Close the gap between MAYDAY and the voters and candidates

I have been strenuously advocating that MAYDAY supporters be aggressive in interfacing with voters and with candidates, in order to publicize MAYDAY's platform, and to advance MAYDAY's goal to elect a reform minded Congress in 2016. (It should be obvious why tons of grassroots work is needed here.)

More than a month ago I tried to push that onto the MAYDAY.US Facebook Group, and was rebuffed.

The Facebook Group has now expressly limited itself to being "a community discussion forum" and reiterates: "This is a discussion page, there is an official MAYDAY Facebook Page, here: https://www.facebook.com/MAYDAYdotUS".

Regarding the Official MAYDAY Facebook Page, it appears some selected people are able to post on the timeline there, but there does not appear to be any general posting rights or procedure for a person to get posting rights. Most all the posts on the timeline of the official MAYDAY Facebook Page are by MAYDAY.US, and the general public is limited to posting comments on timeline posts made by MAYDAY.US and by those selected persons who can make timeline posts.

Reviewing both the MAYDAY.US Facebook Group page and the Official MAYDAY Facebook Page, I see very little going on to promote and encourage MAYDAY supporters to interface with voters and with candidates, as is needed to publicize MAYDAY's platform, and to advance MAYDAY's goal to elect a reform minded Congress in 2016.

I started a blog I called The MAYDAY Supporters Blog to  promote and encourage MAYDAY supporters to interface with voters and with candidates. As you can see from that blog, I have undertaken significant efforts to get other MAYDAY supporters involved in the effort.

I have gotten retweets, but I cannot tell that MAYDAY supporters are doing much of anything to interface with voters and with candidates in the way I am urging in my blog.

I think MAYDAY is allowing an unfortunate gap to exist between MAYDAY and the voters and candidates.

I hope someone will take steps to change this state of affairs.

I am more than happy to be an organizer of MAYDAY supporters by and through my MAYDAY Supporters Blog, but right now I do not have any MAYDAY supporters who are  offering themselves to be organized.

Unfortunately, I am excluded from posting on the MAYDAY.US Facebook Group page, and cannot post a link to this on that page, and can only post a link to this in a comment on  the Official MAYDAY Facebook Page, which I will do.

Please help me out with Gary Palmer in AL06 Cong'l district

Gary Palmer is the overwhelming favorite to win in the Alabama 6th Congressional district on November 4th.

I am doing my best to challenge Gary Palmer.

I have been contending for six months that (i) something is fundamentally wrong with Congress, and it is broken, (ii) I have a diagnosis of the problem, and it stems from the influence of money in politics, and (iii) it needs to be a first priority that the American people take steps to fix the problem.

Gary Palmer has, for six months, refused to engage in any discussion about this, and I cannot get Gary Palmer even to state a position, one way or the other, about contention (i) above, i.e., whether there is or is not something fundamentally wrong with Congress, and whether it is or is not broken. Thus, I have not been able to advance to any discussion about contentions (ii) and (iii).

Moreover, the local media and political commentators have not commented or reported on the subject matter.

The foregoing state of affairs is well documented by myself. As a start, please look at my current sally on the matter, as stated in this link: Just answer the question, Gary Palmer.

Given that Gary Palmer and the local media and political commentators won't talk about the matter, I have resorted to emailing and tweeting to voters in the Alabama 6th Congressional district as much as I can.

Currently I am tweeting the following tweet message, which tweet message contains a link to Just answer the question, Gary Palmer:

Just answer the question, Gary Palmer.  http://al6thcongdist-ihaveuntiljan13.blogspot.com/2014/09/just-answer-question-gary-palmer.html 

As indicated at the end of Just answer the question, Gary Palmer, I am soliciting people locally to help me out by doing their own tweeting. I await seeing how much local help I get.

Earlier in September, I did tweeting into New Hampshire for Jim Rubens and solicited other MAYDAY supporters to do the same. See Status report on MAYDAY supporters' activities.

Having done the foregoing tweeting into New Hampshire (and lesser tweeting into Iowa and North Carolina), I am not hesitant to solicit interested MAYDAY supporters to tweet into the Alabama 6th Congressional district to help me out with Gary Palmer's refusal to discuss matters as described above.

If you are willing to help me out with Gary Palmer, read "YOU TWEET TOO" towards the end of the link Just answer the question, Gary Palmer, and you should get a good idea of what you can do. If you have any questions, please get in touch with me (email rdshattuck@gmail.com).

Thank you very much, fellow MAYDAY supporters.

Status report on MAYDAY supporters' activities

This blog advocates that MAYDAY.US supporters endeavor to interface aggressively with voters and candidates. This seems critically needed to help MAYDAY achieve its goals in 2014 and 2016.

I have been trying to do the foregoing and to join up with other MAYDAY supporters who want to do the same.

This is to report on what has been done so far (to the extent I am aware).


Tweeting into New Hampshire for Jim Rubens

At the start of the weekend before New Hampshire's September 9th primary, I tweeted to MAYDAY supporters a link to this: Let's tweet bomb into New Hampshire for Jim Rubens. There have been 620 page views of that link, most of which occurred prior to the Tuesday primary.

I personally sent a couple of hundred tweets (in the form I suggested) to followers of @NHGOP on twitter. I got both retweets and also flak complaining about my tweets being spamming. On balance, I think the positives of my tweeting greatly outweighed the negatives.

I did not become aware that any other MAYDAY supporters took up my tactic and sent their own tweets into New Hampshire.


Other ideas put out to MAYDAY supporters

I have put other ideas and suggestions to MAYDAY supporters for their consideration and have initiated my own implementation of the same to a limited extent.

These are indicated at the following links:

Engaging with Congressional candidates

Get your colleges and universities to hold Symposia

Get business going on our cause

Using Citizens United vote to publicize MAYDAY -- I have tweeted to followers of Gary Palmer and Mark Lester (the Republican and Democratic candidates in AL06 Congressional district) a link to this What does the AL 6th Congressional district think? I have gotten 250 page views of the link.


MAYDAY Facebook Group

The MAYDAY.US Facebook Group seems still unwilling to take up and recommend to members of the Group aggressive interface with voters and candidates. The Group promoted telephone calling to voters in New Hampshire, and I believe about 2500 calls were generated. The Group is to be complimented on this. I think there is much more they can promote for MAYDAY supporters to interface with voters and candidates. I hope the Group will decide to promote much more in this regard.

Using Citizens United vote to publicize MAYDAY

Here is how I am using Thursday's Senate vote on Citizens United in order to publicize our issue in the Alabama 6th Congressional district:  What does the AL 6th Cong'l district think?

In the Alabama 6th Congressional district, I am confronted with having been unable, for six months, to get any consideration of our issue by (i) Senators Sessions and Shelby and Representative Bachus (as well as the rest of the Alabama legislative delegation in Washington DC); (ii) the other six candidates in the Republican primary in the Alabama 6th Congressional district; (iii) the sponsors of and questioners in numerous 6th Congressional candidate forums; and (iv) local media and political commentators. This has carried over to getting no reaction or feedback from the voters as well.

Accordingly, just the fact that the U.S. Senate had its vote on Thursday seems important for me in trying to publicize MAYDAY in the Alabama 6th Congressional district.

I hope you can find ways to use Thursday's Senate vote  on Citizens United in order to publicize MAYDAY in your district.

Get business going on our cause

In line with the insistence of MAYDAY.US that its cause is for all of Democrats, Republicans, and independents, I think there is a good appeal to be made to business on our issue.

I believe business also is dissatisfied with our corrupt and broken Congress, and wants this to be fixed just as your more familiar MAYDAY supporters want.

A June editorial in my local Birmingham Business Journal contained these statements:

Even the ongoing recovery is threatened by the fierce political divide that has taken hold in our nation....
As has often been the case lately, the primary culprit is Congress . . ..
The petty disputes in Washington must stop. Business leaders need to take an active role by supporting candidates who won't fall into the red vs. blue and Democrat vs. Republican debates.

This punctuated my own campaign efforts to engage the business community related to our issue. My correspondents were the Birmingham Business Alliance, the Business Council of Alabama, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 

I  particularly had two ideas or concepts which I believed were worthy of those organizations' consideration for improving the governance of the country by Washington DC and improving Congressional performance.

You can find all of the foregoing laid out at BhamBizJournal: "Congressional Inaction Could Derail Recovery"

I urge other MAYDAY supporters to take a look at the approach I have made to the business community and determine whether they consider the approach useful in their own efforts.

Get your colleges and universities to hold Symposia

To MAYDAY.US supporters: I make the suggestion that you request of your local colleges and universities that they hold Symposia on our subject before November 4th. I am doing this in my Birmingham, Alabama, area. See Extension of Solicitation of Symposium before Nov. 4th in my campaign blog/website.

Let's tweet bomb into New Hampshire for Jim Rubens

The New Hampshire primary elections are on Tuesday.

MAYDAY.US is supporting Jim Rubens for the United States Senate in the Republican primary election in New Hampshire on Tuesday.

I am sending this tweet into New Hampshire:

#nhpolitics Support MAYDAY.US. Vote for Jim Rubens in the NH Republican Senate primary on Tuesday. https://mayday.us/

Join me and do your own tweeting.

I am using the follower list of the NHGOP, which follower list is here https://twitter.com/NHGOP/followers. There are over 4000 followers.

Redundancy in using that follower list should do no harm. If you would like to divide up the follower list with me, contact me. Alternatively, there should be lots of other follower lists in New Hampshire you can use, such as the follower list for Scott Brown.

Let's tweet bomb into New Hampshire for Jim Rubens this weekend and on Monday!



OR TELEPHONE INTO NEW HAMPSHIRE INSTEAD. BELOW IS AN EMAIL FROM LAWRENCE LESSIG SOLICITING TELEPHONE CALLS INTO NEW HAMPSHIRE:
From: Lawrence Lessig <info@mayone.us>

Date: Sat, Sep 6, 2014 at 1:25 PM
Subject: Make this count
To: Rob <rdshattuck@gmail.com>

Hello Rob, I’m writing to ask for your help — not your money, but your persuasive power as someone who believes in what we’re doing, and who might know people you can convince to vote. On Tuesday, we have a critical election — maybe the most difficult of all the races we will be in this year. In the New Hampshire Republican Primary, we’ve endorsed Jim Rubens against former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown. We entered this race knowing it was going to be tough. In our initial polls, Brown had a 50 point lead, and no one thought that was going to change much. But Jim Rubens is the only Republican running for Senate in the nation who has made our issue front and center in his campaign. (He’s also the only Republican who has acknowledged the truth of climate science, but that’s a separate issue.) And we believed it was incredibly important for us to give Brown a run for his money, so to speak, on the issue of money in politics. Will you pick up the phone to call New Hampshire voters who are on the fence and convince them to vote for Jim Rubens – and vote against corruption – on Tuesday? I won’t hide the fact that it’s been a tough race. Rubens has run a great (if wildly underfunded) campaign, but Scott Brown has had millions from outside supporters as well as the Republican Party. And so even though 70% of New Hampshire Republicans agree with us — agree that it is important to reduce the influence of money in politics — we have had to work hard to get voters to focus on this critical difference between these candidates. We’ve had some important successes. The Concord Monitor endorsed Rubens, in part because of his support for corruption reform. Former Senator Gordon Humphrey (R-NH) has endorsed Rubens because, in part, of his support for corruption reform. More and more, voters in the state are recognizing the critical importance of this issue that Scott Brown has chosen to ignore. And so we are hopeful that if we can rally our base to rally New Hampshire allies, we can succeed in our goal — of making it clear that a significant number New Hampshire Republican Primary voters will make our issue central to their decision.  So here’s what we’re asking you to do: we’ve identified the New Hampshirites who are most likely to vote against corruption in this election. They just need a gentle push from you. We built an easy calling tool and prepared a simple script, now we need your help. Can you take a few minutes to call and ask them to vote?  Click here to use our easy call tool that will connect you to an undecided voter. Just like our crowd-funding efforts from the summer, we’re going to make this call drive interesting. You can compete with other Democracy Rescuers to help Mayday reach our goal of calling 22,831 voters — the number of undecided voters who are likely to vote for Rubens if they get a call from you — before the election. We’ve created a leaderboard, and those who make the most phone calls will win full bragging rights and be featured in an official Mayday blog post. So click here now to starting make calls for our Democracy. Thanks again for everything that you do. -Lessig P.S. Former New Hampshire Republican Senator Gordon Humphrey also supports Jim Rubens and his anti-corruption stance. Watch our video ad with the former Senator.

Why this blog is needed

Please look at Open letter to James Hinton, Cong'l candidate CA05 and the comments, and particularly note the passionate views expressed by Daniela Walls in her two comments.

Then ask yourself, how in the world is MAYDAY going to accomplish its goal?

Politics is awash with passions. They are all over the place, and there is much tension and conflict among many of them.

The passions are powerful and can quickly lead to condemning of MAYDAY, if MAYDAY doesn't go along with a holder's particular passions (e.g., Daniela Walls).

How is MAYDAY going to accomplish its goal if there is so much passion for other things?

If MAYDAY sides with any of the passions for other things, it will alienate and not receive support from those having opposing passion.

It comes back to Professor Lessig and his central message to the effect that "CFR is not the most important issue, but it is the first issue, and until it is addressed, there can be no solution by Congress for your most important issues."

By the same token, I would say "CFR must be embraced as a 'first passion' before your most important passions can receive action by Congress."

MAYDAY can accomplish its goal only if it gets enough voters to vote on the basis of said first passion.

Given the prevalence of passion for other things, this is very hard sell that MAYDAY has to make.

MAYDAY has funds it will spend to make the case through TV, radio and other advertising.

I think it is pretty clear that MAYDAY needs all the help it can get from its supporters to go out and engage aggressively with voters and also with candidates. As to the candidates, they will largely react only to the extent they perceive that the issue is important to voters.

This blog is intended to organize and motivate MAYDAY supporters to do the foregoing.

If any other supporter is endeavoring the same as me, I want to join up with them.

I hope I have convinced you why this blog is needed.