the email I just sent to Gerry Connolly
Dear Rep Connolly
I am writing to express my deep concern about news reports that suggest that you are considering supporting extensions of the Bush tax cuts for the richest 1 percent of Americans.
In the long term, we can not continue to run large budget deficits. Therefore, a vote to extend these tax cuts is a vote to cut spending on education, on roads, on health care, on job training. It is a vote to take away money from child care and from senior centers. It is a vote to accept the increasing inequality of opportunity in our society and to surrender the hope that government can make things better.
I know, some of your constituents are fortunate to make more than $250,000 a year. But they benefit from a healthy society, and can afford to contribute. Our economy grew very well during the 1990s when tax rates were at the levels that they would return to.
Please give me a reason to vote for you next month.
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I sent the same letter (w/o the last sentence) to Warner and Webb.
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I am really f-ing depressed tonight. And I don’t see it getting better soon.
Update: I meant to link to this Center for American Progress report on what a budget balanced through spending cuts alone would look like.
September 24th, 2010 at 11:02 am
thanks for this. I’ll send it to Warner & Webb too.
September 29th, 2010 at 6:12 am
Connolly’s decision process could well be, ‘so she is going to vote for Fimian?!’ And, you won’t. You might stay home, but I doubt it. Further, with Fimian a plausible candidate, Connolly is likely as far left as your district will support. No place to go with this one, except to support folks at other levels of government who are more to your liking.
October 18th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Well, Connolly is still for keeping the top tier Bush tax cuts, and Fimian is nipping at his heels: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/vote-2010-virginia-house-race-bellwether-president-obama/story?id=11895315
Your vote, or non-vote, might actually matter.
October 29th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
I’m wondering if Connolly would be doing better if he were better looking. It seems to me that Sarah Palin is doing well partly because of her looks, I’m unused to thinking of a man’s looks as important, but maybe this is a problem. Fimian has symmetrical features, conventional good looks. If it’s a problem, it’s probably a 3% problem, not a 15% problem – but 3% may matter. Well, we’ll see Tuesday.
November 5th, 2010 at 6:27 am
Landslide! 900 votes out of 220,000. My guess still is, he would have done better if he weren’t so exactly the image I formed of Uriah Heep when I read David Copperfield in 8th grade. And, he likely knew what he was doing in pandering on the high-income taxes.
November 9th, 2010 at 6:17 am
I read in the paper, so it must be true – next year the Reeps are going to slice off Connolly’s nicest, Demmie-est precincts and give them to Moran, and to give Connolly some Loudon to make up for it. Swell, Jim Moran is going to be even more bullet-proof than he is today.
November 20th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Somebody else thinks looks matter: http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/11/last-thing-wisconsin-needed-was-another.html
Although I think Feingold is perfectly okay looking, myself.
January 1st, 2011 at 9:45 pm
Dang, wish I’d seen this a couple weeks ago.
Just ran across your blog while searching for a quotation about fact vs fiction in Madeline L’Engle’s writing – someone practically re-wrote the New Yorker article in one of your comments: yay. 🙂