SwBratcher's Posts

Campaign for Liberty hard against HR5175: Bill Passes

Campaign for Liberty (C4L) does a great job with communicating promptly and repeatedly when urgent communications are necessary to our representation in D.C. They do such a good job, in fact, that thousands of their listeners communicate with senators and representatives through email, phone calls and online web form submissions. I've been one of these of late. I've reached out to Blunt, Bond and McCaskill on a few issues that I felt were important. There is one thing that is missing in the C4L communication process. They haven't taken the step to educate those that they call to communicate with their elected reps. This lack of education causes a barrage of emotional, Constitutionalist rantings to be sent to our representatives. This cannot be productive. We need to communicate with, not shout at our representation. These people are individuals, that we voted into that seat.

In the hopes of communicating this back to C4L I sent the following email message through their web site contact form:

I use opencongress.org and love the interface. I would love to see a C4L official user there, that comments in the specific lines of the bill with reasons why that language is unacceptable and will erode our constitutional rights. Even link it to supporting articles or historical reference to educate people on the 'why' of it. I've commented on the Disclose Act there and taken the permalink from that line of the bill to share with you. 

Here: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h5175/text?version=rh&nid=t0:rh:173

Notice how it takes me directly to the dialogue on that specific line of the bill. Speak up there. Link your arguments in these C4L pages to the actual bill. This will allow us to better pose informed argument to our representation when we contact them.

Your emails are often emotionally, inspirationally and passionately delivered. If that is all the language that most of your users have to reference when contacting their DC Reps, the communication will only serve to incite defensive, us-against-you emotions in those reps. However, educating us in a way that allows me to tell Mr. Blunt that in Section XX alone there is enough broad stroke language that this bill must be voted down, he knows that I'm smart, interested, and aware of his/their embedded loophole. Cuts out the relevance of the hollow political babble that is normally spewed back at us as a response when we send them feedback.

On the DISCLOSURE Act...

The DISCLOSE Act passed a few moments ago. We failed. They failed. It is a failure because of the loopholes in the language that are left open to eventual, inevitable abuse of power that will constrict organizations like C4L and their freedom of speech.

Looking forward...

I think if we let the reps know we are educated and aware, they will have more of a sense of accountability. Right now, they know we don't know the specific detailed language that is undermining our constitutional rights. If we change that, it could impact our relationship with our representation greatly. This is important.

• 24 June 2010
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