Medicare Lobbying Part 3
Today, the Times noticed that there's really something to this Medicare lobbying issue. They've got some ideas of how to get a grip on it.
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Today, the Times noticed that there's really something to this Medicare lobbying issue. They've got some ideas of how to get a grip on it.
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Now, the agenda written below does not address everything but you can choose a big company that gives aid and comfort to the Republican Party and demand that their executives get the Republican Party to do what you want. You can excercise this power every day and you can get other people to join and exercise this power every day. What company executive would want thousands of people demanding a set of progressive agenda, every day with a legal threat of losing your business? Join me and I promise you a peaceful revolution. No need to go out in the streets, no need for first amendment zones, no arrests. You create a no buy zone for some selected Republican contributors such as Walmart, etc. Join me, please.
A political message from the Revolution for progressive legislation.
Here's how we force congress to pass a progressive agenda. Companies do not like boycotts. I suggest you email these demands to Walmart, Wendy's, Outback Steakhouse, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Curves for Women health clubs, each big Republican contributors. Also include Eckerd, CVS, and Walgreens Pharmacy chains. You can send this to other companies as well.
Send this email to your friends and to others on political mailing lists. Thank you.
Send this text in email or fax to a company you can afford to boycott which either heavily supports Republicans or should know better that we need progressive legislative change.
We demand that your company executives get the Republican Party to hold a press conference and accede to these demands and then finally legislate and sign these into law. Until such a press conference happens and the legislation gets passed I will boycott your products.
We demand that the Republican party end their aggressive and hateful action to end a woman's right to choose abortion or not.
We demand the resignation of Tom Delay.
We demand that the United States withdraw from Iraq.
We demand that the Congress of the United states and the president of the United States enact a law to increase the minimum wage to TEN dollars an hour and also to extend unemployment benefits for all people whose unemployment benefits expired after 6 months even though they still seek work.
We also demand that the Congress of the United States to not privatize social security benefits in any form including taking a percentage of the social security tax and placing it in private accounts. People can already create their own pensions with money after taxes in the private sector.
We also demand that the congress make all of a person's earned income taxable for social security FICA tax purposes and remove the 88,000 dollar salary cap. This will make social security solvent for many years to come.
We demand the congress increase the payroll tax in order to make social security solvent as well.
We also demand congress and the president enact a prescription drug benefit under Medicare Part B which covers 80 percent of medication cost, with no extra premium, no extra deductibles, no means test and no coverage gaps, and no penalties for signing up in a succeeding year..
We also call for the complete repeal of the faulty Medicare law HR 1 / S 1 passed by congress in Nov 2003.
We also demand vote by mail throughout the United States of America. This will prevent Republicans from vote suppression by skin color which happened electronicly and in person in the 2000 and 2004 elections. Demand that your state implement vote by mail with ballots easy to fill out and difficult to change or invalidate by Republican Party officials.
We demand Civil servants on every state payroll should keep track of voter registrations and vote counting of mail in votes in each precinct and not companies such as Choicepoint. We need to take the Republican Party out of the business of keeping track of voter registration and counting votes.
We demand States ban the secretary of state from engaging in politics especially acting as a campaign official for a presidential campaign.
_________________________________________________________________ _____________
We do this in the spirit of peaceful resistance to a congress that refuses to enact this legislation
If you don't support what the Republicans did since they took over the House of Representatives in 1995 and don't support the Republican party's plans for this year then Join the revolution for progressive legislation and sign the petition at
http://www.boycott-republicans.com
HIT REPUBLICAN CONTRIBUTORS IN THEIR WALLETS !!
Write this url on your one, five and ten dollar bills in the white areas in Pencil.
--------------------
To each person reading this if you agree with my message please tell your friends and have them tell their friends.
We can stop the war in Iraq by boycotting the defense contractor General Electric corporation.
I want each and every person who wants to stop the War in Iraq to contact the defense contractor General Electric. Go to http://www.ge.com and send them email to the effect that you have decided
not to buy any GE products including Ovens, stoves, refrigerators, light bulbs, televisions, radios, telephones, video recorders, dvd recorders and players, etc.
UNTIL their company executives get the President of the United States aka THE CHIMP to hold a press conference announcing that he will withdraw all US Troops from Iraq, to get replaced by UN troops to defend Iraq until Iraq troops can defend their own country.
In addition to sending email from the web site you can make these demands of GE through their public relations officials. Please act polite when contacting them.
Gary Sheffer
Executive Director, Communications and Public Affairs
(203) 373-3476
gary.sheffer@ge.com
Peter O'Toole
Director, Public Relations
(203) 373-2547
peter.o'toole@ge.com
Yes his name's really Peter O'Toole but Bush appeared the one Lying in Winter about the Iraq war.
I have a plan to stop the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. Of course it will only succeed if you do this and get every person that you can find to do this.Call, email Curves for Women health Clubs corporate Headquarters. The CEO gives quite a bit of money to the Republican Party and the antiabortion movement. When you call them and or email them, tell them you or your girlfriend or wife will not patronize their health clubs until the CEO gets George W Bush to hold a press conference announcing the withdrawal the nomination of John Roberts and replace the nominee with a moderate or liberal for the Supreme Court. Curves for Women health clubs at 800-848-1096 gheavin@curvesinternational.com http://www.curvesinternational.com You can also boycott Dominoes Pizza and call their corporate headquarters make the demands above. http://www.dominos.com (734) 930-3030
http://info.dominos.com/dominos_pizza/contact.nsf/frmContact?open form CEO David Brandon, a hardcore Republican plans to run for Senate in Michigan against Senator Debbie Stabenow. What better way to make Brandon pay more attention to his company and not run for Senate if thousands of people call his company telling him to get the President to withdraw the nomination of Roberts or face a withering boycott.
Spread the word.
Join the revolution for progressive legislation
http://www.boycott-republicans.com
progressive activism group on myspace.
http://groups.myspace.com/revolutionforprogressivelegislation
my web log
http://www.campusprogress.org/page/community/blog/maximus
Liberal America forum.
http://www.network54.com/Forum/259017
http://www.cafepress.com/revolution09
The Revolution for progressive legislation podcast
I have created 2 podcast files you can download.
For the complete list of podcasts look here
http://savefile.com/projects/330309
August 26, 2005 6:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lobbying in general is out of control and has been for some time.
I would like to see local newspapers all across the nation publish once a week run downs of campaign finance stats for their principle federal office holders. Present the public with figures such as total campaign finance expenditures as well as contribution numbers from specific industry groups along with the same number stated as a percentage of contributions. List also focused expenditures paid for by lobbyists targeted to locale specific constituencies.
Voters don't have this kind of information made available to them and really need to be made aware of just how their vote and the actions of their legislators are being influenced.
We will never see appropriate regulation of lobbyists influence upon the legislative process. The least we can do is make those efforts to influence the process transparent to the citizenry.
In this day and age we have the means to do this. I know for sure certain people would argue this isn't possible but that is a load of crap.
Another way this could be done is make a web site controlled by whatever authority structure you wish and have all contributions listed. No contribution can be accepted, check cashed etc, by a politician unless it is listed on the site. Make it a requirement that all contributions are made with traceable financial instruments (no cash). And make sure there are penalties for accepting money that haven't been publicly declared on the site. I suggest a penalty of 50 times the value of a contribution as a reasonable penalty per infraction. That would give some teeth to this and make sure things are all above board. Then organize and present the data that is accumulated so the voter can make sense of it. Do the same for lobbyists and other types of PACs (527s etc) so their expenditures and activities are transparent to the public.
All of this must be available, in real time DURING the entire season of campaigning. The creation of such a DB as a backend to a web site would not be a great undertaking for a small team of database programmers and could be done in a months time. This data is available but usually not until after an election cycle is over. It isn't of much use to the voter after the fact. Such a scheme would add some much needed control and transparency into the system.
The voter has every right to know all of this and it is about time we demand such an accounting scheme so we can see exactly what is going on. We are stuck with the idea that money is going to remain a significant aspect of the political process. It is critical we know who is spending it and who the recipients are. This would be a handy dandy legislative and electoral score card that posts the inning by inning results.
And I would bet we would see election results and most probably legislative activity that generally track to these numbers. It would be really interesting to know how that correlation works out. This will probably never happen because our politicians just don't want information that timely revealed to the public nor do they want that kind of transparency or control to be a part of the system. We need this desperately but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it.
thepeoplechoose
August 27, 2005 2:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Great idea about newspapers. One thing that irks me is that if you want to invest in a stock, bond or mutual fund, the government maintains an excellent Web site, chock full of infomation in easily readable formats, at Sec.gov but that they don't do the same for politicians. Yes, the FEC has a web site and yes, you can get a lot of information there, but if the FEC did things more like the SEC, we'd all be better off. Disclosure is a real problem here. But the technology exists to make information available in a current, easily understood way. We just don't do it.
August 27, 2005 8:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. And the fact that we don't do it for something so elemental to our freedoms but do it for $$$$ tells you a lot about the focus of those who control these things. Capitalism is fine, but it needs to be kept in proper perspective. It is evident that capitalism has become the credo of this country (and the world in general) and the idea of democracy runs a poor second. Money always trumps freedom and its been that way for quite some time now. As long as this condition is allowed to persist we'll have a clash that pits the rich and powerful against the average citizen. This condition has grown demonstrably more pronounced in the last half century and is very basic to what is tearing this country apart. Government economic data fully supports the fact of growing economic class division. The increasing of this gap should be seen as a big red flag but its a yawner.
At the most basic level, the majority of citizens, given an equitable share of the product of their labor, will buy more groceries and refrigerators than a comparatively small class of wealthy individuals. If that overwhelming majority has their purchasing power continuously eroded the entire system falls apart just as we are seeing today. The working class is strapped like crazy. The consumer debt load because of this is a strong indicator of what is happening. The wealthy persons in control don't care because they get theirs, while failing to realize they are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Minimum wage support in line with escalating costs and support of the working class are necessary to make this all function properly. We have just the opposite. This will all go into meltdown eventually and everyone will suffer.
thepeoplechoose
August 28, 2005 1:24 AM | Reply | Permalink