Tag Archives: Florida

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

-Beth Shipp : Political Director, NARAL Pro-Choice America


NARAL Pro-Choice America
This election is going to come down to just a few key states. Ohio. Florida. Wisconsin. Colorado.Women’s rights, health, and lives hang in the balance.

Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and other anti-choice candidates would set women’s rights back by literally decades.

But NARAL Pro-Choice America has identified 1.2 million voters in nine key states who would vote for pro-choice candidates, if only they knew what I just told you.

Click here to help us get the word out, swing this election for President Obama and other pro-choice candidates, and support our grassroots and lobbying work to protect choice at all levels.

We’re launching an aggressive campaign to target voters in 25 swing counties. They’re women. They’re pro-choice. But they need to be reminded of how many of their rights would be taken away under a Romney presidency and an anti-choice Congress.

Will you help us put our electoral plan into action to contact these persuadable voters and tell them about the dangers of Mitt Romney and other extreme anti-choice candidates on the ballot, and to protect choice at all levels?

Thank you for all you do to protect choice.

Sincerely,

Nancy Keenan

Nancy Keenan President, NARAL Pro-Choice America

DONATE NOW
~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

a message from Alan Grayson


Help Prevent This.

The Right Wing is bent on making voting as difficult as possible. You’ve heard a lot of people complaining about it. Well, we’re doing something about it.

Here in Florida, where the Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the Governor’s Mansion, the Right Wing is field-testing every means known to mankind to discourage voting. They have criminalized voter registration; even the League of Women Voters gave up on it. They have purged the voter rolls in express violation of the Voting Rights Act; Governor Scott basically said, “so sue me.” They cut early voting days in half, because so many African-Americans were voting that way. Their extremist voter ID laws place the burden on the voter to provide his identity to their satisfaction. They have made election administration completely partisan ; do you remember that the head of the 2000 Bush campaign in Florida was in charge of counting the votes? They have created artificial shortages of voting machines in heavily Democratic precincts. They have excluded convicts from voting, and made it virtually impossible for them to restore their constitutional rights. They have even set up roadblocks between voters and polling places on Election Day.

Well, we’re not taking this lying down. We’re fighting back.

Our approach is this: we want to sign up every progressive voter to vote by mail . Here in Florida, when you vote by mail, you get your ballot a month early. It comes to your home, so there is no chance of your going to the wrong precinct. If you lose it, you can get another one. After you mail it in, you can call the Supervisor of Elections, and make sure that it’s been counted. If there is any problem with your ballot, there is plenty of time to fix it.

Compare that to voting on Election Day. If you bring the wrong ID, then if you’re lucky, you’ll get a provisional ballot. You’ll have to go back the next day, and give them what they want. Half of all provision ballots are never counted.

Someone who votes by mail is twice as likely to vote as someone who doesn’t. The highest voter turnout in the 50 States is always in Oregon, where everyone votes by mail.

So we are fighting back by signing up Democrats to vote at home. We are literally going door to door throughout our district, handing Democrats the paperwork that they need to vote at home. We’ve signed up thousands and thousands of them.

And it’s not just for us. Since Florida is the ultimate swing state, we suspect that on Nov. 7, President Obama will be thanking us. And Senator Bill Nelson, too.

It’s still 90 degrees outside on many days here in Orlando. Our district is 100 miles long, and it has almost half a million voters. It’s hard work to drive all around our district and knock on all those doors. To get the numbers that we need, we have to pay people to do it. It costs about $5 for each absentee ballot request that we collect.

But unlike the folks on the other side, we actually want people to vote, and we want every vote to count. So it’s worth it.

What’s it worth to you? If you contribute $10, we can sign up another two progressive voters to vote at home. If you contribute $50, we can sign up ten more.

Those absentee ballots get mailed out in three weeks. We need your help. Please contribute to our “Fight Voter Suppression Fund” today.

Courage,

Alan Grayson

“It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”
– Chinese Proverb, paraphrased by UN Ambassador (and Democratic Presidential Nominee) Adlai Stevenson.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Profits Over People, Medicare Edition


By ThinkProgress War Room

Romney’s Plan to Pad Insurance Company Profits

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s plan to end Medicare as we know it and turn it into a voucher plan is bad enough on its face. It doesn’t do anything to actually rein in health care costs. It just shifts costs — potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars for future retirees — from the government onto the backs of seniors.

But it gets worse. We learned over the weekend that all the extra money out of our pockets is going to give insurance companies some extra large profits. Here’s President Obama, who was in Florida yesterday, describing the findings of a new study:

In fact, one report just said that by the end of the next decade, our opponent’s plan would mean as much as $16 billion to $26 billion in new profits for insurance companies.  So basically, your costs would rise by the thousands so that their profits could rise by the billions.

How much more are you going to be on the hook for in order to pump up the profits on insurance companies? Check out this handy infographic to find out:

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You May Have Missed

In his defense, Mitt Romney cites five studies that actually just further prove his plan would raise taxes on the middle class.

In new stump speech, Romney suggests Obama is anti-God.

One hedge fund millionaire is trying to buy a seat in Congress.

Paul Ryan once touted defense cuts he now claims to not have voted for.

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) attacked Sandra Fluke.

Romney’s amazing and dishonest gymnastics on health care.

President Obama said Nikki Minaj’s “endorsement” of Mitt Romney was a joke — and she said the president was right.

Poll finds Obama surging after Democratic convention.

Obamacare has led to a record drop in uninsured young people.