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Upon arrival, we all took our seats after introducing ourselves to Speaker O'Brien. The Speaker eventually made his way to the table in the front of the room, and began a not-so-brief explanation of the Republican agenda of the last ten months. I couldn't begin to describe the fundamental dishonesty of half the speech (or the fundamental flaws of the oligarchical mindset behind the other half). I came, of course, for the "citizen input" portion and cannot really make a passable analysis of his lengthy and cliched speech.
The session began with a "concerned citizen", former GOP State Rep. Marge Hallyburton, who was quickly satisfied with an answer on a local issue, and a "small-businessman" who echoed Speaker O'Brien's attacks on the Department of Labor and attacked Democrats in a fairly incoherent manner. O'Brien replied, cheerfully, contrary to his usually bullying and terse manner, and smiles shone around all the Republican faces in the room. This, thought Bill, is how town halls should go.
The dialogue began to shift with the third question, when a woman criticized Speaker O'Brien for balancing the budget on the back of foster children. The woman, a former foster child, attacked the huge cuts to CHINS, a foster program credited with making NH among the least problematic states for foster children, while allowing corporations to take tax cuts. O'Brien claimed the woman could go to the "round table in his office" where she could address other places that spending could be cut to keep full funding for CHINS. Of course, the local issue from before was keeping a courthouse in the Senate President's district open- for that reason he said funding would likely be available.
However, this is when I lifted my hand and asked my question. I asked him about the aforementioned quote about students and whether or not he believed that there should be a litmus test based on ideology determining who gets to vote easily and conveniently. His response was not to answer the question I quite politely posed, but to start speaking in a rather untoward, declamatory manner about how I "demonized" him and how liberals "demonize" conservatives instead of talking about the important issues of the day- namely, supporting business, lowering taxes, cutting spending and family values. He then went on to distemperately rant about Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals", bitterly implying that I, a flipping fifteen year old, am a Communist subversive, sandwiched between lines about me demonizing Republicans.
At this point, another woman at the event was called upon. She, to my surprise, asked Mr. O'Brien why he was interrupting and demonizing me, much to his chagrin. The woman moved on to question him further about the bill, after which he claimed it was a "joke" that the liberal media picked up on so he could be "demonized" for being a conservative. The questioner asked, then, if he believed the "joke"- he answered that he did. The Speaker, after being rightly castigated by the woman, moved on to a few more questions, which all opposed his agenda.
At this point, the fellow organizing the event, Representative Frank Holden of Lyndeborough, called on us to stop speaking out, as the event "is a meeting for Lyndeborough residents", even though the meeting was publicized in the paper for anyone to attend or to question Bill O'Brien and most other attendees were from nearby Wilton. We were accused of being "hijackers" by speaking about issues that didn't support Bill's radical agenda. The tide, of course, could not be stopped. When the Speaker found out that almost everyone attending wasn't on Bill O'Brien's side, questions were restricted to Lyndeborough residents. But even the home-town team's questions were no more friendly.
Not a good afternoon for our Speaker, poor thing.
Flailing for an opportunity to kill time, he resorted to an "explanation" of his opposition of gay marriage. He basically ran down the list of talking points, from "traditional marriage" to the classic falsehood of "children grow up best in a family of one man, one woman". When we tried to call him out on his list of falsehoods, he repeated them five seconds afterwards, after interrupting us. The rant, short of making him look like a Family Values Patriot™, revealed him as the homophobe that he is.
youtube.com/watch?v=0PYuXqobslU&list=LLVhyVg1DkO6I2N6rKdiXLfQ&index=1
Link to the NHDP's video of the event, "NH Speaker Calls 15 Year Old Boy a Communist Spy", which is quite possibly the best title for a YouTube video ever. Could someone help me to embed the video?
Tomorrowsprogressives.com
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