(no subject)
Dear MoveOn member,
Although the debates between George Bush and John Kerry are still 10 weeks away, we've put together a sneak preview. Our latest ad morphs each candidate into the folks he really speaks for. Bush is represented by corporate CEOs; Kerry is represented by hard-working Americans. The ad ends with a succinct description of the Presidential contest: it's the corporations' choice versus the people's choice. When we tested the ad by running it in one city for a week, it produced an amazing 6% shift in the vote toward John Kerry.
We're trying to raise $690,000 TODAY to air this ad in Ohio and Nevada (another important battleground state). No Republican candidate has ever won the Presidency without winning Ohio, and this year the state is definitely up for grabs. Voters there have been hit hard by the recession and have soured on Bush's foreign policy failures. By contributing to run "Debate," you have the opportunity to make a potentially election-turning difference wherever you are in the U.S.
To watch the ad, read the script, and give what you can to get it on the air and in front of voters, go to:
https://www.moveonpac.org/donate/debate.html?id=3122-3551724-zrAZd674_lvioEIKenJthw
Even if you can only contribute $15 or $25, we can get this important ad on the air if we all chip in.
The ad isn't just about Bush's policy failures, of course. It gives voters information about John Kerry's proposals to fix the damage Bush has done. A working mom, speaking on behalf of Kerry, talks about Kerry's bold plan to give all Americans access to the same health plan that members of Congress get.
Here's how economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman describes Kerry's proposal:
John Kerry has proposed an ambitious health care plan that would extend coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, while reducing premiums for the insured. To pay for that plan, Kerry wants to rescind recent tax cuts for the roughly 3 percent of the population with incomes above $200,000. George Bush regards those tax cuts as sacrosanct. [...]
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that if these cuts are made permanent, as the administration wants, they will cost $2.8 trillion over the next decade. The Kerry campaign claims that it can pay for its health care plan by rolling back only the cuts for taxpayers with incomes above $200,000. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center more or less agrees: It estimates the revenue gain from the Kerry tax plan at $631 billion over the next decade.(1)
With tens of millions of dollars of advertising, lots of campaign stops, and a media apparatus designed to distract journalists from the real issue discussions, George Bush has made it difficult for John Kerry to break through the noise with these kinds of policy details. Together, we can change that, ensuring that voters have the facts about each candidate's record in front of them and know who that candidate is speaking for.
Please help us air "Debate" by giving what you can today. Check it out and donate online now at:
https://www.moveonpac.org/donate/debate.html?id=3122-3551724-zrAZd674_lvioEIKenJthw
Thanks for all of your help and everything you do,
Sincerely,
--Eli Pariser
MoveOn PAC
July 20th, 2004
1. You can read Krugman's whole article at:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/2671864
PAID FOR BY MOVEON PAC www.moveonpac.org
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
First, candidate Bush said we needed to give millionaires a huge tax cut because the surplus was too big. Then President B ush said it was because the economy was in recession. Now America has a record deficit and the economy is still dragging. At the same time, millions of our kids need health care, Head Start, and decent schools-and there’s no money to pay for them.
What’s Bush’s solution? You guessed it. Stay the course! Contin ue cutting taxes for rich folks and leave basic needs unmet at home and abroad. Oh, and let our kids deal with the fiscal and social mess sometime in the future - after he’s out of office anyway.
This time, Bush wants to extend $75 billion in tax cuts for years into the future. These cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of this year. Bush’s backers want to push the giant tax cut extension through the House this week, before lawmakers head out of town for vacation, and then celebrate the victory at the Republican convention this August.
If you want to send your Representative a message (text below) calling on Congress not to extend any of Bush’s irresponsible tax cuts, and you’re a TrueMaj ority member, just click “Reply” and “Send” in your email program. If this message was forwarded to you or you’d like to customize the message to your Representative, click here:
http://action.truemajority.com/index.asp?action=10182&ms=txct1
Here are the facts:
Under Bush’s three tax cuts to date, the wealthiest one percent of millionaires (with annual incomes of over $335,000) will be keeping an extra $60,000 this year-and for the next six years. Folks w ho make less than $16,000 per year (the poorest 20 percent) will get $100 or less in tax cuts this year (Citizens for Tax Justice, www.ctj.org).
Meanwhile the federal deficit has risen to over $400 billion-the highest in American history-and it’s projected to grow even higher next year (Congressional Budget Office, www.cbo.gov).
Yours for responsible fiscal policy,
Andrew
Online Organizer
Here’s the letter we’ll send to your Representative:
Dear Representative:
I understand that President Bush is pushing legislation, HR 1308, requiring that $75 billion in tax cuts be extended into the future.
With over 10 million kids in our country lacking health insurance and millions of kids starving abroad, there’s no reason to renew these $75 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy. They should be allowed to expire, as planned, in January 2005, and the savings should be directed toward meeting basic unmet needs at home and abroad.
Please, don’t extend the tax cuts.
Sincerely,
(We'll put your name and address here.)
Dear MoveOn member,
Last night, over 25,000 people gathered in living rooms across the nation to see Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. It was an inspiring turnout. And we saw just how Fox News delivers the Republicans' talking points under the guise of a news broadcast.
Raising the stakes, Common Cause and MoveOn filed a complaint this morning with the Federal Trade Commission challenging Fox News' deceptive advertising slogan "fair and balanced."
We need your help. Sign our Fox petition and join in our complaint to the FTC and Congress at:
http://www.moveon.org/fox/
We need to add hundreds of thousands of signatures and comments by Wednesday, so that the FTC and Congress know they've got to deal with this issue. The challenges to Fox's partisanship are mounting. Not surprisingly, Fox hasn't offered any real defense. Instead, they have responded by attacking former employees who are speaking out. It's crucial that we demonstrate public support for these courageous journalists and voice our disgust with Fox's deceptive advertising.
And we really need to spread the word about this campaign. On the petition page, there's a really horrifying but funny video clip from the film highlighting Bill O'Reilly's hypocrisy. After signing and giving your comment, you can send the petition and this clip to friends to keep the ball rolling.
Join us in taking on Fox at:
http://www.moveon.org/fox/
This is just the beginning of our Fox campaign. In this election year, nothing could be more important than demanding fair coverage in the press. We're putting all the media on notice that we will accept no less.
Thanks, as always, for all that you do.
Sincerely,
--Carrie, Joan, Lee, Marika, Noah, Peter, and Wes
The MoveOn.org Team
July 19th, 2004
Dear MoveOn member,
Usually we ask you to take an action, but today we’d like to take just a moment to reflect on where we’ve come together, and to take some measure of the impact of our efforts.
In just a little over a week, the Democratic convention will begin. The Democratic nominee, John Kerry, will finally get a chance to be heard directly by the American people, and the fight for the future of America will begin in earnest. We knew from the very start that the Bush administration and the right wing would pull out all the stops to discredit the Democratic nominee before he even appeared at the convention. They put everything they had into it, every dollar and every conceivable misleading ad, and they failed, surprising all the pundits and political operators. We now are facing a real contest - a real chance for change. And we should all take a moment to appreciate this victory.
With your incredible support, the efforts of the MoveOn.org Voter Fund have been a big part of this victory. This is not a partisan victory. It is a victory for truth and accountability over distortion. We’ve leveled the playing field so that opponents of administration policy have a fair chance in this election. Starting last October, over 160,000 MoveOn members gave more than $10 MILLION (!) to the Voter Fund to develop and run ads in battleground states telling the truth about the Bush administration. We’ve reached millions of people with these messages and helped shift the opinions the hundreds of thousands, on George Bush, and on the key issues we face. Below I’ve attached a report, with some hard figures, that shows how important this continuous drumbeat has been. With ads on health care, the Iraq war and on American priorities - some produced by MoveOn members themselves - we’ve kept the voice of the opposition strong and clear.
What’s most exciting about this victory is that it represents a sea change in how politics is done. Who would have guessed that small contributions would become more important than the big ones? Who would have guessed than an organization like the MoveOn.org Voter Fund, driven by 2.4 million MoveOn members, would set the pace in addressing the key issues in this election?
Thank you for being a part of changing the way politics is done.
Sincerely,
--Wes Boyd and the MoveOn Voter Fund team
July 17th, 2004
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Results of MoveOn.org Voter Fund Advertising Program
July 15, 2004
Wes Boyd
In October of last year, we asked MoveOn members if they would support an aggressive advertising program, to “get the truth out about the Bush administration” in battleground states. The response was overwhelming. We raised more than $10 million in small contributions from more than 160,000 MoveOn members. Together with $6 million in challenge grants from large contributors, this gave us a budget of almost $17 million for advertising. We engaged an excellent media firm (Zimmerman and Markman) and a research firm (Greenberg Quinlan Rosner) and developed a program to focus on five core states - Ohio, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, and West Virginia. To break out of the traditional mold, we also started an advertising contest, to bring in fresh ideas from MoveOn members themselves.
Our program is unusual in that we take issues that are very resonant with MoveOn members, and in fact may be issues highlighted by a MoveOn advocacy campaign, and test to see if those issues move people broadly across America. Again and again, this strategy turned up tremendously powerful messages. Our first ad of this kind, $87 Billion in Iraq, aired in December and was based on MoveOn’s Iraq campaign. We were skeptics of political advertising, and wanted to be certain that we were spending this money well, so we developed an elaborate testing strategy - far beyond what others do. Every ad was first tested in the real world in a test market, with a full run of the ad in that market, against results in a comparable control market. Most campaigns just do focus groups, which we’ve found unreliable. As an example of the power of these ads, here are the results of the $87B in Iraq ad:
WOULD VOTE FOR
Before Advertising After Advertising
Democratic nominee
45%
48%
George W. Bush
44%
40%
The $87 Billion in Iraq ad was seen by almost 20,000,000 people, an average of 11 times each, in the five target states, over the two week period it ran. As a result, according to our polling, we saw a significant shift away from President Bush and his policies, especially his policy in Iraq. People clearly responded to this message and nearly a million people shifted their thinking about the President. They also changed their thinking about the war:
FOREIGN POLICY
Before Advertising After Advertising
Different direction
44%
48%
Bush direction
40%
38%
We followed this ad with two ads about the Bush administration’s outrageous Medicare plans - Rug and State of the Union - which also really moved people in our testing. By that time, the BushIn30Seconds ad contest had yielded its winners and two of the finalists tested very well - the winner, Child’s Pay, and another finalist, Polygraph. Child’s Pay focuses on the tremendous burden the Bush administration is placing on future generations through its irresponsible tax cuts. Polygraph highlights President Bush’s misleading statements on Iraq. We placed these ads in the five core states in January and February. You can see all the ads placed by the MoveOn.org Voter Fund in battleground states here.
With these results, we now understood the incredible power of media to get out resonant messages, and we were very worried as we saw that the Bush campaign and others were likely to launch a media blitz in March, once the Democratic nominee was known, with the intention of a preemptive political strike against the new nominee and the administration’s opposition. We expanded our efforts to the entire seventeen battleground states at that key moment, and together with others, successfully blunted this unprecedented media blitz from the right-wing - almost $60M in March and April from the Bush campaign alone. In those keys weeks, we played our contest winning ad, Child’s Pay, and a new ad about the Bush administration’s attempt to reduce overtime pay - our Worker ad. The results: in June, national polling showed Senator Kerry actually leading Bush nationally by a couple points and leading by up to five points in the battleground states, an extraordinary result given the overwhelming resources the Bush campaign brought to bear.
Essentially, the Bush message didn’t resonate. And ours did. And with your help, these messages got out in these key states.
Since March, we’ve focused on a combined program with the Media Fund, to continue to keep up the pressure in five core states. We’ve just received the latest tracking polls, which now fully document the impact of our program over the last eight months. Key findings from Stan Greenberg team’s research include:
1. Our issue advertising has achieved deep and nearly universal penetration in these target states - greater than the recall of anti-Kerry or pro-Kerry advertising - despite the fact that there is more money behind other advertising.
2. In the target states, the presence of continuing opposition issue ads is producing less recall of the Bush campaign’s anti-Kerry advertising. Raising real issues in our ads has the effect of neutralizing the Bush campaign attack ads.
3. We are making gains on key issues related to the advertising, particularly Iraq, corporate influence and health care. The ads produced significant changes, compared to the control states and nationally, on Iraq, Bush’s corporate ties and health care and prescription drugs.
As part of the launch of each of these ads, we’ve typically run “earned media” campaigns with both national and local press. The PR campaigns amplify our online campaigns and have given MoveOn.org Voter Fund and MoveOn members extraordinary national impact and exposure in the last eight months. We believe this national presence has been a key part of establishing a strong opposition voice against the Bush Administration. Of course, this new prominence comes with its costs. The right-wing apparatus now has us on their radar - including Matt Drudge, Fox News, the Republican National Committee, and the Bush Campaign. They have launched a series of attacks to attempt to discredit and silence us. But they have failed.
One prong of this attack is the persistent attempt to characterize one of the 1500 entries in the BushIn30Seconds contest - the now infamous “Hitler ad” - as an ad somehow supported and aired by MoveOn. Of course, this is not true, and in fact the ad itself only appeared to the public at large on the RNC and Bush campaign web sites. While their consistent harping on this lie has gotten press, in the end it’s backfired. Most recently, the Bush Campaign itself ran an ad with Kerry, Gore, Dean and Hitler, referencing the contest ad, and they came under heavy criticism. In another attack, right-wing partisans launched a campaign intended to shut down the MoveOn.org Voter Fund itself through the Federal Election Commission and to chill contributions from big and small contributors. Again, they failed, and support for MoveOn and others opposing the administration has been very robust, especially from the new small contributors many organizations are reaching through the Internet. The bottom line is that the attacks have raised the profile of MoveOn and opposition to the Bush administration in general, and this prominence helps us every day in getting out our message.
We are continually grateful for the incredible support and trust extended to us by you and other MoveOn members. We’re great optimists, because we’re in touch with millions of people who are working to make a difference. We’re also optimistic because the work is yielding strong results. America is hearing the truth about the Bush administration. Now it’s time to drive it home. Soon we’ll let you know what’s next in our campaign to take back America. But for now, we just want to thank you for making these results possible.
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Genocide is underway in Sudan.
The contrast in our government’s response to Sudan and Iraq is striking. Bush was willing to buck the United Nations and spend $200 billion to invade Iraq (most recently for humanitarian reasons).
Now, for a few hundred million dollars and little risk to our armed forces, we really can stop a government from slaughtering a million of its own people.
Instead, the Bush administration has ducked the issue by refusing to call it genocide. Why? Because the United States is party to a treaty that would force us to take strong action if they did.
Now a bipartisan push is taking hold in Congress to call this genocide and get our government to act. The House resolution (H.. Con. Res. 467) is moving quickly, and a vote may come as quickly as next week. In the Senate, Sen. Brownback (R-KS) and Sen. Corzine (D-NJ) have just introduced a resolution (S.. Con. Res. 124) that would also call this genocide and require strong action.
To send a message to your Senators and Representatives telling them to call the atrocities in Darfur genocide, just hit “Reply” and “Send” in your e-mai l program (text below). If this alert was forwarded to you or if you want to edit your message, just click here:
http://action.truemajority.com/index.asp?action=10180&ms=gen1&ref=589671
WRITE A LETTER TO THE EDITOR. Letters to the editor are another powerful way to influence your members of Congress. This feat ure uses state-of-the-art technology to make it really easy for you to submit a letter to the editor. Click here to give it a try:
http://action.truemajority.org/l2e/index.asp?cp=24
Here is what’s happening:
Over the last several months, a government-backed Arab militia in Sudan called the Janjuweed has been attacking black Africans. The Janj uweed tactics are crude but effective. They enter a village and use terror to force everyone to leave their homes and crops. Entire populations have fled to distant camps in the middle of desolate areas. These desert camps are now surrounded and controlled by the Janjuweed, and anyone who tries to leave is raped or killed. Unarmed international aid workers are turned away. 60; A total of 370,000 human beings are already dead or in the late stages of dying from starvation in these extermination camps. The death toll could reach 1 million within the next few months.
Time is our worst enemy. Every day 1,000 people are dying in these camps. Currently, starvation is taking the weakest- 70% of the dead are children five and under. As time goes on, the death toll will rise more quickly. The United States needs to ensure that fo od aid is brought to the people of Darfur with protection from an international military force. Congress has already allocated tens of millions of dollars for this mission and seems willing to allocate millions more if needed. The problem is that the Bush administration is unwilling to take the decisive action needed to make sure the food aid is safely delivered to those who need it most. Instead, they are calling on the corrupt Sud anese government to disarm their allies, the Janjuweed, and allow the food aid in. To pressure the Sudanese government, the Bush administration is talking about using sanctions, a process that will take months-long enough to kill everyone c urrently starving in the camps. That is why it is crucial that Congress speaks out now.
To send a message to your Senators and Representatives telling them to call the atrocities in Darfur genocide, just hit “Reply” and “Send” in your e-mai l program (text below). If this alert was forwarded to you or if you want to edit your message, just click here:
http://action.truemajority.com/index.asp?action=10180&ms=gen1&ref=589671
Ben
To learn more about what is happening in Darfur, you can check out our friends at Res Publica at www.darfurgenocide.org
Calls for action from newspapers throughout the country have been compiled by the Center for American Progress at http://www.americanprogress.org/si te/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=97645
Nicholas D. Kristof, columnist for the New York Times, has put together this slide show about his trip to Darfur: 60; http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2004/07/06/opinion/20040707_KRIS_1..html
Rep. Frank Wolfe (D-VA) recently visited Darfur and has created this report, complete with photos, of what he saw:
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/webreturn/?url=http://www.house.gov%2Fwolf
Letter to Senators/Representative:
Dear Senators/Representative:
Genocide is taking place in Sudan, and we must act to stop it. Aid agencies are routinely turned away from camps by the government-backed Janjuweed militia. We must act today to do everything we can to stop the killing of the people of Darfur.
President Bush and Secretary Powell have been unwilling to call these atrocities genocide, but that is exactly what they are. Our nation is morally and legally bound to pr event genocide; that is why you must act.
Please support the bipartisan resolutions moving through Congress that call the killing in Darfur genocide.
Sincerely,
(We’ll put your name and address here.)