Silicon Valley Republican Women Federated

NEWSLETTER

www.svrwf.org * May 2005

 

             

 

 

President: Doris Whitney – 408-997-0581 * 1st VP & Program: Alice Story – 408-733-3248 * 2nd VP & Membership: Marie Dominguez-Gasson - * Newsletter Editor: Laura Riffle – 408-263-0990

 

All SVRWF luncheons and dinner meetings are held at the Ramada Inn Silicon Valley, 1217 Wildwood Avenue, Sunnyvale, California – Luncheon Meetings: Social 11:30am, Lunch 12:00 Noon – Dinner Meetings: Social 6:30pm, Dinner 7:00pm – Luncheon: $16.00 – Dinner: $20.00 – For reservations please call Louise Kinney at 408-739-4724 or Alice Wilson at 408-733-6352 or Doris Whitney at 408-997-0581

 

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

 

May 5                     SVRWF Board Meeting – Noon – Ramada Inn Silicon Valley

                                (This is a CHANGE from the normal Board Meeting Date)

 

May 12                   Region VII Conference at the Ramada Inn Silicon Valley

                                10a.m. until 2p.m. – Cost is $25 – Further information in this newsletter

 

June 2                     SVRWF Dinner Meeting at the Ramada Inn Silicon Valley

                                Social 6:30 p.m. – Dinner 7:00 p.m.

                               Speaker: Luis Buehler – Bay Area Vice President of the California Republican Party

 

May 25, 2005 is our Bridge Party Marathon at The Forum

9:45 am for BRIDGE * 12:30 pm LUNCH & Prizes

Menu Choices:  Chicken Caesar Salad (dressing on the side, rolls and butter) or Thin sliced Steak Sandwich with red peppers & onions on a French roll with tater tots

Both are served with soup and lemon cake and coffee or tea

Cost:                             $17.00

Deadline to register:       Friday, May 20

The Forum is located at 23500 Cristo Rey Drive in Cupertino

Make check payable to JANE REED.  Please write your menu choice on your check and send it to Jane at 1515 Ashcroft Way, Sunnyvale, CA 94087.  If you have questions or would like to discuss joining the bridge group, please call Jane at 408-245-2429.

 

Bridge Couples Group: The party will be held at the Reed’s home on May 20 at 7:30pm.  Call Jane at 408-245-2429 and let her know whether you will be bringing an appetizer or a dessert.  Prizes awarded and sign-ups taken for next year.  Deadline is a couple of days before the party.

 

“Thanks to all who make our annual bridge fund-raiser a success.   Please join us.” – Jane Reed

 

Text Box: Membership – SVRWF membership dues are: Active Voting Member - $25.00, Associate Member - $15.00, Patron - $40.00 ($25.00 dues plus a $15.00 gratuity to the club). A person can only be a voting member of one federated club but may be an associate member of one or more clubs if she is already an active voting member of a Unit Club. Please make your checks payable to SVRWF and mail to: SVRWF / Doris Whitney 20181 Almaden Road San Jose, CA 95120

 

 

 

 

PRESIDENT’S LETTER . . . .           By Doris Whitney

On April 14, 2005, your executive board met at the Ramada Inn Silicon Valley.  As per our 2005 budget that you approved, JoAnn Barr volunteered to complete the paperwork for the Silicon Valley Republican Women Federated's contribution to the Santa Clara County Republican Party (formerly known to most of us as the Republican Central Committee of Santa Clara County).  In working with the County Republican Party, we will be registering voters in Sunnyvale and Milpitas this summer.  Volunteers are appreciated.  Please call if you are interested.  The board discussed some projects regarding our veterans and military people.

After some research and some help from Shirley Harvey and Nancy Wark (a new member), we will work as a supporting group for the future Fisher House to be built  next to the Palo Alto Veterans Hospital.  The Fisher House will be for families visiting their loved ones at the VA Hospital and veterans needing out-patient care.  The Fisher Foundation believes they can have the home built a year from now.  My husband and I were aware of the wonderful things the Fisher Foundation has done for our military and the veterans.  The Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum at Pier 86 in New York City is a Fisher Foundation project.  There are already many Fisher Houses at VA and military hospitals around the United States.  Nancy Wark,  who had  become aware of the  Palo Alto Fisher House at her DAR meeting,  has volunteered to be chairperson for this project.  Nancy will have some information in this newsletter.  Many thanks Nancy for volunteering.

CFRW Advocacy will be in Sacramento April 25 and 26 with four SVRWF members attending.  Our governor may be a luncheon speaker.  We are the only state that employs a full time lobbyist and maintains an office in our state capital.   We are also the only state that puts on an Advocacy Program every year to showcase the workings of the Capitol and Republican legislators to our members and youth.

Mark your calendar to attend our Region VIII Conference on May 12.  This will substitute for our May meeting and is scheduled one week later than our regular meeting.  Director for Region VIII

Shirley Harvey has developed an outstanding program  starting at 10:00A.M.  We hope to see you on May 12.

In March, I attended the Northern Division, CFRW conference in Napa.   There were five SVRWF members that attended.  To begin the conference the welcome speaker was Napa County Supervisor Bill Dodd ( a Republican).  Every conference and convention starts with a welcome from a current Republican elected official to tell us about the area that we are visiting.

The morning business meeting included reports, unit club information, and nominating a CFRW and Northern Division Nominating Committee.  Speakers were Edward J. "Ted" Costa, (CEO People's Advocate), Ron Rogers (Partner, Russo, Marsh, & Rogers, Founder, The Campaign Store.com), Pete Conaty (Lobbying, Pete Conaty & Associates), Karen Hanretty (CRP Communications Director) and The Honorable Jim Nielsen (Director, California Department of Corrections).  There was a tremendous amount of information provided to us by the speakers.    I would encourage each member to consider attending a conference or convention.  Our November convention will be in Pleasanton.  I hope you will consider attending.

Doris Whitney, President, Silicon Valley Republican Women Federated.

 

 

 

                           SVRWF'S COMMUNITY OUTREACH      By Alice J. Wilson

 

     One of our Community Outreach projects is our membership in the Sunnyvale Chamber of Commerce.  On June 4th & 5th, we will register voters at the Sunnyvale Art & Wine Festival.  The 6th Annual Summer Music Series will be held at the Farmer's Market in Sunnyvale on Wednesday evenings from July 6th through August 31st.  The Chamber holds a "Wake Up! Sunnyvale" breakfast at 7:30 AM on the second Thursday of the month and a Mixer from 5 to 7 PM on the fourth Thursday.  A Golf Tournament will be held in September.  As we have for many years, we will be contributing gifts and money to the Sunnyvale Community Services during the Christmas Season.

     If you are interested in representing our club in one or more of these events, please give me a call at 408 733-6352.

 

 

No Budget, but FTB Deciding a Statue of Limitations  (found by Shirley Harvey on the CFRW Website)

With the budget deadline June 15th, the legislature has not spent a lot of time hammering out a budget. In the words of a Sacramento Bee editorial, “The state’s budget is still in shambles and the June 15th mandate for a balanced budget is just two months away. Worse...the economy now is getting shaky—meaning revenue growth could start to slow, making the budget crisis worse. Yet legislators still are playing around with unneeded new legislation.”

However, on a different front, the California Franchise Tax Board is now considering limits on its ability to reach so far back to collect money. Recently, the FTB had sent out letters to over 400,000 people saying they may owe taxes going back decades. One woman received a letter saying she owed an overdue tax bill from 1975 for over $25,000.

The Internal Revenue Service has a ten-year time limit on the collection of federal taxes except in the case of fraud or failure to file returns. At a recent meeting, The FTB has no such time limit. Director of Finance Tom Campbell argued for a ten-year limit similar to the federal government. Recently the three-member board instructed its staff to draft a legislative proposal for a 20-year limit.

According to FTB representatives, a 10-year limit would cause the state to lose $15 million a year while a 20-year limit would only result in $2 million a year. The time limit would have to be approved by the Legislature and signed into law before it was enacted.

 

 

Have you ever tried to commit voter fraud?  Probably not, but no doubt you have contemplated how easy it would be. Since all you have to do is register to vote multiple times, then walk into a polling place and declare your name and address and cast your ballot-- and then go from polling place to polling place doing this over and over again.  A simple prevention would be requiring voters to show identification before receiving their ballot.  This is the eighth time since 2000 that the Democrat-controlled legislature has rejected this common sense protection.
Since the Legislature is unwilling to act, a group called “Citizens Who Vote” is stepping up to put the idea on the ballot.  For more information, see www.voteridact.com.
 
From THE LEONARD LETTER
A weekly electronic newsletter about
California government, business and taxes
By Bill Leonard, Member
State Board of Equalization

 

"Howard Dean is out trying to rally the Democrats for 2008. This is what he told them. He spoke quite honestly. He said the Democrats have to stop speaking down to voters. And today John Kerry said 'Well I can't do that. What's the point in being better than everybody if you can't speak down to them?'" --Jay Leno
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Opportunity to Help Our Heroes LOCALLY                                           by Nancy Wark

Are you aware of the Fisher House? It is a wonderful opportunity for our Club to aid our Military Families. There are plans to build one of these houses in Palo Alto.  “Because members of the military and their families are stationed worldwide and must often travel great distances for specialized medical care, Fisher House™ Foundation donates ‘comfort homes’, built on the grounds of major military and VA medical centers. These homes enable family members to be close to a loved one at the most stressful times - during the hospitalization for an unexpected illness, disease, or injury.”

As you can well imagine there is a great need for one in Palo Alto can you picture the shock on a young family’s face when they are told the price of a hotel in Palo Alto when they arrive from a small town in, say, the Mid West.

You can find a great deal of information about them at their website at www.fisherhouse.org I’m a new member of our club and Doris Whitney has asked that I gather information for us regarding this opportunity to aide our military. You may contact me, Nancy Wark, for more information and I will be bringing some printed information to our next meeting. My email is nancywark1@hotmail.com and my phone number is 408-356-7879.

In closing, you will be interested to know that if we designate our checks to go towards the Palo Alto House 100% is allocated for that purpose and the Foundation does NOT disclose the names of its donors to any other individuals or organizations, they also state they do not do direct mail or do telephone solicitation.

From The Republican Party of Santa Clara County…

Republican Party Goals

Elect Republicans to all offices

In order to achieve this goal, the Republican County Committee:

Conducts candidate development work shops

Develops precinct committees so that all 1650 precincts in the county have precinct workers to individually contact voters in their precincts.

Conducts voter registration drives at various community events and shopping centers throughout the county, from Palo Alto to Gilroy.

Makes people of all ethnicities welcome into the Republican Party. This is carried out by our Citizens by Choice Committee.

 

 

Makes efforts to coordinate the activities of various volunteer Republican organizations in the county.

Provides speakers to address various high school and community colleges throughout the county about the goals and principles of the Republican Party.

Attracts numerous volunteers to man our headquarters office building at…

 522 North Monroe, San Jose.