Rep. Kristi Noem has a lot of explaining to do, now that she's voted to raise taxes on nearly every worker in South Dakota. Don't expect her to come out and do that explaining over the holidays. She has consistently avoided facing us, her constituents, throughout her first year in office. She hasn't put a public event on her official online calendar since August 30. She rejected my invitation to attend a public forum in Madison during the first week of August and ignored my proposals for rescheduling.
Rep. Noem thinks that her telephone town halls make up for her lack of public engagement. However, these calls are a sham. The Congresswoman's office doesn't announce them. It doesn't make clear how to get invited to join these calls ahead of time. The phone just rings, and you are expected to drop everything, give the Congresswoman a listen, and maybe try to come up with a question that will get through her unseen filters and fit with the pre-briefed responses the unseen Noem has written out in front of her.
This "Don't call me; I'll call you" attitude is so annoying that even Republican machine tool "Bill Clay" has to admit that Noem is failing to live up to standards for public engagement:
We have an incredible number of issues that are extremely important to the future of our country, and I have a real problem when constituents' questions can be prescreened in calls at a tele-town hall forum that their tax money is paying for. I don't care what party an elected official belongs to or how perfect they vote on the issues. Constituents have a right to be heard.
I'm sure it would be easier for our part-time legislators if they were to hold tele-town halls with prescreened questions, but I can't imagine the news media or the constituents would appreciate it [some guy pretending to be Hans Grüber, "Holding Ourselves to Our Standards," Dakota War College, 2011.12.20].
It's no wonder Rep. Noem hides from the public. Even when she has a prepared script in her hands, she's awful. Asking our Congresswoman to hold an open town hall and address whatever questions her constituents want to bring forth about her must set her and her staff a-tremble.
But such public engagement is part of the job. She needs to start doing it.
elected officials need to be held accountable to the public.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clay
Maybe he's pretending to be this congressman from Missouri? Or maybe it's a take off of Bill Clay Ford?
If your sure you're right in your beliefs, Noem, then you shouldn't be afraid to debate them.
Nah, couldn't be a Ford reference: that guy's too green! A vegetarian, even!
Exactly, Owen. Noem's insecurity is blatantly obvious... and embarrassing. How can she represent us when she won't talk to us to find out what she should be representing?
You know, if I pre-screened both the questions and those I called, I bet I'd find that I was 100% right about everything I believed, too...