Not One Red Cent

(Mike Stark in the hizzouse fo shizzle!
¡Orale, loco! Welcome to DD! – promoted by kestrel9000)

One diary (and one late-night story at C&L).

24 hours.

167 donors.

Almost $5,500 dollars.

NotOneRedCent is underway; you all made it happen.

Before I fill you in on where this effort is going next, I feel like I really need to clarify what NotOneRedCent is.  There seemed to be an awful lot of confusion in the comments to yesterdays diary.  Unfortunately, I must not have been clear enough in defining the goals, mission and methods.  Please flip if you are in doubt.

And please flip even if you aren’t…  The plan is organic and has added a layer or two.  And I’m going to need help with the next steps.  If you are a talented programmer and need a project, we need to talk.

NotOneRedCent FAQ
This FAQ is drawn from actual concerns and questions drawn from the initial diary.

• How about “Not One BLUE Cent”? Is that one already taken?
  The idea behind NotOneRedCent is that when money is used to support candidates that refuse to end the Iraq War, support candidates that do not support accountability, support candidates that accede to the evisceration of civil liberties (habeas, FISA, PATRIOT Act), then our contributions are frustrating the purposes for which they were given.  It’s not about where the contribution came from; it is about how our contributions are used.  Our monetary contributions will not shared with those that capitulate to republican agenda.
• Is Tom Allen included in the list of “elected Dem’s” since he is not a senator? He is challenging Susan Collins, so will he be exempt from the fundraising strike?

  YES!!!  NotOneRedCent is not an anti-Democratic Party initiative.  This point cannot be stressed vehemently enough.  We will support unelected Democrats running for office.  Donna Edwards, Darcy Burner, Rick Noriega, Tom Allen…  they all benefit from this.  NotOneRedCent is a campaign that targets democrats that have decided (as indicated by their stunningly poor performance since assuming Majority status in both Houses of Congress) that progressive principles are not worth fighting for.  Impeachment is off the table.  Contempt charges are on hold.  The war rages on unabated.  Aside from one night of cots, there have been no extended debate sessions. (And even on the night of cots, Republicans knew they’d be able to go home the next morning.)

  We cannot blame the unelected for the failure(s) of the elected.  This effort is squarely targeted at sitting Democratic Senators and House Members.

• DSCC and DCCC! Yeah! Not a cent more to them. Because if there’s a party of which half of the senators voted the wrong way on a stupid publicity stunt, they should all be punished so that other the party, whose senators all suck, win next time!

  That’ll show them!

  Well, for decades now the Democrats have had policy positions that most Americans, in poll after poll, say they agree with.  Somehow the consultants hired by the DSCC and DCCC have managed to parlay winning hand after winning hand into fold after humiliating fold.  Worse, there have been times when Democrats actually stayed in the hand and still managed to lose spectacularly.

  It’s been used enough to be cliche, but I’ll use it again here because it is so apt:  doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results…  is the very definition of insanity.

  To the extent that democratic strategy is driven by an incompetent consultant class…  well, we do not have to fund those efforts.  There is an extraordinary community of new blood with fresh ideas, boundless energy and unalloyed commitment.  Some of us are here in the netroots, others operate in parallel activist spaces.  It’s time we give the new crew a chance. 

  And, by God, it’s time we fire the inbred class that’s led us to this point.

  In sum, by redirecting funds previously turned over to the incompetent, and using those funds for the energetic, creative and committed, we improve our movement.  It’s long past time we took this step.

• ?All elected Democrats?  I contributed to your cause.  I agree to a point but there are a handful of Democrats that I will continue to support directly  including Barbara Boxer and Russ Feingold.  Dick Durbin made my list today.  there are a FEW who are not total sell-outs. Do you intend to throw them out, too?

  I don’t give to DSCC or DCCC and haven’t since 2004.  Bill Nelson won’t get another penny from me. 

  Yes, all elected democrats are cut off.  The thing is that even the good dems have obligations to the DSCC or DCCC.  If you give Barbara Boxer money, she turns over a portion of it to the DSCC.  The DSCC, as explicitly noted by Chuck Schumer, is an incumbent’s organization.  They exist to ensure members of their caucus are re-elected.  So when you give money to Barbara Boxer, she turns some of it over to the  DSCC and they do what it takes to get Joe Lieberman re-elected.  (BTW – Holy Joe just re-registered as a Democrat – I cannot be sure, but I’m betting his grubby little paw will be outstretched in 2011 when he’s running against his next primary challenger.  Think about that the next time you decide you want to give to a “good Dem”.)

• Neither MoveOn nor the Scumbag Dems gets my $; it’s going where it will actually do something, Common Ground.  I’ve begged MoveOn to do something for New Orleans, and they’ve ignored me everytime.  I give up.

  Excellent.  If they have an ActBlue account, I am happy to add them to the NotOneRedCent donation page.

There’s more, but I’ve got a long way to go and too little time to get there, so I’ve got to, ahem, MoveOn for now…

Next issue:  I need a web developer that can do some database work for me.  We need to be able to aggregate and send freeform messages to Congress and aggregate checkbox data that tells Congress what issues are important to the NORCs (NotOneRedCent-ers).

Finally, and this is the coolest thing we’ve dreamt up yet…  I need the following…

I need an application that receives emails, parses them for candidate names, cross-references the name against a database of contact emails and automatically sends a reply email that says:

“A member of the grassroots donor union, NotOneRedCent, received this email solicitation on such and such a date.  Since elected democrats have done such a bang-up job of betraying progressive principles, this email has been NORCed.  Please ask again when you can honestly say you are providing conscientious representation that at least somewhat approximates the text of your email.  Until then, we are on a donor strike.  Best regards, the NORC Crew.”

So yeah, email me at stark dot m at gmail dot com if you have the tech chops, can build this quickly, have a track record of meeting deadlines and creating bulletproof tools and need the job.

Until the next update…

yours in solidarity,
Mike Stark

>original Diary<
How many of you support MoveOn?  How many of you are current members?

According to the Senate – and many Democratic Senators – you are filthy and traitorous.

In a nutshell, this is the crystallization… another vivid example – an irrefutable demonstration of the craven and wanton disloyalty of our “friends” on the Hill.

This isn’t about Republicans.  They are a lost cause.  Anyone that has the nerve to crawl out from under a rock with an “R” next to their name…  well, they are just clinically insane and beyond redemption.

This is about our so-called friends – the Democrats that allowed this to happen.

All is not lost.  We have the ability to respond forcefully; we are not powerless.  In fact, we have been empowered.  No longer do we labor under the impression that our elected leaders are our friends.  We no longer give refuge to the false notion that our “friends” will stand up for us.

Truth IS power.  We have been empowered.  Flip for the plan.

The simple fact is that we were just stomped on and thrown under the bus.  Over 20 Democrats agreed with a unified republican caucus that you and I and 3.2 million MoveOn members are dirty scumbags for questioning a sock-puppet of a general that spouted lie after propagandistic lie.  Repeating:  our friends just punched us in the gut and kicked us in the nuts. 

How long do you think it will take them to come asking us for money?  These shameless bastards are probably already composing the emails…

I’ve been waiting for this moment – it’s been a long time coming.  In preparation, I registered the domain names, “WeAreYourBase.com”, “SpeakWithOneVoice.org [and] .net” and I’ve researched the cost of purchasing NotOneRedCent.com.

I’ve spoken with the netroots leaders Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers.  They support this idea.

We are forming a donors’ union and going on strike.

If I can raise the money, we will build a site that allows people to donate $10 to any non-elected progressive candidate or progressive organization that has an account at ActBlue.  I am confident that we will be able to recruit 10,000 $10 donors (some will contribute more).  repeating:  each donor will promise to give NotOneRedCent to elected Democrats or organizations that give money to elected democrats.  Instead, they will promise to use their money to contribute to progressive organizations and candidates that, as proved by their record, support the furtherance of progressive ideals.

This means Darcy Burner and Donna Edwards get paid.  Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi do not.

Harry Reid refuses to force the republicans to filibuster. 

Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table. 

Cardin, Johnson, Webb, Landrieu, Pryor, McCaskill, Feinstein, Casey, Salazar, Nelson (FL), Nelson (NE), Conrad, Lincoln, Mikulski, Leahy, Dorgan, Baucus, Carper, Tester, Kohl…  and about 10 more…  all just said you were condemnable.

Nobody has done a single thing to end the war.

Nobody has done anything to hold anyone accountable for the crimes of the last 7 years (do not confuse accountability with oversight – Dems are plenty good at campaigning – that’s all oversight amounts to without accountability – campaigning on your tax dime).

These people have BETRAYED US.

MoveOn gets paid.  (If you haven’t joined MoveOn, this would be a great time to do so).  BlogPac gets paid.  BraveNewFilms gets paid.  DemocracyForAmerica gets paid.

DSCC does not.  DCCC does not.

Right now I need to raise the money to pay a web developer and host for the site.  The best way to give is by giving to BlogPac through my NotOneRedCent page.

Moving forward, as we accumulate people that are fed up, sick of this profane bullshit representation and ready to take the pledge…  well, periodically, I will release the number of people that donated and take their messages to the hill.  They need to know they are losing their base.  They need to know it now, before election season 2008 really heats up.  A list of 10,000 donors will be much more powerful than any petition with 1,000,000 electronic signatures.

This can work.  We need your help.  Contribute to BlogPac through NotOneRedCent.

>\original diary<