I mention this because to a lot of people, giving money is a big deal.
It’s not so much to me, because I don’t find money very interesting. Which is a big reason why I don’t have much of it. I’m even less interested in lucre than I am in football.
It was a bigger deal to me to actually start choosing and endorsing candidates back in 1994, my first year in the editorial department. That took some serious rewiring of my head. And then getting the point of putting out yard signs for candidates, as I started doing in 2018. And when I went to work for James and Mandy that same year.
To me, saying “I support you” is a bigger thing than “Here’s some money.”
But I know that makes me kind of weird, so I’m telling y’all — so you can make of it what you will — that one night last month, I actually, deliberately made a financial contribution to a candidate, in response to this appeal:
Please donate $20.20 by midnight to help hardworking @MPowersNorrell meet her #matchingmoneyMonday match (every dollar donated is $8!) so we can keep her in the SC House!
Mandy Powers Norrell — Donate via ActBlue https://t.co/jo5aErFk7Q
— Marie-Louise Ramsdale (@mlramsdale_law) September 21, 2020
So I went to the ActBlue link and gave.
Yeah, I know. Twenty dollars and twenty cents ain’t much. I wish I could give Mandy a lot more. But still, it was technically money, and therefore kind of a step for me.
And as long as we’re talking technically, I guess it wasn’t my first. Several days earlier, my wife had made a contribution to Jaime Harrison. She mentioned it so I’d know, because my name’s on the account. So I was on the books as a donor. Which I thought was great — I’d been thinking about making a contribution to Jaime, but as I tend to do with money, I had repeatedly forgotten about it. So I was a donor, and I didn’t even have to do anything (like fill out a form or something, which I hate with a passion). Which is awesome.
But technically… I had made a contribution earlier in the year, to Joe Biden. I had reached out to folks I knew on his campaign, back before the primary, to ask if they’d like a free ad on the blog. They said yes, so I filled out an in-kind form (see how much I love you, Joe?), and put up the ad. I liked seeing it there so much that I left it up for awhile after the primary was over, but finally made myself remove it.
So I guess that was my first “financial contribution.”
I did it again a week or so ago. And reached out to Jaime Harrison’s campaign and did the same for him. You can see both ads in the rail at right. (And I’d put one up for free for Mandy if I thought it would help her up in her district — I don’t know how many actual readers I have there.)
So I’ve just been giving like crazy to these campaigns. Sort of. And now you know…
Related Posts
Speaking of money, that picture I put on the top of this reminded me of another COVID thing…
When’s the last time you withdrew any actual cash? I used to routinely — like every week or two — get $20 cash on top of debit card transactions, just to have some on hand for incidental small expenditures.
I haven’t done that since March, at least.
During all that time, I’d had about two one-dollar bills in my wallet with the debit receipts. Month after month. Until this past weekend. We went to walk around the Belser Arboretum the other day, and as we were leaving, we were passing a table where there was a container for contributions, and my wife told me to put some money in.
Well, all I had was that $2. So I put it in. Which wasn’t convenient. Before I could get back to the table, a bunch of people had walked in and stood talking to the people at the table. And not one of them had on a mask. After waiting awhile, I determined they weren’t ever going to move on, so I excused myself and wedged between them to drop in the money.
Dealing in cash isn’t safe, which I guess is why we don’t do it anymore.
Filthy lucre, and all that…
I mean, it’s weird, right? I mean, first off, we know that bills and coins are literally filthy.
You have no record of the transaction.
If someone GIVES you money in cash, you have to take it to the bank and deposit it if you want to have it available later to spend.
It’s like — prints of pictures. If I have an interesting picture, I have to scan it if I want to DO anything with it — use it on the blog, put it on my family tree, or simply share it with anyone, period.
My mom thinks of it the opposite way. To her it’s not real until she gets it printed. And if she wants to share it with some relative or friend in another part of the country, she puts it in an envelope and takes it to the Post Office and mails it. She prefers that.
It’s an interesting shift in cognition, in our very perception of what is REAL, that we’ve undergone…
Of course, it’s the same with the written word. I’ve had less and less interest in words on paper since about 1980, when we started using a mainframe system in the newsroom, abandoning typewriters.
Since I could hit a button to send it to the copy desk, I wanted a button for sending it to the reader, from that moment on.
It was years before that was practical, but I started wanting it in 1980…
Yeah, I know — it’s not very interesting, is it? But I thought I should disclose that I made these donations…
I’ve donated to Biden 5 times this cycle.
I’ve donated to Jaime Harrison 2 times
Senator Gary Peters earlier this week
And Mark Kelly in Arizona.
My average donation each time is $15. I think my average to Biden has been a little more, probably more like $22.
I also always add a 10% Tip for ActBlue. ActBlue has this thing down. I’ve heard the GOP is very jealous of ACTBlue. I can see why.
To be fair, it’s more like my wife did. I think it was all under her name.
Good thinkin’. Gives you deniability, for when Trump wins re-election and starts rounding us all up to put us in cages down on the border…
Just so you know, Lindsey Graham proposed investigating ActBlue’s contributors today because something isn’t right, what with Jamie Harrison getting all of those small donations and outraising him. So you will be scrutinized, identified and caged in due course.
I’ve read several stories over the last 6 months about how the RNC and GOP operatives have envied ActBlue and their platform. They were caught flat footed and ignored ActBlue for a long time until they couldn’t.
So of course a few bomb throwers on the GOP side have to “investigate” what is just a good, well developed platform for funding Democrats.
I laugh when I hear Lindsey state how a lot of Jaime’s funding came from out of state. Of course Graham’s FEC filings show a majority of his funding comes from out of state. But I’m sure a lot of voters in South Carolina don’t realize – and don’t care- that Graham is in the same boat.
Five times?
Dude, you’re the reason I keep getting those texts all day. They figure people will just keep giving and giving….
Which I suppose I would, if I had a bunch of money. It would be a way of assuaging anxiety about the election. Feeling nervous today? Give some money…
Now watch: I’ll get a text from “Joe” or “Kamala” saying, “Assuage your anxiety, Brad!…”
Well, I don’t have a lot of money to give to politicians but I could spare $20-$25 for those 5 donations over the last 2-3 months.
Of course now I’m getting requests from house candidates I’ve never heard of from Utah, and New Mexico. LOL.
I should say each donation was in the $20-25 range. My first one was the day after he decided to get in the race.
My last one was about 2 weeks ago.
I think I’m done. Especially since Jaime is using the cash to run ads against Dr Bill Bledsoe, a man I had never heard of and I keep up with this stuff. Still not sure what that is about.
You know what? Those ads perplex me, too. I don’t really understand the strategic point at ALL.
I even read a news story “explaining” it, and I still don’t get it…
The part that really perplexes me is this:
Yep. I mean, it seems like the strategy is to try to get people to vote for Bledsoe.
Which, I read later, is NOT what they’re trying to do….
“Which, I read later, is NOT what they’re trying to do…”
Are you sure? I thought the whole point was to try and get some far-right voters to bleed off from Graham and go to Bledsoe, thus making Harrison’s path to victory easier. Otherwise, what’s the point of the ad?
“If someone GIVES you money in cash, you have to take it to the bank and deposit it if you want to have it available later to spend.”
Um, I mean, you would have cash at that point. You know, money? You take that cash and, you know, buy something with it. Or better yet, you could buy something for someone else.
Two, things: first, this makes me think of the scene from The Wire, where one of the young dealers gets burned by taking fake money from one of the heroin addicts, which leads to an oft’ quoted line of “Money be green. Money look like money….”
Second, it makes me think of a story I heard from a now retired family court judge (he was an active judge when he told me this story) about someone who only dealt in cash. Back when this now retired judge was a young lawyer practicing in family court it was quite routine that men would hide their income to avoid paying child support, alimony, or even dividing assets. Nowadays, it’s pretty hard, because almost all income is traceable somewhere.
Even if someone gets paid in cash from their customers, they often deposit it all in the bank. This judge told me about a case he had where he represented a wife, whose husband was a farrier, and how he had a big problem proving the husband’s income. For those of you who don’t know, a farrier is a specialist in shoeing horses and generally caring for the hooves.
So this farrier was quite skilled, and South Carolina has its share of well-to-do horse owners who pay well for the care of their horses. They would pay him in cash or, usually, just wrote him a check. However, this ol’ farrier didn’t have a bank account, though. So he would just go around town cashing the checks from his clients at their banks, and then keeping the cash. And he never deposited it in a bank, so there wasn’t any bank record of how much his deposits were. Oh, and he never filed taxes.
Accordingly, the lawyer had to basically go around and figure out from all the horse owners who used this guy as their farrier, and how often they paid him, etc. so he had to reconstruct the farrier’s entire business operation.
Anyway, it was a good lesson in doing some good work in reconstructing a puzzle when the normal pieces aren’t there for you to put together.
“Um, I mean, you would have cash at that point. You know, money? You take that cash and, you know, buy something with it. Or better yet, you could buy something for someone else.”
Yeah, but to do that you have to physically go to where the purchase is being made, and physically HAND the filthy stuff to someone. Assuming they’re set up to take it.
Very like the example you provide, of a drug deal. Grubby stuff. Next thing you know, somebody gets whacked. No thanks, man.
Unless drug dealers allow one to send one’s man of business to conduct the transaction. Which I doubt…
Now that’s the kind of attorney every woman with a husband like that should be blessed with.