Hey, Jane. Thanks again for all you are doing, and I hope you are making sure to take good care of yourself. There aren’t many people in this world I would consider my hero, but you have become one of them.
A couple of questions:
1. When I donated via Act Blue, the dollars were automatically spread amongst all the Congressfolk on the list and because I gave $50 and there were more than 50 Congressfolk on the list, the ones at the bottom didn’t get anything. So I changed my dollar amounts and put $5 in the bucket of the ten who I favored the most. But it worried me that the money wasn’t getting distributed evenly if you let ActBlue do the default distribution.

2. Can you give us a heads up on how the new “Netroots for Health Care” group at dkos, the “Let’s Get it Done” campaign at OFA, HCAN, and the Firedoglake initiative are related, whether they have common goals and whether all are trustworthy on a solid public option?

3. About the march on Washington that is being planned for Sept. 13th: Are you getting behind that? Are other organizations? We’ve made train and hotel reservations. It would be nice to see some unity among the organizations that are working on the same thing. The OFA bus tour is doing rallies too. HCAN is doing events. And there’s a “Mad as Hell Doctors” bus tour in September. It’s getting really confusing. But it looks like the 9/13 march is getting some fairly big name support. Why are we not seeing more people getting behind it or giving us information about a different march on Washington to focus on?

Thanks again,
Joanne

That chart seems a tad counterintuitive, I must say.

Hi Joan, I’m not positive about how money gets distributed to congresspeople with Act Blue but my guess is that it’s actually distributed evenly, and then their algorythm tries to reflect that as accurately as possible on the page. So if people are giving uneven amounts, what you see reflected may be the software’s attempt to distribute your donation plus the donation before in equal amounts on the screen. But I will check. I’m pretty sure when it’s calculated it will be distributed evenly, even if that doesn’t show up on the page.

Don’t know about “Netroots for Health Care,” do you have a link?

I’m not sure what OFA or HCAN are doing, I think they’re mostly running general support campaigns for the President. As for the Sept. 13 march, those are really expensive and take a lot of manpower to run effectively. We just don’t have the resources or the bandwidth, so we’re going to stick to our plan and let others with more money and personnel handle that one.

Nice work, Jane. Here’s hoping!

thanks for all you do .. but ..

imo .. it’s kinda sad we have to buy our reps off like this ..

the fact 60 people die every day and 22,000 americans die each year from lack of access to affordable health care ought to ..in and of itself .. be more than enough motivation for passing this eons overdue legislation ..

Jane, this is fabulous.

Remember back in 2004 when the netroots helped raise $40 million for Howard Dean and made the Baby Lieberman cry? Five years later, we’ve not only shown we can raise money, but that we know how to use it effectively.

The problem is that election campaigns are obscenely expensive. Even a congressional race in a rural district requires the winner to fork over at least half a million bucks nowadays — more if it’s a hard-fought race. And that’s without taking primaries into consideration.

This is all great but Sirota and Open Left are incapable of writing an article without bullshit like this:

”many progressives in the throes of Democratic Party/Obama sycophancy have refused to consider”

Open Left, shove it up your ass.

imo .. it’s kinda sad we have to buy our reps off like this ..

many pockets, not deep pockets

Some dfh broke it down:

dfh’s awarded $5,762 in gold stars to progressives

Big Insurance spent $ 4,401 per Blue Dog

Do you think that election campaigns are, in your words (and I won’t disagree) “obscenely expense” because the “private sector” controls them?

Hmm?

What does that suggest?

;~D

Is this a democracy or not?

Time will tell.

But, “It Is Up To Us”*. As Jane and FDL so well demonstrate.

Genuine change, whether the Political Cla$$ want it or not, is upon us (finally!).

*Proposed change to motto on US coinage

As one of those recently uninsured lobbyists, I give my thanks to FDL & Jane. This struggle is personal for me. Without your efforts I would feel powerless.

Here is what we are about to find out. How deep do corporate pockets for lobbying expenses go? How much are they willing to spend to leave us in the dust? For we’ve noticed how cheap our members of Congress are to sell out.

And even if we succeed in passing a strong public option in a strong bill, all of that can be undone if we don’t watch the regulations put out for public comment and don’t work the regulation writers.

hey Jane !

when do we go on our first golf junket fact-finding mission ??

and when we open our Four Star restaurant I call dibs on the backroom as my station :D

I am wondering how those Blues – most of which are nominally non-profit – are donating to political campaigns!?! In my state, they are prohibited from doing so – even by a “for-profit subsidiary” (which is a sham concept in itself), under a theory of Respondeat Superior.

In my state, the Attorney General is responsible for policing the non-profits. I’m thinking the IRS is responsible for allowing or disallowing the tax exempt status of these “non-profits.” Perhaps that is what Henry Waxman is investigating…

It would be nice to have the dark blue line taken right off the chart, and have all those “donations” refunded…

But then again, I’m one of those who thinks artifical legal entities (read: corporations) do not have the inalienable right to free speech – since they are NOT citizens.

The Blues have an association to which they pay dues. The association does lots of things, but it also lobbies and has a PAC. The association is incorporated as a business association.

Jane,

That graph speaks loudly. It is tragic the graph has such import. However, we must start somewhere if we are going to fight fire with fire. The FDL $$ actually stand for votes of the people, not the power of the 1% wealthy in the health care and financial industry. Thus, we have an upper hand. Congress knows this.

Remember Tony Benn from SICKO:

“…Democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world. If you have power, you use it to meet the needs of you and your community…

And, an educated, healthy nation is harder to govern.”

Thank you for making it harder on our Congressional reps. That is when we know Democracy is awakening.

not to put too fine a point on it, but this graph at open secrets stongly suggests that the data you are using for your graph is incredibly faulty. Your graph suggests that Wellpoint Inc has only spent around $275,000 so far… the graph found at open secrets shows that Wellpoint has spent $455K so far this cycle. And a quick survey of the other companies you list shows that you grossly underestimate the amounts being contributed.
_
The discrepancy may be that your graph includes only money contributed to individual campaigns, while the data shown at the graph cited above includes not just campaign fund donations, but donations to PACs (including ‘leadership’ PACS) as well.

That is exactly what I was thinking. It’s a sad sort of victory.

It has been a sad lesson for us all. We now know that the congress members do NOT have our best interest at heart, that many, or maybe most, cannot be trusted and that we must not ever again assume anything. We will be ready for them next time.

oh, and here’s another graph that shows that the “health” sector has contributed over $20 MILLION so far in this election cycle….

Really, the very best thing to come out of all of this I think is the internet has restored democracy and majority rule to the US. Hyperbolic yes, but I truly believe we had very much slipped away over the last 10 years or so. In particular I’m attuned to your ‘we’ll be ready for them next time’ comment. We’d better be – we have to be. If those bastards get another chance to seal themselves and their moneyed interests off from public review and voters, they’ll have learned a few lessons too and everyone else will suffer.

You are great, Jane!!! Slink and Eve also.

All of us who do whatever we can to make the public option happen!

:-) Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ya….we’d be considered the largest single contributer but the health sector is acting like a bloc themselves also

Does $1 from “we the people” speak as loudly & in the same language as $1 from Wellpoint? “We the people” can’t offer jobs to ex-congress critters & their aides…

We the people can vote in large numbers.

The insurance lobby doesn’t have enough jobs for all the Congress-Critters. We just need to keep getting them booted every couple years. Not easy, but at least it helps me to have some hope of making a difference in the face of all that lobbying.

Jane,

Links to explain what I was talking about:
http://www.dailykos.com/commen…..462/25#c25
http://www.dailykos.com/tag/Ne…..Healthcare

I have since heard from one of the volunteers who organized Netroots for Health care and as you will see in the first link, they are working to help get more visibility for the various action-oriented blogging activities by the different organizations/groups who are involved in all of this.