TTTT Takeaway Activism and Notes – January 2013

Speaker Notes:

After the excitement of our meeting in November, CCTP Steering Committee members wanted to continue to inform about the Tennessee Center for Self Governance and the training effort underway to become experts on Self Governance… …Citizen SEALS!

Jan Farrar and David Larson led the discussion with our experience in training, examples of successes with TNCSG’s efforts, and many of the trainees in attendance chimed in with notes and examples of how this effort will work.

Before the TTTT, I asked David to describe what he planned to do in the meeting:

Jan and I will do about thirty minutes on the benefits of taking the five levels of citizen engagement through the Tennessee Center for Self-governance. We will discuss civil responsibility and civil authority, by comparing and contrasting them. We will point out that there are hundred  if not thousands of special interest groups lobbying the lawmakers we send to the various legislative houses at all levels. Then we will explain the ordinary everyday citizen is not represented in that manner. We will explain that these classes will empower them to become engaged in the process so that they are no longer lost in the shuffle nor ignored.

And, that’s exactly what they did.

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Working Meeting:

Tonight’s meeting was also a working meeting.  The goal here was to review and approve (or reject) the legislative items sponsored or co-sponsored by Cape County’s Missouri House and Senate members – Donna Lichtenegger, Kathy Swan, and Wayne Wallingford.  A few bills proposed by other legislators were added to the list including one co-sponsored by Shelley Keeney of Bollinger County

We:

• Put together list of the bills
• Broke up into 4 groups
• Reviewed them quickly
• Used our laptops to get additional information on the bills from the House and Senate web sites
• Came up with a knee-jerk decision to vote for or against the bill

We obviously knew that, with the few minutes we had to work on the effort, we could easily end up with an incorrect decision.  But, the effort was enjoyable, and the decisions likely in line with the CCTP goals of Fiscal Responsibility, Founding Principles, and Constitutionally Limited Government under God.

When reviewing the decisions of the group, most of the responses were quite emphatic.

Click below to see the bills that were reviewed and the decisions of the group.  We hope to complete similar efforts in the future.

CCTP – TTTT – 20130115 – Local Legislator Bills – Reviewed – 01

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Takeaway Activism

As a follow-up on our two activities tonight, we need to continue to consider our Civic Authority and our responsibility to guide the votes of our elected officials at all levels.  To that end, we ask that you do three things:

 

Senate Bill Review

• Visit the Missouri Senate web site
• Locate a bill that was not reviewed at TTTT: http://www.senate.mo.gov/13info/BTS_Web/BillList.aspx?SessionType=R
• Write a short summary of why you think your legislator should vote for / against the bill
• Send your review to CapeCountyTeaParty@yahoo.com

House Bill Review

• Visit the Missouri House of Representatives web site
• Locate a bill that was not reviewed at TTTT: http://house.mo.gov/billlist.aspx?year=2013

• Write a short summary of why you think your legislator should vote for / against the bill
• Send your review to CapeCountyTeaParty@yahoo.com

New Legislation

• Propose a piece of Legislation / Law
• Write a short summary of what you would like to have enacted
• Give it an awesome title
• Send your new law to CapeCountyTeaParty@yahoo.com

We will compile these summaries and set up a meeting with our local legislators to pass along your ideas and wishes