DCCC Actions

[Independent_Liberal]

I got this in an email yesterday. Sorry if it's a dupe.
>
>
>

<SNIP>

GOPCaughtOnTape.com

Recently, we launched GOPCaughtonTape.com, a website devoted to exposing House GOP Flip-Floppers on Social Security privatization. We've culled the TV campaign ads of vulnerable Republicans who pledged not to cut benefits or privatize Social Security during the elections but now support Bush's plan that would slash guaranteed benefits by up to 45 percent. We've sent it to the press, and now we're sending it to our supporters in those members' districts to make sure everybody knows the kind of deceptive politics they are engaged in, putting partisanship and ideology ahead of their constituents - and their own past promises.

http://www.GOPCaughtonTape.com

Our Chair, Rahm Emanuel said it best:

"Many House Republicans supporting President Bush's privatization plan are in for a rendezvous with their records - they can't hide from their televised vows not to cut benefits or privatize Social Security. When these Republicans said 'no cuts in benefits,' they were pledging to voters never to back a plan that replaces Social Security's guaranteed benefits with a guaranteed fee for Wall Street. Many Republicans are on-record and on-tape pledging not to cut benefits - we'll be watching to see if they keep their word."
Our campaign has already received a blitz of press coverage from outlets including the Associated Press, CNN, and the Washington Times just to name a few. We will keep fighting to protect Social Security no matter what, but we ask you to consider investing in the fight by becoming a monthly sustainer donor for the DCCC. Join thousands of others in donating even a small amount each month - $5 goes further than you think - and take a stake in your party and the fight to protect Social Security. And of course, thanks in advance from all of us here at the DCCC.

https://secure.dccc.org/sustain/default.aspx?id=monthly_stake

<SNIP>

AARP Gets the Swift Boat Treatment

The New York Times broke this blockbuster story on Monday:

"Taking its cues from the success of last year's Swift boat veterans' campaign in the presidential race, a conservative lobbying organization has hired some of the same consultants to orchestrate attacks on one of President Bush's toughest opponents in the battle to overhaul Social Security.

"The lobbying group, USA Next, which has poured millions of dollars into Republican policy battles, now says it plans to spend as much as $10 million on commercials and other tactics assailing AARP, the powerhouse lobby opposing the private investment accounts at the center of Mr. Bush's plan."
So the Republicans got the old gang together and decided to take a whack at the AARP, despite the AARP bending over backwards and sacrificing perhaps thousands of members to support the Republican sham Medicare bill. And as blogger and journalist Josh Marshall demonstrates, USA Next "shares an office" (read: "is the same organization") as a PR firm that serves both the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee. But could we really expect as spectacularly slimy attack on the AARP as we saw on John Kerry? Would they have the nerve and indecency? Well, below is their first online advertisement which linked to their website, judge for yourself:
>
>
>
INSERT IMAGE: "X" over a picture of a soldier. Check mark on two gay guys getting married.
>
>
>
Wow, that is pretty spectacular, especially since "clicking for details" brought nothing of the sort. In fact there was no information on AARP and the military or gay marriage whatsoever. The AARP did not appear to be willing to take it lying down, and put a statement up on their own blog:

AARP calls your attention to these efforts because media coverage is clear about the aggressive tone of the language. We question why neoconservatives would choose these tactics.

AARP urges you to judge critically the motivations behind statements made against AARP. For example, whenever you see attempts to discredit AARP presented on Fox News Channel or other media outlets like talk radio shows that regularly carry the neoconservative lobbying group messages, AARP urges you to consider these important background facts:


USA Next is a lobbying group that "has poured poured millions of dollars into Republican policy battles" as reported in the New York Times.
As reported by UPI, USA Next has hired a public relations firm with "plans to spend as much as $10 million to counterattack Democrats opposed to changing Social Security, has hired Chris LaCivita, a former Marine who advised Swift Vets on its media campaign and helped write its potent commercials attacking Bush's opponent, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass."
Creative Response Concepts of Alexandria, Virginia is the public relations firm hired by USA Next. As reported by PR Watch, in 2004 "this firm used right-wing blogs and news sites to turn a CBS report casting doubt about President George W. Bush's National Guard services into a potential black eye for both the network and the Democrats."
The third rail might have just gotten a little more juice. The Democratic point man on Social Security in the House, Sandy Levin, came to the AARP's defense:

"The president can't simply look the other way as supporters of his Social Security privatization plans begin to launch a 'character assassination' campaign against the AARP. He must condemn these efforts immediately."

<SNIP>

The Private/ Personal Switcheroo

"I countered it by being very clear that I supported personal accounts and opposed privatization."
-- Republican Senator Norm Coleman, explaining how he dealt with criticism that he supported privatization
In their freshly minted handbook for "reforming" Social Security, GOP strategist Frank Luntz cites a myriad of op-eds in support of the idea. Funny thing though: almost all of them refer to "privatization" or "private accounts" - and here we were thinking that Republicans were against that! Odder still, none other than Frank Luntz himself appeared on Air America Radio recently and contended that "the press is making a perjorative statement" when they use the term "private accounts." Luntz must have been mighty disappointed, then, to hear President Bush say this at one of his loyalists-only "conversations" in Tampa just this month:

"The private account -- the private retirement accounts alone don't fix Social Security. They are part of a larger solution. And that's what's important to know. It's just the fact that you can earn better rates of return within a private account that it makes it -- that it helps mitigate the other changes in the system that will be necessary to eradicate the red ink."
You can find that at the official White House website, where you'll also find this table of contents for an official White House press briefing in January:
>
>
>
INSERT: Scott McClellan's press breifing, Iraq and WMD, damage to US credibility, Chertoff, SS private accounts, Iraq and insurgents weapons supply, Indonesia requesting troop withdrawal, budget, death benefits, etc.
>
>
>
As Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi poignantly put it:

"Republicans know Democrats are coming, and they are running away from privatization. Republicans know that privatization is unpopular, but instead of changing their plan, they have changed the name. Now they are calling it personal accounts. They can soften the language, but it doesn't soften the blow to America's seniors, survivors, and people with disabilities."
In other Social Security swindle news, GOP Whip Roy Blunt is quoted in a David Broder column:

"'The idea that these accounts will be yours to control is our strongest selling point,' Blunt said. 'I've told Al Hubbard that anything we can do to strengthen the idea of ownership, we should do. Once people have saved enough to pay for a decent annuity, we ought to free up the money for whatever they want to do.'"
But once again the Republicans are their own worst enemies. Washington Post Associate Editor Robert G. Kaiser took questions in an online chat after President Bush's State of the Union speech and addressed both private/ personal debate and the "ownership" aspect:

Albany, N.Y.: What do you make of the "personal" versus "private" accounts sematic battle. I see that your earlier posts have leaned in both directions. Will this battle be settled by such small -- but potentially crucial details?

Robert G. Kaiser: As we've reported, pollsters have discovered that voters are made nervous by the term "privatization of Social Security." So, in the spirit of this plastic age we live in, promoters of changes in Social Security decided to change the terminology they themselves introduced, and refer now to "personal accounts."

Significantly, the senior administration official who briefed today on details of the White House plan on Social Security did make clear that thinking of them as "private" would be a mistake. The government will control the money, the citizen will have narrow choices as to where to invest it, and the government will retain the first three percent per year of all earnings the money accrues (this being the interest paid on the Treasury Bills now in the Social Security trust fund).
So the only delineation between "private accounts" - which apparently all Republicans are against - and the "personal accounts" that sound so swell, is the fact that you don't actually own it at all.

It's another massive big government entitlement program - run for your lives!

Too bad that's their "strongest selling point." A New York Times editorial also decimates the much-applauded ability to pass on your accounts to heirs. It's well worth reading in full, but this line captures the truth:

"If those happy clappers only knew the details."
That might be a good slogan for the Republican Party, actually. Feel the GOP contempt.

<SNIP>

Rep. Slaughter and the DCCC Battle Bush Propaganda

On Wednesday Rep. Louise Slaughter Rep. John Conyers sent letters to both Comptroller General David Walker and US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald requesting further investigation into the faux-reporter Jim Guckert (aka Jeff Gannon). On Tuesday Representative Slaughter (NY-28) wrote this message to all our supporters earlier this week...

For any other White House, the fact that a partisan operative managed to masquerade as a reporter in the White House press corps might be taken as a slip. But this is no ordinary White House, and in fact, this was no ordinary partisan operative. It has now become clear that the reporter for Talon News known as "Jeff Gannon" was actually James D. Guckert, an individual who had no journalistic credentials whatsoever.

Sign the Petition to Stop the Propaganda.

During the February 10 White House briefing, Press Secretary Scott McClellan stated that Jeff Gannon, "...like anyone else, showed that he was representing a news organization that published regularly" in order to receive his day pass to press briefings. It has now been confirmed that Jeff Gannon was in the White House briefing room, actively participating in these briefings, as early as February 28, 2003 a full month before Talon News even existed.

For almost two years Gannon breezed through security and was allowed to lob softball questions to spokesman Scott McClellan and even President Bush himself - culminating in an absurd and factually inaccurate question to the President on national television about how he could deal with Senate Democrats "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality." Wait, there's more.

We've also learned that in December of 2003, Gannon bragged to Talon News that he'd had access to classified documents revealing the identity of former Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife as a covert operative for the CIA. At the time Gannon said, "For something that is supposed to be classified, it seems that this document is easily accessible." He added, "Washington is leaking like a cheap umbrella." Talon News, the "news outlet" that Mr. Guckert worked for was at best a front for a Republican activist website called GOPUSA.com owned by a Texas Republican. Worse yet, Gannon's news "stories" consisted mostly of verbatim Republican press releases and claims that John Kerry "might someday be known as 'the first gay president.'"

Sign the Petition to Stop the Propaganda.

It has been well over a week since I wrote President Bush seeking answers in this matter. I have not yet received a reply. Along with Rep. John Conyers, I have also submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for all DHS records regarding Mr. Guckert's admittance into the White House. With each new revelation it becomes more and more clear that the relationship between the White House and Jeff Gannon was anything but typical.

It is time for this Administration to stop the stonewalling and come clean with the American people.

I have worked on media fairness and reform throughout my stay in the House, and never have I seen such an open assault on the standards of a free press as I have in the past four years. We have seen several right wing pundits who were being paid with tax dollars to promote Administration policies with no disclosure. We have seen fake news reports distributed to media outlets with no indication of their origin; we have seen those fake segments deemed "illegal covert propaganda" by the General Accounting Office; and then we have seen the White House simply continue on with the technique completely unphased. We now know that prior to the war in Iraq, Iraqi exiles with checkered pasts, allied with (and paid by) the White House distributed bogus intelligence on WMD to produce perhaps more than 100 newspaper articles hyping the case for war! Even now President Bush flies around the country at taxpayer expense holding televised "town hall discussions" on Social Security in which nobody who does not support him is allowed in.

This must stop, and it must stop now. This sort of manipulation of the free press - one of most pivotal checks & balances in our Constitution - demonstrates a contempt for democracy, the rule of law, and the great people of this nation, many of whom trust this president with all their hearts.

I ask you to stand with me - and the DCCC - in demanding an end to the propaganda.
Please sign our petition:

http://www.democraticaction.org/propaganda/index.php?source=feb22email

Sincerely,


Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (NY-28)
Ranking Member, Committee on Rules

----------------------------------------------------------------------

You can click here to strike back at DeLay: https://www.dccc.org/getinvolved/donations/atstake

Peace guys.

:)

[benfranklin1776]

1. Kick

:kick: