White House Petitions

Two years ago President Obama set up a very cool system where anyone one can post petitions on the white house's website and if they can get 100,000 people to support the petition online then President will issue an official response.  Its a very cool way to bring a little attention to an issue.  So far the white house has made 120 official responses to petitions.

One that I just recently supported is a petition to allow Tesla Motors to sell cars directly to consumers across the country.  Car dealerships are putting up legal fights to prevent Tesla from selling direct to consumers.  The petition just recently topped 100,000 so the white house will respond but the more the merrier so go out and support it as well, it is as easy as liking something on facebook.

The official response to a number of petitions opposing the Westboro Baptist Church (the group that protests funerals) just came out. The response didn't say all that much other than "we don't like them either" and "we can't comment on certain matters".  I suppose it is a good example of where a petition can't do much because the white house actually can't do that much. 

The petition system is nice because it is a little bit of a gamble for the President.  I'm sure the President doesn't want to discuss pardoning Eric Snowden.  I wonder if it would ever be used by the Republicans against the President, by flash mobbing the system with something super conservative that sounds great with a quick one liner but is really a much more complicated issue, like "Flat Tax".  I kind of wish the Democrats had done something like that to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's "YouCut" website, we could have put in "Cut Oil Company Subsidies".

My State Reps

In my county we are lucky to have two state representatives. I really like our two state reps, Mitzi Johnson and Bob Krebs.  They are very open to talking with constituents so I thought I'd look up their voting records for the year.  The state has a pretty good searchable database so I did some research and this is what I came up with:

Bill	Topic	Mitzi Johnson	Bob Krebs	Status
H99	Equal Pay	Yea	Yea	Enacted
H520	Greenhouse Gas Reduction	Yea	Yea	Enacted
H530	Budget Bill	Yea	Yea	Enacted
H200	Decriminalization of Marijuana	Yea	Nay	Enacted
H536	Sexual Harassment in National Guard	Yea	Yea	Enacted
S14	Unions	Nay	Nay	Enacted
H270	Public Pre-K Education	Yea	Nay	Stalled after House
S77	End of Life Choice	Yea	Yea	Enacted
S59	Unions	Yea	Yea	Enacted
S38	Drivers' Licenses for Illegal Immigrants	Yea	Yea	Enacted
S7	Social Network Privacy and Patent Law	Yea	Yea	Enacted
S81	Poison Flame Retardant	Yea	Yea	Enacted
S82	Campaign Finance Reform	Yea	Nay	Stalled after House
s152	Health Care Reform	Yea	Yea	Enacted
H112	GMO Labeling	Yea	Yea	No Senate Action
S129	Workers' Comp	Yea	Yea	Stalled after House

They mostly voted the way I would expect/hope but there were a few surprises.  Bob voted against the marijuana decriminalization bill, the Public Pre-K bill, and Campaign Finance bill.

Don't really care about the marijuana bill, though I'm glad it passed and I would have voted for it.  But the other two bills didn't pass (they did pass the House just not the Senate),  and they are two bills I do care about quite a bit.  I'll follow up with Bob and get his take, I'm sure he'd be glad to talk.

I'm also bummed the GMO bill didn't pass but both my reps voted for it.

Later, I'll try to do the same for my state senator, Dick Mazza as well.

Acts and Resolutions

So tonight I thought I'd research some bills introduced in the Vermont General Assembly.  But I got side tracked when the search page had the option of searching Acts or searching Resolutions.  What is the difference?

So it turns out Acts are the real deal law making that we know about.  Resolutions are cute little things that say things like "Congratulations Essex High School for winning the division III badminton state championship!"  and then they make the Secretary of State mail of copy of the resolution to the congratulatee.  They don't have to be passed, they are just sort of approved. 

This only applies for Vermont, for the Federal Congress resolutions are just another type of bill but they still have to get voted on and signed by the President.  US Senators and Representatives have to just congratulate people on the floor of the floor during a speech.

Just something to know.

The Poor Getting Poorer

So today I'm working to become a more informed voter by making sure I'm staying up on the news.  Its hard to find time so I multitask, every night as I'm putting my 3 year old to bed I read to him and the last thing I read once the lights are out is articles from the New York Times.  I realize he doesn't get what the stories are about but hopefully it expands the vocabulary and he doesn't seem to mind.

So one of tonight's articles stood out, it turns out that many businesses are forcing employees to take their pay in the form of "Pay Cards", cards that act like ATM cards but have a ton of charges and fees, including fees for transferring money to your regular bank account and fees for just leaving the money in there.  This is happening to a lot of retail employees and fast food employees and with the fees they can end up being paid less than minimum wage.

It turns out these cards aren't regulated like credit cards or ATM cards and there are some big financial incentives for employers to use them.

So I'm going to email, the article to Senator Sanders because it seems like the kind of thing he fights against.  He probably already knows about it but every time he hears that voters know about it will help  motivate him and other lawmakers to address the issue.

Local Business

Today I decided to keep it local and check out my towns website.  It has really improved in the last year.  it used to be very out of date and only of limited use.  But now it has a lot of good stuff including town meetings minutes.  So I decided to check out the most recent selectboard minutes.

So it started with the public input section which had a slightly disturbing story of a residence that had their door kicked in by a man.  They of course called 911 but it wasn't during our Sheriff's department operating hours so the call was sent to the state police, who showed up 40 minutes later.  Wow, thankfully there doesn't seem to be any more to that story but certainly concerning.  It turns out the town pays about $95,000 a year for 50 hours a week of Sheriff coverage.  Now, this isn't an outrageous amount of money it works out to about $35/hour but there are also other towns paying in for overlapping coverage so it would be interesting to see a comparison to what other counties pay.  The Sheriff's department has at least 4 cars and even a boat it seems, maybe we need more personnel to do more hours and less cars? 

The kick in story combined with only having 30% of the hours in the week being covered by local police makes me think about getting a gun.  I don't really want to but I inherited my mother's ability to over worry.  We live in the most gun lax state in the country, I may ended up taking the leap some day.  It is a whole balance of protection by the gun vs safety from the gun.  I think I'll probably do a whole post on this someday.

The Selectboard also set out 14 goals for the year.  I'll talk quickly about a few

• Consider eliminating invocation before Town Meeting - I don't have a big problem with this and it isn't unconstitutional (The US Congress still does it).  But I would hate to make anyone feel uncomfortable and it doesn't affect how I face town business so I say get rid of it.
• Discuss a Town noise ordinance - I like the idea (some people party a little too hardy) but with no local police to enforce it it seems like it would be pretty ineffective.
• Look into obtaining land in South Hero for a future Town center - I'd certainly like to hear more about this.  I don't know what would be in a Town Center but our school, Folsom, serves fairly well so far.
• Explore the possibility of combining local schools or the supervisory union - This is a big one.  I'd like to hear more on this.  My kids will be in school in a few years and I don't love the idea of having classes so small that there are multi-grade classrooms.  More would mean more efficient use of money, and maybe better educational opportunities.  A friend of mine on the North Hero school board is fairly set against this(based at least on financial disincentives that the State have in place).  I'll have to reach out to discuss further, and of course report here.

Next, they passed a motion that says no private vehicles can be worked on in the town garage by town employees.  Wow!  That wasn't already the rule!  There are so many reasons that is a bad idea, misuse of public funds, town liability, favoritism/perks... the list could go on and on.  Maybe town garages should consolidate?

Finally, a shout out to my wife who was appointed to the Planning Commission.  Congrats babe!

First Post, letter to my Congressman

It is sort of a random start to my blog but I imagine a lot of this stuff will be random.  There are lots of way to be involved with your government and one of the easiest is to write your representatives.

My Congressman, Representative Peter Welch, just introduced a bill and made at least the local news in doing so.   The press release on the bill.  The thing that caught my eye about it was that it was advertized as bipartisan.  Nothing is bipartisan in the US House anymore!  Even the farm bill failed to pass for the first time in 40 years.

My excitement subsided as I heard about the bill though.  It is a bill that prohibits any US military action in Syria.  My fear is that it is bipartisan because it is an odd combination of anti-war liberals and anti-Obama conservatives.  My fears are explained more in my letter below.

I like my Congressman, I voted for him, and will continue to vote for him, but I'm concerned about the bill so I emailed the letter to him.  I wasn't sure about whether I should send actual mail or email but why waste paper.  Someday maybe I'll study which was is the better way to get a response.

Day 1 in the books.

THE LETTER

Dear Congressman Welch,

I recently read that you are leading a bill that seeks to prevent military intervention into Syria. While I understand your sentiment, I am concerned that you are sending some unintended messages with the introduction of the bill and that there may be some unintended consequences if it were to pass.

First, your bill implies that you believe President Obama would drag us into another war like Iraq or Afghanistan. I certainly don't believe he would, and I hope you do not either because you know him better than I, and I would trust your judgment over my own here. I believe that President Obama would never enter a ground war for all same reasons you set forth in your statement. I know that you do not intend to imply this but I could easily see other Congressmen intentionally slandering the President through the bill.

Second, your bill implies that the President could start a war without Congressional authorization. I understand there is precedent for limited military action without Congressional preauthorization but Iraq and Afghanistan were pre-authorized. My fear is that you may be setting bad constitutional precedent through implication; I wouldn't want pre-denial of military intervention to become expected or requisite.

Finally, I am concerned that there could be an unintended consequence of your bill if an exigent national security threat arose in Syria. If Syrians rolled out long range missiles and pointed them at Israel or our military bases in the middle east the President would be unable to even send jet fighters to stop the missiles without having to wait for Congress to assemble and vote, which could be much too late.

I understand your sentiment and motivations. I also applaud you for giving attention to a very important issue that often gets forgotten in the media. Please continue to do everything you can to keep Syria in focus. I particularly worry about the refugees from this awful civil war and I'm sure that after you visited them you are committed to do everything in you can to help them.

Thank you for your attention and thank you for your service,

David Cain

South hero, VT