Taking a Spin with Joe Courtney
- Guest Writer
- Jun 4
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 5
Feeling slightly dizzy after Congressman Joe Courtney’s forum in Madison, I stood on the sidewalk as the crowd dispersed.
Over an hour before, I had chatted with the incredibly pleasant and efficient young men and women handling registration and answering questions. While they bustled, the audience of much older people, many of whom had trouble navigating the stairs and aisles between the chairs, mingled with the few middle aged people sprinkled among them.
The forum began and during the following hour, Courtney acted like a lawyer arguing a case for his party; not like a representative of the people looking after their interest first.
Courtney knew his audience, and he constantly, but gently, fanned the flames of their anxiety. He began by excoriating President Trump for having planned his first days in office, suggesting that such preparation was sinister. Joe then assured the audience that the Democrats had spent much time and effort planning to obstruct Trump’s agenda. It was understood that the Democrats’ planning was a noble effort. The crowd did not seem to grasp the hypocritical contradiction.
I expected the audience to understand the basics of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. But like the attendees at Martha Marx’s forum some weeks before, they did not. After the Congressman’s 15-minute opening remarks, people asked questions that muddled the three. At one point, a distressed woman asked if she would lose her Medicaid (she had Medicare). Courtney admitted that the bill would not cut social security. I applaud him for doing that, but after all he did have to be careful with the aged and infirm audience. The questioner’s relief and the general ease in the room spoke volumes about the misinformation the crowd had imbibed from the scaremongers on mainstream TV and print media.
Much of the hour was spent praising Courtney - and even Joe Biden - and agreeing with Courtney that Trump should be stopped and that “right wing,” voices on social media should be censored for disseminating “misinformation.” Ironic in light of the fact that so many who spoke obviously did not understand the Constitutional right to free speech or seem to realize that they want to protect sources that fed them the misinformation that their Social Security is being cut.
When my turn came to ask a question, I mentioned the New York Times article about 80,000 missing migrant children who are being killed, prostituted, transported out of the country, and used as cheap labor. I noted that this all happened on Joe’s watch. I said that the DOJ, FBI, and ICE have found some of the children and asked Joe if he would work with the administration to find children. After attempting a diversion, he eventually promised to work with the Republicans and the agencies. We’ll see.
The feeling in the crowd was slightly annoyed with me, but mostly they didn’t seem to know or to care about the missing kids. (A few clearly did care.) The young staffers had looked annoyed with me at first, but that changed as the discussion unfolded.
Joe wound up the session by saying that Connecticut has decided to spend 100 percent of Medicaid for undocumented immigrants, which the taxpayer will pay since the federal government will withhold federal funds for making that choice. The crowd didn’t seem to mind. He also noted that “gender affirming care,” i.e., castration, will be covered, because it’s “important.”
Yes, the spin made me dizzy standing on the sidewalk. But I noticed the young volunteers nearby, obviously upset. I said good night to them, which they acknowledged. It dawned on me that the baby boomers might have been misinformed and narrowly focused on their own concerns, but those young volunteers have curiosity and phones. They probably looked up the 80,000 missing children and care about them. And they may not want to pay 100 million more in taxes.
Thank goodness for those twenty somethings. They might save the Republic.
You can hear my remarks at the forum on Lee Elci's radio show on June 5th and on Lee's X account.
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