America's Veterans Deserve Better Than Mike Coffman
(Cross posted on Square State)
In 2008, Mike Coffman promised the sun and the stars and the moon to our Veterans, and according to the Colorado Veteran's Alliance, has disapppointed them greatly, receiving a "D" rating. http://www.coloradovets.org/files/CVA_Congressional_Report_Card.pdf According to Congressional Quarterly magazing, CD 6 had 60,000 Veterans in the year 2000. Between "The War On Terror" being fought in three countries during the past decade and Douglas County being the fastest growing county in the nation during some of those years, the 2010 census will show the number of veterans in CD 6 has grown dramatically.
OUR VETERANS DESERVE BETTER!
To win the general election, CD 6 needs a tough-as-nails Democratic candidate who strongly believes in social justice, yet can establish common ground with Independents and Republicans, as well. We need someone with a demonstrated appreciation for fiscal responsibility and a strong record on national security. CD 6 needs someone who can reach across party lines and get things done. Perhaps most importantly, CD 6 needs someone who can DELIVER ON THE EMPTY PROMISES MADE TO VETERANS BY REPUBLICAN INCUMENT MIKE COFFMAN.
Lt. Col (ret.) John Flerlage exemplifies the values of voters in CD 6. John has earned a reputation as a leader in the United States Marines, accomplished athlete, and respected citizen. He earned a degree in mathematics from Colby College and later served as treasurer of Colorado House District 28. He is tough on national security and has the experience to show it. Before retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Marine Corps, John proudly served his country as a fighter pilot, flying F/A-18 Hornets and A-4 Sky hawks. He trained young pilots at the Marine Aviation tactics school and in the 1990s flew support missions in Bosnia. John has been a pilot at Delta Airlines since 1991 and is now an international captain.
When he is not flying, John enjoys playing ice hockey, and coached the sport briefly at Columbine High School. John was a regular volunteer at his children's schools, and is involved in local Jefferson County politics. John has traveled the world extensively; seeing the way the rest of the world viewed our country during the Bush administration he realized, "Americans can do better."
John Flerlage believes America's Veteran's deserve better than Mike Coffman's empty promises! As a Leader of Marine's, John can easily step into a seat on the Armed Services Committee or anywhere else he is needed, and is ready to do so. John Flerlage can win Colorado's Congressional District 6 as a Democrat, proudly showing how America's Veterans should be treated, but he needs our help to do it.
Please honor a veteran you know by making a contribution of any size to send this extraordinary leader to Congress to represent us in CD 6.
http://www.actblue.com/page/we...
To learn more about Lt. Col.(ret.) John Flerlage: http://www.flerlageforcongress.com/
Friday, April 24, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Defeating Mike Coffman is a COLORADO PRIORITY!
Defeating Mike Coffman is a Colorado Priority!
(Cross posted on Square State)
I will never forget piling my team of college students, political activists and stay-at-home Moms into my mini-van, dropping each one of them off at a different spot in Arapahoe County, then standing outside all day in the hot sun outside Ross Department store at the Towne Center of Aurora. We were MoveOn voter registration staffers in the summer of 2008, determined to hang out in every conceivable place we could to find young people and minority members to register. We spent our days and some evenings at unemployment offices, train stations, bus stations, social services buildings, college libraries, skateboard parks, rock concerts... you name it. I never had a better tan than I did last summer, and I am proud to say I personally registered about 1000 great new voters, most of whom were motivated by the sheer privilege of electing someone named Barack Hussein Obama to be President of the United States.
Every day I was asked the same question when registering voters, which usually went like this, "I don't own a car. I take public transportation, so I don't carry a driver's license, and it is safer to keep it at home. The instructions on this registration form say, 'Check here if you have a driver's license. If you do not have one, use your social security number.' If I own a driver's license but keep it at home, what should I do?"
Every time someone from MoveOn called to ask the Secretary of State Mike Coffman's office how to handle this question, we were told regestrants could put their social security number alone, without checking the box, since the person did actually own a driver's license -- they just didn't have it with them. Sometimes we were instructed to have the person put a driver's license number down in addition to their social security number, "just in case".
You can imagine my disgust, frustration and rage every time I turned on the news at election time to hear how then-Secretary of State, Mike Coffman was making his best attempts to invalidate our thousands of voter registrations. People who did not follow the (misleading, ambiguous) instructions on the form exactly, were being purged, his office said. The newspaper said they were purging voters for not checking the box, or for putting both their driver's license and their social security numbers on the same form. "Don't blame us, Mr. Washington, Ms. Hernandez, and Mrs. Wong, rules is rules", they seemed to say. Each time I saw this, I screamed at my television, vowing to work tirelessly on the campaign of anyone who ever ran against Mike Coffman for political office.
Fast forward to February of 2008. I heard two candidates threw their hats into the ring to run against now-Congressman of congressional district 6, Mike Coffman. During the next few weeks, I spent hours with each candidate, getting to know them both well, trying to determine which had the better resume to defeat Congressman and acquitted vote purger, Mike Coffman. I studied election results from the last four cycles, studied demographics in CD 6 from Congressional Quarterly, and talked to people on the previous opponent's campaign team. Having been a precinct chair and resident of CD 6 for 18 years, I know what voters in my district want, and how they think. Wild horses will not stop us from defeating Mike Coffman from his next political victory in Colorado. When Democrats are done with Mike Coffman in 2010, he will be playing checkers with Dick Cheney at Shady Acres retirement center.
Wherever you live in CO, please join us in defeating Mike Coffman in Congressional District 6, for the good of Colorado, and for the good of the United States of America. It is our duty to stand up for democracy and send a message to every Secretary of State across this nation that voter registration purging will not be tolerated. Please donate generously to the ActBlue Congressional District 6 committee. Your money will go to the candidate who wins the Democratic Primary. http://www.actblue.com/entity/...
Oh, and who am I supporting? More on that, later!
(Cross posted on Square State)
I will never forget piling my team of college students, political activists and stay-at-home Moms into my mini-van, dropping each one of them off at a different spot in Arapahoe County, then standing outside all day in the hot sun outside Ross Department store at the Towne Center of Aurora. We were MoveOn voter registration staffers in the summer of 2008, determined to hang out in every conceivable place we could to find young people and minority members to register. We spent our days and some evenings at unemployment offices, train stations, bus stations, social services buildings, college libraries, skateboard parks, rock concerts... you name it. I never had a better tan than I did last summer, and I am proud to say I personally registered about 1000 great new voters, most of whom were motivated by the sheer privilege of electing someone named Barack Hussein Obama to be President of the United States.
Every day I was asked the same question when registering voters, which usually went like this, "I don't own a car. I take public transportation, so I don't carry a driver's license, and it is safer to keep it at home. The instructions on this registration form say, 'Check here if you have a driver's license. If you do not have one, use your social security number.' If I own a driver's license but keep it at home, what should I do?"
Every time someone from MoveOn called to ask the Secretary of State Mike Coffman's office how to handle this question, we were told regestrants could put their social security number alone, without checking the box, since the person did actually own a driver's license -- they just didn't have it with them. Sometimes we were instructed to have the person put a driver's license number down in addition to their social security number, "just in case".
You can imagine my disgust, frustration and rage every time I turned on the news at election time to hear how then-Secretary of State, Mike Coffman was making his best attempts to invalidate our thousands of voter registrations. People who did not follow the (misleading, ambiguous) instructions on the form exactly, were being purged, his office said. The newspaper said they were purging voters for not checking the box, or for putting both their driver's license and their social security numbers on the same form. "Don't blame us, Mr. Washington, Ms. Hernandez, and Mrs. Wong, rules is rules", they seemed to say. Each time I saw this, I screamed at my television, vowing to work tirelessly on the campaign of anyone who ever ran against Mike Coffman for political office.
Fast forward to February of 2008. I heard two candidates threw their hats into the ring to run against now-Congressman of congressional district 6, Mike Coffman. During the next few weeks, I spent hours with each candidate, getting to know them both well, trying to determine which had the better resume to defeat Congressman and acquitted vote purger, Mike Coffman. I studied election results from the last four cycles, studied demographics in CD 6 from Congressional Quarterly, and talked to people on the previous opponent's campaign team. Having been a precinct chair and resident of CD 6 for 18 years, I know what voters in my district want, and how they think. Wild horses will not stop us from defeating Mike Coffman from his next political victory in Colorado. When Democrats are done with Mike Coffman in 2010, he will be playing checkers with Dick Cheney at Shady Acres retirement center.
Wherever you live in CO, please join us in defeating Mike Coffman in Congressional District 6, for the good of Colorado, and for the good of the United States of America. It is our duty to stand up for democracy and send a message to every Secretary of State across this nation that voter registration purging will not be tolerated. Please donate generously to the ActBlue Congressional District 6 committee. Your money will go to the candidate who wins the Democratic Primary. http://www.actblue.com/entity/...
Oh, and who am I supporting? More on that, later!
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Partying like it's... 1773?
By Joseph Soto.
We all know about those tea parties that conservatives are throwing all over the country, right? We all know about the references some conservatives are making to the 1773 Boston Tea Party, right? Well, back then, it was about taxation without representation and stuff like that. I really don't think starting the world's first sustainable democracy through equal parliamentary representation is the same thing as protesting over a tax code that will probably HELP them. Do you?
Well, if you don't know about these tea parties, let me tell you about them! There are these people "all over" the state of Colorado and "all over" the country that are upset. The bug that crawled down their pants, the wrong side of their bed, the thing that is making them angry is President Obama's tax plan. They think he is raising taxes on all Americans and reforming our tax code in favor of the wealthiest 2% of Americans. They "know" for a fact that Obama and all of us liberals are turning America into one big fascist, commie stink hole!!
Well, the thing is, the things these Republicans and "conservatives" are telling them is for the most part, a load of... doo doo. They don't know that unless you are in the wealthiest 2% of Americans, you haven't seen a tax increase from President Obama, unless of course, you're a smoker. God forbid these people know the truth, right? Well, the truth is that we aren't coming up with this big socialist tax plan in preparation for class warfare. The truth is that we're simply going to let the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2002 expire. We're not Marxist, people. We just want economic equality for all. The truth is that income taxes under Reagan in 1981 were 70% for the top bracket, much lower than what we pay now. The truth is that the President is going to return the wealthiest Americans to the tax rates of the 1990s, which may not be that bad, only being an increase from 35% to 39.6%.
These tea party conservatives are complaining about Barack Obama's budget and tax code and other things, but I question why they are doing it. Didn't George Bush increase our national debt outrageously, too? And what for? Look at how we handled ourselves for those eight years. We were the guy on the tightrope, walking and making progress on fragile ground, until we... well, fell off the rope in September with the housing, credit, auto, and banking crisis. We DON'T have the education system our children deserve. We DON'T have the health care our citizens worked for and paid into. We DON'T have the funding and benefits that our soldiers deserve. We DON'T have the kinds of domestic and international programs our people and global citizens deserve and should get from us. President Bush ran up the deficit $5.6 trillion for pretty much nothing. At least Obama is trying to do something with what capital he can.
These are people that just can't or won't look at the evidence in front of them. The tax code, which consists of letting Bush tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans, isn't that bad. I'm assuming that the citizens who protested in front of state capitols all over the country don't comprise the wealthiest 2% of Americans. This is really ludicrous, don't you think? The President's trying to help you out, guys!
Well, I've said my piece. Now, what's yours?
We all know about those tea parties that conservatives are throwing all over the country, right? We all know about the references some conservatives are making to the 1773 Boston Tea Party, right? Well, back then, it was about taxation without representation and stuff like that. I really don't think starting the world's first sustainable democracy through equal parliamentary representation is the same thing as protesting over a tax code that will probably HELP them. Do you?
Well, if you don't know about these tea parties, let me tell you about them! There are these people "all over" the state of Colorado and "all over" the country that are upset. The bug that crawled down their pants, the wrong side of their bed, the thing that is making them angry is President Obama's tax plan. They think he is raising taxes on all Americans and reforming our tax code in favor of the wealthiest 2% of Americans. They "know" for a fact that Obama and all of us liberals are turning America into one big fascist, commie stink hole!!
Well, the thing is, the things these Republicans and "conservatives" are telling them is for the most part, a load of... doo doo. They don't know that unless you are in the wealthiest 2% of Americans, you haven't seen a tax increase from President Obama, unless of course, you're a smoker. God forbid these people know the truth, right? Well, the truth is that we aren't coming up with this big socialist tax plan in preparation for class warfare. The truth is that we're simply going to let the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2002 expire. We're not Marxist, people. We just want economic equality for all. The truth is that income taxes under Reagan in 1981 were 70% for the top bracket, much lower than what we pay now. The truth is that the President is going to return the wealthiest Americans to the tax rates of the 1990s, which may not be that bad, only being an increase from 35% to 39.6%.
These tea party conservatives are complaining about Barack Obama's budget and tax code and other things, but I question why they are doing it. Didn't George Bush increase our national debt outrageously, too? And what for? Look at how we handled ourselves for those eight years. We were the guy on the tightrope, walking and making progress on fragile ground, until we... well, fell off the rope in September with the housing, credit, auto, and banking crisis. We DON'T have the education system our children deserve. We DON'T have the health care our citizens worked for and paid into. We DON'T have the funding and benefits that our soldiers deserve. We DON'T have the kinds of domestic and international programs our people and global citizens deserve and should get from us. President Bush ran up the deficit $5.6 trillion for pretty much nothing. At least Obama is trying to do something with what capital he can.
These are people that just can't or won't look at the evidence in front of them. The tax code, which consists of letting Bush tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans, isn't that bad. I'm assuming that the citizens who protested in front of state capitols all over the country don't comprise the wealthiest 2% of Americans. This is really ludicrous, don't you think? The President's trying to help you out, guys!
Well, I've said my piece. Now, what's yours?
Sunday, April 12, 2009
We need bloggers!
We need bloggers! If you can write, you can blog! Anyone can respond to a blog entry, but only people with a password can write the original articles. If you are interested in blogging, send an email with the subject "I want to blog on Piney Creek Progressives" and I will send you back your password, if you don't have one already.
Thanks for helping me make Piney Creek Progressives the home for progressives in SE metro Denver.
Thanks for helping me make Piney Creek Progressives the home for progressives in SE metro Denver.
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