Taking a page from the highly successful strategy of the Democratic Party, there was a town hall meeting Tuesday night to discuss the nation’s economic direction.
By the end of the evening, the more than 300 attending left with more questions than answers, but many felt they had been educated, which was the point of the event.
The event was sponsored by the Kankakee Regional Chamber of Commerce in partnership with the organization Americans for Prosperity. The chamber brought the audience, and the national Americans for Prosperity brought — and paid for — the heavy-hitting headliners to discuss what is going on in Washington, D.C.
Highlighting the discussion was FOX News political analyst Bill Kristol, who said citizens need to push for change as opposed to waiting for politicians to take the lead.
“This is a time when citizens can get involved,” Kristol said to the audience, gathered on the grounds of the shuttered former General Foods plant on Hobbie Avenue on Kankakee’s north side. “You need to get involved. This is really an unusual moment. No one really knows” what’s going to happen.
The evening was billed as a nonpolitical, nonpartisan, something the chamber went to great pains to stress. Yet, the meeting was dominated by Republican Party views and the speakers implied that many of President Obama’s initiatives could swing the United States from a freemarket society to that of socialism.
Kristol said Republicans seem to be adopting the strategy that Democrats used to wrestle away the GOP’s control of the White House and Congress.
“I give Obama a huge amount of credit. ... The Republican Party got too complacent and they are now not the party in control,” Kristol said after the nearly twohour program.
“I see events like this catching on,” he said after the meeting. The high cost of clean energy A focus of the event was the opposition to the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The bill would make a number of changes in energy and environmental policies largely aimed at reducing emissions of gases that are said to contribute to global warming.
This bill recently squeaked out of the U.S. House of Representatives by a 219-212 vote. The U.S. Senate is expected to cast a vote on its version sometime in October. Whether it will clear the Democrat-controlled Senate is unknown.
And what will be in the final version is also a question mark. During the wide-ranging discussion, panelists gave a lot of statistics and information. But the members were markedly representing a particular point of view with no opposing viewpoints at the table.
Gary Baise, an attorney with the Washington, D.C.,-based law and lobbying firm of Olsson Frank Weeda Terman Bode Matz, pulled no punches. He said the bill will limit the freedoms of people and drive up the cost of living. And he claimed, it is a main aim of the bill to replace coal-fired energy with a greater reliance on natural gas, wind and solar power. Even though, he said, there are questions regarding how much power can be produced from wind and solar sources. And, Baise said, there seems to be no indication the rest of the world will follow this strategy of cleaner energy.
Phil Kerpen, director of policy for Americans For Prosperity, said while the goal of stepping away from fossil fuels is to reduce global warming, the jury is still out as to the degree global warming exists.
At a meeting at The Daily Journal prior to the town hall event, Kerpen said the rest of the world “thinks we’re loony when we are talking about global warming.” Kerpen said this act will make manufacturing and commercial business change operations to be in compliance with the new regulations.
Kerpen estimated that such mandates could hit business so hard that 3 million jobs could be lost as a result. “As a business sees its cost go up, they lay people off,” he said.
Baise said such pressure would only add to the problems in Kankakee County, which has 12 percent unemployment — one of the highest in the state. Kerpen said homeowners won’t escape this act either.
They will be required to update properties to meet these new standards and if they don’t, the property will be labeled as nonenergy efficient. In effect, such a label would diminish a property’s value.
David Hinderliter, executive director of the Kankakee Regional Chamber of Commerce, said people must know what Washington is proposing. “This is about education and opportunity,” Hinderliter said. “It’s the time of the season to get information on this.”
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