Take Back Congress volunteers campaigned at the Trumansburg Fair and got a good response. Phonebanks are starting up soon in Ithaca, Auburn and Utica and lawn signs are coming next week.If you want a lawn sign or want to volunteer then email me or volunteer online.
It was apparent last night at the event commemorating Katrina that the level of need folks in New Orleans still face continues to go unaddressed. The lack of a coherent plan for helping people put their lives back together is a day to day insult to a population that has already endured endless trauma.More pictures below:
Survivors who have come to New York are struggling to keep it together, either emotionally or financially, sometimes both. The trauma sustained does not just melt away like a flesh wound, it festers and debilitates long after the fact.WFP State Co-Chair Bertha Lewis (pictured at right), also executive director of New York ACORN, gave a detailed accounting of the dearth of a coherent government response, even to this day. The public school system in New Orleans has been decimated, a majority of the teachers fired, and most of the schools operating today are charters - read privately run. Funny, didn't the Bush administration want to do this with vouchers? People have lost their addresses and thus their ability to receive their Social Security checks, so they have been cut from the rolls. Funny, didn't the Bush administration want to do this too?
Jeffrey Volk (pictured left), a former Bush fundraiser, came to speak. He's on a rampage against the current administration, after having been caught in the eye of the chaos while depositing his daughter at Tulane and witnessing the horror. He told of his Jewish grandparents being rescued by the US Army at the end of World War II, and his incomprehension at the fact that the same US Army couldn't be marshalled to rescue it's own people.
He was not present last night to tell a personal sob story he said, he was there because he had vowed to go anywhere, to talk to any audience, to decry "the disgrace" that is the Bush administration. Talk about an epiphany.
There's a tremendous amount of disillusionment about government, a corrosive lack of faith in politicians, which illustrates the loss for all of us, whether we lived in New Orleans or not. People just don't believe that politicians can or will do anything for them.
One of the most consistent remarks among survivors however, and the most heartening, is that even though they don't believe in government, they believe in people, the goodness of nameless individuals who jumped at the chance to help, and have continued to do so. It's a solid lesson for all of us.
The Working Families Party has a big challenge ahead of it - as does any one of us who cares about having a collective conscience - to restore faith in government or, rather, restore government to an institution that deserves our faith. Maybe the way to start that process is by putting those same good people in government.
Maybe we need to look to ourselves, look to our neighbors, join proverbial hands, and work together to improve government. There has never been a more crucial time to come together with one of our most powerful weapons - the power of the multitude raising their voices in tandem - to hold politicians accountable to the concerns of poor and working people and change the politicians we have for the ones we want.
 Kevin Powell, one of the event's organizers, riffed on Fannie Lou Hamer's famous quote "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired." |
City Councilmembers Tish James and Charles Barron fired up the crowd with their take on Katrina, economic injustice and what we can do about it. | |
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The Working Families Party, ACORN and Kevin Powell are holding a Townhall Meeting on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and why we need to Take Back Congress. Admission is free and no RSVP is needed.
Monday, August 28th, Doors open at 6:30 PM
Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church
15 Hanson Place, between Ashland and St. Felix in downtown BrooklynTake the B, D, M, N, Q, R, 2, 3, 4, 5, or LIRR to Atlantic Avenue Station
Seating is on a first come first served basis
No one alive today will forget Katrina and what it revealed about our society. Nor should we.
What can we do in New York a year later?
Tonight, we'll gather together to grieve at the anniversary of our nation's loss and talk about taking back Congress - which is this year's battle in the long march for progress."National Journal, an online magazine that covers national political issues, rates this race the 11th most competitive in the nation.So how is campaigning going for both candidates?
'Most recent numbers we've seen have Arcuri up by a few points over Meier . . . where are the GOP [poll] numbers to respond?'
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President Bush's sagging popularity has hurt Republican candidates, particularly in this region of the nation."
"People around here are anxious and concerned not just about the national state of affairs, but also their personal state of affairs. As a Republican candidate, the challenge is to show you have even a clue about what their lives are like."But Meier and the Republican Party hierarchy aren't worried; they're counting on their stealth candidate sneaking into office with help from other right-wingers in the district:
"Ray will bring a huge base of conservative voters"We need to get the word out so Meier can't steal this race with his phony double-talk. Let's Take Back Congress - volunteer or donate
Last week I put out a call for ideas for what Google ad keywords people searching for election information will use (Micah Sifry has more - thanks for the kind words!). The idea is to use those keywords to buy Google ads that support WFP-endorsed House candidates running for Republican-held seats here in New York.
The response from people emailing me ideas was overwhelming - I got over 1,000 ideas for election search terms!
So now we're moving to the next step: raising the money we need to start running Google ads. After Labor Day - the traditional start of the campaign season when more people start paying attention to the candidates - we'll start running Google ads to test the keywords everyone sent in and see what works best. As we move closer to the election, we'll focus on the most popular search terms.
If you want to help Take Back Congress than please make a donation to put these Google ads online today!
Technorati tags: Working Families Party | 2006 Election | Take Back the House | Vote Row E"Of this year's 27 most vulnerable incumbents, 14 face challengers who have raised at least $1 million, according to FEC reports. At this point in 2004, no Democratic challenger had raised $1 million. What's more, all but one of the 27 Democratic challengers has raised at least $400,000 -- a figure that many election experts consider a minimum price of entry for candidates hoping to mount a credible campaign. Taking into account all House races, 36 Democratic challengers have cleared the $400,000 threshold.You can see more FEC numbers online.
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For political finance experts, the data are striking because they show that the usual fundraising advantage of incumbents -- who tend to have more access to special-interest money -- is durable but not impervious to competing trends. This year, these include a highly motivated base of Democratic activists and low approval ratings for President Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress."
"Have you heard Congressman John Sweeney trying to beat up on Kirsten Gillibrand? His attacks aren't true. The Albany Times Union calls Kirsten an Albany native and said, 'Ms. Gillibrand and her family live in Columbia County and nowhere else.' The Glens Falls Post-Star called Sweeney's claims false and disingenuous, and said, 'It's a non-issue. Get past it.'Let's Take Back Congress - volunteer or donateSo why is John Sweeney lying? Maybe because he doesn't want you to remember that he's been one of President Bush's biggest supporters in the Congress. He doesn't want you to know about his lockstep support for the Bush energy plan that rewards big oil companies instead of reducing the price of gas at the pump.
And maybe Sweeney doesn't want to talk about the fact that he supports the president's failed 'Stay the Course' strategy in Iraq. A rubberstamp for the failed Bush agenda on gas prices and Iraq. Now we know why John Sweeney would rather tell lies about Kirsten Gillibrand than tell the truth about his own record."
"Sweeney has said he would have preferred legislation that dealt exclusively with the minimum wage issue, but Democrats as well as Republicans were not willing to support that."John Sweeney knows that's a flat out lie - progressives in the House want to raise the minimum wage without any payoffs and introduced legislation to do just that.
"Voters shouldn't be fooled by Republicans on the congressional campaign trail who claim that they tried to raise the minimum wage this year. What they did was tie a wage increase to a doomed bill that included a controversial and unwise cut in the estate tax.Let's Take Back Congress - volunteer or donate
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It has not escaped voters that, since the last federal minimum wage increase in 1997, members of Congress have raised their pay by more than $31,000 a year. Republicans, who have blocked Democratic efforts to raise the minimum wage, know that a vast majority of Americans favor an increase. A Wells Fargo-Gallup poll taken in March showed that even 84 percent of small business owners, whose struggles are often cited as a reason not to raise the minimum wage, said that the minimum wage would have no effect on them.
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Americans want to see working people earn a fair wage. Republicans, who are fighting to retain control of Congress, should stop playing politics and provide one."
House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King has endorsed requiring people of "Middle Eastern and South Asian" descent to undergo additional security checks because of their ethnicity and religion.NY NAACP president Hazel Dukes calls it right:
"We are all concerned about safety but to target any group for nationality or religion is unconstitutional. African-Americans understand racial profiling. We won't support any targeting of a group. The practice is just un-American."It's time for Congressman King to go.
Not surprisingly we haven't heard many public comments from John Sweeney in the past few months. But his spokesperson Maureen O’Brien Donovan (known to friends and foes as Morod) has been hard at work "spokesing" for her man. Which is good. That is what she is paid to do. However, she has a problem of pretty much lying every time she opens her mouth. I may have some time on my hands (thanks to John Sweeney and George Bush's economy...things are a bit slow) so I'm thinking of counting up all the Lies of Morod. The latest installment.That's it: the counter is started. We'll watch it rise, and please go post at www.democracyinalbany.com if you catch the Congressman and his staff in a lie.Sweeney campaign spokeswoman Maureen O’Brien Donovan, who earlier this week insisted to me that the congressman’s campaign doesn’t use trackers and accused Gillibrand’s tracker/intern of stalking Sweeney, didn’t deny these two guys are connected to the campaign.So we'll start the count at one Morodism. Feel free to join in the fun.
Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland, a former Ronald Reagan-era Pentagon official, immediately accused Spencer of engaging in adultery and nepotism and said it spoke to his lack of credibility to serve in office.Uh boy. Fortunately, it's their only debate.
"That's something that, in 1998, the Republican Party impeached President Clinton for exactly the same behavior," McFarland said to gasps from the audience. "If you'd been in the military, you would have been court-martialed. If you worked in the federal government, you would have been subject to indictment."
Spencer angrily shot back, saying McFarland had unfairly insulted his children and lied about his record.
"You have no way of knowing my private life," he said. "I say to you, Mrs. McFarland, shame on you. Shame on you as a mother of children and a woman yourself for talking about my wife and my family that way."
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So much time was spent discussing Spencer's private life that Carter finally turned the tables, asking McFarland whether disclosures about her own messy past _ she accused her father in 1992 of sexually abusing her as a child _ were relevant to her fitness to serve.
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When asked to pose questions to each other, McFarland cited instances when Spencer had threatened to kill Gov. George Pataki and had used ethnic slurs against Italians and Chinese.
"Is this how you plan to conduct yourself?" McFarland asked.
Spencer said he'd apologized for using crude language and for making jokes that fell flat
"The political climate will be extremely hostile to Republican candidates. . . . All of the traditional diagnostic indicators in major national polls taken in the past 10 days show numbers consistent with an electoral rout. . . . In a very large tidal-wave election, as this one appears to be, it would not be unusual to see all toss-ups go to one party, along with a few out of the leaning column as well. Republicans might lose their House majority just in the seats in which they are behind or in which their edge is within a poll's margin of error."From Larry Sabato:
"Indicators are now suggesting that Republicans are headed for their most serious midterm losses in decades. . . . To be certain, the 2006 midterm election cycle promises to feature the most strongly anti-incumbent mood since 1994 . . . . At this stage, the Crystal Ball is shifting its outlook from a Democratic gain of 6-8 to a Democratic gain of 12-15 seats in the House."From the Wall Street Journal:
"'It is likely that Republicans lose control of the House,' says Bernadette Budde of Business-Industry Political Action Committee. The biggest danger for Republicans: 'clumps' of defeats in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York, submerging incumbents who don't now appear vulnerable."From the Washington Post (poll results here):
"Most Americans describe themselves as being in an anti-incumbent mood heading into this fall's midterm congressional elections, and the percentage of people who approve of their own representative's performance is at the lowest level since 1994, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll."New York is the swing state, with as many competitive House races as any other state in the nation. And Mike Arcuri's race in CD24 is shaping up to be the closest of the bunch.
"With Boehlert out of the picture, Democrats are upbeat about their chances, citing a strong nominee and a favorable environment, including likely November landslides for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and gubernatorial hopeful Eliot Spitzer . . . Arcuri, who will run on the Democratic, Working Families and Independence party lines, presents himself as a moderate who is 'similar to Boehlert.' Like the retiring Republican, he opposes Bush's position on federal funding of stem-cell research, is pro-choice, favors increasing the minimum wage and opposes a ban on gay marriage. . . . If the national political environment were completely neutral, the GOP almost certainly would retain the seat. And Arcuri would have an almost impossible task against Boehlert, if he were seeking another term. But the open seat and the possible Democratic surge in the state and nationally make this a very competitive race. Meier still has an edge, so a Democratic win there definitely would mean GOP control of the House is in deep trouble."I'll wrap it up with another blurb about our work to Take Back Congress, this one from Crain's Insider (no link):
"Paris Hilton has entered New York politics. A Working Families Party radio ad supporting Democratic congressional hopeful Mike Arcuri blasts a Republican bill in the House that ties a minimum wage hike to a cut in the estate tax, saying the provision is for 'heiresses like Paris Hilton.' Arcuri's opponent, state Sen. Ray Meier, has said he supports the bill. The two are battling to succeed Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-New Hartford, who is retiring. The Cook Political Report calls it the state's most competitive House race but rates Meier a slight favorite."It's going to be a tough fight, but this is our year. Together, we'll win. You can get involved by making calls to support Mike Arcuri (email me to volunteer), making a donation so we have the money we need, and making sure you're on our email list.
Hotline: AD WATCH: First Ad Tying Paris Hilton To A Minimum Wage Hike?Listen to the ad here.
The Working Familes Party launched a radio ad 8/3 attacking GOPers for "playing more political games" on behalf of Oneida Co. DA Michael Arcuri (D).
Full Script, "Raise": There they go again. Instead of just raising the minimum wage, the Republicans in Congress are playing more political games. Last week they said they'd raise the minimum wage but here's the catch: it has to be coupled with a big inheritance tax cut for the very rich. Make that the very, very, very rich. Because only the 8,000 wealthiest families in America qualify. While Congressional salaries keep going up and up, it's been nine years since Washington increased the minimum wage. And the Republicans still refuse to raise it unless heiresses like Paris Hilton get a tax cut. That's just not right. This November, vote your values. Vote for Democrat Mike Arcuri on the Working Families Party line. Arcuri supports raising the minimum wage. Health care we can afford. And Social Security we can count on.
To All parties that have helped Childcare Providers,Thanks Gladys, we're proud to be in your corner.
The following is titled "Why I want a Union!"
The reason I want a union is quite simple (WE) need it. We are professionals without the tag that usually comes with work done of the highest value. The beginning of the future of our children.
Our forefathers fought for the rights we have today. Using any measures necessary to accomplish equality and humane conditions. The fight continues with organizations like THE WORKING FAMILY PARTY, to insure that people like myself are able to utilize the right to organize. The people that have made social and economic justice their goal in life deserve and should have all RESOURCES, that are available to help people to achieve the DEMOCRATIC DREAM. That is and should be available to ALL in America.
I have to thank WFP for the support that has been given to legislation override.
The struggles still exist hence making organizations like WFP one of the most important means to pave justice for today and tomorrow in my world of CHILDCARE.
Sincerely and passionately submitted,
GLADYS JONES
PROUD SUPPORTER OF ANYONE IN MY CORNER
