"All students," wrote Ken Klippenstein at The Intercept, "hope to learn from the top experts in their field. Graduate students at Arizona State University have an unusual opportunity this fall to do just that," because corrupt conservative Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema "is teaching a course on getting rich people to give you money... Fundraising is a subject the Arizona senator knows a thing or two about, having raised eye-popping sums of money from groups opposed to President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. Sinema has racked up some $920,000 in campaign contributions from said groups, according to an analysis by Accountable.US, a watchdog group that monitors corporate lobbying. In the past two years, she has received tens of thousands of dollars in maxed-out contributions from private equity partners and investment firm CEOs who stand to lose in the event of a tax hike on corporations or the rich, as The Intercept reported last month. Sinema recently told colleagues that she would not accept any corporate tax or income tax increases, the New York Times reported.
Sinema's approach is very different from Alan Grayson's. Sinema takes bribes and should been prison instead of teaching courses about how to legalistically skirt the law (not to mention morals and decency). Arizona State University should be ashamed. Grayson, on the other hand, has always raised funds from grassroots small donors.
Yesterday, he send out a fundraising letter and when I was reading it I wondered why all candidates running against Republican incumbents have put out the same kind of communication. "Yesterday," wrote Grayson, "Marco Rubio voted in favor of defaulting on the national debt."
Cheating the people who, in good faith, lent $27 trillion to our national government.
Cutting off Social Security checks and Federal Unemployment earned benefits.
Raising interest rates on houses, cars and credit cards.
According to this analysis, after default, the stock market would drop by one-third, “wiping out $15 trillion in household wealth.” That’s $50,000 for every American man, woman and child, down the drain.
Rubio . . . just . . . doesn’t . . . care.
Fifty sane Senate Democrats joined with ten sane Republicans to prevent this from happening-- at least until December.
But not Marco Rubio. He just wants to burn it all down, even if you’re caught inside.
Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Rubio is one-upping Nero; Rubio is setting the fire himself.
WE MUST DEFEAT MARCO RUBIO.
Join us!
Courage,
Alan Grayson With your help, the next Senator from Florida
I recall when Erica Smith was in the middle of her 100 county tour in 100 days and her van broke down. The campaign sent out a very effective e-mail that raised her enough money to tow the van and get it repaired. It seems urgent without feeling hysterical like the DSCC and DCCC e-mails that predict if you don't contribute $5 in the next 12 hours the world will end but if you do contribute it will be matched 50 times. And it wasn't just a phony-baloney end of the quarter desperation e-mail. It appeared to me at the time that it was rooted in a component of her campaign that people like and it seems to empower the donors, by giving them the opportunity to make areal difference in a very tangible way while letting them know exactly what the contribution will be going for.
<b>
I feel pretty awkward about this.
But I’m writing to you from the side of Route 85 with an urgent request.
Believe it or not, our old campaign van just broke down!
Yes, that’s correct. I am currently sitting in a rusty campaign van on Route 85, just outside Kannapolis, North Carolina!
Some friends of mine are on their way to come rescue me. But bringing our van into the repair shop is going to be a HUGE and UNEXPECTED campaign expense this month.
This van is how we get around North Carolina, criss-crossing the state to meet every voter. I really need your help getting our campaign van back up and running ASAP to continue our 100 Counties, 100 Days Tour this weekend, so I am humbly asking:
Thank you SO MUCH for your support!
-Erica
P.S. Here’s what the van used to look like when it was in tip-top shape. Can you chip in $10, $5, or even $3 to help cover repair costs?
Another effective e-mail was one that Jason Call sent out discussing Climate, one of his top campaign subjects. But this time the subject has resilience for everyone-- while effectively tying the problem to his opponent:
Seeing the Gulf of Mexico on fire this week was pretty horrifying -- and brought back a lot of bad memories.
At this time 11 years ago, emergency crews had already been working for 78 days to stop upwards of 60,000 barrels of oil per day from gushing out of the Deepwater Horizon rig after it exploded on April 20, 2010.
In the wake of one of the worst oil spills in history, many of us thought the final straw had broken, and we would FINALLY act decisively to ensure rapid transition to clean, renewable, sustainable energy systems.
But Big Oil had other plans. We now know, thanks to a video leaked by Greenpeace UK, that Exxon has dialed in which lawmakers they can count on to carry out their marching orders. And it’s clear that my opponent-- with campaign coffers full of Exxon and BP cash-- is one of them.
Just one year after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and with $30,000 in fossil fuel money in his pocket, Rick Larsen voted against the Brown Amendment which would have put an end to offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
In fact, Larsen has a long history of backing the fossil fuel industry at the expense of the climate.
• On Sep 15, 2005, he voted against conducting a study to examine the safety of transporting liquified natural gas by sea.
• On May 25, 2006, he voted to maintain federal subsidies for “ultra-deepwater” oil drilling operations-- and pocketed a $1,000 check from BP two weeks later.
• On Apr 09, 2008, he voted to protect fossil fuel corporations from any additional restrictions on oil and gas development in National Conservation areas.
• On Feb 05, 2012, he voted against requiring oil drilling leases to include information about the possible worst-case scenarios resulting from an oil spill.
• On Jun 21, 2012, he voted to continue a policy of “free drilling” in the Gulf of Mexico where fossil fuel corporations can renew oil drilling leases for free.
With Larsen looking out for his corporate benefactors, drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and other vulnerable coastal regions has actually EXPANDED since 2010.
Eleven years later, we are no closer to ending our dependence on fossil fuels. We’re still drilling the ocean floor. We’re still dealing with deadly explosions, fires, and pipeline leaks. And the climate crisis continues to escalate. All on Larsen’s watch.
The bottom line is we cannot trust politicians who take corporate cash to vote for the common good any more than we can trust corporations to do the right thing without rigorous oversight and accountability.
But here’s the good news. When working people stand together we are so much more powerful than these giant corporations. You can help me defeat a corporate Democrat who answers to Big Oil with a contribution to our campaign.