CALL TO ACTION... US DOT, Mary
Peters Announcement
Background
Letter Sample - Long - Word DOC File - Be sure and edit properly before sending
Letter Sample - Short - Word DOC File - Edit before sending
Instructions
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ACTION REQUIRED: WRITE AT LEAST 3 LETTERS Write three (3) letters to your elected officials serving in the U.S. Congress.
Please
send a letter to each of our (2) United States Senators in the
U.S. Senate, and the third letter to your U.S. Congressman
serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. Please be clear
we are talking about your elected officials serving in U.S.
Congress in Washington D.C.
All of us in Florida have the same two U.S. Senators, Senator
Martinez and Senator Nelson. This is no good if we only send 100 or 500 letters. We need 10,000 letters, so we need all members to participate and we need our members to get other people to participate. Please mail the letter one and letter two to our pair of U.S. Senators to:
The Honorable Mel Martinez
The Honorable Bill Nelson IMPORTANT NOTE: Letter 3 address is ONLY an example. This is my U.S. House member. This is only applicable to you if you live in the same U.S. House District. You need to write the letter to YOUR U.S. Congressman (The one representing YOU in Washington, D.C.). Florida has 25 different members of the U.S. House. If you do not know who represents you in the U.S. House, look at your voter ID card to determine your US House District info. With his info you can look in the phone book to see who your elected officials are but online there are many resources. You can also go to our website and hit the LEGISLATIVE button to go to our new Legislative Info Center link. You can enter your physical address to find out who your elected officials are. (EXAMPLE ONLY - This address is only good if you reside in US House Congressional District 6 (The Sixth District)
The Honorable Cliff Stearns We need to involve other organizations and people in this effort.
We also need
every member to get a friend or family member to do the same Email is ok if that is how it has to be done, but email is easily deleted. I prefer letters arriving via US mail –at least 10,000 of them. They have much greater impact in that someone has to deliver them, open them, organize them, etc. PLEASE No threats, no screaming, no yelling, no profanity. We need our messages to all be rational requests to simply get him on target with what it will take to stay in the US Senate. We want their offices covered with our letters, but we do not want a single staffer to be able to say a single thing about ‘hate’ mail or give them any cause to portray any of our messages or ABATE in a negative light. Your letters can be very short. Give your Chapter members examples. Write letters at Chapter meetings. You can encourage them to change the example letters somewhat to personalize them, but we all need to write the letters. Below is an example letter **********begin LONG example letter **********
The Honorable Cliff Stearns Thank you for your continued service in the US Congress. I remain a registered voter in your District. I am writing in regard to my extreme displeasure with U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Peters. I am dismayed that she feels comfortable going on record that she is usurping federal law intent to prevent the federal government from interfering in State Rights issues specifically in regard to mandatory helmet laws for motorcyclists. Her February 14, 2008 press release as well as related information she distributed on November 2, 2007 clearly violates the intent of Section 30105, Restriction on lobbying activities. She is using information prepared by NHTSA in violation of this. I am of the opinion I would like to see her removed from duties. She certainly should be taken to task. If this law is too vague to prohibit her from whatever she is doing, please amend it and close the loophole and remove her ability to interfere in states rights issues. We have received advanced word in Florida to expect improvements in our fatality reports, yet with the propaganda released in November, NHTSA uses their own math to also incorrectly guess how many lives would have been save if the person killed has been wearing a motorcycle helmet. One of the most offensive and hard to digest concepts she is introducing as legislation involves encouraging diverting federal funds specifically for motorcycle safety in regard to education for use in promoting motorcycle helmet use. We know rider awareness and rider training can proactively help save lives. As the people who are dying in these accidents, we prefer to not get in them to begin with. We know we are going to be hurt and killed in crashes. Helmets are effective band aids for a limited few fatalities. Someone died this past weekend in Ocala on a motorcycle because someone turned left in front of them. This motorcyclist did not die because they were not wearing a helmet, they died because someone turned left in front of them. Since they did not mention the rider was not wearing a helmet, I suppose we can assume this was another of the numerous helmeted riders who are being slain on Florida highways every day. Mandatory helmet laws will have little effect on the fatality rates of motorcycle accident victims. In Florida the fatality per 10,000 registrations ratios was sometimes higher in the years before Florida allowed adults the freedom to choose when to wear a helmet. Since the 2000 change in Florida’s motorcycle law, the ratios of fatalities per accidents and incapacitating injuries per accidents are sometimes lower for those without a helmet than those who wore one. Below is a copy of the law I am referring to: From the U.S. Code Online via GPO Access
[wais.access.gpo.gov]
[Laws in effect as of January 3, 2005]
[Document not affected by Public Laws enacted between
January 3, 2005 and February 7, 2007]
[CITE: 49USC30105]
TITLE 49--TRANSPORTATION
SUBTITLE VI--MOTOR VEHICLE AND DRIVER PROGRAMS
PART A--GENERAL
CHAPTER 301--MOTOR VEHICLE SAFETY
SUBCHAPTER I--GENERAL
Sec. 30105. Restriction on lobbying activities (a) In General.--No funds appropriated to the Secretary for the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shall be available for
any activity specifically designed to urge a State or local legislator
to favor or oppose the adoption of any specific legislative proposal
pending before any State or local legislative body.
I very much appreciate your consideration on this matter. Do please contact me if you find yourself in need about information regarding motorcycles and the people who ride them. Thank you again for your service in the U.S. House. Sincerely, Jeffery E. Baxla **********end LONG example letter ********** NOTES: It remains important the Chapter newsletter contains the Chapter’s legislator contact info. Every Chapter must keep this contact info visible for their membership, this is who we are and what we do. We have to make it as painless as possible for our membership to participate. Sometimes we see only information for elected members of the Florida legislature. These example letters are not about our officials in Tallahassee, these are to our elected officials in Washington, D.C. Please be sure to take the same info to the next level and make sure all Chapter newsletters have the names and contact info for our Florida U.S. Congressional delegation in D.C. AND the members of our Florida legislature in Tallahassee. Know that it is important to help some people learn and distinguish the difference between the two, one being state, the other being federal. You can also leave out some of the details above and write a much shorter letter.
The Honorable Bill Nelson I am writing in regard to my extreme displeasure with U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Peters. I am dismayed that she feels comfortable going on record that she is usurping federal law intent to prevent the federal government from interfering in State Rights issues specifically in regard to mandatory helmet laws for motorcyclists. Her February14, 2008 press release and related information she distributed on November 2, 2007 clearly violates the intent of Section 30105, Restriction on lobbying activities. She is using information prepared by NHTSA in violation of this. I am of the opinion I would like to see her removed from duties. She certainly should be taken to task. If this law is too vague to prohibit her from whatever she is doing, please amend it and close the loophole and remove her ability to interfere in states rights issues. I very much appreciate your consideration on this matter. Do please contact me if you find yourself in need about information regarding motorcycles and the people who ride them. Thank you again for your service in the U.S. House. Sincerely, Jeffery E. Baxla
**********end
SHORT example letter **********
EXTRA CREDIT:
Extra/Extra
Credit: More extra credit, you can also write to HER:
The
Honorable Mary E. Peters EMAIL: dot.comments@dot.gov
to your US House Rep or Senator but do not know their phone number, you can call the Capitol switch board in Washington, DC at 202-224-3121 and ask for which office you would like to speak to. The preference is that we send letters in the U.S. mail. If we can send 10,000 the bulk of that correspondence can be seen and felt better than a bunch of email. If you cannot fathom being able to write and mail a letter, anyone can go the US Senate and US House web pages to email their legislators or get the contact info to write or call. http://www.house.gov/writerep/ You can go to this site and enter your zip code to send an email to your US House member http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm You can go to this site to email your (2) US Senators in Washington, DC When you write letters, you do not have to offer to have your legislators contact you for further information but there a great advantages to establishing rapport. Making yourself available does not mean they will call you. If they do, GREAT. There is nothing wrong with saying, “Thanks for calling, I will get back to you with some facts you can use”. You do not have to be an expert on anything, you can get any information you need from us. If you do not know, you do not have to answer. It is very important we always answer truthfully and factually so they will also count on information from us to meet that criteria. Thanks for your efforts, Let's Rock and bury them in 10k+ letters.......JEB
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