League of Women Voters of Denton Newsletter: December 2007

Sue Smith, President
Sondra Ferstl, Editor
P. O. Box 424945 TWU Station
Denton, TX 76204
www.lwvdenton.org

Calendar

Sunday, December 2, 3 p.m.
Board Meeting at the home of Peg LaPoint, 1900 Highland Park Circle. Members are welcome to attend Board Meetings.

Thursday, December 13, 7 p.m.
Holiday Party and Program Planning (local, state, and national). Home of Peg and Tom LaPoint, 1900 Highland Park Circle.

Sunday, January 13, 3 p.m.
Board Meeting at the home of Peg LaPoint.

Membership in the League of Women Voters of Denton is $50 for an individual member. Household memberships are $50 for the first person and $25 for each additional person residing at the same mailing address. Full-time students may join for $20. Send a check payable to LWV-Denton to P.O. Box 424945 TWU Station, Denton, Texas 76204.

HELP SET OUR COURSE FOR 2008-2009

The December 13 meeting will be our annual Christmas party. You are strongly urged to attend because it is during this celebration that we set our course for the upcoming year. While enjoying party fare and wine, we ask you to come prepared to suggest subjects for monthly programs and possible study. This is your opportunity to influence the direction of the local League while enjoying the excellent company of fellow League members.

Is there an issue you believe the League should be discussing or studying? We are especially interested in local issues of interest to the membership. Please come prepared to give and discuss suggestions for the upcoming year.

We will have a brief discussion of program at the National and State levels, led by Sondra Ferstl and Sue Smith.

Also, you can help your League improve by suggesting how we might better publicize our activities and how we might better publicly recognize our non-member contributors.

Feel free to bring finger food or treats.

The party will be at Tom and Peg LaPoint’s home: 1900 Highland Park Circle at 7:00 p.m. Directions: Cross I-35 E by going south on the North Texas Boulevard bridge. Turn right onto Highland Park Road and follow the street as it bends left past the duck pond. The first street to the left is Highland Park Circle. 1900 is the white brick house at the end of the cul de sac. Phone: 891-4984.

Peg LaPoint, Program VP

PRESIDENT’S PODIUM

How important is our December 13 meeting on pro-gram planning to you? It’s not often we plan for all three levels of League at one time, so if you want to have a say in setting the course for LWV-Denton, LWV-TX and LWVUS in 2008-2009, this is your chance. All our program planning starts with ideas from members of local Leagues. Remember the idea from Sondra Ferstl who suggested a national study of Immigration at our last national program planning meeting? We sent in the suggestion and did a little conferring with other Leagues, particularly those in Texas to encourage them to submit the topic. By the time of the planning deadline there were 74 Leagues that submitted the topic to the National Board. A few months later, at Convention 2006, the Immigration study was adopted. We are participating in the LWVUS consensus at the local level in November. It will certainly be interesting to see the end result from LWVUS in spring 2008.

Come with your ideas and finger-food refreshments for an interesting meeting.

On November 13 we participated in voter registration at the University of North Texas, organized by LWV-Tarrant County. Kay Branum and Sondra Ferstl represented us and registered close to 70 voters. It was non-stop from start to finish!

Sue Smith

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES VOTERS GUIDE

A recent news release from LWVUS announces that thanks to the collaboration among members of the Maryland, the National Capitol Area, the Virginia Leagues and LWVUS, twelve candidates have been invited to participate in the LWVUS Presidential Candidate Voters Guide.

The candidates who were invited to participate met the following criteria for the Primary Election: 1) The candidate must have made a public announcement of her/his intention to run for her/his Party’s nomination for President; and, 2) The candidate must meet the Presidential Election Campaign Fund Act’s minimum contribution threshold requirements for qualifying for matching funds, based on the most recent data publicly available on the FEC Web site as of October 5, 2007.

The questions asked of the qualifying candidates are as follows:

1) What should be done, if anything, at the federal level to reduce our use of and dependence on fossil fuels?

2) What should be our short term and long term goals in Iraq and the Middle East?

3) What should the federal government do, if anything, to ensure that every American has health coverage?

4) Please explain why you do or do not support setting spending limits for political campaigns and providing a set amount of public funding for all candidates who agree to take no private contributions.

5) What should the federal government do about immigration?

Source: League of Women Voters of the United States

The Voters Guide will be available by January 2008.