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More Than 200 Republicans in Congress Are Skipping February Town Halls with Constituents
VICE News reports on Feb 16:
Members of Congress are set to return to their districts this weekend for their first weeklong recess since Donald Trump's inauguration. Heading home during legislative breaks is nothing new, but this year most Republicans are foregoing a hallowed recess tradition: holding in-person town halls where lawmakers take questions from constituents in a high school gym, local restaurant, or college classroom.
After outpourings of rage at some early town halls--including crowds at an event near Salt Lake City yelling "Do your job!" at Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Committee--many Republicans are ducking in-person events altogether. Instead they're opting for more controlled Facebook Live or "tele-town halls," where questions can be screened by press secretaries and followups are limited--as are the chances of becoming the next viral meme of the Left.
For the first two months of the new Congress, the 292 Republicans have scheduled just 88 in-person town hall events--and 35 of those sessions are for Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, according to a tabulation conducted by Legistorm. In the first two months of the previous Congress in 2015, by contrast, Republicans held 222 in-person town hall events.
[...] "What happens in politics is that over time, you can get increasingly insulated from people that have a strongly held point of view that's different [from yours]", [said Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina]. Sessions like tele-town halls aren't a good substitute, he said, because "oftentimes they will screen their calls and those forums can be manipulated".
Republicans who get [verbally] roughed up at their town halls have taken to dismissing the attendees as professional organizers. [...] While there is no evidence of paid protesters attending town halls, it is true that Democratic activists have been organizing to manufacture viral moments of confrontation like the tea party movement did in the summer of 2009.
[...] One strategy for activists has been to host their own town halls and invite their representatives to attend. [...] Another method has been to confront senators and representative in public places and demand they hold a town hall.
Examples throughout the week at AlterNet and The Daily Hampshire Gazette of Northampton, Massachusetts.
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3
(Score: 4, Interesting) by charon on Saturday February 25 2017, @05:57PM
OO_, count yourself lucky that I published this at all. Politics is not part of our mission. This story has zero science/tech aspects, and you submitted it three times. As you may have noticed, it sat for a while because no one else wanted to publish it, even less so now that you have decided to start calling out specific editors in the submission itself.
If the only complaint you can level at my editing is that I dropped some of your fragment identifiers, that does not really rise to any level of partisanship. Your first summary was represented in full; anyone interested in the story could click the links to the other source articles, without your clumsy, cherry-picked, ellipsis filled quotes. Partisan does not mean "didn't do exactly what I wanted him to."
But hey, think of it this way: you may just have won another battle. Due to bullshit like this in the comments, I will think twice before I use one of your submissions again. Just a few more successful battles like this and you'll lose the war. Well done?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 25 2017, @08:24PM
The comment is currently at +4.
Others have added other names to the (meta)thread.
Clearly, there is interest in seeing the names here on this page.
I dropped some of your fragment identifiers
When I expend effort to make something more useful and someone clumsily/offhandedly destroys my efforts, I become agitated.
Forgive the hell out of me for being human and taking pride in my work and not wanting it to be treated like crap.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 27 2017, @08:20AM
When I expend effort to make something more useful and someone clumsily/offhandedly destroys my efforts, I become agitated.
You still haven't said what the point of these URL fragments was supposed to be. As I noted earlier, I loaded the URL in question, with [vice.com] and without [vice.com] the fragment and saw no difference in the final webpage. It looks to have the same appearance, same browsing behavior, and roughly the same download time. Perhaps you'd get your wish, if you'd tell us what the advantages of the original URL were supposed to be? Editors can always fix links after the fact.
I will add that I find your article contributions to be interesting. I definitely don't want to see them stop coming. But I just don't see what the problem is supposed to be here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @09:13PM
You're playing catch-up. [soylentnews.org]
These are not included specifically for -you- nor for anyone else who is fully able-bodied. [soylentnews.org]
(Try blocking CSS and see how the links work, with and without.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 27 2017, @11:36PM
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday February 28 2017, @04:37PM
Vision problems? Am I somehow the only person whose browser actually renders these pages differently with the URL fragments in place? Are you using some weird or ancient browser? 'Cause it works for me on Firefox 51, Chrome 50, and even IE 11 (I'm at work...). Or maybe you're using some massive resolution that fits the entire article in one screen?
I mean sure it can help with screen readers and such knowing where to start -- but I've got perfect eyesight (well, with these contacts in...) and it still helps me in the exact same way by jumping past headers and ads all the other junk.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 28 2017, @05:01PM
Am I somehow the only person whose browser actually renders these pages differently with the URL fragments in place?
Using Firefox here. The URL fragment I looked at didn't look any different to me, with or without.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday February 28 2017, @04:28PM
Um...if you're going to be staff here, you should probably take a look at The FAQ [soylentnews.org], since it definitely does NOT agree with you about the purpose of this site. Your mission is NOT science and tech, your mission includes general interest, and politics is CERTAINLY a part of that. Your other complaints about the submission do seem valid, but reading that one -- and having it as the FIRST AND PRIMARY COMPLAINT -- is frankly rather frightening. Either recognize that your job as an editor might include some content that you personally aren't interested in, or get together with the other editors and update the About/FAQ/etc pages to make it clear that the original mission has in fact been abandoned as you claim it has.
And for what it's worth, except the obvious fake one the URL fragments *do* cause a noticable visual difference in how the pages load for me on Firefox. The example you posed a couple comments down (to Vice) is the exact same one I used, although the difference is more noticeable with Alternet and others. But they do work as intended, and jump directly to the article. Might be your browser or screen size that appears to be breaking them (I suspect for the Vice one your screen might just be large enough to display the article at the top -- mine isn't. But if the others don't work either it must be your browser I guess)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragment_identifier#Examples [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by charon on Tuesday February 28 2017, @10:44PM
I appreciate the feedback.
The FAQ says this:
So, fair enough, it does say general interest. It does not, however, say politics, which is the sole topic of this article. You may think that's splitting hairs, but politics is a subject that a lot of folks do not wish to see here. The reason for the creation of the new Politics Nexus is so that people can turn it OFF and never see those stories. It is probably the most requested feature. We get enough political submissions that we could run 5-10 per day. They would drown the rest of the site if we editors were not choosy about which we publish, though we'd get tons of comments since political stories regularly hit 100+. But there are lots of places to discuss politics (read: shout past one another) on the internet. We aim for something different.
See also the very first line of the FAQ:
We make these decisions of appropriateness all the time, and if there is doubt we discuss it. Everyone has their own tolerance for where a story lies on that spectrum. No one lightly rejects a story, and I've seen many published by other editors that I would not have accepted. I've also published plenty of stories that I personally do not agree with; I am capable of objectivity.
As far as the fragment identifiers, I usually don't delete the ones that are links to anchors further down the document (#content, etc.). I know what they do. I may not agree with skipping the site header and author's byline, but, (remember, objectivity) it's not worth making a fuss over. The type of fragments I delete are these, from the original submission of this very article: https://www.legistorm.com/pro.html?ExtremelyPoorUseOfAccessibilityFeatures#NoFragmentIdentifiers. [legistorm.com] Do you see the part beginning with a question mark? It does nothing to change where the link points. I can only guess it was written by OO_ in an effort to have that fragment show up in the target site's visit logs as a protest that the site does not have a below-the-header-anchor he can link to. If OO_ wishes to complain to that site, he is welcome to do so, but not welcome to drag every user of our site with him.
Another link sent with a different submission [soylentnews.org] is: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7UcVPgwMJ_MJ:usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/05/29/3-lies-about-jobs-and-the-unemployment-rat+Lp+Lp+Lp+Lp+Lpe+the.economy.needs.to.add.about.180000.jobs.a.month.just.to.keep.up.with.population.growth+Lp+subtract-180000-*-*-*-*-*-*+*-*-*-employed-people-*.*-*-*.*-*-*-*-*-*+*-*-the-decline-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*&strip=1#rectangleA. [googleusercontent.com] This highlighting and cherry-picking is more than a bit disruptive to reading the article; it was removed. As a result of this kind of behavior, we editors have all learned to take a long look at anything added to the end of any link in any story.
Again, I do appreciate feedback. In no way is this sarcasm. I'm trying to write this with my shiny editor's hat only half-way on. On enough to give you a look at what's behind the curtain, and off enough to not be some kind of Authority. I don't speak for anyone but myself; I'm just a guy who volunteers to do copy-editing. I happen to think I did the correct thing for good and valid reasons, but I'll talk with my colleagues and ask if I overstepped.
Cheers and good evening.