Emailing government
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eiredrake)
Lately I've been writing a lot of letters to my Representatives, because a lot of shit going on in Congress is.... well... basically batshit insane. Both houses of congress are sucking Bushcock like there's no tomorrow, thus creating a situation where there may very well BE no tomorrow. To paraphrase Carlin, this is problematic for me. I'm not a very good citizen you see, as I like to think for myself. I don't like people telling me what I can and can't do. Especially those paragons of virtue down in DC.
Recently, through Americans United for the Seperation of Church and State I found an interesting ( if specific ) outlet for this. AU keeps track of any and all bills that relate to religion. They post a summary and provide links to the original bill. They also have an applet that sends pre-formatted form letter email to your Represenatives. You can modify these emails of course, but they are good for people like me who just tend to get a little hotheaded when something pisses them off. Three or four clicks, maybe some modificiation and poof! From what I've been reading our Congressmen and Congresswomen no longer like getting snail mail at all. Back in my civics classes in HS they told us that a written letter would get a lot more attention because you took the time to actually sit down and write it. Apparently that's no longer the case and email is the way to go. Makes sense I suppose. Email is easier to delete. We really need a service like this for ALL issues, IMHO.
In any case I spammed the shit out of my MD representatives here. One email each on something like 5-6 different bills. Two democrats for the Senate and a Republican in the House. There were something like 5 bills total going through at the moment that were related to jamming more power into the religious out there. Which automatically gives more power to the Christians since they happen to be the majority out there. As though with the Faith Based Initiatives our Fearless Leader has foisted upon us they don't get enough special privilleges now as it is. Anyway, I sent a bunch of email out.
For each one Roscoe Bartlett received, I got a canned auto-reply. I got nothing from the damned Democrats at all. I figured "That's ok.. you'll be hearing from me again."
Last night I got a snail mail etter from Rep Bartlet. It surprised the hell out of me. I doubt he personally wrote it as I'm sure he has better things to do than to answer every email that comes by his desk. But the fact that I got a letter at all means that someone at least is reading his email. He ( or at least whoever responded ) thanked me for sending him the email 'relating to the seperation of church and state'. He said that the bill in question that I was referring to had been defeated in the House, including his vote of Nay for it. He also alerted me to another Bill that was about to be proposed , which he seems to think is a much better idea from the tone of his letter. I'll look up the Bill and report on it later once I have internet service. He even gave me the bill number.
The new Bill he refers to ( though I don't have the bill number handy but I will post it lter) in his words 'clarifies' the right amount of political action faith groups and churches are allowed to take. The existing statute states that a church may do some partisan electioneering as long it doesn't constitute a 'substantial' amount of their activities without losing their tax exemption status. This wording is ambiguous and it has allowed as he put it 'favorable' churches to use the pulpet as a voting booth while other less powerful 'unfavorable' churches become affraid to speak up at all for fear of losing their tax exemption status.
Basically, Conservative churches have been abusing the statue to put people like Bush and others in office without reprisal from the IRS whereas people in more moderate or liberal churches are currently being investigated for small pamphlets conserning how each candidate voted in the past on what issues.
I plan to write back to Roscoe to thank him for the reply but also to let him know how I feel, as an athiest, about the seperation of church and state. As far as I'm concerned, any church can talk to their people about current issues. They can talk about which politicians have voted in the past on which issues and which way they voted. But the moment they tell their flock "Vote for X or you are not a member of this church" or tries to claim that "God wants this candidate to win" or starts using rhetoric like "X Candidate kills babies!" or "The church will donate money to X so they can win over the godless secularists!" , they should have their tax exemption yanked so fast their head will spin.
Freedom of expression cannot be abridged. Whether I ( or anyone else ) agrees with what a person is saying or not. Not even in cases where El Repugno Fred Phelps is talking. Even that preacher in the pulpet deserves the right to speak his mind. Whether it be about War or Abortion or whatever. However, allowing him to dictate to his parishoners who they must vote for is in effect making his vote count 100, 1000, 10000 times more than mine. it is using and abusing the name of divinity in order to sell politics and that is wrong. In this nation, we have one vote each, no more, no less. That preacher's vote is equal to mine but it is not worth MORE than mine.
As much as I rant about the curent Republican regime, at least this one Republican noticed when I wrote to him. That gives him a few points. I'll still be watching of course but it's more than the damned Democrats did.
Why am I posting this? It's directly related to the fight against the righ as obviously SOCAS is one of our main issues. It also seems to show that not everybody in the Republican party is pandering to our enemies. But I think most importantly that it shows that you CAN successfully get some of those peckerwoods in Washington to take notice of you if you take the time to write. Will these letters change the world? No. But Roscoe at least knows there's one person out there that wants the church out of his state and the state out of his church. Maybe if everybody here wrote an email ( there are 900 of us after all ) to our Reps* we could make a dent.
* I'm not telling you what to do and I'm not saying you already haven't.
Oh, and I'm still ticked off that the Dems didn't even respond.
Recently, through Americans United for the Seperation of Church and State I found an interesting ( if specific ) outlet for this. AU keeps track of any and all bills that relate to religion. They post a summary and provide links to the original bill. They also have an applet that sends pre-formatted form letter email to your Represenatives. You can modify these emails of course, but they are good for people like me who just tend to get a little hotheaded when something pisses them off. Three or four clicks, maybe some modificiation and poof! From what I've been reading our Congressmen and Congresswomen no longer like getting snail mail at all. Back in my civics classes in HS they told us that a written letter would get a lot more attention because you took the time to actually sit down and write it. Apparently that's no longer the case and email is the way to go. Makes sense I suppose. Email is easier to delete. We really need a service like this for ALL issues, IMHO.
In any case I spammed the shit out of my MD representatives here. One email each on something like 5-6 different bills. Two democrats for the Senate and a Republican in the House. There were something like 5 bills total going through at the moment that were related to jamming more power into the religious out there. Which automatically gives more power to the Christians since they happen to be the majority out there. As though with the Faith Based Initiatives our Fearless Leader has foisted upon us they don't get enough special privilleges now as it is. Anyway, I sent a bunch of email out.
For each one Roscoe Bartlett received, I got a canned auto-reply. I got nothing from the damned Democrats at all. I figured "That's ok.. you'll be hearing from me again."
Last night I got a snail mail etter from Rep Bartlet. It surprised the hell out of me. I doubt he personally wrote it as I'm sure he has better things to do than to answer every email that comes by his desk. But the fact that I got a letter at all means that someone at least is reading his email. He ( or at least whoever responded ) thanked me for sending him the email 'relating to the seperation of church and state'. He said that the bill in question that I was referring to had been defeated in the House, including his vote of Nay for it. He also alerted me to another Bill that was about to be proposed , which he seems to think is a much better idea from the tone of his letter. I'll look up the Bill and report on it later once I have internet service. He even gave me the bill number.
The new Bill he refers to ( though I don't have the bill number handy but I will post it lter) in his words 'clarifies' the right amount of political action faith groups and churches are allowed to take. The existing statute states that a church may do some partisan electioneering as long it doesn't constitute a 'substantial' amount of their activities without losing their tax exemption status. This wording is ambiguous and it has allowed as he put it 'favorable' churches to use the pulpet as a voting booth while other less powerful 'unfavorable' churches become affraid to speak up at all for fear of losing their tax exemption status.
Basically, Conservative churches have been abusing the statue to put people like Bush and others in office without reprisal from the IRS whereas people in more moderate or liberal churches are currently being investigated for small pamphlets conserning how each candidate voted in the past on what issues.
I plan to write back to Roscoe to thank him for the reply but also to let him know how I feel, as an athiest, about the seperation of church and state. As far as I'm concerned, any church can talk to their people about current issues. They can talk about which politicians have voted in the past on which issues and which way they voted. But the moment they tell their flock "Vote for X or you are not a member of this church" or tries to claim that "God wants this candidate to win" or starts using rhetoric like "X Candidate kills babies!" or "The church will donate money to X so they can win over the godless secularists!" , they should have their tax exemption yanked so fast their head will spin.
Freedom of expression cannot be abridged. Whether I ( or anyone else ) agrees with what a person is saying or not. Not even in cases where El Repugno Fred Phelps is talking. Even that preacher in the pulpet deserves the right to speak his mind. Whether it be about War or Abortion or whatever. However, allowing him to dictate to his parishoners who they must vote for is in effect making his vote count 100, 1000, 10000 times more than mine. it is using and abusing the name of divinity in order to sell politics and that is wrong. In this nation, we have one vote each, no more, no less. That preacher's vote is equal to mine but it is not worth MORE than mine.
As much as I rant about the curent Republican regime, at least this one Republican noticed when I wrote to him. That gives him a few points. I'll still be watching of course but it's more than the damned Democrats did.
Why am I posting this? It's directly related to the fight against the righ as obviously SOCAS is one of our main issues. It also seems to show that not everybody in the Republican party is pandering to our enemies. But I think most importantly that it shows that you CAN successfully get some of those peckerwoods in Washington to take notice of you if you take the time to write. Will these letters change the world? No. But Roscoe at least knows there's one person out there that wants the church out of his state and the state out of his church. Maybe if everybody here wrote an email ( there are 900 of us after all ) to our Reps* we could make a dent.
* I'm not telling you what to do and I'm not saying you already haven't.
Oh, and I'm still ticked off that the Dems didn't even respond.