I know you’re busy with the year-end holidays so I’ll get straight to the point: The only reason Republicans backed down on the payroll tax cut was because we had the American people standing behind us. Now, we need you again.
At midnight on December 31st, the big ball drops in New York City, our books close on 2011, and both parties have to report their year-end fundraising totals.
That means we have just 5 days to raise the $1 million we need to show that Democrats are strong, united and determined to defeat Republicans in 2012. Make a year-end contribution of $3 or more to our Republican Accountability Fund and House Democrats will match your gift dollar-for-dollar, doubling your impact.
A funny thing happened last week.
When Speaker Boehner announced that Republicans would give up their Tea Party demands — for now — and pass the payroll tax cut for the middle class, he actually said these words:
“…why not do the right thing for the American people – even though it’s not exactly what we want?”
That’s exactly what we’ve been asking all year! Why won’t Republicans do the right thing for the middle class instead of kowtowing to Tea Party extremism?
It’s not just this fight over middle-class tax cuts. They were willing to bring down the government in March over a woman’s access to Planned Parenthood for health care. Then it was the Paul Ryan budget that would eliminate Medicare as we know it, their refusal to touch tax breaks for billionaires and Big Oil companies, and on, and on, and on. Thanks to you, we’ve stopped them in 2011. With your gift today, we can defeat them in 2012.
Contribute $3 or more to our Republican Accountability Fund before the end of the year and House Democrats will match your gift dollar-for-dollar, doubling your impact.
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.
Friend —
Be a Seed for Change 
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