I hate this crap. I stopped giving to the USO because their privacy policy at the time was "We'll only share your info with organizations we think you might be interested in", which was of course the Republican Party and various other conservative groups; stuff like what the DCCC has chosen to do with their petition makes me want to never sign a political petition again.
That being said, I hope I DID sign the petition. Akin can apologize 'til the cows come home and he's blue in the face - what he said was just horrifying.
What kicked this off was spam from Angela at the DCCC, who is suffering under the misapprehension that I am her friend, when I'm actually really irritated at the petition-to-donation-form thing. Bait and switch routines annoy me. I realize that the dccc email is probably a one-way mass email thing, but if it was actually Angela's email, here's what I would have said to her.
**********************
-----Original Message-----
From: bonnie k. frogma
Sent: Aug 22, 2012 12:45 PM
To: dccc@dccc.org
Subject: Re: did your friends sign too?
Dear Angela - I signed, but was unwilling to pass the link along because of the way that the form ends up attempting to coerce a donation. I was confused by the second screen, I would willingly put my real name and address to this petition and thought that was the purpose of the second screen - then I realized that this was actually a donation form. I closed out of that page unsure of whether I had actually signed off on the petition or not. I'm very scared of people like Akin being given control but that doesn't mean that I'm entirely thrilled with the Democratic Party either. Sliding in a sneaky and misleading hit-up for a donation to a petition that so many people would be eager to sign doesn't earn you any trust.
***********************
From: Angela Guzman
Sent: Aug 22, 2012 12:17 PM
To: bonnie k. frogma
Subject: did your friends sign too?
Friend --
We're 34,211 short of an amazing 300,000 people telling Speaker Boehner to remove Todd Akin from the House Science Committee. Will you help us keep up the pressure?
Please forward this email to 3 of your friends right now...
*******************
OK, got it off my chest. Thanks. Check in tomorrow (or maybe even later today, depending on how the work goes) when Happy Bonnie will be back...
5 comments:
I won't comment on Rep Akin's remarks; there are better places for that. Some people have expressed surprise that he's on the Science Committee. Rep Akin isn't a member of the Science Committee because he's a scientist or because he's interested in science. He's on that committee because it is a vehicle for him to funnel Federal money to his district. The same reason he's on the Armed Services Committee - General Dynamics (makers of F-18 and F-18 aircraft) has a big plant in his district. It's a strange road that carries a Missouri Congressman to the Seapower and Force Projection Subcommittee, given that he has no beachfront to project power from.
Removing him from the Science Committee has almost no scientific repercussions, but it does carry deep financial repercussions for his district.
It's a crazy world.
Blech. That's why I really do hope I did sign the petition, even though I'm angry about the way signing off on the petition immediately send you down a chute to donating money.
I still don't know whether I actually signed the petition or not or not - the only button that said "Complete" was on the donation page.
I think I'll go to Speaker Boehner's website tonight, most of them have contact forms & that's probably a better way of requesting that Akin be removed from that post.
Attempting any sort of dialogue/communication via websites is totally futile. I sent a few messages to my Republican Senators a few years ago at the time of the craziness about shutting down the government over the budget impasse, telling them how I had voted Republican for many years but that I was horrified at the extent to which the party had become hostage to the extremists and, as expected, got back robo-messages thanking me for my comments which would be duly considered by the Senators who were proud to be busy taking exactly the kind of action I was railing against. I dont expect a personal response drafted by the Senators but I would expect that some poor staffer at least reads the message and records it on a spreadsheet somewhere. Of course since then I have been on the mailing list and get drivel that only makes me madder.
Maybe grumbling about it publicly on a blog is just as effective as anything else.
That is to say, not very.
:(
He won't be on the science committee for long. Since he's running for senate, I don't think he can run for another term in HR at the same time. So one way or another he's out of HR at the end of the year.
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