Alan Grayson's e-mails are legendary because they say something worth taking a few minutes to read. No one likes being bombarded with pointless spam-- like "we're almost there" or "the sky is falling," or whatever pointless bullshit the DCCC tells candidates to use. And at the end of the FEC quarters, it's just horrific, since most candidates share their lists with crooked operations-- like EMILY's List, End Citizens United and the DCCC who sell the names to every candidate they can find, making sure everyone is flooded with garbage e-mail from the worst candidates, like Ann Kirkpatrick, who literally sends a policy-free e-mail begging for money every single day. This was today's idiotic, witless spam:Does anyone still fall for the "all contributions will be doubled" scam?On the other hand, there are a few candidates, usually progressives who follow the examples of Bernie Sanders and Alan Grayson and do not send out crap e-mails. Here's an example of the difference, the polar opposite of EMILY's List/DCCC/New Dem candidate Ann Kirkpatrick. Compare her typical e-mail above to the one Paul Clements send out at the same time.
The American healthcare system is badly broken. A new report from Senator Claire McCaskill shows that the prices of the top-20 most prescribed drugs have each increased an average of 12 percent each year over the past five years-- nearly 10 times the rate of inflation.Our pharma costs are so convoluted and dangerous to the public that the Financial Times launched an investigation into the January death of a Texas teacher who died of the flu after leaving the pharmacy when she couldn’t afford a $116 co-pay. FT found that if she’d used a coupon and paid cash, Heather Holland would have paid just $51.94-- insurance, in the convoluted pricing schemes favored by insurers and pharma, made her medication cost even more than the full cash price.Our drug pricing system is predatory and destructive. Why isn’t Congress acting?It’s money. Pharma’s lobbying efforts are vast, and its contributions large-- my opponent, Fred Upton, is one of the top Congressional recipients of pharma cash - $1.44 million in the past 20 years. Upton and his Republican allies are using their power to protect the industry. Since Trump and the GOP Congress took control, no pharma CEO has been forced to testify before Congress. When STAT asked Upton, former chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee (where in 2015 he helped Rep. Tom Marino pass legislation easing DEA enforcement against suspected black market opioid shipments) about a chair’s power, he said, “As chair, you can do just about anything you want.”Since Republicans refuse to act on pharma greed, we must make them answer at the ballot box.Your support today will help me fight for fair drug pricing and against Big Pharma greed. If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:In Congress, I will act to ensure that Americans pay drug prices no higher than those in Canada and negotiated by the VA. I will stand up for single-payer Medicare-for-All to ensure that fewer of our neighbors suffer and die because they cannot afford care.In so many ways, this is a life-and-death election. As always, I am grateful for your support.
The difference is palpable, but the DCCC tells its pathetic and generally dishonest candidates to send out crap like Kirkpatrick's nonsense and to never send out policy-laden emails like the one Clements sent. Especially at a time like this, at the end of the quarter, it's worth rewarding candidates treating us like adults and giving us something of substance to read, instead of the raw sewage we get pouring out of desperate and useless careerist candidates like Kirkpatrick. Please consider chipping in to Paul's campaign by clicking on the Blue America congressional thermometer on the right. I'm proud to say that most of the Blue America candidates send out the intelligent e-mails, not the useless, embarrassing kind the DCCC encourages their candidates to flood our e-mail boxes with.Another way to reach voters-- and contributors-- is to just send an especially compelling video. If a candidate's got the goods, a great video can really do wonders. A video sure launched Randy Bryce's campaign. Now we're in the middle of a viral explosion on social media for this Kaniela Ing video. Watch it and listen to what he has to say-- and remember, the population of Hawaii is less than a million and a half people and Kaniela's district is about half that. Yet this video has been viewed by over 7 million people: