Excerpts from The Daily Call, by Mark Taylor

Paul Ryan Dodges Angry Cheeseheads

Republican Reps Run

from Angry Constituents

By Andy Kroll

Mother Jones (8/26/11)

Bright and early Wednesday morning, a lively band of Wisconsinites arrived at Rep. Paul Ryan's Kenosha constituent-services office for a fifth straight day of protests and sit-ins. The protestors were demanding face time with the Republican, who has scheduled no public town hall meetings in his district during Congress' August recess. This time, however, a police officer was waiting for the protesters at Ryan's front door with a message from the congressman: Get lost.

Over the past week, hundreds of people, a mix of constituents and other angry Wisconsinites, have marched outside Ryan's Kenosha and Racine offices, angry over what they see as Ryan's inaccessibility and refusal to face his constituents in a free, public, in-person town hall. For four days, they also held sit-ins inside Ryan's Kenosha office—until police kicked them out. The only in-person event on Ryan's recess calendar is anappearance at a Rotary hall outside his district with a $15 entrance fee; by contrast, Ryan held more than a dozen town halls in 2009. "This is a jobs crisis in his congressional district, an emergency," says Scott Page, 37, an unemployed Kenosha resident. "Yet he's not even listening to his own constituents."

The only in-person event on Ryan's recess calendar is an appearance at a Rotary hall outside his district with a $15 entrance fee

In an August 18 statement, Ryan said, "I pride myself on being accessible to those I represent." Conor Sweeney, a spokesman for the House budget committee, which Ryan chairs, wrote in an email that the Kenosha protesters had been offered a chance to participate in a conference call with Ryan, and that their actions "were preventing Congressman Ryan's staff from serving other constituents." Claims that Ryan was inaccessible or avoiding angry constituents were "inaccurate," Sweeney said.

Ryan isn't the first lawmaker to face blowback from voters during the August recess. Freshman Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) was bashed by a newspaper in his district for refusing to schedule public town halls despite bashing his opponent in the 2010 campaign for doing the same thing. (Barletta denied avoiding his constituents.) Amidst a wave of public pressure, including from an angry crowd outside a private event he attended, another GOP freshman, Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.), finally agreed to host a public town hall in Duluth, the biggest city in his district, after planning not to do so.

Republican lawmakers who have held public town halls have found themselves at times on the receiving end of heated criticism. Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.) faced a charged crowd at a town hall and dodged a question about the effectiveness of the Bush tax cuts. Citizens protested at a town hall hosted by Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) because Chabot's staff insisted on reviewing audience questions in writing and then selecting the ones that the congressman would answer. And on August 15, protesters chanted and shouted their way through a town hall hosted by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chair of the House energy and commerce committee.

But the protests targeting Ryan throughout the August recess are among the most heated …

Read the Rest: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/paul-ryan-dodge-town-halls