|
Meeting Notes
CfD Business Meeting, May 17, 2007
Present: Nick Albaugh, Colleen Blacklock, Jonathan Collett, Bill Dobbs, Norman Ehrlichman, Ken Fogarty, Dave Grodsky, Paddy Lane, Jack Maier, Carole Marner, Gene Marner, Suzanne Miller, Alice Richardson, Ed Rodriguez, Stef Seifried, Sandy Twang, Walter vom Saal.
1) Minutes accepted as sent out.
2) Treasurer's report: $178.50 on hand. $212 was reimbursed to Alice by the IRS for an incorrect billing.
Step It Up would like $100 from CfD if we can afford it. Paddy also has some receipts for xeroxing.
We are looking for a new treasurer.
3) Spam on our listserv: The filter on our Yahoo listserv catches things and sometimes when Ed is away, he does not pick it up for a while. Should we move to another server?
Jack Maier agrees to co-host our listserv to help prevent future backlogs. Bill Dobbs will look into Riseup as an alternative server.
4) Health Care reform work group (Mary Breuninger and Sandy Twang) met with the Health, Education and Agriculture Committee of the Otsego County Board of Reps, with the objective of asking the County Board to pass a resolution in favor of single payer health care. The board may be particulary open to this, as over half its tax levy this past year was used to pay health care costs for county employees and retirees. A copy of the proposed resolution is attached to this report. The group will make a half-hour presentation to the county board at their meeting on Wed, June 6.
5) Environmental work group: Will meet at the strawbale house at Pine Lake on Sunday May 20--6:15 for potluck, 7 PM to discuss local food infrastructure and projects the committee wants to do. Two local farmers will speak.
6) Voting machines: The Troy Board of Education has been given Liberty voting machines for free for their upcoming Board of Ed election. State election law does not cover school elections. This is the next wave of underhanded tactics that voting machine companies are using to ensure that their DREs are adopted by NY State.
On the federal level, Rush Holt's bill calls a "paper trail" printed by a DRE a "paper ballot." This is misleading because a paper trail from a touchscreen machine is not something which has been directly filled out by the voter, and it won't be counted for the election results. (It is used for recounts only, and it is very rare for any elections results to be changed by any information that arises after the initial announcement on election night.) Many voters cannot accurately verify the paper trail, and it does not necessarily contain the same votes as the electronic votes inside the DRE. Rush Holt's bill is a dangerous bill
7) Arcuri visit: We discussed briefly the visit with Rep. Michael Arcuri that is planned for Wed, June 30, and who would be interested in going. Gene Marner urged those going to address the issue of Peak Oil. Energy descent is inevitable and needs to be controlled. Forced energy conservation and research on the subject should be advocated for, as well as localization. Sandy Twang, Dave Grodsky, Ed Lentz and Paddy Lane expressed interest in going.
8) Newspaper ad: A newspaper ad calling for an end to the Iraq war, enumerating a list of complaints about this administration, and calling on our Congresspeople to address these and also call for impeachment was discussed at length. The group worked off of two variations of a proposed ad. Eventually, all the points addressed in each version of the ad were read aloud and the group voted on which to include. The list was then handed to a drafting committee made up of Walter vom Saal, Sandy Twang, Jonathan Collett and Ed Lentz to come up with a final draft for the group's approval and final suggestions for changes. The entire discussion took about two hours, facilitated by Ed Lentz. Proposed publication date is June 30, and our aim is to collect hundreds of signatures for it by June 19. The final version will be posted to the listserv and will also be able to be downloaded from our website www.democracycoalition.org.
|
