Friday, August 31, 2018

Friday 8/31 Call to Action

Friday
There are lots of goodies in the news that are worth a call to you members of Congress. Here are just a few to get you started.
Democratic Candidate Has Personal Information Leaked
Former CIA operative, Abigail Spanberger, is running for US Congress against Rep. Dave Brat in Virginia’s seventh congressional district. It has come to light that the US Postal Service released Spanberger’s security clearance form to Paul Ryan’s GOP super PAC after they submitted a Freedom of Information Act request. The application contained very detailed information about Spanberger that should never be made public, including her social security number and her health records. Here’s some things to keep in mind:
*Security clearance applications should NEVER be included in FOIA documents.
*The time it took the USPS to release these documents was three weeks. Typically, FOIA materials take a notoriously long time to be produced; months to years even.
*Despite that fact that Paul Ryan’s PAC knew this information should not be disseminated, they used it anyways.
*The USPS admits that they released the same information on other Democratic candidates as well.
Republicans in power are pushing the boundaries of norms to the extreme. We have got to vote them out in November. A failure to do so will give them carte blanche to dismantle our democracy.
https://www.cnbc.com/…/usps-takes-blame-for-releasing-abiga…
Questions linger on release of candidate's private documents https://www.msnbc.com/…/questions-linger-on-release-of-cand…
Trump Blocks Pay Raises for Civilian Government Workers
Yesterday, Trump announced that he was canceling a 2.1 percent pay increase for government workers in an effort to keep our nation fiscally sustainable. Keep in mind that Trump (and the GOP in Congress) happily passed a tax cut that will balloon the federal deficit by $1 trillion.
Government workers aren’t fancy. They are regular people living across the United States that deserve to make a living wage and have pay increases to keep up with the rising cost of living. Congress has the power to circumvent Trump’s orders. Why not call and ask them to do so. Who are are representatives fighting for? Is it the wealthy 1 percent or regular working class constituents?
https://www.nytimes.com/…/economy/pay-raises-federal-employ…
Trump cancels raise for federal workers, adds to GOP midterm woes http://www.msnbc.com/…/trump-cancels-raise-for-federal-work…
Sexually Transmitted Diseases Are on The Rise
Federal funding for STD (also known as Sexually Transmitted Infections) prevention and control has been decreasing for the past fifteen years. Reports this week tell us that STD’s are on the rise. In fact, the United States has the honor of having the highest rate of STDs in the industrialized world. Studies are finding that some sexually transmitted infections, like gonorrhea are becoming resistant to antibiotics. Denying Americans access to education and preventative measures is a disservice. We can do better than this. You know how we can fix this? That’s right, get out the vote in November. Nothing will improve until we get better representation.
https://www.cbsnews.com/…/stds-on-the-rise-cdc-gonorrhea-s…/
If you have some extra time today you can call Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to declare STDs a public health crisis to help bring attention to this issue, and to encourage funding to help combat the spread of STDs in the U.S.:
E-mail Address: Secretary@HHS.gov
Phone: 202-690-7000
Mailing address: Office of the Secretary U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 200 Independence Avenue, S.W. Washington, D.C. 20201
Judge Rules Against Alex Jones and Infowars in Sandy Hook Lawsuit
Here’s a little good news to come out of a terrible situation. A Texas judge denied the motion by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought against him and his Infowars operation by the parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim, in a ruling released on Thursday. Jones and his Infowars lackeys have terrorized the families of the Sandy Hook victims for years. At the very least they deserve their day in court.
https://www.nytimes.com/…/alex-jones-infowars-sandy-hook-la…
Get out The Vote
Do you need a little motivation to get out there and help a campaign? Read this opinion piece from Paul Krugman. He argues that the United States is one election away from becoming a broken democracy like Hungary or Poland. Yikes. https://www.nytimes.com/…/trump-republican-party-authoritar…
Check out this great website shared by my friend S. The Resistance School has online classes on all kinds of topics including how to effectively phone bank and door knock. There are so many great resources out there! https://www.resistanceschool.com/who-we-are/
Candidates cannot win without help from us. Commit today to doing your part.
Each candidate on the November ballot has a website where you can sign up to volunteer.
District 1 Daniel Feehan https://danfeehan.com/
District 2 Angie Craig https://www.angiecraig.com/
District 3 Dean Phillips https://www.phillipsforcongress.org/
District 4 Betty McCollum https://www.mccollumforcongress.com/
District 5 Ilhan Omar https://www.ilhanomar.com/
District 6 Ian Todd www.iantoddforcongress.com
District 7 Collin Peterson http://www.petersonforcongress.com/
District 8 Joe Radinovich https://www.joeradinovich.com/
Minnesota House Campaigns
Check out these calendars for upcoming events near you.
https://cd2action.com/calendar/
https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed…
This And That
National healthcare advocate Ady Barkan, who has ALS, has an interesting approach to courting Sen. Collins (R-ME) vote on Kavanaugh. He is soliciting donations to go to her opponent in her 2020 re-election bid should she vote for Kavanaugh. https://theintercept.com/…/brett-kavanaugh-susan-collins-a…/ Over $100,000 has been raised so far. Let’s see if we can help:https://www.crowdpac.com/…/either-sen-collins-votes-no-on-k…
Study after study shows that the most effective way to get people to vote is by having conversations with them in the four days before Election Day (Saturday, November 3rd–Tuesday, November 6th). Volunteer here to be part of the last big push. https://thelastweekend.org/?source=MN02
Sister District Action Network did a study on the impact of postcards on voter registration and released the results showing positive results:https://mailchi.mp/…/dark-money-fireside-chat-and-critical-… Let’s read the report and keep on writing postcards!
Klobuchar-202-224-3244
Smith (202) 224-5641
House of Representative switchboard: (202) 224-3121
MN Legislators: https://www.leg.state.mn.us/leg/legislators
Resistbot: https://resistbot.io/
Governor Dayton- https://mn.gov/governor/contact-us/

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