NC Veterans Council 2006 State Senate & State House Audio Forums:Invitation

The veterans organizations of the  North Carolina Veterans' Council comprised of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (VFW), the American Legion, the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), AMVETS, the Military Order of the Purple Heart, the Vietnam Veterans of America, the Marine Corps League, the NC Department of American Ex-POWs, and the Fleet Reserve Association. and their collective 140,000 members are extending this open invitation to the NC State Senate and NC State House Candidates to participate in the

2006 NC Veterans Council
State Senate & State House
Audio Forums

These neutral, non-partisan, not-for-profit forums are part of  an ongoing effort to engage our membership, our deployed military community and our state's voters in the democratic process .

The Veterans Council will be asking questions of the Candidates on behalf of our membership over the course of the 2006 Elections.
 
Candidates are asked to take the oppurtunity to personally reply via phone to the following questions.

1. How do you stand on providing totally disabled veterans with property tax relief? 

2. Are you a veteran or have you had any other military experience?  If so, do you belong to any veterans' organization? 

3. Do you support extending the NC state income tax exemption of military and federal retirement benefits for those that entered military service after August 1985? 

4. How do you stand on creating a state cabinet Department of Veterans Affairs to replace the current state Division of Military and Veterans Affairs under the Department of Administration?

5. Do you favor providing exemption from tuition at North Carolina public universities and colleges for North Carolina resident veterans, who have been recently separated from active military service? 

6. Will you support efforts to establish two additional State Veterans' Nursing Homes similar to the ones in Fayetteville and Salisbury?

• Candidates need never be in the same place at the same time to participate.
• Candidates will be provided with a phone number and personal access code.
• Candidates can record their responses from anywhere home, office, car, the campaign trail.
• Candidates will be provided 90 seconds for their responses.
• Candidates will have an oppurtunity to review and record their responses as many times as they wish.
• Candidates responses will be posted in the order they are received with no editing.
• Candidates content will be donated to the public domain through the Internet Archive after the Election.

The Veterans' Council has pointed out that 770,000 veterans now live in North Carolina, and total 2005 Veterans Administration expenditures in the state added $2.25 billion to the North Carolina's economy. In addition, veterans and their families represent 2 million votes.

For more information please e-mail choicesofdemocracy@gmail.com or call 336.273-4371.

Thank you for your consideration and we look forward to your participation.