LD Town Hall meetings today, get involved

People often complain that politics is depressing. Politicians are often dishonest and power-grabbing. Meetings are boring. Political activists are annoying. The media barely covers rallies. It’s all so frustrating and exhausting.

They say all politics is local. That’s not quite true, but it is true that getting involved makes a big difference. Even though it’s painful and unpleasant.

I say: progressives should take over the Democratic Party the way social conservatives and Tea Baggers infiltrated the GOP. See this article. Progressive pour tremendous amounts of time, money, and energy into advocacy groups (MoveOn, PDA, DFA, environmental groups, peace groups, health care reform groups, election reform groups, etc, etc). If, instead, they took over the Democratic Party, we’d have a better chance of influencing legislation and elections. Third parties rarely have much influence in American politics.

Enough preaching. Many legislative districts are holding town hall meetings today, where your state legislators will give short speeches and are usually available for questions.

Do a google search like this one to find the times and locations of town hall meetings. Or visit your state legislator’s webpage, which you can find at http://www.leg.wa.gov/pages/home.aspx.

What should we ask our legislators?

Please consider attending your LD meeting and asking questions about issues that concern you. For me the most pressings issues are: (1) eliminating tax loopholes, (2) the unconstitutionality of I-1053 , Tim Eyman’s bill requiring 2/3 majorities to raise revenue, (3) crisis pregnancy centers’ lack of truth-in-advertising, and (4) The worker’s compensation legislation opposed by big labor, as described in the post below or  here.

I’m sure this just scratches the surface of what’s important.

This newsletter gives a good summary of the bills.

Also, King County Democrats prepared this pdf document describing the bills under consideration.

Wish it were all easy.