Progressive Change Campaign Committee

Polls say Americans are concerned about National Security Agency surveillance. According to a progressive group’s survey, many want to see a top intelligence official punished for giving Congress inaccurate answers about the NSA’s efforts.

An internal NSA audit, released Thursday by The Washington Post, found that the agency has violated privacy rules thousands of times every year since 2008. But even before those revelations, a majority of voters in five state-level polls said that James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, should be prosecuted for giving Congress a “clearly erroneous” answer about NSA surveillance.

The five polls were conducted by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has raised money for NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s defense fund.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) is the latest to pile on Sen. Mitch McConnell, who is facing a contentious re-election, with a new ad launching Thursday hitting the Kentucky Republican over Social Security benefits.

In the ad, auto worker Kirk Gillenwaters talks about the financial challenges he’s faced, and why he’s relying on the entitlement program as part of his retirement planning.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is launching a new television ad pushing embattled Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to oppose cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits.

The ad features Kirk Gillenwaters, a Louisville, Ky., worker who has been employed at a Ford plant for decades.

“We work hard for these companies and we’re promised a secure retirement in return,” Gillenwaters says. “But our pensions are being cut and we need Social Security.”

“When Sen. Mitch McConnell supports cutting Social Security, he’s breaking a promise – and he’s hurting our families,” he continues.

A progressive group targeting Mitch McConnell of Kentucky released a television ad Thursday, calling on the Senate minority leader to expand Social Security as the powerful Republican fights to hold on to his seat next year.

The 30-second spot features Kirk Gillenwaters, who says he started working at the Ford plant in Louisville when he was 18.

The ad from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee will run into next week on Louisville broadcast. The group says it spent $21,000 on the initial buy, adding to the $100,000 it has already spent against McConnell in Kentucky.

There is no longer any doubt that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied to Congress. Likewise, there is no doubt that his lie runs afoul of federal law. And, of course, there is no doubt that in terms of its implications for oversight, constitutional precepts and privacy for millions of Americans, his lies were far more serious than those that have gotten other people prosecuted for perjury. The question now is whether his brazen dishonesty will become a political issue — or whether it will simply disappear into the ether.

As evidenced by President Obama this week attempting to promote Clapper to head an “independent” NSA reform panel, the White House clearly believes it will be the latter. But a set of new polls out today suggests such a calculation may be wrong.

Commissioned by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Credo and conducted by Public Policy Polling in five ideologically diverse states, the surveys find that huge majorities want Clapper prosecuted.

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said in a statement to Civil Beat, “Every week, we hear about corporations that cut the pensions they promised to workers. As a result, Social Security has never been more important. Senator Harkin’s bill, which Senator Brian Schatz was among the first to support, will expand Social Security benefits for our grandparents and veterans. And by requiring the wealthy to pay the same rate into Social Security as the rest of us, Harkin and Schatz would pay for the benefit increase and have trillions left over to keep Social Security strong for decades.ai??? Last week, the group pushed the idea at rallies in Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Texas.

It was Democrat versus Democrat at times during Iowa Senator Tom Harkinai??i??s event in a Des Moines retirement center Tuesday. But a womanai??i??s emotional plea for help is what captured the attention of room full of dozens of retirees.

Harkin hosted the event with a number of Democratic-friendly groups, including the Iowa Alliance for Retired Americans, Progress Iowa, The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy For America, MoveOn.org, Social Security Works, and Credo Action.

Harkin, as well as some speakers expressed frustration with President Barack Obamaai??i??s previous push to change the way the government determines the yearly increases in social security benefits.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee will be running a unique online debate on Saturday featuring all five Democratic candidates in the 5th Congressional District.

The debate, which will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 10, will be run through the website OpenDebateQuestions.com, which the PCCC is debuting for this event. The public will submit questions and then vote on which questions they like. Massachusetts voters will pick the top 50 questions, and moderators will choose from those questions to ask the candidates. The candidates will participate via video from remote locations. So far, people have submitted more than 300 questions.

A progressive group announced Tuesday morning theyai??i??ll be hosting a ai???first of itai??i??s kindai??? debate in Massachusettsai??i?? 5th congressional district, where five Democrats are vying to replace the seat now vacated by Sen. Ed Markey.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee says their ai???Open Debate,ai??? where all questions will be submitted and chosen by the public, could serve as a model in future races and someday (they hope) presidential races.

ai???Open Debates, where the public submits and votes on the questions, will hopefully be a game changer in our political process. What starts here in Massachusetts will hopefully become the norm for local, state, congressional, and even presidential debates in the future,ai??? said PCCC spokesman Matt Wall.

Five Democrats who are running to fill an open seat in the Fifth District of Massachusetts will participate in a novel interactive online debate format this Saturday, thanks to the efforts of a progressive group that’s been pushing to change the passive broadcast format of televised political debates for the past six years.

The five Democrats are running to fill Democratic Senator Ed Markey’s old seat in Massachusetts, an area that encompasses the suburbs to the north and west of Boston. They’ll be participating in a debate format that will include live questions from Massachusetts residents whose questions had been submitted online and voted up Reddit-style. Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor, co-founders of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and the organizers of the event, will moderate, and they’ll invite those whose questions received the most votes to participate.

Democratic New Jersey U.S. Senate candidate Cory Booker said he supports expanding Social Security and Medicare hours following a press conference Thursday where his opponents challenged the popular Newark mayor on the issue.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee held a morning rally in Trenton with Booker’s opponents, Rep. Frank Pallone, Rep. Rush Holt and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver pressing Booker on the Social Security issue. Later Booker took to Twitter to say that he wants to expand, not cut Social Security and Medicare, and that he opposes raising the retirement age. A week ago Booker told NorthJersey.com that he would consider voting to raise the retirement age for those in their 20s or younger.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a political-action committee based in Washington, D.C., is leading an active “draft Schweitzer” movement, rounding up money and supporters. The group’s co-founder, Adam Green, visited with Schweitzer in Montana in May, and the group is buying Internet ads in Montana saying “Draft Brian Schweitzer for Senate!” So far, PCCC has raised $29,000 dedicated to helping the Schweitzer Senate campaign, signed up 415 people who say they’ll work as volunteers on the campaign and had nearly 18,300 people sign an on-line petition urging Schweitzer to run.

The concern that Cuomo isnai??i??t really one of them continues to this month as the left presses him on passing a system of publicly financed political campaigns. Cuomo unveiled the bill for elections reform this week and it includes a $41 million public system thatai??i??s similar to New York Cityai??i??s program. Still, this the $20 million man trying to get the money out of politics, a governor who has assembled a massive war chest from a variety of interests while also backing an overhaul of the very system heai??i??s so thrives in.

Itai??i??s a dissonant note for some. So thatai??i??s why a liberal group, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, is unveiling today a petition to pressure singer Paul Simon, who is slated to perform at a high-dollar Cuomo fundraiser, to support publicly financed elections.

A coalition of progressive leaders, including MoveOn.org Executive Director Anna Galland, Rebuild the Dream President Van Jones and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas are pressuring Democratic House leaders crafting campaign finance reform legislation to be introduced this year…Signing the letter, along with Galland, Jones and Moulitsas, are Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founders Stephanie Taylor and Adam Green, Democracy for America chair Jim Dean, CREDO CEO Michael Kieschnick, CREDO political director Becky Bond, Wolf PAC founder Cenk Uygur and Working Families Party Executive Director Dan Cantor.

A group of liberal groups is out with a letter Wednesday urging Democratic Hill leaders to come to a consensus on a public financing elections bill. Currently, three different proposals are being considered — and the groups urged lawmakers to merge the bills into one proposal. At the heart of the bills is a proposal to create a system of publicly financed congressional elections. The groups — which include the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, MoveOn.org, Democracy For America, CREDO and others — support the Yarmuth and Sarbanes proposals, but they oppose the Price bill.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) is among those organizations trying to keep the National Security Agency’s phone and Internet record surveillance practices in the spotlight. On Wednesday, the group delivered a petition demanding a congressional investigation to Senate Judiciary Chair Pat Leahy, D-Vt., as well as two prominent supporters of the surveillance program, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. The petition has nearly 97,000 signatories.

The email went out shortly after midnight Thursday, a few hours after the news broke about the Obama administration’s large-scale monitoring of Americans’ cell-phone records: “You are being spied on.” It was sent by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a leading liberal organization, to its list of supporters, and it asked them to sign a petition demanding an investigation of the cell-phone surveillance. “It’s simply unacceptable,” the email said. As further revelations about domestic surveillance have emerged in recent days, the group has kept up the drumbeat. The response, PCCC officials say, has been overwhelming — a sign of the widespread liberal anger at Obama over civil liberties.

A progressive group upset with news about the breadth of the Obama Administration’s surveillance efforts started raising money Monday to help self-confessed leaker Edward Snowden’s legal defense. Snowden admitted Sunday he leaked information to The Guardian and The Washington Post about the large, classified telephone and internet surveillance programs aimed at thwarting terrorism. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee announced the initiative with an e-mail from Stephen Kohn, the executive director of the National Whistleblower Center, which has represented federal employees in the past.

Progressives have begun raising money for the legal defense of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who has admitted to leaking several secret national security documents to the British newspaper The Guardian and the Washington Post.
In an email to supporters today, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said that because “whistleblower” cases are extremely expensive to litigate, they would raise money to pay Snowden’s legal fees.

Friday, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a left-leaning advocacy group, announced a series of internet ads they would run across the country targeting Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. ai??i?? a fierce defender of the Obama administration’s counter-terror tactics ai??i?? and against Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who told reporters Thursday he was “glad” NSA was keeping tabs on phone records.

“In 36 hours, nearly 20,000 people have signed the Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s petition calling on both houses of Congress to hold investigations and reveal their findings to the public,” committee spokesman Matt Wall said.

The New York Times also ran a scathing editorial against President Obama Thursday night that accused his administration of losing “all credibility” on the issue of national security.

Just hours after the Guardian newspaper reported on a secret court order that allows the government access to Verizon company phone records, progressive groups are marshaling an organized response. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) posted an online petition demanding a congressional investigation of the domestic surveillance program operated by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Vinson’s order relies on Section 215 of the Patriot Act, 50 USC 1861, better known as the “business records” portion. It allows FBI agents to obtain any “tangible thing,” including “books, records, papers, documents, and other items,” a broad term that includes dumps from private-sector computer databases with limited judicial oversight.

The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the order as “beyond Orwellian,” and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee launched a petition to Congress.

Prior to Christieai??i??s announcement, the liberal group New Jersey Working Families alliance joined forces with a national group, The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), to petition Christie to hold the election in November.

The Draft Brian Schweitzer for Senate campaign has set its first Missoula organizing meet-up for 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Montgomery Distillery in downtown Missoula. Members of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee in Montana and nationally launched the effort after Baucus announced last month that he would retire from the Senate. The committee said more than 18,000 people nationally have urged Schweitzer to run at DraftSchweitzer.com.

PCCC’s Adam Green was a featured guest on MSNBC’s Ed Show on Sunday, May 19th. He discussed the Draft Brian Schweitzer campaign in Montana, and the efforts of progressives across the nation to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits.