigans, and our business has dropped probably 80 percent since then.

Everything you've said with this (Boehner/Cantor) chart, I think most people would agree with -- yes, we're spending too much money; yes, we need to reform taxes.

But don't close your mind, which you seem to have done, against raising taxes for the people who can best pay them.

Gibson lamely responded that he was in favor of vague "tax reform"; he didn't mention, on this YouTube, that he had voted for "tax reform" that would dramatically cut rates for the rich and corporations in the Ryan budget.

To his credit, Gibson at least holds town halls without charging admission, screening out Democrats, or confiscating cameras.

Therefore he has had to deal with constituents who see through the BS Boehner/Cantor talking points and PowerPoint charts.

The essential fact is that Gibson and the radical Republicans don't care about their constituents -- all they really care about is reducing taxes for millionaires and billionaires and doing their utmost to wreck the economy, for partisan political purposes.

The radical Republicans' relentless focus on comforting the comfortable may help a few hundred people in NY-20, but the vast majority of Gibson's constituents have been, and will be, screwed by their radical Republican Congressman.

More and more of them are catching on to that.

Gibson Drops Plan For Nuclear Plant In The 20th CD

Since shortly after arriving in Washington, Republican Rep. Chris Gibson has been one of the new Republican Congress' most ardent backers of nuclear power.  Earlier this year Gibson sent staffers to coordinate with members of the Easton Town Board in Washington County to restart a long dead plan to place a nuclear power plant on the Hudson River almost across the river from the Saratoga National Battleground Park and the Solomon National Cemetery.  Despite the Easton Town Board's support (all Republicans), Gibson's proposal brought strong opposition in Washington County, one of the best dairy farming regions on the Northeastern US.

However, according to the Glens Falls Post Star, Gibson has now done an about face, and no longer supports "at least for now" building a large nuclear facility in the Hudson River Valley.   The paper reported,

"After I studied this in detail, it was clear to me that where we can make an impact at the federal, state and local level is with transmission," Gibson said during an interview at his Glens Falls district office on Monday.

 Gibson now supports improving transmission line capacity, which has been advocated by people studying local economic development issues for many years.   In the 1990s the City of Glens Falls, under the leadership of a Democratic controlled Common Council,  considered creating a municipal electric utility.   One of the options was to "wheel," or bring power from remote resources, over long distance transmission lines from sources like Hydro Quebec, which has surplus power to sell at prices very substantially below that of a new nuclear plant.   In fact,  in the Northern New York area encompassing the 20th CD, nuclear power could not be competitive with power from Quebec, and would actually substantially drive up the cost of electricity across the region.

For more on this story, check out the Post Star story.

Rep. Chris Gibson is caught misrepresenting budget deficits with his own graph.

Rep. Chris Gibson's town hall meeting on April 26th was well attended, with the large meeting room at the Malta Community Center filled to capacity.    The questions were excellent, with the largest number deeply concerned about Republican plans to turn Medicare into an ill-funded voucher program.   Gibson ducked and weaved most of the evening, but the best moment of the night came when Al Ormsby of Saratoga Springs caught Gibson misrepresenting budget deficits with his own graph.   When Ormsby boxed Gibson in the illogic of his own position, Gibson finally simply gave up, unable to answer.

Press Release: Chris Gibson Watch launched by Glens Falls DFA as public service providing accurate information on Gibson’s extremist record

Press Release:  Chris Gibson Watch launched by Glens Falls DFA as public service providing accurate information on Gibson’s extremist record

Press Release

For Immediate Release

Democracy For The Greater Glens Falls Area, a member of the nation-wide network of groups led by Democracy For America, has established a public information service, http://www.chrisgibsonwatch.com, to provide fact-checking, accurate and timely information, and constructive alternatives, to the positions,  policies, activities, politics and campaign finances of right-wing Republican Rep. Chris Gibson.  The new service will also explain the consequences of Gibson’s positions and actions for residents of New York’s 20th Congressional District, and who Rep. Gibson actually represents.  

The Gibson Watch website is also a highly-integrated web-based system:  posts to the Gibson Watch site, which is organized in searchable blog form with side areas for special information and media, are automatically fed to a special twitter account,  http://twitter.com/gibsonwatch, for those who want to be immediately alerted to  the service’s postings on a regular basis.  Postings will also be automatically fed to the Gibson Watch Facebook page,  http://http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chris-Gibson-Watch/108979135849779  Anyone who is interested in following Gibson Watch postings are urged to subscribe to the twitter feed.

Gibson Watch is a volunteer, collaborative effort and is not affiliated with any political campaign or candidate.  It’s goal is based on the reality that congressional representatives, particularly from upstate New York, routinely go to Washington and then consistently vote against the interests and beliefs of their constituents— and get away with it—  due to the geographically dispersed nature of a district as large as the 20th, which generates considerable confusion since voters often do not know what is going on in other areas of these large districts, and the unfortunate fact that today’s news organizations do not always have the resources to adequately follow what a member of Congress is actually doing.   

As a result, misrepresentations often go uncorrected.  One current example is Rep. Gibson’s recent statement he is an original co-sponsor of  a provision passed in the House of Representatives to repeal a requirement in the Healthcare Reform Bill that small businesses  file 1099 forms with the IRS for every purchase of goods and services over $600.   In fact, this problem was first identified by Rep. Scott Murphy last year.  It was Murphy, a small businessman himself and an expert on small business problems, who sponsored the first legislative action to relieve the paperwork burden of this provision.  Gibson is to be applauded for supporting Murphy’s initiative.  But  it is intellectually dishonest, and a bad sign of what area voters can expect,  for Gibson not to give Murphy credit for identifying this problem and being the first to take action, the equivalent of a student copying another’s homework, or an author copying another’s work without attribution.   (GIbson defeated Murphy last November.)

The Gibson Watch team of volunteers will identify or develop areas in which they  have expertise, whether it be educational issues, environment, economics, national security or others, and follow Gibson’s positions accordingly.   It is the intention of Gibson Watch not to merely critique Gibson’s policies and actions, but to also provide concrete policy alternatives that benefit the people of the 20th Congressional District.  

Gibson Watch will especially focus on how Gibson’s positions are out of the mainstream of his district and upstate New York in general, and damage the local economy, jobs and environment.  However, Gibson Watch will not neglect the impact of Gibson’s policies on the nation as a whole.  One example would be the consequences of eliminating the 1099 reporting provision cited above.  Despite Republican claims that deficit reduction is their overriding priority, eliminating the reporting requirement is unfunded, unlike earlier Democratic provisions, and will add to the deficit in the same way other unfunded Republican tax cuts also add to the deficit.  

The Gibson Watch team is open to all  liberals, moderates and progressives across the 20th CD and the upstate New York region who support responsible positions that build the district and the nation, support peace, economic and social justice,  human rights and human dignity, and America’s progressive tradition of a government, as Lincoln put, “of, by and for the people,” not the powerful, the connected, or privileged and wealthy elites.  

Democracy For The Greater Glens Falls Area was founded as a Dean For America Meetup  in March 2003 and had its first meeting as such in April 2003.  When Gov. Dean suspended his campaign in 2004, he went on to create Democracy For America, which the local group also joined, formally becoming Democracy For The Greater Glens Falls Area, but also widely known as Glens Falls DFA.   With DFA National, GFA-DFA continues the principles of the Dean campaign of backing progressive candidates and causes, resisting right-wing extremism and building a new American community.   

for info:  Coordinator, Larry Dudley, ldudley@nycap.rr.com

Update

Announcing Chris Gibson Watch is now supplying feeds to Twitter and Facebook accounts.  Stay tuned for official announcement!

Welcome to Chris GIbson Watch

We would like to welcome everyone to Chris Gibson Watch.  It is our intention to provide a public information and news sources on Rep. Chris Gibson, his activities, positions, policies, politics, campaign finances and supporters, and above all, the consequences of all of these for the people of New York's 20th Congressional District, New York State (because the district cannot be healthy and growing unless the state is) and the nation and world as a whole.

It is our experience in the past that members of Congress from the rural areas of upstate New York tend to disappear into an informational vacuum when they arrive in Washington, with people back home having no idea at all what those representatives are really doing and supporting in Washington.   In part this is because of the highly dispersed nature of congressional districts like NY-20, which is actually bigger geographically than some states.   Things that affect people at one end of a district may go unnoticed in another, or their importance and implications unrecognized or not understood without background and context.  Compounding the problem is that news media organizations based in rural districts like NY-20 are often small and with limited resources, and simply cannot follow a representative the way, as only one example, the Albany Times Union can follow their hometown congressman, Paul Tonko— for better or for worse.  

We want the information posted here to be reliable and consistent, and without bias.  We believe the simple facts speak volumes.

We intend to regularly update this site as information becomes available.