Category: Action Alert

Those bastards

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

This week in Denver, July 19-21, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) will welcome Republican state legislators and its corporate funders, including Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, K12 Inc., Peabody Energy, and PhRMA, to vote on corporate legislative priorities and create cookie cutter “model” bills in task force meetings that are still closed to the press.

ALEC will welcome U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, Newt Gingrich and other Trump loyalists to the meeting.

On the agenda for debate and discussion? A model bill to repeal the 17th Amendment, which established the popular election of United States Senators in 1913.

Previously, U.S. Senators were selected by state legislatures and political party bosses beholden to powerful industries. The corruption scandals erupting from the wheeling and dealing fueled some of the great muckraking investigative journalism of the early 20th Century. In 1912, progressive Republican U.S. Senator Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follettecampaigned for the popular election of U.S. Senators as a means of cracking down on political corruption and corporate control of the democracy. Reformers introduced direct primary elections, ballot initiatives, and recall votes, in the same time period.

Now right-wing extremists want to roll back the clock to enable Republican state houses and Republican governors to hijack at least 10 U.S. Senate Seats held by Democrats in Republican trifecta states, and force an ever more extreme agenda through Congress.

ALEC’s model bill to repeal 17th amendment

The “Draft Resolution Recommending Constitutional Amendment Restoring Election Of U.S. Senators To The Legislatures Of The Sovereign States” is scheduled to be debated by ALEC’s Federalism and International Relations Task Force in Denver.
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Pay attention

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Kris Kobach, who is the scariest of a very scary bunch, is up to no good here:

Read the story, call your state’s Secretary of State and tell them you don’t want the federal government poking into your voter history. This is a really bad thing.

Fortunately, states are already starting to say no — California, Virginia, and Connecticut, so far.

CALL YOUR SENATORS: 202-224-3121

~ susie

Be civil. Tell the intern how this bill affects you and the people you care about. TURN THE SCREWS.

They are telling themselves since they won the election, the rest of us are malcontents. They are fools, as far as the long-time effects are concerned.

See what McConnell did? He listed only $2B for opioid treatment. That means Rob Portman and Shelly Capito will publicly ask for a big increase and maybe a delay in Medicaid reduction.

Then they will call a press conference and announce how hard they fought for their constituent. And of course now they’ll vote for the whole mess.

Then they announce how brave and tough they are to win their ask and thus, now satisfied, they will vote for the bill.

As long as Collins and Murkowski are the only two left, they’ll be allowed to vote against it, and Mike Pence breaks the tie.

The House will pass whatever the Senate sends them, and the rest of us are fucked.

Like this woman, whose daughter has cancer. She confronted Sen. Shelly Capito (WV) over health care bill:

https://twitter.com/MuslimIQ/status/877958527955812354

Young progressives lead ‘Indivisible, the resistance to Trump

~ susie

Stakeout Outside the Barrington Illinois Office of Representative Peter Roskam 3-16-2017 9560

In the weeks after Donald Trump won last year’s presidential election and Republicans kept control of Congress, Sarah Dohl, with a of friends and former Capitol Hill colleagues, wanted Americans — mostly distraught Democrats — to know that their voices could still be heard. Not expecting much, they published online a 26-page document in mid-December, outlining… Continue reading “Young progressives lead ‘Indivisible, the resistance to Trump” →

Okay, time to make some calls

~ susie

TEA Party Rally

Call the Capitol Hill switchboard @ (202) 224-3121 and ask for your congressperson. When they answer, say:

“I am calling because I want you to hold public town halls on repealing the ACA, just like you did for the people who opposed it. There should be no final votes on this until the public has had their say. There was no mandate to repeal this.

“Are you willing to hold a town hall?”

Then call your senators — also through (202) 224-3121 — and say the same thing.

Remember, the airwaves were dominated for an entire summer by the Tea Party idiots who screamed out and threatened their congress critters at public town halls. Now it’s our turn to stand up for the ACA.

Federal offices are closed today

~ susie

Big dome

But you might be able to leave a voice mail if you call your congress member or senator. If not, we need you to call 202-224-3121 tomorrow and DEMAND they hold town hall meetings about the ACA repeal before the final vote.

Here’s what they’re doing Friday:

WASHINGTON — The House is expected to give final approval on Friday to a measure that would allow Republicans to speedily gut the Affordable Care Act with no threat of a Senate filibuster, a move that would thrust the question of what health law would come next front and center even before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office.

The House vote would come after the Senate narrowly approved the same measure, a budget blueprint, early Thursday morning. Americans woke up Thursday to the realization that a Republican Congress was serious about repealing President Obama’s signature domestic achievement — a move that could leave 20 million Americans unsure of their health coverage and millions more wondering if protections offered by the Affordable Care Act could soon be taken away.

“This is a critical step forward, the first step toward bringing relief from this failed law,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said.

Democrats said the rush to repeal was the height of legislative irresponsibility and would endanger the health of millions.

“For the life of me, I can’t understand the need to take health care away from people, and why in the world anybody would even contemplate doing that without something to replace it,” said Representative Louise M. Slaughter of New York. “Just snatching it out from under them and it’s gone. I think that there’s going to be a mighty rumble in this country, an outburst of anger and fear.”