Thank You for Caring, Sharing

The joint holiday party with OTDB and the DuPage Democratic Party was a great success, with a good turnout and therefore a sizable donation made to the Midwest Shelter for Homeless Veterans. Thank you to everyone who attended and those who participated in the 50/50 raffle to raise more money for the shelter -- including the winner, Roger Tauchman, who generously donated his share back to the shelter. Anyone wishing to learn more about the shelter or make additional contributions is invited to visit: HelpaVeteran.org.

Operation: Turn DuPage Blue also thanks everyone who submitted entries to win a $100 donation to the charity of their choice. The winner was Steve Stawarz and OTDB will make a contribution in his name to DuPage PADS, which works to prevent and eliminate homelessness in the county. Please visit DuPagePADS.org if you would like to learn more about this fine organization or make a donation.

Thanks again for your generosity.

OTDB warmly wishes all the best to you and yours.

Iron Peickert and the Scarlet Barton?

Don't ask. Just go read So-Called Austin Mayor.

Here's the Plan

Bob Peickert and Michelle Barton have released the outline of their plan for improving the DuPage Democratic Party.

You can read it here.

Another Message From Bob Peickert

How disappointing!

The November 6 press release by the DuPage Democratic Party states:

Robert Bisceglie, Chair of the Democratic Party of DuPage County, today announced that THEIR [emphasis added] campaign to recruit precinct committeemen more than doubled last year's numbers.

The rest of the release went on to report about the county's efforts in this recruitment period. No mention was made of the efforts or results of township campaigns or that of Operation: Turn DuPage Blue.

Throughout the recruitment campaign that included independent efforts by OTDB and township organizations, OTDB has recognized the work of everyone who played a role in this unprecedented recruitment period. Having spent many days walking precincts and making phone calls, I realize that no one group could have accomplished this by itself. Chris Hotchkin deserves a lot of credit for working on the county plan. Some townships had their own recruitment plans in place, and OTDB had its plan.

Let's look at the results. We now have 237 precinct committeemen (more when you count the "looped" committeemen) as compared to 122 at this time last year. Everyone who had a part in this should be recognized and given credit.

To take sole credit for this achievement sends a message — a wrong message. Apparently some now see this as a competitive exercise rather than a cooperative one. When someone speaks of "reaching out" to other Democrats and organizations, the words are meaningless unless one can attach an action or actions that support that claim or promise. When personal interests override the interests of the party, we won't get very far as an organization.

We can only hope that Rob Bisceglie will send out another press release that recognizes the work of OTDB and the township organizations.

Update: Minor edits at Bob's request.

The benefits of cooperation

Let's take another look at the numbers from the last post. Over the past year, some of the township Democratic organizations worked together with O:TDB on precinct committeeentity recruitment, while others did their own thing. Here are the townships in the first group and the results that they saw:

Township	PCs on 2006 Ballot	PCs on 2008 Ballot	Improvement
Addison	9	20	+11
Milton	29	49	+20
York	23	35	+12
Naperville	6	25	+19
Lisle	5	22	+17
Total	72	151	+79 (108%)

By comparison, here are the results from the townships in which there was not substantial cooperation between O:TDB and the township organization:

Township	PCs on 2006 Ballot	PCs on 2008 Ballot	Improvement
Wayne	3	4	+1
Bloomingdale	10	26	+16
Winfield	9	13	+4
Downers Grove	26	43	+17
Total	48	86	+38 (79%)

A number of points need to be made here. First of all, O:TDB is certainly not claiming to have recruited all 79 of the new PCs in the cooperating townships. For example, of the eleven recruits in Addison township, four were already-appointed PCs, six were found by O:TDB, and one was found by someone else. Secondly, even in the townships that did not work cooperatively with us, we did do some recruiting -- we came up with thirteen PCs in Bloomingdale township and five PCs in Downers Grove township.
Update: Corrected some erroneous numbers.
Update 2: Fixed bad formatting. Thanks to michael in chicago for the tip.

So, how'd we do?

The candidate filing period for the February 2008 primary election has ended. Now's a good time to step back and see how successful our party's candidate recruitment efforts have been compared to previous years.

Our Congressional Representative races are well-stocked with candidates, as they have been in previous years. So let's move down to the state level.

Out of sixteen state senator/representative seats up this time around, not including ones which are less than ten percent in DuPage, we filled six slots on the ballot. This is a notable improvement from both 2004 and 2006 in which we only filled four of these slots, but we still have a long way to go.

At the county level, improvement is marginal if even that. Seven out of twelve county board seats will have Democratic candidates on the ballot, compared with five out of twelve in 2006 and five out of six in 2004. We only managed to fill one out of three forest preserve slots on the ballot this time around, compared to none in 2006 and two in 2004. And we filled slots for zero out of five county-wide officer positions, compared with zero in 2006 and two in 2004.

Obviously the quality of candidates also matters, but there's no real way to quantify that until we see how they do against the Republicans. In terms of numbers alone, we're not seeing much progress except for the State Senate.

Where we have seen great improvement is in precinct committeebeing recruitment. Here are some numbers:

Township	Total precincts	PCs on ballot 2006	PCs on ballot 2008
Wayne	39	3	4
Bloomingdale	72	10	26
Addison	64	9	20
Winfield	35	9	13
Milton	109	28	49
York	130	23	35
Naperville	60	6	25
Lisle	95	9	22
Downers Grove	128	26	43

That's a total of 237 precincts with Democratic PCs on the ballot, compared with 123 last time around. With well over seven hundred precincts in DuPage, there's still a long way to go with this too, but an increase of nearly 100% is something we should all be proud of.

Update: Edited for formatting fix.

A Progressive National Agenda

A coalition of progressive organizations has put together a Progressive Agenda for candidates for President and Congress. It is quoted below.

Questions for discussion:

1) Is this a good platform for our federal office candidates to adopt? If not, what would you change?

2) How can we get our federal candidates to sign on?

3) Could we come up with something similar at the more neglected county level?

Progressive Agenda

1. End Imperial Foreign Policy, Redirect Funding
   
   All U.S. troops and military contractors must be safely withdrawn from Iraq now with war funding redirected toward social needs at home, and humanitarian and reconstruction aid to the Iraqi people. Under our Constitution, Congress has the power of the purse to cut off funding that prolongs the occupation of Iraq. The disastrous war in Iraq must not be extended into an even more disastrous attack on Iran.
   
   U.S. foreign policy must be fact-based, committed to international law and respect for the sovereignty of other nations, and aimed at intelligently countering real threats, such as weapons proliferation and transnational terrorism. Instead of producing more advanced nuclear warheads and promoting weapons into space and building missile shields, U.S. policy should lead by example in non-proliferation by disarming our own nuclear stockpiles. Reducing our nuclear weapons will facilitate negotiations with major powers like Russia and new nuclear countries like Iran. U.S. policy must be even-handed in the Middle East, aimed at justice and security for both Israelis and Palestinians. U.S. foreign policy must shift from reckless unilateralism toward cooperation and diplomacy with people of other countries knowing us more by our helping hand than our slugging arm.


2. Healthcare for All
   
   It is immoral for a country as wealthy as ours to have 47 million people with no healthcare coverage, and millions more with inadequate, overly expensive coverage. Despite spending twice as much as other industrialized nations on healthcare, our system performs poorly because the private U. S. insurance bureaucracy soaks up nearly one-third of all healthcare money in waste, profits, paperwork and advertising. Poor health and poor healthcare drag down the economy and job creation; healthcare expenses are a factor in half of all personal bankruptcies. Nonprofit national health insurance Enhanced Medicare for All could provide topnotch universal coverage by negotiating drug and treatment costs, while recouping $300 billion in administrative savings currently wasted in private insurance bureaucracy. This kind of cost-effective single-payer system is publicly financed, privately delivered healthcare.


3. Economic Justice
   
   The Bush Administrations enormous tax breaks for the wealthy must be rolled back so that the richest 1 percent of our population (with yearly incomes averaging $1.3 million) will not pocket $300 billion over the next few years. Tax burdens on the middle class can be eased if the wealthy pay their share. Thirty seven million people (equivalent to the population of California) are living in poverty in the U.S. today. These immoral levels of poverty, which disproportionately impact communities of color and women, can be significantly reduced through concerted effort including a living wage for all workers, expanded earned income tax credits, childcare assistance and housing vouchers. The federal government must fulfill its promise of resources to Hurricane Katrina survivors so they can return to rebuild their communities in the Gulf Coast.
   
   Protecting the right of workers to form and join unions in the U.S. is essential to preserving the middle class, as is federal investment in job creation, such as the Apollo Alliance for renewable energy, and investment in wireless Internet networks. We need fair trade deals with other countries that protect workers' rights and the environment not wage-reducing "free trade" agreements that protect only corporate rights to globally exploit unprotected labor.Finally, we need humane and comprehensive immigration reform, which insures the rights of undocumented workers in the workplace and affirms the dignity and integrity of immigrant families.


4. Stop Global Warming
   
   No issue reveals more clearly the flaws of the U.S. political-economic system than global warming the triumph of greed and corporate power over the public good, and the near-sighted focus on the short-term over the welfare of future generations. But the U.S. public is ready to take action to save the planet and protect our remaining wild places from further degradation in the pursuit of oil. We need elected leaders who will act boldly in reducing our country's oil dependence and use of fossil fuels. This can be done by raising auto fuel economy and imposing mandatory caps on carbon pollution while investing in public transportation, energy conservation technologies and alternative energy development. (Such investments create good-paying jobs.)


5. Reproductive Freedom/Civil Rights & Liberties
   
   A woman's reproductive freedom, including the right-to-choose, is essential to personal privacy and gender equality. Equal rights and equal opportunity must be a guiding principle of society, especially in view of historic and ongoing discrimination against women and racial, ethnic and sexual minorities. Affirmative action in employment and education is an important tool for racial and gender equality. Lesbians and gays must be afforded equality, including in marriage and military service. The Bush administration has exploited the 9/11 tragedy to constrict precious Constitutional rights of privacy, speech and due process. These rights must be restored. Drug policy should emphasize treatment over criminalization not a drug war that erodes Constitutional freedoms, privacy and law enforcement resources. The prison-industrial complex in which economic interests profit from incarceration must be shrunk and capital punishment, with its racial and class biases, must be abolished.


6. Clean, Fair, Transparent Elections
   
   The U.S. election system is in crisis, with voters facing political and racial obstacles in casting votes and in getting their votes counted. Big money and entrenched power deform the political process, with incumbents unfairly insulated by district gerrymandering and rules obstructing independent candidates and parties. We need comprehensive campaign finance reform at the state and national level, including Clean Money public financing of the public's elections, plus free TV/radio time for candidates. We need a ban on touch-screen (DRE) voting machines for counting votes, paper ballots as the official records for deriving voter intent, and rigorous mandatory audits of elections. We must end racially-biased disenfranchisement of felons who've served their time, and initiate reforms like "Instant Runoff"/proportional voting, which assure more accurate and broader representation than winner-take-all elections.


7. Media Reform
   
   A half-dozen media conglomerates now sit on the windpipe of the First Amendment, having seized the publics broadcast airwaves; these companies helped facilitate the Iraq War. Giant phone and cable TV companies threaten to transform the Internet from a free forum fostering citizen action to a corporate-dominated medium fostering profiteering. The Internet can be saved by legislating Net Neutrality. Regulation and anti-trust enforcement can break up media monopolies to diversify broadcasting and expand minority and nonprofit ownership. Our country needs well-funded, genuinely independent public broadcasting to replace the current corrupt system of corporate underwriting and politicized White House control. Government policy should promote nonprofit and public access outlets, along with high-speed community Internet for all.