Head ‘em up. Move ‘em out!
Let’s get this show on the road!
Alllllll aboooaaard!
Anchors Aweigh!
Let’s roll!
Off we go, into the wild blue yonder….
Over hill, over dale, we will hit the dusty trail…
Forward, march!
Or, as Herman Cain’s grandfather would put it, “Them that’s goin’, get in th’ wagon. Them that’s stayin’, get out the way.”
Our message to you: Join the FairTax Facebook Phone Tree Army in your District.
What’s with all the clichés, anyway? After more than two years of diligent work by your Georgians for Fair Taxation leadership and dedicated volunteers, we have our State of Georgia Fair Tax bill, ready to introduce in the 2016 General Assembly.*
Introducing the bill is just the beginning. We need thousands of enthusiastic, eager, willing recruits from every corner of the state for our Facebook Phone Tree Army, people in every House and Senate district who will make a few phone calls each, or write a short letter, or send a quick fax or email to their state Representative and state Senator.
We know our bill will face serious opposition in the General Assembly from legislators and the Administration who count on campaign contributions from special interests in exchange for favorable income tax treatment at the state level. The special interests, with deep pockets, will join forces to stop real tax reform that would overturn the status quo. It is up to each and every one of us to overcome that opposition by communicating – clearly, emphatically, and unequivocally – to our elected officials: WE WANT A TRUE FAIR TAX for the state of Georgia.
How do we do this? We TELL them.
GFFT has made it as easy as pie (what’s one more cliché) to contact your legislators. We now have Facebook Phone Tree groups set up for all 180 House and 56 Senate Districts, and finding yours takes just a few steps:
- From your Facebook home page, use the search window at the top to find your House and Senate groups, using this format: GA House XXX and GA Senate XX where X is the District number. (Find your districts at http://openstates.org/ga/legislators/ and enter your address.) For example, search for “GA House 009” to find the northeast Georgia group whose state Representative is Kevin Tanner and “GA Senate 51” for State Senator Steve Gooch’s District. Click on the bold font district names that appear under the search bar; this links you directly to your district pages. (Having trouble? Ask your kids or grandkids for help.)
- From your district page, ask to join by clicking on the green “+Join Group” button, just under the Georgians for FairTax logo:
One of the Group Administrators will confirm that you live in the District and approve your request. It’s important to join only the House and Senate groups where you live and vote. Those are the representatives who are supposed to listen to you, their constituents. - As soon as you’ve joined, invite your neighbors, friends, relatives, co-workers – anyone you know who lives in your House and Senate Districts, believes in the FairTax, and uses Facebook – to join your groups. For folks you know in other districts, direct them to Step #1. Keep it going until we have Facebook recruits all over the state.
- Once you’ve joined your House and Senate Phone Tree groups, check Facebook regularly. We’ll let you know when it’s time to call your Representative and Senator to tell them to support the bill. And we’ve made it super easy to make that call or send that fax or email. You’ll find complete contact information for your Representatives and Senators at the top of the page, just under the Join button. Be sure to set your Notifications to alert you when we post in the groups.
Are YOU ready to join? Do it NOW, and when our bill becomes law, you can say “I helped make that happen.”
* The bill was written by David R. Burton, Senior Fellow in Economic Policy at the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, part of The Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity at The Heritage Foundation. Burton was one of the original co-authors of HR-25/S-155, the Fair Tax Act. (For more information, here’s a link to his bio: http://www.heritage.org/about/staff/b/david-r-burton#).