"Notes and Quotes"

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. - Elbert Hubbard

Saturday, August 8, 2009

A Letter and the “Declaration” for your elected representatives

A lot of time and thought went into this proposal. Please take time to read it. If you agree there are several action steps you can take noted below. We all complain and express our frustration... now is a good time to take positive action for the good of all of us.


By Marvin Franklin



By sending the following “Letter” to your congressman and senators, you will help all voters regain a voice in government. You will no longer have to fight on a day-to-day basis to maintain your freedoms on each new issue, or struggle to get the facts. This should be appealing to every voter.

First, please read the Letter and the “Declaration” within the letter.

************************

The Letter


Dear Congressman or Senator,


This is part of a nation-wide campaign. I am writing you apologetically because this letter contains a threat and I do not normally believe in threats, however, neither do I believe in firing a person without trying to give them notice in advance and a fair warning. Therefore, I am giving you this notice.


In the past, you have earned sufficient support to gain your position as our representative. However, the times in which we live are critical and we must all do our part in attempting to survive. I am asking that you do your part. If you cannot or will not do your part then I will have to do my part in seeing that you are fired and I will work hard to that end. I will not tolerate the present conduct of our Congress which is oriented toward party power rather than the well-being of our people.


Your part will be in signing the Declaration herein offered to you, and in helping to gain the 60% of signatories required to ensure the effectiveness of the Declaration’s intent, and to accomplish that by September 30, 2009. This will allow you 30 days after the August recess to gain the support of your other members who will most likely already have been contacted by their constituents in a similar manner.


If you have reasons why you cannot or will not sign the Declaration I will listen to them, and then I will fire you as soon as possible.


Respectfully, from "A Citizen Who Cares,"


Signature

Name

Address


Enclosure: The Declaration (for you to sign and have notorized and displayed on your internet site.)


**************************************************


Enclosure: The Declaration


I, the undersigned member of Congress, believe that the American public is being overwhelmed by the volume of proposed legislation currently being heaped upon them and their elected officials, and that some citizens are even living in day-to-day fear of the consequences to themselves and to their country. The thousands of pages in the proposed laws provide hiding places for crucial clauses that may or may not even pertain to the stated objective of the legislation at hand. The sheer volume may obscure and even create unintended consequences.

I believe it is my duty to keep my constituents honestly informed on important issues that will effect their lives or the lives of loved ones. It is my duty to not try to “sell” them any legislation that I do not fully understand myself. In order to exercise my responsibilities, it is incumbent on me to ensure that proposed legislation is properly and thoroughly studied and analyzed before it is presented to the Congress for a vote. This cannot be accomplished amidst the last minute hustle made in the late hours of the night. It must be done instead with the transparency promised by our president as a keystone of his administration.

With these objectives in mind, I commit myself to the following procedures which may be altered from time to time, as experience dictates, by a vote of 80% of the signatories. I further commit to help form and join a coalition in Congress that will stop every piece of legislation until it has met important criteria, which includes:

A) It must be written in clear and simple English, not requiring a law degree to understand it.

B) All political parties must be allowed access to the actual drafting of the legislation, so that it becomes more difficult to insert extraneous rules, or misleading language.

C) Once the draft is completed, pros and cons will be written by each party much as the pros and cons of ballot issues are given to voters before they vote. Rebuttal statements will be allowed.

D) When ready, and after other procedural matters are satisfied, the legislation along with the pros and cons and rebuttals will be given to all members of the Senate or House for discussion and debate.

E) When the debates are over, the final negotiated document, again with pros and cons and rebuttals, will be published for the public, and time will be allowed for feedback prior to a vote.

F) All Earmarks must be bunched annually in one omnibus earmark bill for easier review. The author and sponsors of each earmark must be identified along with their one-paragraph justification of what the earmark is and what it accomplishes. In this way, voters can see in advance and on-line who is behind the spending. No Earmarks will be allowed as part of any other legislation. Each author or sponsor of an earmark must sign a statement that no member of their family, no friend, no associate, no individual known to them personally, will gain directly or indirectly from the earmark, and that if their statement is later found to be untrue, they must be tried in a court of their peers, with such trial open to the public and the media.

G) These general rules, with the exception of paragraph F, may be amended by a 75% vote of either house so as to best carry out both the intention of these rules and the functioning of either house. (Such an amendment itself must first follow the criteria set forth above.)

This will slow down the fire-hydrant flow of legislation that is currently overwhelming Congress and frightening the public. It will also reduce the number of earmarks introduced.

Perhaps some bills coming before the Congress should not require all steps in the process to be carried out. However, to allow for any exceptions opens the door for abuse, therefore there will be no exceptions allowed other than an act of war.

I realize that adopting these procedures will delay the processing of some legislation, but by being more thorough, and transparent, the Congress will improve our laws for the good of our nation and its people.

Signed and notarized by (Congressional Representative or Senator)


******************************************************************************************

Dear "A Citizen Who Cares,"


Now that you have read the Letter, I hope you will agree with me that it can improve the way our government works. Most members of the House and Senate should welcome the Declaration when they realize it frees them from despotic leaders they may have and allows them instead to be responsive to those who voted them into office. Being faithful to their constituents will become more important than falling in line with the dictates of the party. But they won't sign the Declaration without pressure from all of us.

If you agree with me, it is vital to do as many of the following as you are able:

1) Send an e-mail copy of the letter signed by you, and a copy of the Declaration, to your Representative and your two U.S. Senators.

Click here: Find and contact your Congress members by phone, email or fax at Congress Merge

2) Send a FAX copy of the letter signed by you, and a copy of the Declaration, to your Representative and your two U.S. Senators.

Click here: Find and contact your Congress members by phone, email or fax at CongressMerge

3) To give this campaign real momentum and to let the Congress know how serious we are, call each of their offices and tell them in your own words about your messages and what you expect of them.

They need to be deluged with e-mails, FAXes, and calls.


4) Through whatever contacts you may have, try by phone to reach a radio talk-show host and a TV personality in your locale. Tell them about this campaign and offer to send them a copy of the entire e-mail which you received. Tell them you would like them to (a) promote the campaign on their program and (b) post the entire e-mail on their web site and let their audience know that it is there to copy and use. If you manage to do this you are a hero.

5) Similarly, try to reach other organizations in your area who are interested and involved in helping to improve government. You might find contacts to the local Tea Party, Town Halls, and Foundations in the area. They will be interested in helping promote this campaign. (Your local library is an excellent resource to help identify such organizations for you and may be able to serve you by phone.)

(Note: The Letter can be reworded to your personal taste but frankness is encouraged. The Declaration should be left unaltered in order to facilitate a unified Congressional front. As you can see, citizens have the power to carry out this plan. The Letter which forwards the Declaration begins the process. The campaign of "A Citizen Who Cares" is in the hands of each of you. Good luck to us all.


Marvin Franklin

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"Notes and Quotes" Archive

  • **“Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence.” – Justice Tom C. Clark (1899-1977) US Attorney General, 1945-1949
  • **"If the Constitution no longer matters, then the federal government no longer exists. The same document that restricts the federal government is also the document that created them and gives them their authority. Either it is in effect, or it is not." Gary Henderson
  • **"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in the time of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." Dante
  • **“When anyone gets something for nothing, someone else gets nothing for something.” -Anonymous
  • ** "My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane" Author unknown
  • ** “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” — Peter F. Drucker
  • ** “If getting employer benefits without paying union dues is BAD, why is getting government benefits without paying taxes GOOD?”
  • ** “It's not that ‘the rich’ aren't paying their ‘fair share,’ it's that America isn't. A majority of the electorate has voted itself a size of government it's not willing to pay for.” - Mark Steyn
  • ** "One of the penalties of not participating in politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors." ~ Plato
  • **"Fathom the hypocrisy of a Government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured...but not everyone must prove they are a citizen."
  • **If it matters, measure it: How do you know how much you’ve slipped or improved in an area unless you measure it? How do you take something “to the next level” if you don’t know what level you’re already at? How do you set concrete goals without a sense of where you are and where you want to go? If the success of your venture depends on it, you need to find a way to measure it.
  • **The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. - Mark Twain
  • **Political correctness is an approved form of censorship.  Based on emotional appeals at the expense of reason, political correctness mandates that inconvenient truths or facts be swept under the carpet.  Or else. Free speech, guaranteed to all Americans under the First Amendment, is on its way to becoming moot.  The political, media, and intellectual elites who control the terms of national debate and the rules of civil society have succeeded in censoring opposing views, limiting debate, and demonizing dissent.  Perception is on its way to becoming our new reality. Nancy Morgan
  • **Ronald Reagan once defined an economist as somebody who sees something working in real life and wondering if it will work in theory.
  • **"Fathom the odd hypocrisy that Obama wants every citizen to prove they are insured, but they don't have to prove they are citizens." ~ Ben Stein
  • **“America is the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.”--Dinesh D'Souza
  • **No politician has any business talking about tax increases until ObamaCare is repealed. It’s the most comprehensively failed legislation of the modern era. Like a taxi that runs on plutonium, it’s costing us a fortune, and making us sick, even while it’s sitting there and doing nothing. Sold with fanciful promises and fraudulent cost estimates, it’s another expensive scheme to buy votes with taxpayer money, ending with a planned crisis the government will be only too happy to step in and “solve” by seizing even more of our wealth and liberty. Its passage stymied serious attempts at real improvements to our health-care system, including tort reform and allowing the interstate sale of insurance plans to increase competition. As with so many other delusional Big Government programs, the opportunity cost of passing ObamaCare, and passing up on reasonable plans that enhance individual liberty, rivals its staggering price tag. We’ll come trillions closer to a balanced budget by shredding it. -- Dr. Zero
  • **'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel' -- Benjamin Netanyahu
  • ** This is almost unbelievable. Barack Obama is more concerned about Jews building homes in Jerusalem than about Iran building a nuclear weapon. --Ben Stein
  • ** I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts. --Ronald Reagan
  • ** "As an American I am not so shocked that Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize without any accomplishments to his name, but that America gave him the White House based on the same credentials." - - Newt Gingrich
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  • ** The banking crisis wasn't caused by a lack of regulation. It was caused by regulation that pushed banks to make bad loans. --John Hawkins
  • ** An ideal Federal government in our country wouldn't take much from you, do much for you, or get in your way . --John Hawkins
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  • ** A final word on Tea Party numbers.  The Obama Inauguration left in its wake 100 tons of trash on the Mall that required herculean efforts by the District and the Park Service to clean up.  And it devastated the grass surfaces of the Mall that necessitated budgeting millions of dollars to repair.  Saturday’s Teapartyers left behind a west lawn and Mall that could be used for the U.S.Open.   The sparse trash that was left was neatly stashed in and closely around the too few receptacles provided.  And police reported zero arrests.-- William Campenni
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