2017 - A New Year - We Will Leave Our Mark!
I hope you enjoyed your holidays! Now we settle down to save our democracy, but first, some good news! And I will try to always start with some good news this year.
GOOD NEWS
"One city, though, is ending the year with a vote for local campaign finance reform, and another will launch its own reform starting in 2017. Earlier this month, Portland's city council approved an initiative that will match residents' small campaign contributions 6 to 1, transforming a $10 donation into a $70 one, and $50 into $350. In 2017, Seattle will implement the country's first experiment with "democracy vouchers." Every resident 18 years or older will receive four
vouchers worth $25 each they can give to any local candidate of their choice, provided those candidates opt in to strict limits on spending and receiving private donations.
If it works as supporters intend, residents won't need to spend a dime of their own money to support candidates, people without wealthy donor pools or deep pockets of their own will be able to run on a more even playing field, and all candidates will be encouraged to spend more time talking to the voters than on soliciting big donations."
Put these two numbers in your PHONE:
Sen Cruz 202.224.5922 and
Sen Cornyn 202.224.2934 You will need to call them regularly starting today! Today call to say you do not want Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. "NO SESSIONS" Most likely you will not speak to a person, but do leave a message. These calls are very important and disturbing even to our Texas senators. They do not usually get calls, especially from progressives. We are going to change that. We must protect our democracy.
I asked you to create for yourself, a list of your representatives with contact information for them and their staff. I hope you have started. You absolutely need this information today and all the coming weeks. Here is an easy way to get much of this information, if you haven't finished your list of representatives: https://whoaremyrepresentatives.org/
ACTIONS IN JANUARY
(List not complete--check your local organizations for local events)
Jan. 11: Trump will announce a phony plan to address conflicts of interest - look out for
online actions.
Valuable resources and talking points:
A new site,
Factba.se, now provides a searchable database of all President-elect
Donald J. Trump's speeches, tweets, and policy statements.
Media, activists, nonprofits, policymakers and others can now track the corporate ties of President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet picks and other top political appointees at
CorporateCabinet.org.
Resources on Jeff Sessions:
SURPRISE MATCH EXTENDED to JAN 18
Our donor has extended now through Jan18th the offer to match each donation one to one (up to $150 each) -- your $10 will be matched by the donor's $10 ..
This offer is for either of our organizations,
Clean Elections Texas (not tax-deductible) or
Clean Elections Texas Education Fund(tax-deductible).
We have a very challenging year ahead so this could really help us meet that challenge.
Clean Elections Texas (
CETex) will be going to Austin in this next legislative session working on several campaign finance bills as well as joining others to support ethics bills and/or fight "bad" bills. The money is used for our visits to Austin to work with legislators and our network of organizations.
Clean Elections Texas Education Fund (
CETEF) will be working as usual to educate various constituencies about the issues which concern their work and lives that are being affected by the outpouring of special interest money and/or the issues of voter suppression and of low voter turn-out among those who are registered to vote.
Your donation of $5, $10 or $100 will give us more resources to do our work.
Donate to CETEF (our education arm and tax-deductible) Only hours left for these tax-deductible donations to count in 2016 taxes.
THANKS to you and our donor!
|
