The Media Research Center is promoting a new, heavily-edited video that claims to show Congresswoman Melissa Bean “intimidat(ing) constituents” at a town hall meeting, with her own hired “thug.” The American Spectator says, “The meeting was held Thursday at the public library in Round Lake, Illl. While captions in the video label the security guard "Bean's thug," one Illinois source said Monday that the man is actually employed by the library. Mediaite notes that the heavily edited video really misrepresents what actually happened at Rep. Bean’s event. They write, “That event wasn’t a political town hall, either, but rather, an educational forum about credit card debt. According to one source, the video doesn’t show instances of constituents asking the guy with the video to pipe down so they can hear the presentation they came to see.”
Decide for yourself:
On Thursday, August 12, I was there at the meeting with Representative Melissa Bean (IL-8) that was held at the Round Lake Library. The meeting was billed as a Financial Education seminar to teach citizens how to manage their credit card debt. What happened at this meeting was anything but educational. During the meeting, which I attended, citizens started to ask questions about jobs, government spending and the federal deficit. As you can see from the video, every time a citizen would attempt to ask a question, Melissa Bean’s THUG, who we were told worked for the Round Lake Library, would walk over to that person and hover over them to intimidate them. This is exactly what was shown in the video even though it has been edited. The THUG was not bending down to reading anything, as some of the pro-BEAN blogs are now saying. He was bending over a person who was asking Bean a question to intimidate her. I was about 6 feet away and saw it all. This Thug exhibited the same behavior which went on during the course of the entire meeting without Bean saying a word about the blatant intimidation she knew her constituents must be feeling.
ReplyDeleteIt is obvious from Bean’s obfuscation that she chose this type of forum so she would not have to answer any direct questions about her voting record. Instead of having an open Town hall forum where citizens are free to have a dialogue with their Representative, Bean chose to have a representative from the Illinois State Treasury come in and lecture her constituents on how they should pay down their credit card debt and start saving. How ironic when the Federal Government has spent over 13 Trillion dollars and the majority of the states are on the verge of bankruptcy.
I, along with many others in attendance, felt that every attempt to ask Bean a question was either “shut down” by Bean personally or through the intimidation tactics of her THUG. Is this the type of “transparency” we were promised? Why does Bean feel that Thuggery is acceptable?
If you don't condone this type of behavior by Bean, please donate to her opponent's campaign, Joe Walsh and help us get rid of her. www.walshforcongress.com