http://www.causingprogress.com Motivation and tactics for progressive / liberal community leaders and activists Sat, 27 Jan 2007 05:37:01 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en After losing my election campaign and a hiatus, this is my first post here in about five months. Here's the blog from my campaign for Santa Clara County Board of Education; AHERN for County Board of Education. I plan to resume posting here and may be starting a few unrelated blogs or ... http://www.causingprogress.com/2007/01/26/campaigns/post-election-blues/ While Congress is on recess, now is the time to attend a town meeting hosted by the member of the House of Representatives for your Congressional District. This round of meetings may be more contentious than previous cycles due to the probable shift to a Democratic majority in the mid-term elections ... http://www.causingprogress.com/2006/08/01/community/attend-your-congress-members-town-meeting/ Two candidates for the US House of Representatives need your support: In the 1st District in New Mexico, which includes Albuquerque, the state's Attorney General, Patricia Madrid, campaigns against a long-term Christian-Republican incumbent. The incumbent has collected the fourth highest cash total from Tom DeLay's ARMPAC campaign money-laundering operation. Because Madrid ... http://www.causingprogress.com/2006/07/01/action/contribute-to-giffords-az-and-madrid-nm/ While considering a speech by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) promoting a Constitutional Amendment elevating banner worship above the principles of democracy, I thought I could hear the familiar dismissal; "There's no difference between Republicans and Democrats." Too often the similarities obscure the differences. Often, I suspect Feinstein and even Howard ... http://www.causingprogress.com/2006/06/27/money/democratsrepublicans-buffetellison/ One axiom of Christian-Republican faith holds that government cannot deliver high-quality , low-cost services to a community. The faithful argue that only a for-profit business can 'deliver the goods.' So, it's interesting to see what happens when a city turns over the task of maintaining public property to a business ... http://www.causingprogress.com/2006/06/16/money/when-public-works-become-private-enterprise/ While commenting on the appointment of a Wall Streeter as Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Reich observed "Bill Gates alone owns more assets than the bottom fifty percent of Americans put together." With the abolition of the aristocracy tax (a.k.a. the estate tax, a.k.a. the death tax), generations of the Gates ... http://www.causingprogress.com/2006/05/31/money/evolving-aristocracy/ From the Austin (TX) Statesman (5/24/06): Texas Supreme Court Justice Admonished For a glimpse of what we might expect from the political operatives appointed to the US Supreme Court by Bush the First and Bush the Second, consider; Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht crossed an ethical line last year when he ... http://www.causingprogress.com/2006/05/23/community/fixer-on-the-tx-supreme-court-admonished/ When experts talk about the cost of rents or mortgages for low income individuals and families, the phrase "deeper affordability" comes up. The question; How do we make homes available to people with incomes lower and lower on the income scale (below the median income for an area)? For most of ... http://www.causingprogress.com/2006/05/19/money/deeper-affordability/ An editorial in today's Cincinnatti Enquirer, Top 10 Reasons to Vote Today, highlights a problem across the country; extremely low voter turnout in non-Presidential primary elections. As the editorial points out, primaries contested within only one party or in jurisdictions where registrations heavily favor one party become de facto ... http://www.causingprogress.com/2006/05/16/campaigns/reforms-to-encourage-higher-turnout-elections/ A few years ago MoveOn.org published 50 Ways to Love Your Country. 50 Ways consisted of brief first-person accounts by progressive activists about how each became an activist. Each 'way' also included a few, brief MoveOn Tips of guidance. Recently, the less high-profile Earth*Works Action Network released 50 Simple Things ... http://www.causingprogress.com/2006/05/15/community/50-simple-thingsto-do-today/