6th District constituents ask: Where is our country headed – and why are you a part of it?!?

We promised a follow-up on details of Sixth District constituent comments and questions posed on February 22, at the weekly Open Door meeting in Front Royal hosted by staff of Congressman Bob Goodlatte – and here it is.

Why additional detail on those comments?

Goodlatte staffer Emily Wicht, right, sets groundwork for Feb. 22 Open Door meeting, as portion of a record crowd of 31 constituents begins to settle in. Photos/Roger Bianchini

Because they reflect deep concerns that have driven an outburst of public anger at Town Hall meetings across the nation during the recent Congressional recess.  It has been Republican lawmakers like Goodlatte that have taken the brunt of that anger as a consequence of the first month of Republican Donald J. Trump’s presidency.  It is a presidency unusual on several fronts:

• Trump lost the popular vote by three million votes, despite the disenfranchisement nationally of millions of traditionally Democratic demographic groups, including youth, blacks and the elderly based on new, more restrictive state-approved voter ID laws and rules – “It’s almost to the point you have to have a birth certificate to vote,” one person present at the Front Royal meeting observed (and that might not work since they don’t have photos attached).
• At least in part, as a consequence of the difference between the popular vote and Electoral College result, Trump begins his presidency with the lowest approval rating – about 40 percent – in history;
• Despite those numbers, Trump enters office with a decisive Republican Congressional majority, a majority whose approval rating has been worse than his, around 20 percent or lower for several years, in both the House and Senate. It is a conservative majority that seems determined to overturn a half century or more of federal labor, environmental and civil rights protections, as well as social safety-net programs enacted during Democratic administrations;
• And the new president is poised to appoint a crucial tie-breaking US Supreme Court justice after those congressional majorities blocked the incumbent Democratic president’s ability to nominate a court successor to ultra-conservative Antonin Scalia in the final year of his presidency. – “It’s getting more like an oligarchy,” another person commented of defacto Republican-control of all three branches of the U.S. government.

And if Goodlatte personally managed to dodge the direct and often angry encounters many of his colleagues faced during the congressional recess by scheduling a trip to India to assure that government that our new president’s immigration policies will NOT impact that nation’s tech workers seeking employment here, his staffer Emily Wicht did not.  As we previously reported, a lengthy list of questions and complaints were submitted to her to be presented to her boss.

Near the top of that list was a request Goodlatte make himself directly accessible to face constituent questions about his and his Party’s support of the agenda of a president whose primary leadership experience is as a “Reality-TV” star; and a silver-spoon-fed businessman with a habit of declaring bankruptcy (four times), at least in part to avoid paying debts.  And with news reports escalating through February and beyond about “the Russian issue”, exactly how Trump’s path to the presidency was achieved, was not far behind accessibility and policy accountability on constituents’ minds in Front Royal that unseasonably warm February morning.

A double standard

“There is clearly a double standard here,” one of the 31 people who turned up to confront the absent Goodlatte, said.  The reference was to the reluctance of House Republicans like Goodlatte to pursue an investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian government personnel during the 2016 presidential race, after those same congressmen spent millions of taxpayer dollars on repeated and repeatedly fruitless inquiries into Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi-related e-mails.

In fact, Goodlatte himself has co-sponsored (with Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah 3^rd) a call for a Congressional investigation into the leaks surrounding evidence of those contacts, while ignoring the substance at the root of the leaks – leaks which subsequently led to the resignation of Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

As FOX News correspondent Sheppard Smith noted of such an inquiry based on President Trump’s allegations of “leaks” surrounding the Russia contact stories, “They are saying the news is FAKE, but the leaks are REAL – that is IMPOSSIBLE.”

The general mood of those present seemed reflected in the question, “I wonder what made Trump single out the Russians to hack his opponent’s e-mails during the campaign?”

Since the February meeting here, the Russian plot has thickened for the Trump Administration, if not piqued the interest of House Republicans to pursue it.  Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from any potential Russian inquiry due to his own Russian contacts during the election, a fact he neglected to mention under direct questioning about Russian contacts during his Congressional confirmation hearing.

A crowd of 31 disgruntled, even angry constituents gathered inside and out of Samuels Library’s Baxter-Bowling Conference Room on Feb. 22.

“What’s disappointing to me is his (Goodlatte’s) support of Donald Trump,” John Cermak told Wicht.  “I met him and his wife; they seemed like nice people … but for him to support Trump on Party lines – I don’t understand it … Our disdain is generated by these Party-line stances.”

Inaccessibility

According to our contributing writer Malcolm Barr, Sr. complaints were already showing up about Goodlatte’s inaccessibility since he managed to earn the ire of President Trump on the ceremonial opening day of the 2017 Congress.

On that day, Goodlatte led a tribe of rank-and-file Republican lawmakers, who’d voted in a secret House Judiciary Committee meeting to dismantle the independent Office of Congressional Ethics.  In the midst of a public and media firestorm, Trump Tweeted his displeasure, suggesting Goodlatte and company focus on “other more important things” and the House Republican Caucus immediately back-pedaled in the face of Trump’s objection and the growing public outcry.

It appears Sixth District Congressman Bob Goodlatte will remain reclusive during public backlash toward the Trump Administration agenda and congressional support of it.

“I don’t think I’ve heard a peep directly out of our congressman’s mouth since January 20,” Barr said; adding that he was told by one of our town’s leading citizens who asked not to be identified, about being “stood up” by Goodlatte last month.

Meanwhile, letters to the editor in other publications around the Sixth District have lodged similar complaints, which apparently led to a press release from the congressman’s office saying Goodlatte would not appear publicly either at town halls or with individuals for an unspecified time.

Health Care

If he did, another overriding concern he would have heard at the February 22 Open Door meeting was that Republicans NOT rush into repeal of the Affordable Care Act.  The overwhelming consensus of those present was that the reduced-cost health care coverage implemented by President Obama under the ACA be maintained until Republicans come up with a BETTER alternative.  And those addressing this issue, like Christine Ilich, Rea Howarth, Frederic Tagg III, Kathleen Roush and Diane Demarcus made it clear they did NOT view “better” as an alternative geared to simply restoring un-regulated corporate health insurers’ profits, thus making health care coverage unaffordable, even for many working Americans.

In fact, Rea Howarth said her daughter had begun a small business that would not have been possible without ACA help with health insurance coverage – “People overlook the positive impacts of the ACA on small business,” Howarth stated.

Her husband Tom Howarth cited his own work at health clinics, pointing out that people with any income, no matter how small, could not qualify for ACA-associated Medicaid coverage in Virginia because the Republican-controlled General Assembly had refused to adopt Medicaid Expansion, a key element of the Affordable Care Act.  It is an element a U.S. Supreme Court majority in 2012 ruled that each state had the option of approving or rejecting, despite its connection to a federal program they deemed legal.  Estimates are that the Virginia General Assembly’s rejection of Medicaid Expansion pushed by Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe has kept as many as 400,000 Virginians from Medicaid eligibility and reduced ACA health insurance costs.

At least if you’re approaching WMH from this side, you’re able to walk in.

“Medical expenses can send people into bankruptcy overnight if a child is born with or comes down with a serious disease,” Rea Howarth stated, asking, “Why are we against socialized medicine and health care? Other countries do it and make it work.”

“Because we’re Americans, and we believe in FREEDOM!!!” one man said pounding the meeting room desk, drawing some laughter for his delivery of an obviously facetious remark.

Christine Andreae cited her work on the Warren Memorial Hospital Board.  She pointed to the high amount of debt the hospital takes on because of patients who can afford NEITHER health insurance or large, unexpected medical expenses.

“It seems Republicans are more interested in Party than people,” Howard Morton commented.

“I don’t understand putting Party over the general good,” one young woman said, adding of Goodlatte, “What are his morals if he supports Trump?”

Immigration policy

And on the topic of morals, the president’s attempt to institute an immigration policy based on stereotyping of ethnic groups and nationalities came under heavy fire.  Eleanor Miller said she taught an ESL (English as Second Language) class at Samuels Library, coincidentally site of the Goodlatte-less Sixth District Open Door meetings.

“The numbers have been dropping off in recent months – these are mostly moms trying to better themselves and the opportunities for their children.  But they are afraid to drive now,” she or someone next to her said of a growing fear of immigrants that things like routine traffic stops could lead to incarceration and deportation, potentially separating them from their children.

“All I see are increases for the police and the military.  ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) and the Border Patrol are becoming our Brown Shirts,” one woman said of Trump budget proposals and immigration policies (Brown Shirts being a reference to militarized German police of the fascist, Nazi era of the 1930s and 1940s).  “We’re not the home of the free, home of the brave anymore – we’re home of the scared; and they are doing everything to promote that fear,” she said of the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans walking in lockstep on immigration with it.

“I don’t want one cent spent on building a wall,” Tom Howarth added to his previously expressed concerns about health care.  Of Trump’s immigration policies and deportation plans, Howarth cited the plight of a Salvadoran friend in Arlington.  He said if that person was sent back to Salvador in the wake of the most recent coup there, they had told him, “We will be killed.”

“Are we that hard hearted that, that’s the best we can do?” Howarth asked the absent Goodlatte, who as House Judiciary Chairman sits at one focal point of immigration reform.

The narrative & the media

Melissa Ricks recounted helping take a group of children to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.  She said that when one of the children asked how something like that happened, she responded that Hitler and the Nazis “controlled the narrative” about what was happening at the hands of their government, and why.

A master of narrative control – German “Minister of Public Enlightenment & Propaganda” Josef Goebbels, circa 1933-1945. His book on narrative control, aka propaganda, is still referenced by right-wing extremists around the world. Public Domain Photo

That observation led to some group back and forth about Trump’s vilification of the media, most famously as the “enemy of the people”, exactly because they do not accept the president’s often unsubstantiated or even verifiably false narrative on myriad issues.

Trump’s assertions about the media were recently contradicted by a perhaps to many, unexpected source – former President George W. Bush.  In response to a direct question from the “Today Show’s” Matt Lauer about Trump’s “enemy of the people” comment, Bush said he considered the media “indispensable to democracy.”  The 43^rd president then added, “We need an independent media to hold people like me to account.  Power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive, and it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power.”

WHAT is going ON?!!? – I have quoted Fox News’s Sheppard Smith AND Texan George W. Bush in one article – QUICK, someone get me the vapors before I expire!

Ah, that is better.  A quick count of “narrative” issues involving either Trump or Congressional Republicans in general included in and after the February 22 Goodlatte-less Open Door discussion were:

• Actual crime rate numbers;
• Immigrants’ impact on crime rates;
• The president’s rationale for proposing huge increases in military and law enforcement spending;
• The necessity of cutting social safety net programs to achieve other budgetary goals;
• And even things as trite as the attendance at the president’s inauguration.

In the administration’s first month, Trump spokesmen or women were forced to create a term to explain gaps in the president’s statements and reality – “alternative facts”.  It is a concept that Miriam Webster’s Dictionary online has noted “does not exist” – facts are facts, the “alternative” is non-facts, as most five-year-olds are probably beginning to understand.

“We have to contradict that narrative every chance we get,” one person said of the Trump and Republican Congressional majority’s narrative about the state of the nation and world.

“I hold him personally responsible for violating citizens’ civil rights,” another commented – and it wasn’t clear at that point, at least to this reporter, if “him” was President Trump or Congressman Goodlatte.

Time will tell…

There was more, including Administration and Republican Congressional weakening of environmental protections, including offering federal lands for sale to corporate interests at the state level; the diminishing of science as a basis for governmental decision making on things like energy, the environment, climate and human health; corporate profiteering off student loans to cover soaring college costs; why Goodlatte as House Judiciary Committee chair had rejected some comprehensive immigration reform plans, then excluded Democrats from a meeting with ICE officials; and even a general Trump Administration assault on the function of federal agencies, including the EPA, Education and even the State Department.

Photo/memegenerator.net

But I know I’m probably boring the county’s Republican majority, though perhaps NOT. – As several people present on February 22 said, “I used to be a Republican” or “If you take Republicans for granted you are making a BIG mistake.”

However, there were also questions as to whether Party-line supporters of Trump, or Goodlatte for that matter, understood that they, not to mention their children and grandchildren, ALSO benefit from things like affordable health care reform; affordable college tuition; federal land and national park protections; and moves toward sustainable energies from highly polluting fossil fuels.

As my friend and colleague Malcolm Barr, Sr. said in a recent Opinion piece involving a Goodlatte-sponsored economic development initiative here, I guess “time will tell.”

(Malcolm Barr Sr. contributed to this story.  His appraisal of Goodlatte’s effort to remove independent ethics oversight from himself and his colleagues is posted in our OPINION section.)