Facebook friend, campaign trail acquaintance and fellow Kossack, Blizek, drew my attention today to a surge in contributions on ActBlue presently enjoyed by Democrat, Ilya Sheyman, my personal favorite political candidate in any race for 2012, aside from President Obama. Mr. Sheyman, a community organizer and former staffer for Senator Obama, is running for Congress as a fighting, progressive Democrat in a 3-way primary against two business executives. The general election will be against 1st term Republican, Robert Dold, a damned reliable Republican vote in the House, except for a little wobble on the environment. Boehner allows him that for the benefit of his Lake Michigan bordered district because it doesn't matter anyway once mountain state Democrats chime in to kill environmental progress. This increasingly blue district has been in Republican hands for a generation.
In a free speechy, First Amendmenty kind of thing like a blog, one would think that an author could very much sound off and expound or explain, or inquire or comment or plead or argue or suppose or whatever so long as actual incitement to violence and destruction and copyright infringement stayed off limits. Alas, it may not be so, if the speaker possesses an appointment to federal employment. Hence, speech may be restrained by provisions of the federal Hatch Act. So, in this space, no one will find any solicitation to contribute to any candidate by either name or persuasion.
Giving to candidates can be either good or bad, right? Everyone gets to decide for themselves what that means. I don't encourage anyone to suppose or speculate that I behave as I do when I make political contributions simply because I believe it is he right thing to do,. Everybody should think whatever they want.
Yet, even without espousing or fomenting donations to particular partisan candidates, one should be free to talk about historical facts. Thus, the following observations about the author's contribution history on ActBLue.
No intention to cause anyone to contribute anything to anybody for any purpose should be supposed or implied by the contribution disclosures published here.
So, I clicked through to my ActBlue contribution history for the 1st time ever, today.
One sorta cool thing that I didn't see coming was that my biggest single cause to date on ActBlue was the money I sent to the Wisconsin State Senate Committee Democrats during the early rounds against Scott Walker's assault on public employees during the quorum fight, to help support Senators' sojourns in Chicagoland where I dwell. The next highest amount given via the site was to the aforementioned, Ilya Sheyman. Close behind that were my past contributions to the previous Democratic contender, Dan Seals, who lost to Dold in a vacant seat race in a bluish district. The total amount given through the site was larger than I expected and the number of individual candidates and causes supported, in the dozens, more numerous than I expected, even though the record spanned several years of contributions. Most of my contributions go directly to candidates and causes and I use ActBlue only sporadically.
I'm unsure why anyone blogging here would not have something like an ActBlue account, allowing easy, click-through contributing. Political organizing requires those who can to contribute material support, including money; it's an inescapable political reality. I don't know anything about sites for our political opponents, political puppets of the 1%, you know, Republicans and Libertarians (and some Democrats), but I invite anyone, including trolls, to submit comments with links to whatever comparable ActRed site, or ActGreen or ActPaulish or whatever there may be.