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The ACS Green Mountain Local Section Government Affairs Committee  A message from Glenn Ruskin Director, ACS Office of Legislative and Government Affairs, August 2007 It has been
written by the venerable Chinese philosopher Confucius that "a journey of a
thousand miles begins with the first step." This quote applies equally well to
passage of sweeping federal legislation by the U.S.
Congress-sometimes it takes years to get something right and develop
the needed support.
We witnessed a good case in point last week when Congress overwhelmingly adopted milestone legislation to bolster U.S. innovation and foster our global competitiveness. The bill, The America COMPETES Act, brought together various pieces of legislation dealing with federal research and development as well as science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education into a comprehensive bill. For those of you who are members of the ACS Legislative Action Network, the topics will sound very familiar as you have helped advocate for them over the past several years. Since 2005 LAN members have generated over 21,000 letters to Capitol Hill and the White House urging passage of U.S. innovation and competitiveness legislation! During that same period of time, LAN members and local section government affairs committees met with 74 congressional offices advocating on behalf of various parts of this bill. A message from Green Mountain GAC Co-chair, Sarah Locknar: Ralph Stewart and
I are co-chairs of the Green Mountain Local Section Government Affairs
Committee. The GAC acts as a "local voice" for
issues important to the American Chemical Society which are outlined in
their policy
statements (found through www.acs.org and the Legislative
Action Website). A really easy way to get involved is to
join the Legislative Action Network.
We've set up an email list for discussion of issues brought up by our congressional offices, and of other political chemistry-related issues (which we might like to ask for action on). We've taken the liberty of signing up all Vermont Legislative Action Network members, but any Vermont Chemist is welcome to join (or unsubscribe). I plan to send summaries of our discussions to our congressional offices so they can see our opinions on these matters. I hope that people will feel free to speak their minds on the issues. To subscribe to the list, send an email to listserv@list.uvm.edu with "SUB GMACSGR your name" in the message box. No subject line is necessary. To unsubscribe, send the message "UNSUBGMACSGR" to the same email address. To post to the list, write to GMACSGR@LIST.UVM.EDU ACS Office of Legislative and Government Action |