If This Were Frank Wolf...

If this were Frank Wolf, would he be bragging about how he voted over and over again to spend rubber stamp George W. Bush's strategic and tactical mistakes in Iraq? As Judy Feder said the other day:

...as the poorly planned and misguided war now enters its sixth year, Rep. Frank Wolf continues to be a rubber stamp for George Bush’s failed approach, consistently voting against a responsible end to the war.

Despite five full years, nearly 4,000 brave American soldiers killed, and more than half a trillion dollars spent, Frank Wolf continues to stand in the way of change...

Sad but true. Fortunately, 10th CD voters have a choice this year -- Judy Feder.

...if I'm elected to Congress, I will do what Frank Wolf refuses to do – end the war, support a responsible of redeployment of our troops, rebuild our military, and honor the debts owed to the brave men and women who have served their country.

Go Judy, and help get us out of this mess!

Judy Feder at Netroots Nation

From Raising Kaine:

Join Netroots Nation, future Congresswoman from VA-10 Judy Feder, Senator Russ Feingold, Rep Lloyd Doggett (TX-25), Rep Brad Miller (NC-13) and a team of celebrity bloggers this Wednesday, evening in Washington, DC for our annual grassroots, low-dollar fundraiser. RSVP NOW.

For more information, see here.

Feder Raises $310,000 in 1Q08, 95% from Individuals!

More on Judy Feder's incredible fundraising...

Judy Feder Raises More than $310,000 in First Quarter

More than 450 Virginians Contribute to Change Congress since January

Campaign has $700,000 Cash on Hand


McLean, VA – Judy Feder’s campaign to bring change to Congress continues to gain momentum. The Feder campaign will report raising more than $310,000 in the first three months of 2008 with almost $200,000 contributed in March alone and approximately 95% of donations coming from individuals in the first quarter.

“People want change.” said Feder. “They voted for it last November. They turned out in record numbers for it in February. They are contributing to my campaign because they know that’s what I stand for.”

Since announcing her challenge to Frank Wolf, Judy has raised nearly $900,000 and now has $700,000 cash on hand.

“Frank Wolf has been sitting in Congress for 28 years. Virginians are saying: “That’s enough.”

Over 450 Virginians contributed to Feder’s campaign in the first quarter of 2008 and 538 individual donors gave online, demonstrating the growing grassroots appeal of Judy’s message. Seven months out from the November election, the Feder campaign has already raised more than it had by Labor Day of 2006 when Judy Feder gave Frank Wolf his closest race in 24 years.

“Our momentum is building. Our fundraising success has built a foundation that will give us the financial resources and the grassroots capacity to win in November,” said Feder. Virginians are tired of empty promises and blue ribbon commissions, they want real leadership.”

In 2006, Judy Feder mounted the strongest challenge to Frank Wolf in nearly a quarter century. Though Feder entered the 2006 race a mere 10 months before Election Day, she cut dramatically into Wolf's margin, revealing a growing call for change in the district. That call has grown, as voters in the 10th and across the Commonwealth are demanding that Congress begin to address rising health care costs, a weakened economy and a war in Iraq that has sapped the ability of our nation to focus on the priorities of the American people.

$900,000 for Feder!

This is impressive by pretty much any standard. Go Judy!

Wow! It's been an incredible few weeks. On March 6th we challenged you to help us reach our goal of 2008 individual donations by our March 31st fundraising deadline. Your response was overwhelming - and we ended the quarter with 2,394 donations by individual donors since we began this campaign.

With your help we're shattering our own records and have now raised nearly $900,000 -- a level of fundraising strength we didn't reach until Labor Day in 2006.

To all of you who have contributed, and all you who have already signed up to volunteer, I want to say thank you.

Our success, our strength, is because of you -- and it's starting to get noticed. Just last week, Marc Fisher of the Washington Post noted our "strong challenge" of Frank Wolf as further evidence that Virginia Republicans are in trouble.

We've come a long way together over the past few months, but there is much work left to be done. We'll need to knock on tens of thousands of doors, make hundreds of phone calls per night and yes, raise another million dollars or more. But with the help of thousands of supporters who are hungry for change I'm confident we can get there.

Click here to join our campaign and volunteer.

I continue to be inspired by your support and I know that together we really can change Washington.

Gratefully,

Judy Feder

Judy Feder: "Triple-A health care reform-- NOW!"

Over at the blog Down With Tyranny, Judy Feder -- one of the nation's leading experts on health care -- has a guest blog post entitled, "LET'S KEEP OUR EYES ON THE BALL: Universal Healthcare Coverage Now!" From DWT's intro:

...Professor Feder-- who was also the Dean of Georgetown University's much heralded Public Policy Institute-- is a recognized expert on an issue topmost on many people's minds this year: health care. In Congress she will start out not as just another freshman, but as one of the policy experts on an issue that has to be dealt with seriously. Her work at the Brookings Institution, Urban Institute and as staff director for the bipartisan Congressional Pepper Commission for comprehensive health care, plus stint at the Department of Health and Human Services, where she worked to expand health insurance coverage and manage Medicare and Medicaid effectively, make her uniquely qualified to play a major role in developing solutions to the very real problems facing out country's medical system after 8 years of Bush Regime malfeasance.

In contrast to Judy Feder's extensive expertise on health care, Rep. Frank Wolf...well, to be polite, let's just say that Judy Feder has more health care expertise in her pinky than Frank Wolf does in his whole body. For instance, see here and read about how "Frank Wolf Fails on Mental Health." See here for "Frank Wolf's vote against [health care] coverage for children." Also read about how "Wolf's dismal record on healthcare includes voting to allow insurance companies, not doctors and patients to make healthcare decisions, gutting state protections for diseases like diabetes and breast cancer and repeatedly voting against potentially life saving stem-cell research."

This year, as we all know, it's time for a change in many areas. Health care is certainly one of those areas. Reason #1 to vote for Judy Feder, the next representative from the 10th Congressional district of Virginia!

Are You Better Off Now Than You Were 4 Years Ago?

Back in 1980, Ronald Reagan asked Americans considering whether to vote for him or for President Jimmy Carter, "Are you better off now than you were when this Administration took office?" The answer was clear to the majority of voters, and Ronald Reagan went on to a landslide victory in the elections that year.

Well, today we have evidence that this same question could be a potent one in 2008, just as it was in 1980. The New York Times reports:

Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll.

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

[...]

A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off.

Breaking this dissatisfaction down a bit, we've got 71% of Americans concerned about health care costs, 69% about housing costs, and 82% about having enough money for retirement.

As if to emphasize the poll's findings, the economic news this morning was not encouraging:

The economy shed 80,000 jobs in March, the third consecutive month of rising unemployment, presenting a stark sign that the country may already be in a recession.

[...]

“Three months in a row of payroll job losses and a sizable negative revision: these are clear signs that the job market is in recession,” said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economics Policy Institute. “I’m hard-pressed to imagine anyone who would raise doubt to that at this point.”

In short, the The Bush-Republican economy is in freefall, yet their response is to do nothing. In February, for instance, they opposed extending unemployment insurance, even as around 200,000 Americans have lost private sector jobs in the first three months of the year.

In March, Republicans blocked consideration of legislation to address the housing crisis and the foreclosure explosion. That's bad enough, but Republicans weren’t even willing to offer their own solutions, they just blocked the Democratic solutions from coming to a vote. As they did so, the number of homes in foreclosure and mortgages behind in payment were jumping in every state, further driving down home values.

Faced with increasingly dire economic news this month, Republicans have (finally) agreed to consider a scaled-back version of a bill to address the mortgage crisis, but only after insisting on replacing assistance for homeowners with bailouts for home builders who made bad investment decisions.

The bottom line is that Bush-Republican economic policies don't work for the middle class in this country. Instead, the Bush-Republican economy means falling wages, lost jobs, rising prices, foreclosed houses, and record debt. And, of course, Republican "trickle-down" never seems to actually trickle down from the super-rich to everyone else.

Obviously, this is a "change" year politically, one in which people will be looking for a new approach and a new hand on the tiller. The question is, who will be most credible -- John McCain (and GOP congressional candidates like Frank Wolf) or the Democratic nominee (and Democratic congressional candidates like Judy Feder) -- when THEY ask, as Ronald Reagan did in 1980, "Are you better off today than you were when this Administration took office?" Given that John McCain and Frank Wolf offer nothing but the same old Bush-Republican economic policies, it's a good bet that it won't be them.

Frank Wolf Would Probably Oppose This

Given his consistent opposition to energy efficiency, conservation, alternative energy and the environment, it's highly likely that Frank Wolf would oppose this:

Loudoun County government has saved nearly $1 million thanks to energy efficient measures undertaken by its employees, an ad-hoc committee chaired by Supervisor Andrea McGimsey (D-Potomac) found.

Sadly, Wolf would probably vote against this if it came up in Congress. Reason #4,258 why it's time for a change in the 10th CD!

Frank Wolf's, er, Misstatements on Energy

Check this out from Frank Wolf's latest "E-Newsletter" (received yesterday late afternoon):

Ultimately, America must find ways to curb its dependence on foreign oil and become more energy independent. I support efforts to increase conservation, develop alternative fuels, tap domestic sources of energy, as well as making the machines we use, especially automobiles, more energy efficient. I will continue to work to find both short- and long- term answers to the country's energy needs.

Oh, really Congressman? So if you supposedly "support" energy efficiency, alternative fuels, etc., then why have you consistently voted against energy efficiency, against renewable energy, and against measures to reduce our nation’s dependency on foreign oil? Is your memory failing you, or are you simply willing to tell your constituents anything in order to perpetuate the myth that you're a "moderate" (and to get re-elected for the gazillionth time)? Oh, and when are you going to tell residents of the 10th CD about how you've voted time and again for tax breaks to Big Oil at a time that people are paying $3.50 per gallon for gasoline and Big Oil is making enormous profits? C'mon, Congressman, I'm sure they'd LOVE to hear all about that! :)

Frank Wolf and the White House Torture Memo

Given that Frank Wolf is against banning waterboarding water torture, what does he think of this?

The Justice Department in 2003 gave military interrogators broad authority to use extreme methods in questioning detainees and argued that wartime powers largely exempted interrogators from laws banning harsh treatment, according to a memorandum publicly disclosed on Tuesday.

[...]

Some legal scholars said Tuesday that they were amazed at the scope of the memorandum.

“This is a monument to executive supremacy and the imperial presidency,” said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School and the Washington College of Law at American University. “It’s also a road map for the Pentagon for fending off any prosecutions.”

The memorandum gave the military broad latitude to use harsh interrogation methods. It reasoned that federal laws prohibiting assault were not applicable to military interrogators dealing with members of Al Qaeda because of White House authority during wartime. It also argued that many American and international laws would not apply to interrogations overseas.

Given Frank Wolf's well-known commitment to human rights in China and Darfur, you'd think he would have vocally denounced this memorandum, later rescinded by the Justice Department, as immoral and illegal (not to mention deeply unAmerican). But since we didn't hear a peep from Frank Wolf on this, apparently we can assume that he agrees with this definition of torture:

“The victim must experience intense pain or suffering of the kind that is equivalent to the pain that would be associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body functions will likely result,” Mr. Yoo wrote.

The Army Field Manual, by the way, explicitly bans coercive interrogations. Apparently, Frank Wolf agrees with the Bush Administration's lawyers and disagrees with the Army Field Manual. Also, apparently, Wolf is more concerned with human rights violations in China than he is with human rights violations authorized by the Bush Administration. Can we say "partisanship over principle?"

Meet Judy Feder!

From the Feder for Congress campaign, two excellent chances to meet the next representative from the 10th district!

Dear Friends,

Two opportunities to meet Judy are coming up:

- Thursday April 3 from 7-9 PM at a supporter's home in Sterling.
- April 13th (tentative) at the home two supporters in Leesburg.

For more information contact:
Judy Feder for Congress at 703-286-9208 or visit (JudyFeder.com/events)

I want to know what you would like to see from your next Member of Congress. You can reach me by email at Judy@Judyfeder.com. You can also follow all of the latest news on the campaign at www.JudyFeder.com. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your past support and I look forward to working with you again in 2008.

Sincerely,

Judy Feder