All posts by PeteB2

Debra Bowen Supporters:Let’s Get Calling

crossposted at DailyKos

Hopefully, you’re already on board supporting Debra Bowen as the next representative for the 36th Cong. District in California in the seat that Jane Harman quit from just a couple weeks ago.  (If you’re not yet familiar with Debra Bowen and why she’s worth supporting, take a look here: “Why Debra Bowen”) The Governor today set the election date May 17, just two short months from now.  (If no one gets over 50% of the votes cast, then the top two will go head-to-head in a July 12 election.)

This diary isn’t going to be asking you to donate to her campaign (although there’s an Actblue page for Kossacks to show support here).  Instead of asking you to give money – which, sadly, is a limited resource – I’m going to ask you to donate (in a way) something more valuable which paradoxically you may have an endless supply of:  Weekend Minutes!

For those of you with an internet connection and free weekend minutes, you can make phonebanking calls for Debra’s campaign without any cost to you.  Without coming up with any money to contribute or having to travel to get to this district, you can accomplish the same exact important work that volunteers are doing here locally by phonebanking from your home.  

Whereas Janice Hahn has a lot of the local political machinery behind her, Debra has connection with a wider grassroots and netroot community.  We made sure she got elected as Secretary of State, and her campaign is needing us to step up again for her.

I’ve done some phonebanking from the campaign office using the online system and it’s pretty simple to use since you don’t have to fumble with any papers – it’s all on your screen.  

So if you have an interest in helping out the campaign, an internet connection, and a phone that won’t cost you to make calls, please sign up as a virtual phonebanker for an hour or two each week.  Our contact person at the campaign office is Peter Berg who can be reached at 310-212-6792.  Let him know you are a netroots supporter of Debra’s and want to virtual phone bank and he’ll set you up with an account and you’ll be ready to call.  If you want to shoot me a message over DKos to let me know you’re doing calls, that would be great so we coordinate activities as a group signs on to get involved.  If there’s enough of us doing it, there’s a lot of potential to coordinate efforts with a scheduled DKos phonebank day and combine it with a fundraising drive.  

I’m not especially talented at coordinating something like this, so if you’d like to help out, it would be certainly appreciated, please chime in or send a message.  

I would also request that if you’re a Kossack for Debra Bowen, please rec the diary to send that message and/or chime in with a supportive word for Debra in the comments.  If you’re a supporter, let everyone know it!

(And if you’re local, come to Torrance and make calls from the campaign office, which is just down the street from the Red Car Brewery, which has fabulous beer for a post-phonebanking refreshment.)

3 Quick Suggestions to Build on Colbert’s Effort to Help Farmworkers

I’ll try to make this short.  Stephen Colbert has made the media focus on the plight of farmworkers who are abused because they have no rights, and done this better than anyone else for a really long time.  You’ve probably seen his testimony delivered “in character”:

In fact, as Dave Dayen has pointed out (BTW, hats off to DD for being all over this story) the most powerful testimony was at the end of the hearing, when answering the questions of Representative Judy Chu of California.

Some concern trolls are suggesting that what Zoe Lofgren has done by bringing him to testify in Congress – and his involvement in the Take My Job effort by the United Farm Workers in the first place – has been a setback to the effort to help the farmworkers.  

Mr. Colbert has moved me enough to see what I could do to help.  Perhaps you all have some better ideas, but here are the ones that occur to me:

#1 – Sign the UFW pledge to support the AgJobs bill (HR 2414), which is expected to allow current undocumented farm workers already in the United States a path to earn legal status.

#2 – Figure out if your representative in the House is a co-sponsor, and ask them to become one if they are not.  (For example, my representative Jane Harman is not currently one of the 63 co-sponsors)

#3 – Give a little money to the UFW to help them support migrant farm workers.  And if you have your donation end in $.01, they will know that it’s a donation inspired by Colbert.  

#4 – any suggestions?  

Help Marcy Winograd’s campaign – Donation match offer

The purpose of this diary is to get you to donate to or volunteer for Marcy Winograd’s campaign.  I’ll match the first $5 you give to Marcy at my ActBlue page for her.  Also, if you pledge to phonebank or precinct walk for her, I’ll kick in to her campaign as well.  (Volunteer signup form here).

Why contribute to Winograd?  I’ll give you 3 reasons:

Because your support could make a difference: Winograd has a shot at winning. She’s raised over $300K for the race (with no corporate donations) and Winograd’s recent poll of the race found Harman to be well below the 50% threshold considered safe for incumbents.  Most relevant, the poll found that “…approximately 70% of all voters who have formed an opinion of Winograd are likely to vote for her.”  .  Your money or phone calls could get Winograd votes just by getting info about her to voters in the district.  

Because you need not worry that a Republican could be elected.  This district is tailor made for a BETTER Democrat, not just a tolerable one.  We can demand a great Democrat who we can trust will be with us when it matters, not saying the right things in public while privately trying to do the opposite.  

Because she speaks clearly on the issues, and will be accountable to us.  If Winograd gets elected, we’ll know where she stands on healthcare (a supporter of Medicare for all) and on Iraq and Afghanistan (she’s pledged to appropriate no money for those wars other than what’s needed to get the troops home. Pinning down Harman is impossible – usually she doesn’t take public positions on legislation prior to a vote.  

Please give what you can to Marcy, or pledge to make some calls/canvass in the comments.  I’ll match you the first five bucks (it would be great if you could give more), or I’ll kick in $5 to her if you pledge to do at least an hour of calling or canvassing for Marcy.  

CA-36 Harman Votes For “Off Budget” War Spending After Blasting It

I previously wrote about a situation where Jane Harman condemned those planning to oppose Iraq war funding in 2007 as being in favor of letting troops die from IED’s, and how she herself ended up voting against the war funding.  Apparently, Harman’s condemnation of herself is becoming a habit.

This time it’s over passing war funding in emergency supplemental budgets.

Jane Harman explained quite clearly in 2007 how wrong it was to be budgeting quite predictable war funds outside of the normal budget process.  In a post titled simply enough “Put the Iraq War on Budget”, Jane Harman was clear on her thinking:

We have already spent at least $400 billion dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But only about 9 percent of those funds were approved through the normal appropriations process.

The rest was passed in “Emergency Supplemental” appropriation bills not subject to budget caps or the normal congressional oversight process. These supplementals – because their numbers do not appear on the budgetary bottom line – allow the White House to pretend it is maintaining a semblance of fiscal discipline. But our deficits are already spiraling out of control and there is no way to bring the budget into balance without taking the staggering war costs into account.

The Bush Administration has claimed emergency spending is necessary because the costs of a protracted war on terror are not known. Nonsense. Both the Korean and the Vietnam Wars were almost entirely financed through the regular appropriations process – not emergency supplementals.

The White House will soon ask for over $100 billion in new emergency war spending, Adjusted for inflation, that is more than we spent in 1968, the most expensive year of the war in Vietnam. And the lion’s share of that funding was done through the regular process.

There must be no more blank checks for this President, and I predict this will be the last “emergency” supplemental in the new Democrat-controlled Congress.

This week we saw a repeat of almost the exact same situation: The administration asking for just shy of $100 billion for war spending, without any restrictions (aka a blank check).

Given her clear statement she’d never again approve non-emergency war spending outside of the normal budget process, you’d think it would be easy to predict what Jane Harman would follow her own admonition and vote No when faced with the exact same situation this week. It turns out, she voted Yes.

So, simply using Harman’s own criteria about “off budget” war funding, her consistent votes in favor of it show that she supports:

– purposely mischaracterizing war funding to avoid having to budget for it;

– making our deficits which are already “spiraling out of control” get even worse;

– making the Federal budget impossible to balance by refusing to take the staggering war costs into account.

That means that it’s not just Marcy Winograd who’s criticizing Harman over her support of irresponsible and progligate war spending – the person that Harman sees when she looks in the mirror is too!

2/3 Rule Initiatives. Should Repeal of Tax Increase Rule Wait? (Take POLL)

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