Get Out The Vote

Vote David Levitt for US Senate

 

In the June 5th US Senate primary we're standing up for what the people of California want by voting for David Levitt.

"Instead of wasting trillions on wars and for big banks to gamble with, we can invest in education, infrastructure, and 21st century energy jobs," says Levitt.  "Let's end Afghanistan, end prohibition, provide Medicare for all and rebuild the American dream."

Amid a comprehensive platform developed by over 100,000 people, known as the Contract for the American Dream, we're focussed on 3 issues:

End Afghanistan     End Prohibition      Medicare for All

• Rescue our soldiers from Afghanistan – where truth tellers like Lt. Col. Dan Davis conclude there is no achievable mission and not one more life should be lost in a war that isn't keeping us safer.
• End the prohibition of medical marijuana – and the ongoing destructive federal raids on California medical dispensaries.
• Expand Medicare to all Americans - provide not-for-profit universal single-payer insurance to younger, healthier people at even lower rates - the way most other civilized countries do.

This US Senate race in California isn't widely discussed because people who follow it know one winner will be Senator Dianne Feinstein.  But in the new "top two" race, no one knows who the other winner will be.  David Levitt has:

• more online Fans than any other candidate challenging Senator Feinstein - over 5000 Fans with 2 MILLION Friends
• many times more engagement -- 2000 talking about us vs 570 and 150 for the wealthiest Republicans and 300 for Feinstein
• in fact, many of those "Talking About" Feinstein on her page are really criticizing her or recommending Levitt! 
• over 250,000 emails from partners have been sent to California voters
• hundreds of glowing, eloquent recommendations of Levitt by voters at ProgressiveBallot.org, more added every hour -- add yours!

NOW IS THE TIME: 

• Many of us have already voted for David by absentee ballot.  
• Half of California will vote on June 5th, primary day.
• Surveys say half of those voters haven't chosen a US Senate candidate -- that's 25% undecided.
• They also say no Republican has more than 4% support! 

David Levitt will be one of the two primary winners if this weekend and Monday we contact our 2 Million Friends -- mostly California voters -- to Vote Levitt on June 5th!

Tell friends about David Levitt on our ballots

On Facebook:

• We've made sharing easy: share this link.  Follow the instructions at http://Levitt2012.org/goviral to Tag your California friends in a Facebook post about the campaign, so it will be seen on all their Facebook Walls.  Using tags that way, one post can appear on over 40 friends Walls.
• Like http://facebook.com/Levitt2012 so others know you're involved

On Twitter: Follow, Retweet and Reply at @Levitt2012

• Include @Levitt2012 in Tweets that link articles on Afghanistan, CISPA, health care, prohibition, whistleblowers and freedom.
• Favorite and Retweet such messages when you see them, tagging them @Levitt2012, and put them on your Facebook Wall.

Here's more on what David Levitt stands for, from this week's Brad Blog:

"Instead of wasting trillions on war and giving $7 trillion for too-big-to-fail banks to gamble with as we have the past 4 years, we need to invest in education, infrastructure, and 21st century energy jobs," Levitt says in defining his positions.

Those positions stand in stark contrast to Feinstein, whose husband, Richard Blum, made millions off the Iraq war. Feinstein supported the 2002 Iraq war resolution, warned Republicans not to oppose Bush's Iraq troop escalation in 2007, co-sponsored the USA PATRIOT Act, joined Republicans in voting to limit the scope of privacy protections in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and supported the Obama administration's troop escalation in Afghanistan.

Levitt, on the other hand, calls for an immediate end to the DOJ/IRS raids on CA medical marijuana clinics and for a single-payer Medicare-for-All healthcare system. He not only decries the fraudulent Wall Street schemes that led to the 2008 economic meltdown, but calls for specific solutions, including a break up of the big banks, prosecutions of bank and rating agency executives, restoration of Glass-Steagall, and "a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions by any bank that received bail outs or low interest Fed loans."

Back in 1998, Feinstein was amongst the group of Senate Democrats who opened the door to the Wall Street credit default swaps casino by voting to repeal Glass-Steagall, the Great Depression era banking reform that, for decades, had disallowed investment firms from gambling with the funds of private depositors held in commercial banks.

In an email exchange, Levitt, who says he admires Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), informed The BRAD BLOG that he not only opposes the infamous Citizens United decision but supports Vermont's proposed Constitutional Amendment which would end corporate personhood and establish that money does not equate to free speech under the First Amendment.

Should Levitt succeed in achieving the second highest primary vote totals in next week's CA primary election, this could potentially create a far more significant challenge to Feinstein than any that could be mustered by a Republican --- provided Levitt's substantive positions could cut through the cloud of paid-for political propaganda that only corporate money can buy.

 

Great News for Democrats
If you're a Democrat, fear not.  So is David Levitt.  And there's no danger of a spoiler, since Senator Feinstein has 10 times the support of any Republican in the primary.

In fact if Levitt places second, this will be the first US Senate race in California without a Republican since 1856 - and the first one with two Democrats in the November general election, ever!

For once, it's not a "lesser of two evils" choice between what we have now and something even worse.  We can vote for what we really want.

Meeting the Tea Party

The Sutter Buttes Tea Party Patriots hosted a US Senate Candidates Forum in Yuba City for over a hundred citizens of Sutter, Yuba, Butte, and Colusa Counties.  Seven candidates were represented.

In Levitt's closing statement, he refers to the fact that, in response to a question, every single candidate - and apparently, all 100 audience members - acknowledged that the indefinite detention without trial provisions of the recently passed NDAA bill are blatantly unconstitutional.  Levitt also challenges denial about whether tax cuts create jobs, and advocates investing in infrastructure to help create them.

Perversely, violations of the due process required by our 5th Amendment - clear enough to citizens - are ignored by the political class that holds office, despite their vow to protect and defend the Constitution.  As 93 Senators, including Feinstein and Boxer, voted for that NDAA, we could see California has no Senate representative keeping that oath.  You can see the candidates and the audience agreeing.

It's hard to present this fact without sounding negative: Senator Feinstein routinely sidesteps the Constitution rather than defend it.  This is reflected in the many bills she has voted for or sponsored that were described as unconstitutional by her colleagues beforehand, and immediately ruled so by federal courts upon their first review.  They include:

• The PATRIOT Act - including multiple provisions that have been ruled unconstitutional
• The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 that "legalized" warrantless wiretapping
• The bill that punished and destroyed ACORN before it was investigated (and exonerated!), a "Bill of Attainder" under Article I, Section 9
• The recent NDAA provision allowing indefinite detention without trial that we discussed in the debate

This is why Congress has a 5% approval rating and deserves it.  It's why so many California citizens eagerly signed my nomination forms and begged me to run for office.  It's why we hear so many Democrats say "I don't see how I can in good conscience vote for any of these people again." And it's why voting by Democrats has been so depressed, it made the Tea Party seem popular – whereas 2010 exit polls clearly show it was actually a matter of Democrats driving voters away - by betraying their base, disregarding their oaths, and refusing to stand up for what the people want.  

Democratic Party launches Tea Party
The Sutter Buttes Tea Party Patriots had some false ideas (Bush tax cuts create jobs) and odd solutions (to deal with the release of violent criminals from prisons overcrowded with drug war victims, make sure citizens carry guns).   But compared to Democratic voters they were buoyant optimists.  No one had dared to explain what happened - how a diffuse Tea Party with no coherent popular platform seemed to gain traction.

When in 2009 a misleading video had made ACORN into a swear word in Republican's minds, Senator Feinstein decided to destroy it first.  She succeeded by rounding up more Democratic votes against ACORN than Republican.  The fifth wealthiest Senator probably didn't realize she was eliminating our party's main recruiting and get-out-the-vote team for poor and working class votes.  After all, that's what ACORN had done for 40 years: encourage and help people of color, young, old, immigrant, unemployed and working folks who had never voted - sometimes called the Democratic base - to care, register, and find a ride to the polls on election day.  When it shut down ACORN, the Democratic Party handed a gift to the Republicans that included 55 Congressional seats in 2010, giving the Tea Party full and largely undeserved credit.

Some of us expected a strong defense of A Community Organization for Reform Now and its rights, from our organizer/professor president.  Maybe something like what Congressmen Alan Grayson and Jerrold Nadler said: "This is blatantly unconstitutional!"  Or something about the right to due process; or our duty to avoid the tyranny of a Bill designed to pre-emptively punish; or the possibility that ACORN might be found innocent of voter fraud, abuse of funds, or helping right wingers in pimp costumes (after it was destroyed, ACORN was completely exonerated).  Or perhaps something about de-funding an organization whose main job was to ensure poor and working people are equal citizens.

Here's what the president did say:

Amid the buoyant Sutter Buttes Tea Party Patriots at the candidate event, none gave my party's leaders the Thank You they deserved.

Sample and Absentee Ballots Arrive

Sample and Absentee Ballots Arrive for the June 5th Primary!

Most of California has just received sample ballots for the June 5th primary election.

And every one of them has on it:

DAVID ALEX LEVITT, Party Preference: DEM
  Computer Scientist/Engineer

Pulled an absentee ballot out of the mailbox?  Go ahead and mark David Levitt now!

First find me on your ballot among 24 candidates -- it's laid out differently but I always seem to be sandwiched between Libertarian Lightfoot and Republican birther Orly Taitz.  (Below the fold: the full Sonoma County ballot list with all 24 Senate candidates.) 

 

Waiting till June 5th to vote?  Just watch this race get more exciting.  About 100 people just watched the astonishing Republican Candidates Campaign Hatred video I recorded at a recent San Mateo GOP “Get to Know Your Candidates” event.  It shows so clearly how bad politics as usual have become, and how badly we need a change.

(FYI, Ms. Taitz is famous because she believes the artifacts from accidentally scanning a Certified long form birth certificate with the OCR option set to ‘On’ are really evidence it was forged.)

Help me win a few hundred thousand votes I’ll need to beat Ms. Taitz's followers and get on the November ballot!  Post, tweet, and tell your friends about this extraordinary race.  

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Levitt Triumphs Over Hate at GOP Debate

David Levitt and other US Senate candidates for the California primary attended a Get to Know Your Candidates event on May 3rd, hosted by the San Mateo GOP at the American Legion Hall there.  The speeches were recorded on video, excerpted below.

Some viewers are taken aback by the unmasked homophobia, Islamophobia, and racism on display in some of the Repubilicans' speeches.  "... I AM an Islamophobe, and everything we need to know about Islam, we learned on 9-11!  ... I believe in peace and justice for everybody -- but that's not why THEY're here.  ... We're getting sucker-punched because we as white --  yes I said it! -- as white, Christian Americans are being taught that somehow WE are to blame for all the problems," shouted Republican candidate Rabbi Shifren.

Equally stunning were the near-universal vicious attacks on teachers and public schools.  Teachers and administrators are "leftist radical scum" and "commies" who "bankrupt our children and our future generations" and offer "a side door into the homosexual sodomy movement".  One candidate offers autographed copies of his book, "Kill Your Teacher", and most advocate shutting down the federal Department of Education as part of their platform.

In the spirit of this year's all-party "top two" primary, the San Mateo GOP also invited Democrats such as technologist Dr. David Levitt, and third party candidates like Marsha Feinland from the Peace and Freedom party.  Cat calls and disruptions from the audience began as soon as Feinland explained that president Obama is not a socialist -- but that she is.

Dr. Levitt quieted the scene by reminding the audience that while campaigning includes arousing passion, governing is about problem solving.   He appealed to shared beliefs -- such as rejecting bank bailouts, surveillance, and intrusive government - while directly questioning rhetoric aimed at dividing workers in the shrinking middle class; and by calmly questioning the truth behind other candidates' assumptions and statements.  He reminded the crowd that when candidate after candidate praises the Constitution by referring just to the 2nd Amendment "right to bear arms" as if it is the whole Bill of Rights, they're talking down to and perhaps insulting their audience.

After a continuous diet of red meat, the audience wound up eagerly attending to Levitt's approach and greeting it with applause.

June 5 Primary - Call to Action!

NOW: Get Out The Vote: David Levitt for US Senate

Join us in voting for David Alex Levitt, on your ballots in Tuesday's June 5th primary.

We're doing something extraordinary: using our elections to stand up for what Americans want, especially the people of California, when other Senate candidates and incumbents who should be representing us just won't do it.

We have detailed Issue statements, and a policy platform to invest in jobs, renewable infrastructure and education, amid fairer taxes - developed by over 100,000 people known as the Contract for the American Dream.  For the June 5th primary election campaign we're focussed on 3 issues:

End Afghanistan     End Prohibition      Medicare for All

• Rescue our soldiers from Afghanistan – where truth tellers like Lt. Col. Dan Davis conclude there is no achievable mission and not one more life should be lost in a war that isn't keeping us safer.
• End the prohibition of medical marijuana – and the ongoing destructive federal raids on California medical dispensaries.
• Expand Medicare to all Americans - provide not-for-profit universal single-payer insurance to younger, healthier people at even lower rates - the way most other civilized countries do.

This year's primary also has a uniquely happy twist: a new rule where the "top two" vote-getters go on the November ballot, regardless of party.  So Democrat David Levitt can win without getting more votes than Senator Feinstein - with as little as 5% of the vote!

June 1st update: We did it!  We've achieved: 

• more Facebook support and Likes than any other candidate challenging Senator Feinstein
• many times more engagement -- 2000 talking about us vs 570 and 150 for the wealthiest Republicans and 300 for Feinstein
• in fact, many of those "Talking About" Feinstein on her page are really criticizing her or recommending Levitt! 
• over 250,000 emails from partners have been sent to California voters
• hundreds of glowing, eloquent recommendations of Levitt by voters at ProgressiveBallot.org, more added every hour -- add yours!

NOW it's time to GET OUT THE VOTE for Tuesday, June 5th for David Levitt.  

Tell Friends about David Alex Levitt for Senate on our ballots

• On Facebook, we're over 5300 California voters with over 2 MILLION Friends.
• Many of us already voted by absentee ballot.  
• Half of California will vote on June 5th, primary day.
• And surveys say half of those voters haven't chosen a US Senate candidate -- that's 25% undecided.
• They also say no Republican has more than 4% support! 

David Levitt will be one of the two primary winners if this weekend and Monday we contact our 2 Million Friends -- mostly California voters -- to Vote Levitt on June 5th!

On Facebook:

• We've made sharing easy: share this link.  Follow the instructions at http://Levitt2012.org/goviral to Tag your California friends in a Facebook post about the campaign, so it will be seen on all their Facebook Walls.  Using tags that way, one post can appear on over 40 friends Walls.
• Like http://facebook.com/Levitt2012 so others know you're involved

On Twitter: Follow, Retweet and Reply at @Levitt2012
Include @Levitt2012 in Tweets that link articles on Afghanistan, CISPA, health care, prohibition, whistleblowers and freedom.

Favorite and Retweet such messages when you see them, tagging them @Levitt2012, and put them on your Facebook Wall.

Here's more on what David Levitt stands for, from this week's Brad Blog:

"Instead of wasting trillions on war and giving $7 trillion for too-big-to-fail banks to gamble with as we have the past 4 years, we need to invest in education, infrastructure, and 21st century energy jobs," Levitt says in defining his positions.

Those positions stand in stark contrast to Feinstein, whose husband, Richard Blum, made millions off the Iraq war. Feinstein supported the 2002 Iraq war resolution, warned Republicans not to oppose Bush's Iraq troop escalation in 2007, co-sponsored the USA PATRIOT Act, joined Republicans in voting to limit the scope of privacy protections in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and supported the Obama administration's troop escalation in Afghanistan.

Levitt, on the other hand, calls for an immediate end to the DOJ/IRS raids on CA medical marijuana clinics and for a single-payer Medicare-for-All healthcare system. He not only decries the fraudulent Wall Street schemes that led to the 2008 economic meltdown, but calls for specific solutions, including a break up of the big banks, prosecutions of bank and rating agency executives, restoration of Glass-Steagall, and "a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions by any bank that received bail outs or low interest Fed loans."

Back in 1998, Feinstein was amongst the group of Senate Democrats who opened the door to the Wall Street credit default swaps casino by voting to repeal Glass-Steagall, the Great Depression era banking reform that, for decades, had disallowed investment firms from gambling with the funds of private depositors held in commercial banks.

In an email exchange, Levitt, who says he admires Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), informed The BRAD BLOG that he not only opposes the infamous Citizens United decision but supports Vermont's proposed Constitutional Amendment which would end corporate personhood and establish that money does not equate to free speech under the First Amendment.

Should Levitt succeed in achieving the second highest primary vote totals in next week's CA primary election, this could potentially create a far more significant challenge to Feinstein than any that could be mustered by a Republican --- provided Levitt's substantive positions could cut through the cloud of paid-for political propaganda that only corporate money can buy.

Great News for Democrats
If you're a Democrat, fear not.  So is David Levitt.  And there's no danger of a spoiler, since Senator Feinstein has 10 times the support of any Republican in the primary.

In fact if Levitt places second, this will be the first US Senate race in California without a Republican since 1856 - and the first one with two Democrats in the November general election, ever!

For once, it's not a "lesser of two evils" choice between what we have now and something even worse.  We can vote for what we really want.

Levitt Wins Over GOP in San Mateo!

I participated in an astonishing Get to Know Your US Senate Candidates event yesterday evening along with many of my Republican Senate challengers, before a GOP audience at the American Legion Hall in San Mateo.

The candidates threw plenty of red meat to the audience – rich in homophobia, Islamophobia, contempt for teachers and public education, a sprinkle of racism, and much more.  They practically booed the Peace and Freedom candidate off the stage.

But when I spoke, without rancor or partisanship, challenging their party's conventional wisdom and the other speakers' misleading misstatements and with hard facts, they listened with rapt attention and concluded with a round of applause.

We caught it all on video, which is being edited for posting ASAP.

Standing Up for Soldiers and Veterans

Standing up for our soldiers and veterans – in particular, by ending the wasteful Afghanistan war and caring for our Middle East war vets - has always been a top priority of our campaign.  For more than decade, our Senate has needlessly put our troops in harm's way without making us safer.  Here are Senate candidate Levitt's answers to the April 4th questionnaire from the Veterans Democratic Club of Sacramento County, printed here with permission.

Q: What is the most important issue affecting veterans you seek to represent and what will you accomplish for veterans during your tenure?

A: This answer is summed up in four of the points detailed below: 

• leave Afghanistan in 2013, without leaving troops behind
• proper health care and suicide prevention
• the apology most veterans deserve
• enable veterans' families to live in vacant and stolen bank­-owned homes

Homes for Veterans
Before continuing the questionnaire below the fold, let's lay out that last proposal - which at first glance might seem radical or expensive.  It's not - in fact, it can be achieved without cost to taxpayers, and may be the most cost effective and honorable way for big banks to protect the value of their real estate investments during the current housing crisis, with its glut of millions of foreclosed homes.

Ordinarily a foreclosed home's value is immediately slashed, often by half, the moment it becomes vacant.  When this happens with more than one home, a neighborhood is blighted - neighboring homes slashed in value, theft of copper piping and other vandalism.  The bank no longer receives mortgage premiums or a penny of revenue from it.  It's bad for the banks that own the homes, bad for their stockholders, and terrible for the pension funds that bought their fraudulently "AAA-rated" securities with a promise of a 30 year revenue stream.  But banks' long standing culture of greed and short-term thinking keeps foreclosure agents in charge, and prevents them from seeing smarter ways to protect their investment.  

What if a deserving family was living there instead?  A family that had already sacrificed beyond the call of duty for its country?  A smarter bank - or a patriotic U.S. bank - would jump at the chance to keep the home they own properly inhabited, its neighborhood healthy, and the value of other homes it owns from falling further.  The bank could charge an employed veteran's family an affordable rent and come out way ahead.  It could pay an unemployed veteran's family to maintain the home and still come out ahead when the home's and neighborhood's value are factored in.  

These are the same banks that we learned last fall secretly received $7 trillion dollars in "loans" at near-0% interest, with no strings attached, from our Federal Reserve.  They can afford to spend some of it helping our veterans protect the bank's own real estate investments.

So this proposal won't even cost taxpayers.  It's not even clear new legislation is required.  It just requires leadership, imagination, and a sincere commitment to challenge banks and speak out for veterans.  Amid millions of empty, foreclosed homes and millions of veterans - often un- and under-employed, some even victims of fraudulent foreclosure themselves - this approach to homes for veterans makes logical and moral sense.

Why haven't we heard such solutions?  They elude politicians who routinely consider a bank that has stolen a home (as through robo-signing, a fraud on the court) to be above the law, so it is never convicted and keeps the property - while routinely treating veterans as third class citizens before, during and after combat.

It's inexcusable that we as a nation have turned our backs on them when crooked banks are keeping millions of homes empty.  Shame on any legislator or supposed leader who can't sign on to proposals that help neighborhoods and even pension funds along with veterans.

These are the kinds of solutions I'll advocate as U.S. Senator from California, where most foreclosed homes and far too many homeless veterans can be found.  Let's make it happen.

Below: California Dem Vets questionnaire and answers:

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US Senate Candidate David Levitt Wins Endorsements

Dr. David Levitt, the black computer scientist in California’s U.S. Senate race, has won endorsement from multiple organizations by advocating a swift exit from Afghanistan, an end to prohibition and the federal war on medical marijuana, and single-payer Medicare for All.

San Francisco, CA and Santa Rosa, CA (PRWEB) April 30, 2012

Dr. David Levitt, running for U.S. Senate in California’s “top two” race alongside Senator Dianne Feinstein, has this week won endorsement from the Bernal Heights Democratic Club of San Francisco, the Latino Political Action Committee of Sonoma County and other organizations by advocating a swift exit from Afghanistan, an end to the federal war on medical marijuana, and single-payer Medicare for All. Dr. Levitt cites data that shows all those policies are popular with the vast majority of Americans.

Senator Feinstein did not win endorsement in any venue where Dr. Levitt participated.

Under new rules in the primary race on June 5th, a second-place win would put Levitt on the November ballot even though he and Feinstein are both Democrats – a windfall for the party.

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