Grayson stacks the deck, stifles free speech

Well, ye socks, our illustrious freshman congressman Alan Grayson finally got around to hosting a "town hall meeting" in the district tonight.

I put that in quotes, because the hastily-thrown-together circus was anything but an open forum for his constituents.

It was held in the union hall (go figure) of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, immediately following a meeting of the local Democratic Party.

This meant there were only about 120 seats to be had, and most of them were filled by party activists who hung around after their meeting.

Many, many more people surrounded the building, but were denied entry. Instead, they had to stand outside in the sultry summer air to express their frustration, wave signs, and chant slogans. Surprisingly, there was only one arrest during the two hours of protest: a man who jostled someone while trying to record video of the scene.

Inside, despite the late hour, Grayson used his three children as human shields, reminding every one of the four people who actually dared to ask him a probing question that they were present.

Amazingly, he had the nerve to dismiss questions about tort reform and Medicare fraud because they were not part of the socialist health care bill pending before Congress. In that, he totally missed the point. The fact that these items are not addressed in the bill are just two of the things that make it bad legislation. But, I suppose it is too much to expect our representative in Washington to listen to our concerns and . . . oh, I don't know . . . maybe introduce an amendment or two to address them?!

Ultimately, Grayson was forced to admit the real cause of the nation's high health care costs: "There is a profound lack of competition." Yep, his precise words. And, they ring true.

It is the lack of free and open competition that causes people in New York to pay double the premiums that their neighbors across the state line in Pennsylvania pay.

Any REAL health care reform would address things like that and remove the contrived barriers to affordability.

Instead, Grayson and his ilk seem hellbent on erecting even more barriers, constructing an even bigger bureaucracy in Washington, and leaving an even more astounding mountain of public debt to our children and grandchildren (and their children and grandchildren).

Pitiful and pathetic.