This came in yesterday from a grassroots newsletter called Progressive Dispatch.  I'd like to know how they got my personal email address since I have some 6,000 other email addresses that I use for Dean-DFA-DFA2.0-DFIA-IowaBlog stuff.  But, anyhoo–just skip right past the distasteful remark about how we're all going to have to donate to Kerry sooner or later.  If you do, I promise you a read so FUNNY that you will fall off your chair.

Add A Penny For Dean

Let's face it, we're all going to have to donate to Kerry sooner or later. The question is: How do we get credit for donating as Dean supporters?  Our answer is: “Add a Penny for Dean.” If you're planning to donate, say, $10.00, then make it $10.01 instead, and the extra penny will indicate “This donation comes from a grassroots Dean supporter.”

Will the Kerry campaign figure it out? Yes, because the Dean campaign did — under our previous rubric of “Add a Penny for the Internet.” The purpose then was to indicate that the donor supported grassroots Internet politics. We sent out an email just like this one in February 2003 — asking Deanies to spread the word on their Yahoo groups and websites. It worked.

A couple of representatives from the then-newly-formed MassForDean.org and DeanVolunteers.org groups visited Dean's Burlington HQ the next week. Joe
Trippi came storming in, saying, “What's with all these pennies added to the donations?”

We asked, “How many did you get?”

Trippi: “Who the heck are you?”

Us: “We're the guys who thought of it.”

DeanForAmerica subsequently adopted the idea as “The Meet Up Challenge.” Joe Trippi reported in the Wall Street Journal in June 2003 that $400,000 in donations had come in with the penny marker added, attributing the idea to “some nutty guys in Boston.” We heard later from a NY Times reporter that the total had broken $1 million in September. We made our point – the grassroots want to be recognized, and nutty ideas can be politically effective.

Now we have to make the same point with the Kerry campaign….They need us, and we need credit. So add a penny for Dean.

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Billionaires for Bush
Condemn Add-a-Penny campaign
— LEAKED PRESS RELEASE —
**********************************

“Billionaires for Bush” have taken a strong stand condemning the “Add-a-Penny-for-Dean” project. “We disdain pennies in general, and we particularly disdain pennies in donations,” says Billionaires for Bush spokesperson Lou Poll through clenched teeth. “We seek to establish that campaign donations be restricted to minimum units of $100,000, which this horrible penny scheme greatly undermines.”

The B4B website, www.BillionairesForBush.com, explains the group's advocacy of the “one dollar, one vote” law, which would replace the Electoral College with voting by net wealth. “Penny donations cannot fit within our agenda,” adds Mr. Poll. “We might consider amending our plank to 'one million, one vote' — but 'one penny, one vote'? Never!”

The “Add-a-Penny-for-Dean” campaign recommends that Howard Dean supporters add a penny to their donations to John Kerry, for example donating $10.01 instead of donating $10.00, to indicate that support comes from the Dean grassroots network. The grassroots group DeanVolunteers.org proposed the analogous “Add-a-Penny-for-the-Internet” scheme, to indicate support for the on-line grassroots network when donating to the Dean campaign during the primaries. During the six months that the project was active, over one million dollars was reportedly donated with the penny markers.

“We like the sound of one million dollars in donations,” responded Mr. Poll, “but we insist that it come from at most ten individuals. More than that, and it becomes impossible to account for one's investment after the election, much less recoup it.”  B4B touts the high investment return of campaign donations — for example, Halliburton donated $2.4 million in campaign contributions during the period 1990-2002, and has been rewarded with $2.3 billion in government contracts and tax rebates — a 97,000% return on investment.

* * *

Billionaires for Bush Contacts:
Elizabeth Zelda Street, Liaison Minister,
EZstreet@BillionairesForBush.com
or
Lou Poll, Minister of Spam and FEC Evasion,
Lou.Poll@BillionairesForBush.com
or
http://www.BillionairesForBush.com

* Billionaires Ball: May 22, New York City, all billionaires and prospective billionaires invited — details at:
http://BillionairesForBush.com/index.php

* Be a Billionaire: To join a Billionaires for Bush chapter or start your own, see:
http://www.BillionairesForBush.com/blog/chapters

To read an article on Billionaires For Bush from the Boston Globe, click here.