"C-Span! Dot Mother *^$%&#* Org!"

Tomorrow morning is the long-awaited, smack-down extravaganza that we have come to know as the health care summit. When I came across this video, I just could not resist sharing it with you folks:


Too good right? Health care! Health care! Health care! Join us on twitter during the showdown tomorrow morning for some good conversation.

Planned Parenthood Under Attack In VA

Thanks to the good folks at BlueCommonwealth for bringing this to our attention.

Anti-choice organizations are working to get Planned Parenthood defunded, entirely, and calling on the radically anti-choice Governor for help. That means no money for HIV prevention (how very "pro-life" of them!). That means no money for birth control (which is abortion to anti-choice activists). That means no money for adoption counseling and basic family planning. Yet that would do nothing about abortion, because there is already no money for abortion in the State of VA and all across the country.

Planned Parenthood has stood for years as a stronghold of reproductive justice. A place where anyone, regardless of economic or social status can receive help needed surrounding a number of reproductive issues.

This attempt to defund Planned Parenthood is 1) Cruel and 2) Baseless. This directly hurts the poorest amongst us. Planned Parenthood has never and is not using funds from the state of Virginia for abortion. There is no logic you can find to argue otherwise. This is oddly similar to the frantic, yet uninformed, anti-choice outrage
over national health care reform. The religious right faction of the conservative movement has demonstrated time and time again that it has no problem taking any means necessary to prevent abortion and make the lives of abortion providers, patients, and activists more difficult.

Specter/Sestak Senatorial Forum

At the PA Progressive Summit, we got the chance to catch a Senatorial forum with Senator Arlen Specter and Congressman Joe Sestak. This election is sure to be one of the most watched, and both campaigns have quite a long road ahead of them. They were asked the same questions, so we threw their answers back-to-back for you folks:

Question 1- What Do You Think of a Partial Spending Freeze?


Question 2- What Would You Do To Increase Manufacturing Jobs in the US?


Question 3- What is Your Opinion of Same-Sex Marriage?


Question 4- Will You Vote For The Employee Free Choice Act With Card Check?


Question 5- What Are you Going to do About the Trade Deficit?


Question 6- Do You Support Comprehensive Immigration Reform?


Question 7- What Should We Do About the Filibuster?


For more videos from the PA Progressive Summit, visit www.SumofChange.com/paprog

Training Tuesday: Prioritizing Your Campaign and The Importance of Time

For this Training Tuesday, which was filmed at a Democracy for America Campaign Academy training session, we'd like to help you focus your campaign on what is most important. As our trainer, Kendra-Sue Derby, mentions, when you have limited resources you have to know how and where to focus them. Now to many, resources equals money, but in actuality, money is never your scarcest resource- it might not be easy, but there is always more money to be raised. In reality, the most important resource to focus up on is that of time. Time machines don't exist- the most time you will ever have on your campaign is on Day 1- so it is important to plan accordingly.

In these videos, Kendra-Sue first discusses the Three Campaigns Assets- Money People and Time and how you should juggle them. Next she goes into more detail about why your campaign should be Prioritized Based on Time. Finally, she encourages you to Use a Voter File, the item that will most help you organize your campaign to fight against the clock.

--Three Campaign Assets: Money, People, and Time



--Prioritize Based on Time



--Use a Voter File




For more Training Tuesday posts from Sum of Change, please visit www.SumofChange.com/trainingtuesday

Chris Hayes' Speech At Sum of Change/Grow the Hope House Meeting

Yesterday, we were humbled when folks from the DC/MD/VA area packed into the living room of David Hart, founder of Grow the Hope, for a fundraiser to help us cover the annual Netroots Nation conference. We could not have been more thrilled with the level of energy in the room.

Our featured speaker, Chris Hayes, the DC Editor of The Nation, gave a rather fantastic speech about health care, Netroots Nation, and the importance of grassroots online video that we wanted to share with you all right away:


To contribute to our efforts to cover Netroots Nation please click here.

The video we showed folks right before Chris' speech was from last year's Netroots Nation panel @FDR Is There A New New Deal? And Chris is absolutely right that the video was only 1/5 of the story. You can find Nicholas Beaudrot's flowchart over at Donkeylicious.

Pataki Misleads On Life Expectancy Gap

Former Governor George Pataki was on MSNBC today railing against health care reform. He mentioned that in Great Britain the life expectancy of the poorest folks is a decade less than the life expectancy of the richest folks. The first thing I noticed, he never mentioned the US stat. And David Shuster let him go, without asking him if he even knows what the US stat is.

Well, we looked into it. First off, he was wrong about the Great Britain fact. The gap is not a decade, it is seven years. He was only three years off, but that happens to be a margin of error of 30%.

So let us look at the US figures. In the last few decades, the life expectancy gap between the rich and poor has skyrocketed from 1.2 years in the early 70's to 5.8 years in 2001.

What pissed me off more than anything else about Gov Pataki's interview is that David Shuster just let him get up their and spout his views without any real push back. Is it too much to ask that he give a tough question? When someone claims a stat about Great Britain is an argument against health care reform, is it too much to ask that he or she also know the US figure?

Update: Unvanguard commented over at Democratic Underground:

The article the author points to in the British case reads: "The review says health inequalilties have not narrowed over the past decade, with the gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest neighbourhoods standing at seven years." But the US graph refers to the difference between people in the top half of the income distribution and people in the bottom half. These numbers are not comparable. The comparable US figure is almost certainly higher than 5.8.

Livefeed: Chris Hayes, Sum of Change, and Grow the Hope

Today at 2:00pm we are holding our first house party fundraiser for our efforts to cover Netroots Nation 2010. We have lined up a great set of speakers, opening with Chris Hayes, DC Editor of The Nation. We'll also hear from Nolan Treadway, the Logistics and Political Director of Netroots Nation, Julie Blust, the Communications Director at the Virginia Organizing Project, Jeremy Koulish, the Executive Director of the Carrots and Sticks Project, Yvette Lewis from Grow the Hope's Rapid Response Team, and our host, David Hart, the founder of Grow the Hope.

You can join us at the house party online today! We will be running a live camera feed of the event, so please hang around with us!

(Here is the rerun of Chris Hayes' speech, we'll have more of the house meeting up shortly)


I hope you enjoy the house party and all the great speakers. Then please contribute to help us in our efforts. Here's a list of what your contribution buys for us:

$5 = box of pens
$10 = Round of water bottles for the crew
$25 = roll of gaffers tape
$50 = lunch for a day for everyone
$100 = Gas card
$250 = Tapes for the trip
$500 = camera rental
$1000 = Hotel fees
$3000- $5000 = Sponsor Program

That should help you to visualize your contribution, give you something concrete to say to you are doing to help us get this work done. Please give what you can.

As many of you already know, Netroots Nation is a conference of progressives bloggers and online activists. One weekend every year, some of the greatest minds from the netroots gather to discuss the most important issues of the day. Last year, we covered Netroots Nation and came out with some 75 videos, mostly from panels. This year, we are going to expand our coverage immensely. To find out more, simply join us today for this house party.