Howard Dean, chairman of the DNC, sends an email today:
Hurricane Katrina: How to Help
[...] Many stayed behind and suffered devastating loss and injuries — nearly a hundred have died that we know of, and hundreds of thousands need our help.
America is at its best when we realize that we are one community — that we’re all in this together. That means that each one of us has the responsibility to do what we can to help the relief effort. The Red Cross is a great place to start
[...]
We are still learning the full story of the devastation, but there is no time to wait. Please do something now.
Ken Mehlman, chairman of the RNC, sends an email today:
When they return from their August recess, Senators will consider a key issue: elimination of the death tax.
[...]
Will you help bring tax relief to more hard-working Americans? Call Senator Voinovich today and ask them to eliminate the death tax.
September 1st, 2005 at 6:39 pm
The Republicans are not distracted by minor things like a major hurricane disaster, they must stay on message, no matter what.
September 1st, 2005 at 8:43 pm
You are correct that the RNC did not send out any emails today asking for people to donate to relief efforts. That is because it sent out that email on August 30:
———-
Dear XXXX,
Hurricane Katrina has passed and now the people of Louisiana,
Mississippi and Alabama must begin the process of rebuilding. Our
thoughts are with those who were affected by this powerful storm.
During times like these, there is no room for politics and
partisanship. This is a time when we all come together to help our
neighbors.
Due to the size of this storm and the area of impact, the cost for
recovery will be staggering. For that reason, we are asking you, our
supporters, to make a donation to hurricane relief efforts. The
American Red Cross and the Salvation Army provide shelter, food,
water, blankets and clothing to those who have lost everything.
We appreciate your willingness to help these groups. Your generosity
will help the people impacted by the storm begin the process of
rising up and recovering from this disaster.
Thanks for all you do.
Sincerely,
Ken Mehlman
Chairman, RNC
———-
Sorry to rain on your parade, Ms. Risa, but Republicans may not be quite as evil as you would like to believe.
Zero
September 1st, 2005 at 9:18 pm
That’s Dr. Risa to you, Zero. I’m glad this earlier email was sent, but the fact remains that an entire city has been displaced and people are dying in the streets today, so I stand by my opinion that it’s unseemly to be campaigning for the top 2% of Americans to keep more of their estates.
September 1st, 2005 at 9:33 pm
Yes, Dr. Risa, and to call it the “death tax”, is a particualrly macabre choice of words. (the whole thing was probably computer generated…)
September 1st, 2005 at 11:06 pm
Sorry to rain on your parade, Ms. Risa, but Republicans may not be quite as evil as you would like to believe.
This is possibly true, but they still remain very, very evil.
September 2nd, 2005 at 9:34 am
Pardon my informality, Dr. Risa. I have always found the use of such titles a tad pretentious, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt and accede to your demands. I will not, however, ask that you address me as “Dr. Zero” in return.
By the way, I am on just about all of the GOP mailing lists, but I did not receive any “death tax” letter during the past several days. Perhaps this was only sent out to people in Ohio? In any case, I agree with you that this is poor timing.
(Then again, has the left side of the political lobby suspended their emails about Judge Roberts, etc., this week? I couldn’t say either way, since I do not stealthily subscribe to their lists.)
Your evil Republican pal,
Just Zero
September 2nd, 2005 at 10:22 am
Zero, I was mostly kidding. You are welcome to call me just plain Risa, I just thought that your use of Ms. Risa was slightly condescending.
Yes, I think it was just Ohio.
September 2nd, 2005 at 11:46 am
Apologies Risa, I completely missed the point about the dr. vs ms. …(and I still wish they would call it the inheritance tax, which is exactly what it is).
September 2nd, 2005 at 11:49 am
No problem Moshe. And I completely agree with you about the inheritance tax.
September 2nd, 2005 at 3:12 pm
It should be noted however, that until this morning FEMA and the White House were listing Pat Robertson’s charity as the number two choice for donating funds for relief. So much for publicly acknowledging the relationship between the administration and Mr Robertson; maybe his Chavez comments were in fact a planted leaking of intel.
It is also sadly ironic that the estate tax is currently calculated in such a way that contributing to charities prior to and following the death of the patron significantly reduces the tax. Under the proposed new system there cease to be any incentives whatsoever for the wealthiest .01% to give. Given their desperate need to finance the effort to get rid of the burden of paying taxes and thus increase greedily(have you seen the latest data on the gap between the wealthiest and poorest) their share of the national, we can assume that they no longer have any interest whatsoever in donating any of their obviously most precious resource.
February 3rd, 2006 at 3:00 pm
How is it going? I never installed blog software and need to for my theme on data processing services disaster recovery.What type of software do you use? Is there a ton of maintenance that goes along with it?. Visit me if you want, ASHLEY disaster recovery team
February 3rd, 2006 at 3:17 pm
Gee if Lubos was here he’d tell us to wait for free market forces to fix things in Louisiana. Anything else would be positively “communistic”.
Elliot