December 2021 Newsletter
Dear Mom
by Al Brown
I’m a Democrat and a Capitalist. It seems a lot of people are saying you can’t be both.
I hope that’s not true.
If so, I’m stuck between a party that doesn’t want me and a party that wants an orange dictator.
Who woulda thought?
Let me say right off the bat that I will never vote for an idiot who recommends drinking bleach to cure COVID. I don’t want a President who picks corporate winners and losers from the White House, either.
The orange dictator did both.
So far, President Joe hasn’t recommended drinking bleach.
He’s got folks wondering about the choosing of winners and losers.
Almost everyone agrees the rich need to pay their fair share of taxes, period. That changes pretty quick when you hit the 50% mark.
The idea that you would ask anyone to turn over half of what they earn in taxes is hard to swallow. People don’t trust politicians, even mostly trustworthy ones like President Joe and Bernie. My truck driver dad would have said, “If you’re going to take half of his, you will eventually take half of mine.”
And, I have yet to meet anyone who likes paying taxes no matter what they say before you raise them.
For reference, look to President Bill Clinton’s Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. It raised taxes on high income earners from 36 to 39.6 percent for the top 1.2% of wage earners.
The top 1.2%. Only a 3.6% increase.
The top 1.2% wasn’t me. It wasn’t anyone I was even remotely related to.
President Clinton balanced the budget for the first time since 1969, a monumental accomplishment in 1993. Even more so now.
It also was the kindling that lit the fire that became the Republican Revolution. That, according to its deciding vote, Rep. Bill Sarpalius, the Democratic Representative at the time from the 13th District of Texas. He would lose to Rep. Mac Thornberry, who served until January 2021.
Sarpalius was a heck of a politician, and I was a young reporter at the Wichita Falls Times Record News. He told me the night of his election loss in 1994 that vote was the end of his election chances. Clinton asked and he delivered. The House vote: 218 aye, 216 no.
Afterwards, Clinton appointed him to a top spot in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
A little later I got to cover the marvelous Governor Ann Richards of Texas in her run against George W. It was great fun to interview and listen to Ann. She was so far ahead of her time on so many issues, and she lost by 10 points to a future president who would turn that balanced budget into a Wiki footnote.
There are so many things in Build Back Better that will make this country a better place to live … a better place to grow a business. It must be explained in a way that working families and business owners can support.
There are a lot of Democrats out there that may disagree in theories, but absolutely agree on results.
Love you,
Your Democratic son
CHAIR’S LETTER
Mark Liebow
Attorney General Keith Ellison and Auditor Julie Blaha announced that they are running for a second term in November.
The next big event will be precinct caucuses on Tuesday, February 1, 2022, just three months away. If you want to help with the caucuses, one of the biggest things we have to do, let us know at sd26mn.dfl@gmail.com.
We are working with the Rochester School District to schedule our 2022 unit convention at Mayo High School, more likely for Saturday, March 26, but possibly for Saturday, April 2.
If you want to tell Jim Hagedorn via his staff you’re not happy with him, Indivisible Rochester has a protest every Monday 11-11:30 AM at his Rochester office (corner of Salem Road & Greenview Dr, SW, Rochester-just west of T.J. Maxx Plaza).
Some redistricting maps came out in November, one of them from the DFL House majority. They have very different views of how our local state legislative districts and the 1st Congressional District should be drawn. The Senate GOP has not yet come out with its redistricting plan. If a plaintiff wants maps considered by the court’s redistricting panel, they have to be submitted by the end of the first week in December and will become public them.
POLITICAL UPDATE: FEDERAL AND STATE
Jim Hagedorn continues to take bad votes. He voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill and against the Build Back Better bill. He voted against censuring Representative Paul Gosar, who tweeted an anime video where he killed Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, one of his colleagures.
Now that the Build Back Better (soft infrastructure) bill has passed the House. Senator Schumer, the Senate’s Majority Leader hopes to get it through the Senate this month. Congress also has to pass funding for the Federal government for the next ten months, raise or suspend the debt ceiling, pass the Defense Authorization bill, and deal with several other priorities. It will be a busy December in Washington.
The Republican leader in the Minnesota Senate said he wouldn’t try to fire the Department of Health’s Commissioner Jan Malcolm in a special session, but is demanding changes to the emergency powers law that are unacceptable to the DFL, so there are still no plans for a special session. The regular session starts January 31, 2022.
SENATE DISTRICT 26 DFL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEETS DECEMBER 13
Our next Executive Committee virtual meeting will be Monday, December 13 from 7-8:30 PM on Zoom. DFL meetings are public, so if you want to “attend”, contact the Chair at mark.liebow@gmail.com. We will hear a presentation “Democrats Care”, an initiative to serve our local communities as a means of outreach and partnership with Minnesotans across the state,
officer reports, discuss end-of year fundraising, and continue planning for precinct caucuses and our 2022 convention.
We are looking for a Vice Chair and for three Directors who live in House District 26B. The Vice-Chair and Director positions must be filled by people not identifying as male. Please contact the Chair at mark.liebow@gmail.com if you’re interested in running for one of these positions.
DONATE TO SENATE DISTRICT 26 DFL AND YOU COULD GET IT BACK
At the end of the year, we hope you can donate to Senate District 26 DFL. We need your help to make the DFL a bigger presence in Rochester. This month is the last chance to donate to take advantage of the 2021 Political Contribution Refund program. While one-time donations are welcome, we especially need monthly donations. We have a year-round office, which is expensive, but is crucial in a battleground area like Rochester. We don’t get money from the national Democratic Party. The state DFL contributes $500 a month, but that’s less than 1/3 of our rent. We rely on our local supporters to keep us going and to get the DFL message out. We need the money and you want an active DFL. If you give, there will still be an office for DFL in-person events and meetings when those are possible, DFL participation in events and parades that require entry fees, technology that makes the DFL work better, and outreach into underrepresented communities.
Donate to Senate District 26 DFL and you can get up to $50/person or $100 per married couple back from the state of Minnesota if you are eligible to vote in Minnesota. Do it now. Make your donation via ActBlue (https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/senate-district-26-dfl-party-1?refcode=sd2). If you prefer to write a check, make it payable to Senate District 26 DFL and send it to:
P.O. Box 9044
Rochester, MN 55903-9044
After you send us a donation, we’ll send you a receipt. Send the receipt and the form needed to claim the reimbursement (https://www.revenue.state.mn.us/media/59866) to
Minnesota Revenue Political Contribution Refund
St. Paul, MN 55146-1800.
File a claim and you’ll get a check back in a few weeks.
If you send a check, please include whether you are retired, self-employed or employed. If employed, include the name of your employer and your job title. The Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board requires us to collect that information. If you use Act Blue, the appropriate information is collected.
KEEP UP ON WHAT’S HAPPENING POLITICALLY WITH FREE EMAILS
The Minnesota DFL has several free email publications:
Weekdays-In The Know-A news digest divided by topic.
Mondays-DFL Party Monday Memo- Talking points about current issues and key “stories to share”
Wednesdays-DFL Toolkit- Key stories with suggested social media posts and graphics
Fridays-DFL Dispatch- Newsletter with a deeper dive into some topics, some within the DFL.
To subscribe, email Brian Evans (bevans@dfl.org) and let him know which publications to which you want to subscribe.
ROCHESTER DFL OFFICE
The office, at 1500 1st Ave, Suite A, in Rochester does not currently have scheduled office hours. We monitor telephone messages regularly. If you have a question or concern, call us at 507-536-9785 and we will get back to you.
SD26mn.dfl@gmail.com AND OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA
This is a monthly newsletter. However, events often happen on short notice, so we may not be able to include them in the newsletter. Check our website and Facebook pages for the latest news.
Official communications come from SD DFL (though the full address is above). Watch for them.
We tweet from @sd26dfl and have a website at www.senatedistrict26dfl.com
We have a closed Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/144866495637545/
We share an open Facebook page with Olmsted-25 DFL and Senate District 25 at
https://www.facebook.com/sd26sd25olm25/?fref=ts
Our Instagram account is at dflsenatedistrict26.
Our office is unstaffed for now because of the pandemic but you can leave a message at 507-536-9785. We are monitoring the messages.
The Minnesota DFL’s website is at www.dfl.org. If you go there, click on the I am a … and choose Voter, you can enter your address and find out who your DFL elected officials are. If you click on Click here to join in the Senate District 26 box, it will take you to a secondary website that is currently out-of-date, but should be synchronized with our primary website soon.
The 1st Congressional District DFL also has a website at https://www.dflcd1.org/
