Early House Report Card

[Legislurker]

We still have 100 D or F rated Senators.

[TheEngineer]

[ QUOTE ]
We still have 100 D or F rated Senators.

[/ QUOTE ]

How do you know that? Do you have data?

Six months ago, it seemed like we had 340 (out of 440) D or F rated Representatives. That wasn't the case. I hope you're not proposing that we give up, because we're not done yet. Thanks for sharing your opinion, though.

[Legislurker]

Senator's have statewide races, not gerrymandered cakewalks. You have one senator vocally supporting us? You're handing out As and A-s for cosponsoring? Im not saying give up, I am saying nothing has been accomplished yet by us. What I don't really like is cheerleading nothing. Anything that happens this year happens because of the WTO, the banks, or the domestic B&M industry. We don't and won't accomplish [censored] till we scare or unseat some Representative, and show we can do it again in 2010. Ron Paul supporters send 10x the mail we do and he can't even get equal air time in a debate. Instead of patting ourselves on the back, we should be upping the sense of urgency. We should be preparing to get votes and money ready for 08. Grades are for advocacy groups who have clout, we don't have that yet.

[TheEngineer]

What the [censored] is your problem? You have a better idea? Ratings are done by all advocacy organziations (NRA, Christian Coalition, etc). We need to know where we stand...ratings do that. Someone needs to crunch some numbers, and you sure as [censored] aren't. If you don't want to cheerlead, why are you here?

By the way, we've accomplished a lot. Leach lost his seat, we have bills working through the House. We're as active as we can be for a group our size. Where are your letters? What are you doing? I've not seen it posted. Go ahead and do something, rather than bitching about what others aree doing. We'll be waiting.

[Legislurker]

I call and write as much and more than the next person. Im sorry if you are taking this as hostile, but I hate spin, and this comes off as spin. I may not live in the beltway, and know lobbyists, editors and staffers but I have an idea of what goes on. My statement was this.......All we are doing now is just making noise. Grades are given for results, votes, and committments. We haven't gotten those.
We haven't gotten anything. If we beat Leach, we beat Leach, but no one else outside of here thinks we beat him.
Why you are cussing me out is beyond me, but I don't want a fight here. Yes, keep making noise, but Im just against patting ourselves on the back yet. Im sorry if I've offended you, Im trying to be constructivem but objective.

[TheEngineer]

It came across hostile as hell, to be frank. I have no idea what you mean by spin in this case. Quite frankly, I've never heard of someone getting bad about someone doing an analysis to see where we stand.

I decided to evaluate where we are relative to our support in the House. Seems we should know. Everyone else seems interested. If that angers you so, you can skip the thread, you know. I rated EXACTLY the same as NRA does. A+ for leading action. A and A- for cosponsoring friendly legislation, B for voting against a bad bill that passed 4-1, and an F for actively working against us. Again, if you don't like it, you really don't have to read it.

[Legislurker]

Hostile isn't intended. My opinion is just that no one is on our side. Frank is on the banking indutry's side. I think most of the rest are lukewarm, and following the lead of a committee chairman. The difference is the NRA actually gets good bills passed for them, and bad ones squashed. I don't have a different idea, I like, support, and participate in what we do here. I just politely, and respectfully, think we haven't gotten far yet.

[Uglyowl]

What's wrong with celebrating successes even if they are just steps towards the ultimate goal? Yes, as poker players, we are nowhere we need to be, but in a much better spot than 9 months ago as a group and the political landscape.

Yes the PPA has to be better, I just don't get why they aren't trying to motivate us to do what we need to do.

[RedBean]

[ QUOTE ]
We need to know where we stand...ratings do that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Great work on the ratings. Speaking as someone who doesn't keep daily attention to this stuff, but has an interest in the outcome, I can guarentee you that your work in compiling the ratings helps point the casual, lazy folks like me in the right direction instead of having to do my own homework.

I emailed a link to this thread to my House reps (MS, fwiw)and told them that along with everyone in my circle of family and friends would be voting strictly along these lines, "A" gets my vote, "F" gets their opponent a vote.

One rep's staffer emailed back within 2 hours to say while he didn't cosponsor the IGREA or was listed here as supporting it, that he was in fact in support of it and planning on voting in favor.

Take that for what it's worth, but either way keep up the good work, and especially don't forget to point those casual followers like me who are politically ignorant into the right direction.

[TheEngineer]

Thanks for the compliment on the effort. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

That's an awesome response from your Congressman. Can you post who it was and his/her email to you? (If you're concerned about anonymity of location, can you PM me?) Information like this is invaluable to us in trying to figure out where these folks stand. Thanks.