Join the Progressive Media - Become your own media outlet: http://www.mikehersh.com/join_the_personal_progressive_media.shtml

Call your Senators and Representatives

Calling is much better than email (which is often ignored).

Congressional Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

Find your Senators: http://www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_state.cfm/

Find your Representative: http://www.house.gov/writerep/

1. Oppose the "Brat Tax" repeal.

Right wingers wants to eliminate any tax on estates (wealth passed from rich people to their kids) even though it will cost the rest of us $1 TRILLION over the next ten years, or $100 BILLION per year. See: http://tinyurl.com/4tcsm

2. Stop the Republican attack on Your Voice

Protect your voice in the Senate at: http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/stop_nuclear

3. Oppose the Bolton nomination.

The Bolton nomination is in Committee, so NOW is the best time to fight to keep him from clearing committee. Register your opposition with your Senator. You can also call the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations: Majority Republican Sen Lugar: (202) 224-4651 and Ranking Democrat Sen. Biden (202) 224-3953

Here are the members of the Committee: http://www.care2.com/go/z/22701 Give each of them an earful of details why Bolton is not acceptable to you. See detail at bottom why Bolton is such a bad nominee.

4. Get Big Brother out of the Patriot Act! http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=17913&c=206

5. Stop War Profiteering - Bush demands another $83 billion to squander on war profiteering and waste with no accountability. The House passed this waste of taxpayer money to hand to irresponsible contractors. Stop the $83 Billion Appropriations bill. Tell the Senate: No More Taxpayer Money for War without accountability! Call Congress and demand an end to exploitation and profiteering.

6. Urgent! Call Congress to Demand an "Open Rule" for the Bankruptcy Bill! Oppose the bill itself. TODAY, April 13, at 5 p.m., the House Rules Committee will decide whether to allow any amendments to the outrageous Bankruptcy Bill that was passed by the Senate (S. 256).

Progressive activists, led by Democrats.com and Progressive Democrats of America, are fighting back. This morning we hosted a press conference on Capitol Hill with Reps. John Conyers (D-MI) and Barbara Lee (D-CA), along with the leaders of the powerful DebtSlavery.org Coalition see: http://debtslavery.org

Whether you are outraged by its endorsement of usurious interest rates of over 30 percent, or its abandonment of our medical cost victims, our elderly on subsistence and our over deployed military, we MUST take a strong stand to oppose the "bankruptcy reform" or "bankruptcy abuse prevention act". It passed the House and we must stop it in the Senate! Call your Congressperson 888-818-6641.

If the House passes this bankruptcy bill, Bush will sign it into law severely limiting working and middle class people's ability to file for bankruptcy even if they're filing due to health care expenses, a veteran, a senior citizen or whatever. Yet, the bill still has a huge loophole for rich people!

Democrats tried to slow the bill down by placing an amendment on it that would raise the minimum wage to $7.25 and the GOP struck that down, too! What kind of President is this? Bush has declared war on everyone who is not rich in this nation. we don't count and it is open season on us all - regardless of whether we are black, brown, white, straight, gay, fat, skinny - it don't matter - if you ain't rich ya got to go.

7. Oppose the HUD attack on the poor. Ask for your Senators or Representative at 888-818-6641. They call it "The State and Local Housing Flexibility Act of 2005" http://nlihc.org/news/040705.html

8. Oppose Budget cuts that will hurt the poor. Ask for your Senators or Representative to oppose cuts to the Community Development Block Grant project and to oppose moving it to the Commerce Dept. Read details http://tinyurl.com/5eokx and call Congress: 888-818-6641

9. Oppose Tom DeLay: Congratulate Rep. Shays - Yesterday, Rep. Chris Shays of Connecticut became the first Republican member of Congress to heed the call to demand that Tom DeLay resign from Congress. Join the Public Campaign Action Fund to ramp up the public accountability campaign on three more members of Congress, Reps. Roy Blunt of Missouri, Jim Nussle of Iowa, and Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania. Their ads and grassroots campaign begins in these districts tomorrow. Here's how you can help:

Call Rep. Shays' office to thank him at 202-225-5541. Then call your own Representative through the Capitol Hill switchboard at 202-225-3121 to ask them to stand for ethics and decency by asking DeLay to resign.

Donate to the media campaign at https://secure.ga3.org/03/without_DeLay

Write a letter to the editor of your local paper praising Rep. Shays for standing up to Tom DeLay's big money corruption and urging that your congressman do the same.

Sign up to hold politicians accountable: http://ga3.org/pcactionfund/join.html?r=H7SRM0Y1UzwqE

Tell a friend about the Public Campaign Action Fund to hold politicians accountable at: http://tinyurl.com/46jke

10. Ten reasons for DeLay to resign: http://www.pcactionfund.org/withoutDeLay/facts/

The Tom DeLay abuse story is a fast-moving story. On Saturday, Newsweek reported that Jack Abramoff, the disgraced lobbyist who funded DeLay's trips would soon release emails about how much DeLay knew and when he knew it. Yesterday's bombshell came when Shays' said DeLay should resign and ultra-conservative Senator Rick Santorum called on DeLay to explain himself! Keep the pressure up.

--------------------------------------

BOLTON DETAILS: Letter sent by a citizen to his Senators. Oppose John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. April 11, 2005

Please stop John Bolton from becoming the US Ambassador based on his horrific track record as under secretary of state for arms control. While in this position he did more to spread nuclear proliferation. This man has been totally unapologetic about his radical prescription for dealing with the proliferation threat.

Some examples of his poor performance include

1. Bolton has also dropped the ball on Pakistani weapons dealer A.Q. Khan, who is known to have provided nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya, among others. After learning he may have put two nuclear scientists in touch with Osama bin Laden, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf put Khan under house arrest, but has rebuffed international efforts to question him.

2. Since revelations about the scope of Iran's secret nuclear program first emerged in late 2003, Bolton has shown little willingness to deal realistically with the issue. President Bush has claimed the impasse can be "solved diplomatically," but in 2002, when Tehran "signaled interest in discussing its nuclear program," Bolton brushed it aside. Late last year, Bolton mocked the very notion of diplomacy with Iran, telling a European conference on the issue, "I don't do carrots."

3. Bolton is known to have pressured analysts for intelligence that fit his ideological agenda. In spring 2002, Bolton "planned to announce the existence of a secret bio-weapons program in Cuba" until he was blocked by State Department Bio-weapons Chief Christian Westermann, who said the speech did not accurately reflect intelligence assessments. Bolton "summoned Westermann to his office and berated him … then tried to have him fired."

4. Bolton dismissed and insulted U.N. intelligence estimates that turned out to be more accurate than those he helped gather. For instance, when IAEA Director Mohamed El Baradei told the United Nations that nuclear experts had found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bolton said the report was "impossible to believe." (Recently, Bolton has been a prime mover behind the White House's attempt to get El Baradei fired.)

Bolton has actually fantasized the physical destruction of the organization, saying, "There's no such thing as the United Nations … If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." Surely, Congress should consider Bolton's personal antipathy to the organization for which he has been nominated – it should also consider his first term record.