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April 30, 2004
The Fallen on Nightline
ABCNEWS.com : Reading Names of Dead Service Members. An incredible brave thing for ABC to do. They did a special on the 700 Americans who have died in Iraq.
Online Memorial and Washington Post. For a real heart breaker, check out Faces of the Fallen. It catalogs all 700 people who have died in Iraq so far.
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Posted by rich at 10:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 29, 2004
Mailing List!
free-return.com Mailing Lists. Hey for those of you interested, we're starting an email list in addition to the blog. This will have digest and emergency notices as well as the regular weekly status for the group. Click on the link above and ask to be added now.
Posted by rich at 10:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 28, 2004
CEO George W. Bush
Isn't it this simple?
George W. Bush took pride in running as our first "CEO President".
Imagine you are on the Board of "Enterprise America" and as a Director you've been asked to evaluate CEO Bush.
I did. Check it out.
CEO George W. Bush Report Card
Posted by at 07:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 25, 2004
Fundrace 2004: Who contributed what...
Fundrace2004 is a wonderfully interesting application that takes the campaign contribution data from 1/03 to 2/04 and splits it by zipcode and state.
Very interesting to plug in your zip code and see who gave what where and the addresses too! It even has a nearest neighbor function so you can click on someone and see geographically where other contributers are.
Posted by rich at 12:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Election 2004: Where we are...
Two amazing sites that show the state of the world:
"opensecrets.org":http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/. Gives a good overview. The basic facts are that in a typical election, Republicans raise 2x what Democrats do. In this one, the numbers are even more stunning
George W. Bush: $185,074,755
John Kerry: $85,586,243
BTW, if you think that was an aberrations, the "2000":http://www.opensecrets.org/2000elect/index/AllCands.htm election was actually more even because Bush was the challenger:
| Candidate | Raised | Fed Matching | Spent | Leftover |
| Bush | $193,088,650 | $67,560,000 | $185,921,855 | $7,201,734 |
| Gore | $132,804,039 | $83,016,084 | $120,031,205 | $12,772,827 |
Posted by rich at 12:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Campaign contributions basics
Most folks are having a hard time figuring out what. I have to say I find the actual Kerry site to be incredibly obtuse. Like most overdesigned sites, it has a huge tab bar on the left and there is no search engine on so you can't find things. Here's the decoder ring using opensecrets.org. The best list of basics that I can find, although this doesn't cover the new 527 organizations, so you don't have to read the entire regulation at the Federal Election Commission:
- Kerry Contribution. Right now, you can contribute $2,000 per person to Kerry. This is actually for the primary campaign, but it is the dollars that matter now to get the world out. You need to do this before June 25 because the dollars must be spent by then to be eligible for federal matching. Turns out that after a certain point, you can contribute another $2K/person for the general election, but that date is so late, most folks think it won't matter that much (hence why we don't reco putting the full $4K/person in right now, but go to the next group on the list)
- Get a Code If you doing more raising you're going to do this, you really want to get a separate account code from Kerry (called strangely the Kerry Core for reasons I don't understand as an ex-marketing guy. The basic idea is that if you get others to donate, then they use your account code and you can keep track. A pretty good idea. For instance, this site's code is 00020450.
- DNC Contribution is the way to contribute an additional $25K/person. This goes towards general issues advertising. If you are sending by check, then make sure to source code E002761 on there.
- DNC Code. If you are going to be doing fund raising for the DNC yourself and want contributions to go to your code so you can track and they can, then you have to join ePatriots (I know, I know, more strange names. Basically, you get a personalized website and donations online and offline get a code. The main strange thing here is that you have first get a logon to the democrats.org account, then you sign up for this epatriots thing. You get two confirming emails, you have to click on the earlier one first to validate your email, then the second starts off gives you the account code.
- ACT and MoveOn. Finally, if you want to give more, you can give an additional $25K/person to these two organizations. ACT (another strange unrememberable name IMHO), is the Soros vehicle. MoveOn has been around longer. These don't seem to have the account code thing as much, so you just contribute to ACT or MoveOn.org via your credit card again. Of the two sites, I have to say that MoveOn is the nicer looking, but it is hard to evaluate the effectiveness of 527 funds like this right now.
Posted by rich at 12:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack