Today's the Day to Donate to Tom Geoghegan

Have you been wondering about the best possible moment to donate to the campaign of progressive labor lawyer/ writer/ activist Tom Geoghegan? As you may know, he's running in the Democratic primary for Rahm Emanuel's seat in Congress. Well, it's today. Midnight tonight, February 11, is the FEC filing deadline for campaign contributions.

Why does this deadline matter? A strong showing encourages donations from those who've been waiting to see if the campaign has legs. It also attracts press. So far, none of the candidates have gotten much attention in the local media -- you could help change that.

Even a small donation, added to others, really helps. So don't be shy, visit

Tom's ActBlue page.

Why should you support Tom Geoghegan? He wants to give all Americans single-payer health care. He wants every American to get a decent pension on retirement-- social security, as the working people and retirees in his district know all too well, is not enough to live on. He wants to restore controls on banks and the credit industry so Americans aren't burdened by usurious rates of interest that, until recently, were illegal. And as if that weren't enough, he's really smart, he's honest, he's pro-choice and pro-gay marriage. He not only wrote one of the best books ever about unions, "Which Side Are You On? Trying to Be for Labor when it's Flat on its Back," he's fought for worker's rights in court for thirty years. That is not something many politicians can say.

Read more at the campaign website. Read even more about it at The G Spot.

Comments (12)

1. I dont think it matters who runs for the seat as long as it is a Dem, he will win. It is Chicago remember, and the Chicago machine which has been running Illinois for generations..will get what ever it wants..good thing Obama is not from the machine.

   I wonder if there are a conservative running for the seat..that guy would need money more than any abortion clinic in any small town...and would be more endangered than any fetus anywhere.

   Posted by YourJomamma at 02/11/2009 @ 3:05pm

2. crass, jm.

   good luck to the dude. good thing emanuel's seat is vacant.

   where'd he go again?

   Posted by frosty zoom at 02/11/2009 @ 3:11pm

3. "....he's running in the Democratic primary for Rahm Emanuel's seat in Congress.

   Even a small donation, added to others, really helps. So don't be shy, visit Tom's ActBlue page....."

   ~Katha Pollitt

   Thanks for the info, Katha.

   By the way, is there a campaign we can contribute to that calls for the replacement of Rahm Emanuel as Obama's Chief of Staff with someone who actually respects the American people generally, and progressives specifically?

   Now that would be a useful sign that intelligent democracy was at work in America.

   Posted by b_kool_66 at 02/11/2009 @ 3:15pm

4. Shouldn't the people of IL be supporting this guy?

   Posted by ACook at 02/11/2009 @ 3:20pm

5. Mild apologies for the off topic --beats the usual stream of dimwitted right wing doofuses that typically litter the site, in any case-- but some excellent economic posts showed up today.

   From Britain's "Independent"...

   Excerpt:

   In an extraordinary admission about the severity of the economic downturn, Ed Balls even predicted that its effects would still be felt 15 years from now. The Schools Secretary's comments carry added weight because he is a former chief economic adviser to the Treasury and regarded as one of the Prime Ministers's closest allies.

   Mr Balls said yesterday: "The reality is that this is becoming the most serious global recession for, I'm sure, over 100 years, as it will turn out."

   He warned that events worldwide were moving at a "speed, pace and ferocity which none of us have seen before" and banks were losing cash on a "scale that nobody believed possible".

   The minister stunned his audience at a Labour conference in Yorkshire by forecasting that times could be tougher than in the depression of the 1930s, when male unemployment in some cities reached 70 per cent. He also appeared to hint that the recession could play into the hands of the far right.

   "The economy is going to define our politics in this region and in Britain in the next year, the next five years, the next 10 and even the next 15 years," Mr Balls said. "These are seismic events that are going to change the political landscape. I think this is a financial crisis more extreme and more serious than that of the 1930s, and we all remember how the politics of that era were shaped by the economy."

   Posted by b_kool_66 at 02/11/2009 @ 3:37pm

6. Philip Hammond, the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said Mr Balls's predictions were "a staggering and very worrying admission from a cabinet minister and Gordon Brown's closest ally in the Treasury over the past 10 years". He added: "We are being told that not only are we facing the worst recession in 100 years, but that it will last for over a decade – far longer than Treasury forecasts predict."

   End quote.

   The rest:

   informationclearinghouse.info/article21965.htm

   And there's this wonderfully succinct summary of lately freefalling capitalism's fatally ingrained flaws:

   Excerpt:

   The capitalist state has two roles long recognized by political thinkers. First, like any state it must provide services that cannot be reliably developed through private means, such as public safety and orderly traffic. Second, the capitalist state protects the haves from the have-nots, securing the process of capital accumulation to benefit the moneyed interests, while heavily circumscribing the demands of the working populace, as Debs observed from his jail cell.

   There is a third function of the capitalist state seldom mentioned. It consists of preventing the capitalist system from devouring itself. Consider the core contradiction Karl Marx pointed to: the tendency toward overproduction and market crisis. An economy dedicated to speedups and wage cuts, to making workers produce more and more for less and less, is always in danger of a crash. To maximize profits, wages must be kept down. But someone has to buy the goods and services being produced. For that, wages must be kept up. There is a chronic tendency--as we are seeing today--toward overproduction of private sector goods and services and underconsumption of necessities by the working populace.

   Posted by b_kool_66 at 02/11/2009 @ 3:37pm

7. In addition, there is the frequently overlooked self-destruction created by the moneyed players themselves. If left completely unsupervised, the more active command component of the financial system begins to devour less organized sources of wealth.

   Instead of trying to make money by the arduous task of producing and marketing goods and services, the marauders tap directly into the money streams of the economy itself. During the 1990s we witnessed the collapse of an entire economy in Argentina when unchecked free marketeers stripped enterprises, pocketed vast sums, and left the country's productive capacity in shambles. The Argentine state, gorged on a heavy diet of free-market ideology, faltered in its function of saving capitalism from the capitalists.

   Some years later, in the United States, came the multi-billion-dollar plunder perpetrated by corporate conspirators at Enron, WorldCom, Harkin, Adelphia, and a dozen other major companies. Inside players like Ken Lay turned successful corporate enterprises into sheer wreckage, wiping out the jobs and life savings of thousands of employees in order to pocket billions.

   These thieves were caught and convicted. Does that not show capitalism's self-correcting capacity? Not really.....

   In sum, free-market corporate capitalism is by its nature a disaster waiting to happen. Its essence is the transformation of living nature into mountains of commodities and commodities into heaps of dead capital. When left entirely to its own devices, capitalism foists its diseconomies and toxicity upon the general public and upon the natural environment--and eventually begins to devour itself.

   Posted by b_kool_66 at 02/11/2009 @ 3:37pm

8. The immense inequality in economic power that exists in our capitalist society translates into a formidable inequality of political power, which makes it all the more difficult to impose democratic regulations.

   If the paladins of Corporate America want to know what really threatens "our way of life," it is their way of life, their boundless way of pilfering their own system, destroying the very foundation on which they stand, the very community on which they so lavishly feed.

   End quote.

   The whole thing (highly recommended):

   informationclearinghouse.info/article21957.htm

   Good day, all.

   Posted by b_kool_66 at 02/11/2009 @ 3:37pm

9. Shouldn't the people of IL be supporting this guy?

   Posted by ACook at 02/11/2009 @ 3:20pm |

   No...why?

   This this is about Progressives...who cares about what the people of Illinois want...we will show them later that this is whats good for them..the will see.

   Posted by YourJomamma at 02/11/2009 @ 4:24pm

10. I heard he's a good guy but he's not getting mentioned in the news. Geoghegan needs better campaign materials. I got a letter from his campaign last week and I guarantee it will be tossed unread by most recipients. No pictures, no graphics. Boring. Lots of worthwhile content to read, but when Rahmbo wanted our attention, he sent out glossy mailers with lots of pictures and that's what voters remember.

    Posted by proudlib at 02/12/2009 @ 01:38am

11. Pictures matter and not accomplishments or qualifacations?

    Posted by YourJomamma at 02/12/2009 @ 02:14am

12. In a country where it's left to Ralph Nader to point out the real barrier to workers (Taft-Hartley, in case you're wondering), Geoghegan is probably as good as a Dem gets when it comes to unions. He'd certainly be a welcome relief after Rahm Emmanuel. Ok, I'll buy. I'll give him some money.

    Posted by DP in TC at 02/13/2009 @ 11:23am