Unbelievable. Last week, the Democratic Senate overwhelmingly passed a payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance extension. Now, extremist Tea Party Republicans are refusing to pass it. They are holding the middle class hostage only days before a tax hike will hit millions.
How urgent is this? In just ten days, the average middle class family will see its taxes jump by $1,000 a year. And 2.2 million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits. That’s money families won’t have to spend on food, clothes and rent. That’s money that won’t be spent in our communities. Our entire economy will suffer. Happy New Year, America.
This cannot stand. Demand the House GOP pass this bill. I need your help to reach 100,000 signatures by midnight tomorrow. Demand that House Republicans pass the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance extension. Now.
People’s lives and livelihoods are at stake here. $1,000 might not be a lot of money to Republican members of Congress, but when you’re living paycheck to paycheck – or are scraping by on unemployment insurance – this is a huge deal. sign, and pass this petition on to your friends. WWW.DSCC.ORG
Even Scrooge wasn’t this vindictive. It’s way past time for Republicans to put politics aside and pass this payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance extension. Middle class families are counting on it. For once, Republicans should put them first.
Guy Cecil
Dorothy Cooper was born before women or African Americans in our country could exercise the right to vote. She grew up in a Jim Crow-divided South, and saw the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
Dorothy is 96 years old. In 70 years, she’s missed just one election. And she’s never had a problem voting — until this year.
I head up our voter protection team, and we have folks digging in on these suppression efforts every day. We’re spreading the word when new laws are introduced so we can be in a better position to fight them — and for those areas where laws have already been passed, we’re arming people with the information they need to make sure they can still vote on Election Day.
And we can win these fights:
Earlier this fall, thousands of folks in Ohio fought a GOP-led initiative to severely restrict early voting. They collected hundreds of thousands of signatures to enact a “citizens’ veto” and prevent the law from going into effect. As a result, more than 500,000 people were able to cast a ballot in the elections there this past November, and Ohio voters will be able to vote early in the 2012 election. That’s not a victory for Democrats: It’s a victory for our democracy. Help support Democrats and our team’s work to beat back voter suppression.
GOP leaders have actually said themselves: They do better when fewer people show up to vote.
That’s why these efforts are no coincidence. They’re making voting more difficult, on purpose, and if enough people don’t step up, they’ll keep getting away with it.
Republicans’ suppression efforts go beyond the standard Democrat-versus-Republican back and forth. They are an affront to our democracy — plain and simple.
It is absolutely ridiculous that in Texas you can now vote with a gun license but not a student ID. Or that many of these GOP mandates exclude government-issued veterans ID cards, making it more difficult for our vets to vote.
Or that someone like Dorothy Cooper can show up at her local DMV with her birth certificate, voter registration card, and numerous other residency and identity documents and still be denied the state ID card that Republicans have said she needs in order to vote in her state.
But that is what is happening right now.
If that infuriates you, as it does so many other Americans who are learning more about these laws every day, there’s something you can do right now. Help us keep up the fight by donating to support Democrats and the work we’re doing to push back on laws that keep people out, and double down on efforts to bring more people in: http://my.democrats.org/Fight-Voter-Suppression
Thanks,
Will
Will Crossley
Counsel and Voter Protection Director
Democratic National Committee
They love to talk about tax cut this and tax cut that. They love to pretend that only they pass them. And they love to frame any attempt to increase revenue as a job killer.
But last week, when Democrats tried to extend the payroll tax cuts Obama passed last year — you know, the tax cuts that actually benefited poor and middle class workers — Republicans blocked it. They said paying for the cuts by raising taxes on millionaires stops job creation. Senator Harry Reid had a great response:
“Millionaire job creators are like unicorns. They are impossible to find and don’t exist.”
Frankly, Republicans are hypocrites that only care about lining the pockets of their big-money friends and it’s time we called them out for it.
The payroll tax cuts are set to expire this month, but rather then pass tax cuts that mean real money in the pockets of working people, Republicans would rather grandstand and let them expire.
Just yesterday, the Republican House passed an extension they know Obama would veto if it made it to his desk. They loaded the bill up with a wish list of Republican goodies that have nothing to do with tax cuts: the Keystone oil pipeline, roll backs to healthcare, you name it — they probably included it.
Republicans have been getting a free pass on this for too long. It’s time that we stand up and called them out for propping up the super rich while pushing working families down.
The recent images of men, women and children starving in the Horn of Africa tell a painful story of famine and suffering. How does a nation recover from a devastating food crisis? To find out, Chip Duncan and Salim Amin returned to a Ethiopia, to a place where famine caused a massive death toll over 25 years ago. What they discovered was surprising and hopeful. In partnership with One, they created a documentary showing the contrast between 1984 and present-day Tigray. Read their words below, view a preview and watch their powerful short film. << click on link for VIDEO
In Somalia, innocent people are dying needless deaths due to a famine driven by politics and war. Those who are dying need our help and our voice.
Drought is a challenge faced by people around the world. Climate change is now making droughts more common and less predictable. But drought shouldn’t equal famine. Famine is the outcome of poor infrastructure, corrupt governments and warring factions who choose to use food as a weapon.
During our recent work in Ethiopia, we had a chance to revisit the site of the 1984 famine. Our film uses footage and stills from that famine to remind us of the suffering and of its causes. Our story also chronicles the policies and infrastructure put in place during the last two decades to build sustainable agriculture. Water retention systems, irrigation, improved transportation systems, terraced farming, training programs, improved seeds and fertilizers – this is the new legacy in Tigray Province. It’s a story worth sharing so people everywhere can promote small scale agriculture while motivating governments to make similar investments in the future.
Chip Duncan Director, “The Untold Story”
I made a journey following the footsteps of my father from 25 years ago. When Mohamed Amin made that journey a quarter of a century ago, he never imagined it was one that would change his life forever. He had covered every major story in Africa over four decades, but nothing prepared him for what he saw in Korem in October 1984.
A famine of biblical proportions, with more than 5 million people on the verge of starvation. A famine that was, to a large extent, man-made. The ruler of Ethiopia at the time, Colonel Haile Mariam Mengistu, was using the famine as a tool to suppress the rebel movement that was rising against his brutal regime from the north of the country. He didn’t want the world to know this famine existed.
The pictures that my father shot on the plains of Korem changed his life and changed the world. They prompted the greatest single act of charity of the 20th century and saved the lives of millions of Ethiopians. After this story, he changed the way he looked at news coverage. He cared for the first time in his life and did everything he could to keep the story in the headlines. Those images were amongst the most powerful and iconic images in television history.
I was expecting to see Korem still reeling from the effects of that massive famine. It takes generations to repair that kind of damage, but I was in for a shock. I went in with the best TV production team I had ever worked with, and what we saw stunned us all! A massive drought is taking hold of the Horn of Africa once again, but Korem and Tigray Province is an oasis of crops. Irrigation schemes that have been put in place over the last decade. There’s also a new awareness of the types of crops to grow and how to market and sell them for the best prices; and new resilient seeds have all transformed a community from being “takers” to being “providers”.
The farmers of Tigray Province have proved that drought doesn’t have to equal famine, and smart aid can work.
Today, President Obama and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki held a joint press conference at the White House . In other news, Occupy Wall Street has decided to block or interfere with Ports along the West Coast while The Supreme Court will hear arguments on the constitutionality of: the Affordable Health Care Act, the Arizona immigration law though Justice Kagan has recused herself from the case due to her involvement as a solicitor general with the Obama Admin. The high court’s ruling will have implications for 44 states considering their own immigration policies.
just another rant …
If Congress does not act in 18 days Middle Class Americans will have an increase of approximately $1000 in taxes
The official date of winter is 12/20 but the weather outside is getting frightful …well, depending upon what part of the country you live in. The Politics is getting uglier and people on the Hill are downright rude; Republican rude that is. Speaking of Republicans… who do you want as the Teapublican Presidential challenger – Newt the Grinch, Willard the flip flopper or Rick Perry the Secessionist. I know someone has to challenge Barack Obama though like he said last night; it really does not matter whom because Teapublicans all seem to have the same core values and it is a stark difference from the guy who is getting my vote, Barack Obama in 2012. The notion that the difference between Obama and Teapublican Ideology is a close as the nose on your face is obvious to me yet if you listen and I suggest listening – just don’t believe everything you hear main stream media, TV hosts, or those so-called reporters say. It is as if listening to a drumbeat of misinformation misguided misunderstood hitting the airwaves daily. The meme and the person delivering the crap should be held accountable -listen the 2010 elections had help from TV pundits, hosts etc. that put not only unqualified into both Chambers of Congress they are extreme and represent only a small percentage of their own constituents. I hope everyone gets informed with the facts use YouTube and watch the many town halls the interviews of my fellow Americans suffering from not just their status in life. Teapublicans have put their States at risk, rising unemployment numbers; situations that these new Teapublican Governors and Mayors promised. Now, a big dose of buyer’s remorse has led Americans in various States to become pro-active with progress made by the Middle Class to gain back control that will turn around that downward spiral being offered up by Teapublicans. The latest news is an effort to recall Teapublicans who do not believe in regulations, comprehensive immigration, the right to choose, Medicare, Medicaid, social security or that there is even an worker emergency that needs to be addressed, unemployment given and a real sincere effort to get America back on track instead of using their fellow Americans as pawns. If you listen to folks discuss the so-called “Polls” with strange survey question you have to wonder just how much are they being paid. I also wonder if anyone else wonders, where our economy would be if Teapublicans had not gotten into office in 2010 or got there but did what we all pay them for … To do the Peoples Business but they are not. The People’s Business is far from done and what are coming out of the Republican led House of Representatives are on most days an embarrassment and a big waste of taxpayer money. If you have not seen what goes on in Congress; the bills, the nasty attached amendments, the votes and the comments from Teapublican leaders yet you must take the time. The behavior of grown men and women working to gain whatever they can for their individual States is the job but these lawmakers seem to have forgotten the country. I have to say watching Congress some days the rhetoric is silly, the lack of action upsetting. It brings to mind what some members of the Democratic Party have referenced and I wonder why it took so long for them to get it. It is that football scene on snoopy; an animated cartoon that can be watched and laughed at by millions then forgotten but a look closer at the actions by Teapublican Leadership lately and it is a look at Lucy (Teapublicans) pulling that football(AmericanJobsACT) away from Charlie Brown(Dems) though in our case the scene(story) affects millions watching the crap go down.
I still have the audacity for hope and change …the possibilities to make America better with reforms to counter the corruption that almost brought us to our knees are as far as you can see, yet Teapublicans continue to do us all dirty with those filibusters hurting our entire social and economic system. I have to say if this is, what they think qualifies them to be trusted or to govern the beautiful United States of American then We the People have to make sure Teapublicans do not gain more power in 2012 because the changes they will make will disrupt and dismantle our Democracy as we know it.
Unbelievable. Last week, the Democratic Senate overwhelmingly passed a payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance extension. Now, extremist Tea Party Republicans are refusing to pass it. They are holding the middle class hostage only days before a tax hike will hit millions.
Friend —
Be a Seed for Change 
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