Chop Wood, Carry Water 2/9
Hi, all, and happy Friday!
Hope you’re hanging in there—I know yesterday was a tough day. Between the media’s hit job on President Biden after the release of the Hur report, the Supreme Court’s breezy attitude towards Trump’s insurrection, the continued dysfunction in Congress, and the ongoing nightmare in the Middle East it was, to say the least, a bit of a bruising 24 hours.
Instead of ruminating on the many problems we face, however, I am going to leap right to the solution. You have, after all, plenty of places to go to hear how messed up everything is. Fewer are the voices saying “here’s what we’re going to do about it!” So I’ll be one of them:
We’re going to work the program, not the problem.
The “problem,” of course, is the relentless bad news we wade through every day, most of which we cannot control.
Our “program,” on the other hand, is the stuff we have control over and know how to do: like making calls, volunteering to help win elections, donating strategically, spreading good messages, taking climate action, etc.
I’ve found that when I work the program, not the problem my anxiety lifts, I remember my strength, and I can actually do a lot towards solving the problems I’m not focussing on.
So let’s take that approach again today.
On that note: I was briefly on the Suozzi phonebank yesterday—I was late as I never received the Zoom link—and one woman I spoke to told me she had so far received six hand-written postcards about the election. SIX! Wow, you guys. That’s YOU! I couldn’t be more proud. There are so, so many volunteers showing up for this work—it’s incredibly heartening.
OK, let’s breathe in strength, breathe out fear, and get to work.
P.S.—I’ve gotten a decent number of responses to my States Project poll, but I’d love more before I announce who we’re going to fundraise for. Please take it if you haven’t yet—it requires all of 5 seconds. I’ll tally the results for Sunday’s Extra! Extra! newsletter and announce them there.
Call Your Senators (find yours here) 📲
Hi, I'm a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is ______.
Please ask the Senator to work to pass both the Emergency Supplemental aid package and the Expanded Child Tax Credit bill as soon as possible. Americans want Congress to do its job; protecting our national security, giving aid to people in conflict zones, and feeding our nations children are a few ways it can and should do that, immediately. Thanks.
Call Your House Rep (find yours here) 📲
Hi, I'm a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is _______.
[If you have a Republican Rep]
I want the Congressmember to publicly commit to vote against every rule until the Speaker agrees to put the foreign aid package on the floor. It will only take three or four Republican Congressmembers to do this and the bill will be brought to the floor. It will then pass. As it should. Aid to Ukraine is existentially important. Republicans obstructing it are endangering out allies, helping Putin, and making the U.S. look weak on the world stage. Thanks. [Source]
[If Democrat]
Please ask the Congressmember to take every procedural route s/he can to get the foreign aid bill brought to the floor. I feel very strongly about the aid it contains for Ukraine—it simply must be passed. Thanks.
Extra Credit
The New York Times is at it again. I wrote them here and also sent the below to micheal.scherer@nytimes.com, David-m-halbfinger@nytimes.com. (I also submitted it to letters@nytimes.com as a letter to the editor. I’m that mad.). I also finally cancelled my subscription.
Please use the below as an inspiration to send your own letter. And feel free to write to the editors of other media publications, too. The bad coverage of the Hur report and “nightmare” framing are everywhere.
I said:
I’m writing as a subscriber to say that your reporting on the Hur report yesterday bordered on journalistic malpractice.
Your coverage largely ignored the fact that Biden was fully exonerated and instead harped (in a headline you’ve thankfully since changed), on the “political nightmare” of the partisan attacks on his memory. You framed your coverage as ‘analysis.' The reality, as Popular Information’s Judd Legum swiftly pointed out, is that "stories like this are the story.”
What can the New York Times be thinking? Trump shows clear signs of cognitive impairment. You regularly give him a pass. President Biden is considered by all who’ve interacted with him—including his political enemies—to be sharp and capable. The Hur report was written by a former Trump associate; it was a political hit piece and the Times bought into it with zero journalistic scrutiny.
I have to ask again, do your editors WANT a Trump presidency? Because that’s what your misleading, biased, and hysterically one-sided coverage will bring us.
History will not be kind to the Times for its relentless attacks on the one man capable of saving us from dictatorship. Shame on you.
Extra Extra Credit ✅
Rep. Al Green rolled onto the House floor in a wheelchair, directly from the hospital, to vote against the Mayorkas impeachment. He’s the reason the motion failed. I, for one, want to thank him. If you do, too, here’s the place to send a handwritten card.
The Honorable Al Green
2347 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington DA, 20515
Get Smart! 📚
On Tuesday February 13th at NOON ET Big Tent USA will host Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for a conversation about the 2024 election and how Michigan will continue to model democratic processes - making sure voting rights are protected for all. Sounds amazing!
Secretary Benson has emerged as one of the nation’s foremost authorities in conducting secure and inclusive elections. The conversation will be moderated by Wendy Weiser, who is vice president at the terrific Brennan Center for Justice and directs their Democracy Program.
Give #1!
Subscriber T Harrigan sent me this note yesterday and I think it’s a GREAT idea!
I would like to ask for a call to action today to be as follows: to support Biden after yesterday's hit job. It would be great for Biden to have a great fundraising day today. Yesterday was cheap shot day - let today be one of riches. Donate!
Give 💰 #2!
Airlift is proud to announce that Robert Hubbell will headline Live From the Frontlines: Winning the Ground Game, Tuesday, February 15, 5:00 PM PT / 8:00 PM ET. In addition to an overview of the 2024 landscape, our focus will be on Nevada, a critical state in 2024 with six electoral college votes, a must-win Senate seat, and multiple down-ballot races and ballot measures.
We will also hear from leaders of One APIA Nevada, which organizes one of the fastest-growing yet overlooked constituencies–Asian Americans, Native Hawaiin, and Pacific Islanders. With its innovative, multi-lingual, and multi-generational engagement, One APIA Nevada effectively mobilizes this powerful emerging voting bloc to help us win the ground game in Nevada. Register here for what promises to be a great evening.
This is a fundraiser for One APIA Nevada, but you do not need to donate to register.
Win Races! 🗳
I’m phonebanking for Tom Suozzi again today—hoping this time I get the Zoom link in time. (If anyone else signs up and can forward it to me I’d greatly appreciate it. I seem to be having trouble with Mobilize)
It’s at 3PM PT / 6 PM ET. Join us! We need you! Sign up here.
Resistbot Letter (new to Resistbot? Go here! And then here.) 💻
[To: your Senators] [H/T] [Text SIGN PNLXAD to Resistbot at 50409 or via Apple Messages / WHATSAPP / MESSENGER]
I am writing to urge you, as my Senator, to fight hunger and poverty by swiftly taking up and passing the Tax Relief for Americans Act, and rejecting any amendments that could weaken or limit the impact of the Child Tax Credit (CTC). The bill, which passed in the House with broad bipartisan support (357-70), includes improvements to the CTC that would lift hundreds of thousands of children and their families above the poverty line, and benefit 16 million of the 19 million children currently locked out of receiving the full or any credit.
The refundable child tax credit is vital to helping families in our community and the state put food on the table. I support this policy as does the overwhelming percentage of voters — polling by Hart Research Associates found that “82% of voters favor a Child Tax Credit that is fully available for all low- and middle-income families.”
In 2021, tens of millions of families with children received an expanded CTC, resulting in dramatic reductions in hunger and poverty. After the end of the expanded CTC and other COVID-19 pandemic relief efforts, hunger and child poverty skyrocketed.
I urge you to support the bill’s CTC improvements and vote “yes” when the bill reaches the Senate floor. Also, reject any amendments that could weaken or limit the impact the CTC would have for families struggling against hunger and poverty. This improved CTC will help families – including in our state – who are struggling to pay for food, housing, child care, and other essentials, and will benefit 16 million of the 19 million children who are currently left out of receiving the full or any refundable tax credit.
OK, you did it again! You helped save democracy! You’re amazing.
Talk soon.
Jess
Here is my 2018 cancellation letter:
Dear Sirs,
I’ve read the New York Times all my adult life and am one of your first online readers. I am old enough to have seen the Beatles at Shea and young enough to have been in working in Manhattan on the morning of 9/11, and for years afterward on the recovery. I had a modest role in the opening of telecommunications markets to competition. My New York and open market credentials are solid.
I am canceling my subscription.
The New York Times has the finest writers and journalists I have ever enjoyed. This is not about them.
It is now obvious that the paper has an expressed preference for failed neo-liberal ideology. Blindsided by the hijacking of the Nation’s political institutions by a minority of ignorant bigots, the Times seems to have wandered editorially into an acceptance of this as natural, even evolutionary.
It’s not.
This is a war.
The New York Times appears to be unprepared for the magnitude of the challenge. Instead of publishing absurd pieces on the difficulty of a being a conservative high school student in a liberal high school, the “Week in Good News”, or attempting to weigh carefully the veracity of individual drips from the firehose of falsehoods spewed daily by the GOP leadership and its enablers, the paper should be leading the effort to delegitimize them. Each day, in small print, at the back of the paper should be a mere list of the current lies told by this White House and Republicans absent any elaboration. The rest of the paper should be devoted to building a consensus for new politics, new leadership, and new ideas to stymie the fascist and oligarchic tendencies now so obvious. Until the threat is passed and some are deservedly imprisoned and shunned, there can be no equivocation.
Unfortunately, I have come to conclude the Times is rather now a champion of privileged ultra-rich neo-liberal elites who transcend either party and who have given 21st Century America nothing but failure and hardship. It celebrates the 1% which are its devoted readers, and suffers the rest of us. In the current crisis, it seems the Times can only wring its hands at the wholesale destruction of honored norms and values, and while doing so give cover to the weak-kneed malpractice of the current opposition party in both Washington, Albany, and Gracie Mansion.
Grow a pair.
Your role and manner now reminds me of a fight between three brothers, one of whom is obviously a dissociative psychopath with a knife, another is an Rhodes scholar and a pacifist, and the third is confined to a wheelchair. The first is attacking the third while the second one tries to reason with him. The Gray Lady is like their mother fretting about all her children and wringing her hands pleading with them to be good. We all know the boy with the knife needs to be institutionalized or imprisoned and Mom can either help that happen, or continue to be an unwilling enabler.
Thank you for your kind attention,
Sincerely,
Your former reader,
Chip xxxxxx
September 30, 2018
Thank you for the idea to send a card to Rep. Al Green. He signed a hospital waiver to go to the Capitol! What a dedication to public service and the people. I was originally going to write “I wish we had more representatives like that.”but I realized I can take action to help get others like Rep. Green elected.