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  #1  
Old 09-04-2005, 01:13 AM
OtisTheMarsupial OtisTheMarsupial is offline
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Default Mad? Write to Congress

I want to encourage everyonoe here with an opinion about how New Orleans' disaster was handled to write to their representatives.

One good resource is congress.org

Then, post what you wrote.

I'll start:

Dear Representative/ Senator/ President ____,

I write to ask you to increase federal aid and accept some or all of the international aid offered to help Hurricane Katrina victims. Americans across the country have already contributed to this disaster through taxes going to FEMA. Many of them are now contributing through donations.

We now need to accept all the help we can because this Hurricane should not burden future generations by borrowing money from them in the form of a national deficit.

Please accept the help that is being offered by the International Community. We should be proud Americans, but not too proud to accept genuine offers of help when we can use it.

Likewise, please ensure that the money relief goes to actual victims and not siphoned off by corporations such as Halliburton.

Some of my family lost their homes to this flood. Please don't let them suffer more by making them wait forever for financial relief to relocate or by under funding the relief effort.

Thank you,
_____
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  #2  
Old 09-04-2005, 01:22 AM
FishHooks FishHooks is offline
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Default Re: Mad? Write to Congress

While I dont necessarly agree with many of your underlying points (views of issues just by reading this), glad to see a Democrat who is willing to do something rather than just complain. Good post, gives me inspiration there are more democrats like you and not just people who are crazy and want to complain.
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  #3  
Old 09-04-2005, 01:25 AM
Myrtle Myrtle is offline
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Default Re: Mad? Write to Congress

[ QUOTE ]
While I dont necessarly agree with many of your underlying points (views of issues just by reading this), glad to see a Democrat who is willing to do something rather than just complain. Good post, gives me inspiration there are more democrats like you and not just people who are crazy and want to complain.

[/ QUOTE ]

fish.....everytime that I think there's a glimmer of hope for you, you post something that deflates it.
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  #4  
Old 09-04-2005, 01:31 AM
cadillac1234 cadillac1234 is offline
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Default Re: Mad? Write to Congress

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
While I dont necessarly agree with many of your underlying points (views of issues just by reading this), glad to see a Democrat who is willing to do something rather than just complain. Good post, gives me inspiration there are more democrats like you and not just people who are crazy and want to complain.

[/ QUOTE ]

fish.....everytime that I think there's a glimmer of hope for you, you post something that deflates it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Remember how you thought you knew everything there ever was to know when you were 18?
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  #5  
Old 09-04-2005, 01:35 AM
Myrtle Myrtle is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Massachusetts
Posts: 388
Default Re: Mad? Write to Congress

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
While I dont necessarly agree with many of your underlying points (views of issues just by reading this), glad to see a Democrat who is willing to do something rather than just complain. Good post, gives me inspiration there are more democrats like you and not just people who are crazy and want to complain.

[/ QUOTE ]

fish.....everytime that I think there's a glimmer of hope for you, you post something that deflates it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Remember how you thought you knew everything there ever was to know when you were 18?

[/ QUOTE ]

...indeed, I do, but I also remember asking questions every once in a while instead of pretending that I knew much more than those who were more experienced than I.
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  #6  
Old 09-04-2005, 02:29 AM
Non_Comformist Non_Comformist is offline
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Default my letter

Dear Congress,

The current situation is intolerable! I can no longer tolerate it and resuse to tolerate it any longer than it lasts. Have you be paying attention at all, by the obvious neglect is is obvious you have not. I don't know which makes me more mad that I have had to tolerate these intolerable conditions or that it is obviously so obvious.

Sincerly
Non_Comformist

p.s can I have a highway named after me?
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  #7  
Old 09-04-2005, 01:10 PM
OtisTheMarsupial OtisTheMarsupial is offline
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Default obviously so obvious - book club

[ QUOTE ]
Dear Congress,

The current situation is intolerable! I can no longer tolerate it and resuse to tolerate it any longer than it lasts. Have you be paying attention at all, by the obvious neglect is is obvious you have not. I don't know which makes me more mad that I have had to tolerate these intolerable conditions or that it is obviously so obvious.

Sincerly
Non_Comformist

p.s can I have a highway named after me?

[/ QUOTE ]

There was a time when I wanted to start a Congress Book Club. The idea was that every month my organization would pick a non-fiction book and buy a copy for each member of Congress. Then send them out along with a few hundred press releases about the featured book and the Congress Book Club. If even a few members read even one book, and learned something and then acted on that knowledge, I think it'd be worthwhile.

Besides, how fun would that be? You could have high school and college chapters of the Congress Book Club reading along with Congress and discussing the same issues.
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  #8  
Old 09-04-2005, 04:26 PM
Ed Miller Ed Miller is offline
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Default I wrote the following letter to my representatives

Dear Senator/Congressman,

I live in Henderson now, but I lived in New Orleans from age one to the day I left for college. My parents still lived in New Orleans until they evacuated the day before the storm. As I watch the news, I am becoming more and more frustrated, as the real issues, as I perceive them, are barely being addressed. I understand that the news does not necessarily reflect reality, but I also have several first-hand accounts from people in New Orleans that suggest that my deep concerns are all too real.

There are two major problems that need absolutely immediate attention:

1. There are tens of thousands of people still in their homes. Most of them are not living on rooftops or attics at this point, but they must be rescued just as surely. I personally know of five people who are likely (since telephone is down, I can’t be absolutely sure) living in dry, but isolated conditions. One is 89 years old, lives alone, and has prostate cancer.

The longer these people sit waiting, the more will die. If it takes a week to reach them, some will die. If it takes a month, thousands will die. Rescuers need to visit every last house in Jefferson, Orleans, St. Bernard, and Plaquemines Parishes to see if anyone is there.

I realize checking each house for survivors is a monumental task. But until it happens, more people each day will die of isolation. The number of workers presently in the New Orleans area is not enough by a long shot. At least ten times more are needed.

A friend who is volunteering his time, money, and vehicles to get people out of the city estimated that 90 percent of the rescue workers (as of Saturday, September 3) are state and local workers. A week has passed since the storm. Search and rescue teams from all over the country should be in New Orleans now. There should be as many rescue workers from Nevada and Massachusetts as there are from Louisiana. Right now, that is far from the reality. Until that happens, perhaps thousands of people will be dying needlessly.

2. Hundreds of thousands of people have no job, no home, and no access to their money, if they have any money. My parents are in this situation. They both live in an area that was flooded to the roof, so their houses are total losses. My mom, who is recently retired, was planning to sell her house and use the proceeds to move to Nevada. Now she is out $200,000, essentially her entire life savings, until the insurance company processes her claim, which realistically could take a year.

She had budgeted her retirement based on not paying for housing because she would own a place outright. Now she’s staring at an extra hundreds a month for rent and an outlay for new furniture and other new personal items that she, on a fixed income, simply can’t afford.

My dad is in worse shape. Not only did he lose his house, but also he was not yet retired. His job evaporated with the city. So he has zero income, no place to stay, and no personal items.

My parents are (or were, in my mother’s case) university professors at state schools. They are intelligent and skilled, and they will find their ways soon enough. They just need a little temporary money to keep them afloat until their insurance claims are paid and they get jobs and get back on their feet. They’ll be ok.

But there are hundreds of thousands of people in similar, but worse situations. They have few skills, no homes, no jobs, no money, and no life outside a city that, at present, does not exist. Unless the government wants enormous tent cities along the Gulf Coast of people relying on humanitarian shipments of water and food to survive, these people need immediate grants and emergency loans from FEMA. They need them urgently.

$10.5 billion is not going to be nearly enough. There are over a million people directly affected who can’t live in their homes and cities. $10.5 billion would work out to only about $10,000 per person, which might be enough to help keep people going for a year or more until this mess is sorted out if the entire amount went to personal grants and loans to the displaced.

But it won’t. The city needs to be drained. The levees need to be rebuilt. The power, communications, and transportation infrastructures need to be rebuilt. Then hundreds of thousands of buildings need to be repaired or rebuilt (or at least demolished).

A million people need significant grants and loans from FEMA. If they don’t get them, many will remain homeless and unemployed for months. They need to get the money this month. A million people can’t live with friends, relatives, in motels, in campgrounds, in their cars, on highway overpasses, etc. for a year. They need to start rebuilding, and they need a financial jumpstart to do it.

Doing what needs to be done will cost an absolute fortune, probably a hundred billion federal dollars or more. Relying on the private sector to pay for it will be a humanitarian catastrophe, as the poor will literally be left to rot en masse. After the immediate concerns of getting people out of the city and giving the displaced some cash to keep them afloat are addressed, the private sector can move in to help rebuild.

But the actions that must be taken now must come from the federal government. The few thousand troops dispatched and the $10.5 billion in aid lead me to believe that the government may not understand that cleaning up this mess requires ten times the rescue workers and ten times the aid. And those workers and aid are required immediately. Every day wasted is represents a day of death and a week of squalor.

Sincerely,
Ed Miller
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  #9  
Old 09-04-2005, 04:44 PM
OtisTheMarsupial OtisTheMarsupial is offline
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Default Re: Mad? Write to Congress

Here's a great one I found on congress.org
also, there is now a website for us angry people: make them accountable
----

To:
President George Bush

September 4, 2005

Mr. President,

I am an 81 year old Republican going blind. I have enough sense to know and hear enough to be disgusted with your reticence that you have not moved quickly to this disaster. You and your super rich cronies have siphoned off enough American money and liberties. You all have allowed Vicente Fox to send their citizens into our country, putting out the Red Carpet, giving them free health care, housing, welfare and education. Let alone housing their violent criminals! You have used the term of these illegal immigrants as DISPLACED IMMMIGRANTS!

You call OUR AMERICAN CITIZENS of this country as REFUGES! How dare you to be so callous! You are our leader, so called leader, should you not have given them the rightful name as DISPLACED AMERICAN’S?

I am requesting the appointed positions of FEMA – Mike Brown, what’s his name, and Homeland Security director –Mr. Michael C., Completely out of it, FIRED! Clearly you all were warned 5 days in advance that this storm had the potential it had. It was all over our so called media! You all did nothing! After it hit …YOU ALL DID NOTHING! I have also have heard on our so called media, hearing these men being interviewed saying we didn’t know people were at the convention center etc,…Excuse me Mr. President you flew over and wave to those poor American’s that have been responsible for building such a great country that we American’s have today; they have parent and children in our military. In fact MR. PRESIDENT I THINK WITH ALL THE OTHER DIRTY DEEDS YOU HAVE COMMITTED IN OFFICE I THINK YOU AND YOUR CABINET SHOULD RESIGN! We need to have our official to think clearly and react quickly! You all have demonstrated your lack of ability of thinking clearly, and your ability to react quickly. As a citizen in the United States I feel this nation is in jeopardy with you at the helm.

I live in California and I have served in the Navy, my husband in the Air Force, My father served in the Signal Corp, and was a General. I also, lost a precious brother in law in WWII. I am ashamed of the response – Had President Roosevelt not acted so swiftly and with competence and those appointed we would have not won the war.

I shudder to think if California was hit by a huge earthquake, we would be forgotten too in favor of vacations and more important commitments? i.e., Ms. Rice buying shoes, Cheney planning for a nuclear attack on United States so we can go into Iran.

The best thing you did was to appoint the General in charge of the troops in Louisiana who told his troops them to PUT DOWN THEIR GUNS! He wants the effort to be a HUMANITARIAN ACTION. You and your father and your international friends are in favor of a ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT, did you all figure that our fellow American down in Louisiana and Mississippi were expendable?

All I can say is it is too late for so many-You are trying to save face by finally going down to the ravaged area for a photo op. Shameful! You should have been down there helping people on the buses and calling for support on the first day rather that taking valuable efforts of recovery and rescue agencies for your photo shots several day later when our American’s were dying in the streets.

You lied to the American people! You stated that,” nobody anticipated the breech of the levees.” George Jr. you are a bold face liar!
A June 8, 2004, New Orleans Times-Picayune article noted: "For the first time in 37 years, federal budget cuts have all but stopped major work on the New Orleans area's east bank hurricane levees." The article quoted the manager of the Army Corps of Engineers' Lake Pontchartrain levee project saying that "people should know that this is a work in progress, and there's more important work yet to do before there is a complete system in place." A Corps senior project manager added, "When levees are below grade, as ours are in many spots right now, they're more vulnerable to waves pouring over them and degrading them." And Jefferson Parish emergency management chief Walter Maestri told the paper: "It appears that the money [for hurricane-protection efforts] has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. ... Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
The buck stops with you! You cannot shift the blame on the State’s or their local official. Are you not Commander and Chief?
I cannot support any of you for your disservice to our Citizens!
Why have you not taken any international support and Medical help and supplies?
Your Cabinet and Tony Blair have been indited; you and your Cabinet need to answer Special Prosecutor’s Fitzgerald!
Like so many American’s I too will be opening up an escrow account, I will not be paying my taxes until you answer to Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald for High Crimes and Treason!
Sir you are a disgrace to the human race!
Mary J. Mallon

Lagunawoods , CA
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  #10  
Old 09-04-2005, 04:48 PM
BCPVP BCPVP is offline
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Default Re: Mad? Write to Congress

Anyone else see the irony in Republicans being mad that the FEDERAL government didn't immediately take over a state issue?
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