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Friday, 07 July 2006 |
If you attended a Fourth of July parade in Minnesota, chances are you saw our campaign in action. Hundreds of our volunteers were at more than 40 parades this past weekend. I got reports from supporters from Marine-on-St. Croix to Albert Lea to Eveleth telling me they loved the stickers and the enthusiasm of our team.
In the past week, our family joined in parades in Rochester, St. Cloud, Coon Rapids, Gilbert, Aurora, Crosby/Ironton and Brainerd. We were always accompanied by the action-packed Broom Dancers. They carry their brooms adorned with signs which say 'Vote Amy for Sweeping Change'. In perfect (ok, not always so perfect) synchronization, they dance around the banner to the likes of "Change will do you good" "Ch-Ch-Ch Changes" and "I won't back down."
There are many more parades in the coming weeks and we'd love it if you'd volunteer. Check out our brand new events calendar to find out how you can help in your area — kids are welcome too!
We took a few hours off between the Crosby/Ironton and Brainerd parades on July 4th for a tubing stop with friends on Kimble Lake, leaving Abigail with many tales to share with her friends of her spectacular "biggest wipe-out on Kimble Lake in recent history". With each re-telling of the story, the waves are higher, the length of time in the air longer, and her mom's eyes wider. She's a good sport and got right back on that tube.
In other campaign news, some of you might have heard the MPR July 5th noontime broadcast of the congressional ethics proposal I presented at the Humphrey Institute last week. In case you missed it, you can listen here to my speech and a question session with the public.
If we want to bring sweeping change to Washington, we are going to need more than brooms. We need to fix the rules that Congress plays by. That's why I decided to talk about ethics at the Humphrey Institute.
If we want progress on energy independence, health care reform, and fiscal responsibility — we need to start by changing the system that gives powerful special interests more influence on Congress than you and me. In the past six years, oil companies and big drug companies gave $179 million in donations to Washington campaigns. It's no wonder that Congress is giving away billions of dollars in handouts to the oil industry and writing laws that benefit pharmaceutical companies over consumers.
We should stop these giveaways and start accounting for government spending. That's why I'm proposing we bring Minnesota-style ethics rules to Washington. That means a ban on privately funded travel and gifts — no free golf trips to Scotland, no fancy cigars, no Scotch and no pork projects that waste our money on "water-less urinals" and "bridges to nowhere."
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