corrente

  YABL Threat Alert!             
5 Alarm LIE!!!!!

Courtesy of our resident genuis, the farmer, we have this color coded system for alerting you to recent or upcoming Bush administration lies, dubbed YABL, (see Lexicon) because of their ceaseless nature.

This is the first time we have used this highest level of alert. What lie, or lies do we mean?

Every word spoken in the Senate in support of both the energy and the Medicare Bill.
They will come mainly from Republicans, but doubtless a few Democrats will be peeled off.

This is one of the most important moments there will be for those of you who want to defeat Bush. Passage of these bills, without efforts by Democrats to go to the wall to defeat them, will be a huge win for Bush, and will make it close to impossible for Democrats in next year's presidential and congressional elections to attack Bush and the Republicans on two of their biggest weaknesses.

A solid effort by the majority of Democrats to defeat them, and explain why they are such truly awful bills in the extended debate possible in the Senate, even if unsuccessful, will preserve their ability to make it a campaign issue.

The point of this post is to urge every single person who reads these words, to take the time today, tonight, and even tomorrow, to contact, by phone, email or fax, preferable by all three, those Senators who will be crucial to a solid, unified, Democratic effort to defeat both bills, and to contact at least five other people you know, friends, relatives, work mates, to do the same. Details of how to do this, at the least expense of your valuable time, will follow a discussion, with links, of the policy issues and suggested talking points to be used in your Senate contacts.

These bills are defeatable. Let's take the energy bill first, since that is the one currently being debated in the Senate. This morning, Frist is probably going to call for a cloture vote; he probably won't get it, too many key moderate Republicans, and even a few non-moderates, are appalled by the bill to let him get away with it. But action needs to be taken today to be the most effective.

A recent Zogby poll tells us that a majority of Americans are aware of the main outlines of this bill and that they do not support it. Most of you probably know what's so terrible about it. The best compact discussion I've seen can be found at the new Center For American Progress, which has some real shockers I hadn't heard about, like a RollCall report of specific instances of the Republican crafters of the bill being wined, dined, by industry lobbyists, and taking trips paid for by those interests whose ideasdominate the shape of the final bill. Here's another summary from Act For Change. And another summary of specifics from CAP.

Here are some bullet points:

This energy bill:

Has a huge price tag, which means our tax dollars:

Go to pay for huge tax breaks that go directly to gas, oil, and coal industries.

Go to all kinds of subsidies paid directly to large corportions; for instance, for construction of new nuclear plants; why subsidies? because nuclear power plants are not cost effective, aside from their other problems, which include no safe way to get rid of the nuclear waste.

Are financing the first major rollback in anti-pollution measures ever. Perhaps most outrageous example - makers of MTBE, an anti-smog additive that turns out to pollute ground water, are to be protected from liability, which means no community adversely affected can sue, and the provision is being made retroactive, so states like California and NY, with pending lawsuits, will have no way to recoup the costs of cleanup. In addition, 2 billion dollars of our tax money goes to a subsidy for these companies, to ease them through a transition period from while they find some other pollutant to manufacture. Meanwhile, no one is even talking about extending unemployment for American workers who've been out of work more than six months.

The bill was put together in secret, without input from Democrats or from citizens, or from any environmental groups, but with the active participation in the writing of the bill itself of K Street lobbyists for the energy industry.

The bill will not achieve energy independence, though energy companies will be allowed to exploit resources on federal lands.

The bill is backward looking, by several decades. No real conservation efforts, no greater energy efficiencies, and the provisions for renewable resource developement are a joke. Note, development of such resources means new jobs that cannot be exported elsewhere.

The bill makes us less secure - and could encourage nuclear proliferation by reversing a decades old policy and allowing the re-processing of spent fuel from commercial nuclear plants.

The bill will adversely affect the health of most Americans, which means ever more children with severe asthma, just to mention a single example.

The bill is larded with pork, put there cynically, to entice just enough support from Senators who might have opposed it to squeak it through the Senate.

It's a cesspool of a bill.

Okay, who do you need to call? First and foremost, Senator Daschle. He's on the fence. Those ethanol subsides mean a lot to the farmers, many of them small farmers, in his state. Don't get angry about that. Get smart.

Call Daschle's office and register your intense desire that the Senator lead the Democratic opposition to this bill. Stress how crucial you feel it is. Be polite. Don't talk long, his office will mainly be counting the number of calls. They will register intensity if you stay focused and polite. It's okay to say that you might have to reconsider voting Democratic next November if Daschle fails this test of leadership. And surely, if Olympia Snowe can stand up to the administration and the Republican leadership, Senator Daschle can. Or don't say that. Emphasize you expect no less from Daschle, if that suits you better.

You don't need to pay for the call if you use the Toll-free Congressional Line:800- 839-5276; ask for Daschle's office and you'll be connected. The line can sometimes be busy.
If you can afford it, you can call his office direct at 1-800-424-9094, not sure if that's genuinely non-toll or not, this one definitely isn't - 202-224-2321.

Follow this up with a fax or email to give additional points. Not too many. Be polite. My suggestion is to emphasize that this is one instance in which doing the public good is synonymous with what is politically essential for the Democratic party. Mention the Zogby poll; supply a clickable link, perhaps to the CAP Progress Report mentioned above. Touch on how backward looking the bill is. Use bold type for emphasis, use spaces between lines and points so that it's easy to see the essence of your message at a glance.

Daschle's email: http://daschle.senate.gov/webform.html: this takes you to a webpage where you can leave an email. If you want to send it straight from your email: daschle.senate.gov should do it. Daschle's fax #: 202-224-6603.

If this isn't a day when you can take that much time, Working For Change has made it easy for you to contact Daschle on both the energy and the Medicare bill here. They provide you background information, and a pre-written message, though they encourage you, as would I, to write your own.

Next up. Sens. Dorgan and Conrad are supporting the energy bill. It's the ethanol subsidy, stupid. Again, don't get angry, get smart. Call, fax, or email the two Senators and ask them not to get in the way of a fillibuster, and not to vote for cloture until they feel that they have to, for all the reasons you used for Daschle. You can find all their contact information here.

If you have any more energy left, email the two California Senators, Sens. Schumer and Clinton from NY Sen. Durbin of Ill. Sen. Reid of Nevada, and anyone else you can think of, and ask them to lead a fillibuster of the energy bill; remind them that if the Democrats don't put up a concerted, public effort to defeat this bill, they will not be able to attack Bush or the Republicans on a major weakness. They don't have to win, though that would be nice. But if their opposition doesn't register with the voters, how can they talk about Bush having the worst energy policy next year?

Here's a site that allows you to click on a state to find out all the contact information on the Senators from that state.

Blogs are doing great and important work. But that work won't mean much if we the people, bloggers included, don't get ourselves organized to register our power when and where it matters. How long did it take the right to get CBS to dump "The Reagans?" Any bloggers who happen by, feel free to lift any part of the info here and get your readers to make some calls or send some emails and/or faxes.

WHEN ENOUGH PEOPLE DO IT, WHEN ENOUGH PEOPLE STAND UP TO BE COUNTED, IT MAKES A REAL DIFFERENCE. IT TELLS OUR REPRESENTATIVES WHAT THEY NEED TO DO TO REPRESENT US. THEY HAVE EVER REASON TO LISTEN, AND THEY WILL.

Include Medicare in your communiques if you want, for efficiency. Or come back later for some thoughts on how to effectively counter that horror.

UPDATE: For inspiration, here's Molly Ivins latest on this subject.

I meant to link to this excellent suggestion by Atrios, that the ethanol subsidy need not be a stumbling block, since there enough Republican Senators from corn-producing states to make a separate subsidy bill possible. Also, if the bill doesn't pass, or goes down because it can't pass cloture, that only means that Bush and the Republicans have to come back to the table. If they refuse to, the onus is on them.

For those of you with extra energy, it might not be a bad idea to contact the offices of Kerry, Lieberman, and Edwards and ask them to show real leadership where it counts.

FURTHER UPDATE: Actually this was unaccountably excluded by Blogger from the first update.

To inspire you, I'd like to dedicate this post to Lisa English of Ruminate This, who has been such a tireless, eloquent, and good humored, (she's funny, too) advocate of grassroots politcal involvement. Her blog is one-stop central for citizen participation. Recently, her son's struggle with diabetes has been her number one concern; thankfully, Lisa has great confidence in her son's doctors. In other circumstances, I would probably be linking to a post by her, urging you to get involved and take action, and telling you how. You can let Lisa know at her blog that we're thinking of her, and doing something concrete to make the future of all of our sons and daughters a better one.