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I participated in the recent EFF push for contacting elected representatives regarding SOPA. I customized their pre-packaged letter greatly, adding both my experience and qualifications and expounding on the distrust from the tech industry to SOPA.

The response from my (Republican) Congressman was a form letter telling me I was wrong, and regurgitating a the pro-SOPA talking points.

I've been contemplating a rather severe letter in response, but I haven't gotten to it as I don't believe anything I can say to him will be effective.




I was listening to an interview of Jack Abramoff plugging his new book. Don't know if the book is any good, but one comment that struck me was that, bluntly, campaign donations, all the various perks given to politicians and their staff were bribes. My opinion matches. They're indirect bribes, (mostly) following legal boundaries, but basically bribes for attention if not for outright votes.

What gets a politicians attention is money, and less directly votes - but money can move votes... and people have a poor long-term memory at the voting booth.

I wonder what a open "real-time democracy" Political Action Committee website might look like. Suppose there were tracked tallies of voting intentions, donations, donator "votes" to apply money to issues to be spent on specific campaigns at election time. I imagine you'd want to distribute election targeting data to the PAC voters so they can individually make their resource decisions, maybe to shift their donation to politicians who were most vulnerable in a given district. Sending a politician updates of that summarized data with time series growth might get their attention better than letters. It sucks that we need to bribe your own representatives though...


"I've been contemplating a rather severe letter in response, but I haven't gotten to it as I don't believe anything I can say to him will be effective."

I doubt whether anything you say to _him_ would be effective. But why not write a response and then post the three letters (your first, his reply, your response) to a blog or website? If you publicly reveal the weakness of his position it could have some effect.


I'm a bit disappointed the EFF submit form didn't forward me a copy of the letter I sent through their site.

I didn't make a copy, and instantly after sending, wished I had.


Mr Congressman, you have lost my vote forever. Furthermore, I will be campaigning on behalf of $OPPONENT who still believes in freedom and our greatest liberties. The fact that we have great men like $OPPONENT proves American democracy still works.


"Lost my vote forever" is, I'm sure, the kind of meaningless spiel they hear everyday. It would likely have the same effect on a congressman that saying "meat is murder" has on me - instant tune-out.

A response informing the congressman of why he's wrong, citing loss of jobs and liberty while threatening innovation, all in the name of an ever-growing government keen to erode our rights in the service of special interests, would likely hit enough republican talking points to at least merit a moment's consideration. Which, at the end of the day, is probably the best you could hope for.


That's assuming that this comgressman believes his talking points. I'm of the opinion that many talking points are for _other_ people to believe, but the ones saying them do not believe in them. The subject matter just doesn't affect them. Why would a politician who has been bought by Big Media care about innovation, loss of jobs/liberty, or erosion of rights?

Hit them where it hurts. Threaten _their_ job. If you lose your job due to their legislation, they'll just blame their opponent and tell you to stop begging for handouts.


Threatening their job is one thing -- it's when you say that they've lost your vote _forever_ that it becomes too far, as they might feel that they have no choice for recompense to gain your vote back.

In short, it's going too far, and even if it isn't, certainly seems like an idle threat.

Saying something more like "I cannot vote for any candidate who supports this policy or any like it" is perhaps a more effective statement to make.


A fair point. I like your wording.


"Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on their word.... he who has known best how to [be foxy] has succeeded best.

"But it is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic, and to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived. One recent example I cannot pass over in silence. Alexander VI did nothing else but deceive men, nor ever thought of doing otherwise, and he always found victims; for there never was a man who had greater power in asserting, or who with greater oaths would affirm a thing, yet would observe it less; nevertheless his deceits always succeeded according to his wishes, because he well understood this side of mankind.

"Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them."

http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince18.htm (As they say, read the whole thing... the chapter, anyhow.)


Unfortunately it is incredibly rare to find a match for your hypothetical $OPPONENT that is both electable enough that your letter won't be laughed off and who actually fits the description of being a great man (or woman).


This is often the problem with politics, you may strongly disagree with government policy on an issue that is important to you but all of the other parties that stand any chance at all of being elected to office also support the governments stance on that issue.

So your choice is either to concede that issue or vote for a fringe party (which here in the UK basically makes your vote worthless).


Freedom was not nor ever will be won with words. Freedom is won from the barrell of a gun. words only have power when they are from someone ready to use action if they have no effect.


And sometimes freedom is won by marching for salt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March


No, not really. The establishment embraced Ghandi to take the wind out of the more radical violent movements.

The same way the NAACP was embraced over the Black Panther Party.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_movement_for_Ind...


My Congressman sent me a form letter thanking me for sharing my feedback about an entirely different issue. I did include the bill numbers and titles, so you'd think an automated system would pick it up, but I guess they're going purely by keywords--and "piracy" becomes "privacy" somehow.

No response at all from my Senators. I assume in three months, I'll get a condescending letter from at least one of them explaining why I'm wrong, just like with TARP and any other issue I bother to contact these folks about.


the response from your congressman's office was a form letter. the problem with letter writing campaigns is that after the first few most letters get stopped by the aides before they ever reach anybody of importance. congressmen have office hours. stop by and see if you can talk to him about it.


That's true, but there is a 'hack' to get around that. Generally new questions arriving at the office will not have prepared responses. New text can not usually be written by the staffers without being reviewed.

So, the trick is to raise 2 (unrelated or related) issues in your letter. Issue one is the real issue you are concerned about, and the other needs to be something low profile that will not already have a canned response.

That way a reply will need to be drafted by staffers and reviewed by someone (hopefully the actual politician).


I've tried that also, without really having any success. Perhaps it relates to their profile and volume of correspondence? Most of my (mostly negative) correspondence over the years has gone to my now-former Congressman (and former House Majority Leader) Tom DeLay, who I can imagine was pretty busy.


Post all three pieces somewhere (your letter, his non-response, and your severe response), then call it to the attention of everyone who has the slightest interest in his embarrassment, including news outlets whose only interest is selling ads via controversy.


While your Congressman has probably already made up his mind on this issue, you're not going to help him change it if your communication comes from a 'liberal' organization like the EFF.

Why don't you try writing him while incorporating some more conservative commentary? Here's a couple of links from the National Review, one of my morning reads:

http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/281962/larry-downes-sop...

http://www.nationalreview.com/media-blog/283537/sopa-battle-...

I'm sure you can find more with a little Google-fu.

One of the more interesting things about SOPA is that both its supporters and opponents are pretty bipartisan. You can't oppose (or support) it by indiscriminately supporting one party or the other.


How is the EFF a liberal organization? Their primary agenda seems to be pro individual privacy, pro encryption, and anti-copyright.

Until 2001, some of those (encryption and privacy) were conservative issues. Now both parties tend to be in agreement and oppose the EFF on all of these issues.


I think GP is suggesting EFF has more in common with the ACLU than with the Tea Party.

I think of the EFF as more Libertarian, and a often bit extreme in its position, which I think often puts it at the fringes of either of the major parties.

As is mentioned elsewhere, both parties have trouble understanding/responding to tech/privacy/open source/IP issues, so it's good there's a voice. I glad the EFF finds opportunities to disagree with both parties.


That's why I put 'liberal' in quotes.


There is a useful response: give $50 to your congressman's opponent, attach a receipt, and vote democrat in the next election. Remember, the only people in the us who matter are voters (especially primary voters), donors, and campaign volunteers.


> vote democrat in the next election

Why would voting for someone who voted for SOPA help stop it?

Harry Reid, D-NV, senate majority leader, is pushing SOPA as a jobs bill so claiming that it's a republican idea is silly.

http://maplight.org/us-congress/bill/112-hr-3261/1019110/tot... shows that police and firefighter unions are supporting SOPA, as are the teamsters, the electrical workers union, as well as the movie-related groups that you'd expect.


I think he more meant "vote for that congressman's strongest opponent." The party doesn't particularly matter so much as showing that his handling of this specific situation caused someone to support his biggest rival.


It's well known that Harry Reid is bought-and-paid-for by MPAA/RIAA, just like Dianne Feinstein in California (who most of my liberal friends loved, but who I couldn't stand for her MAFIAA connections).

Politics is no fun. It's not like if I voted for the Republican opposing her that we'd get a better deal for ANYTHING that I cared about. We need a third party with reasonable political power, and/or a proportional-governance system where you tally the votes and give each party its proportional share of representatives. The current system is broken.


Personally, I find myself disagreeing with both sides too much for this to be effective at all.

I'm not going to say one should or shouldn't vote Democrat. But, there are too many considerations on which I'm unwilling to compromise to just vote for the enemy of my enemy. Neither party is your friend.


Politicians will always do whatever is in the interests of the people or companies giving them votes or donations, so unfortunately without voting for the enemy of your enemy (and maybe convincing others to do so), you don't have any other tool to punish these politicians.

And they need to be punished, just like a good spanking at the right time does wonders for spoiled brats.


"unfortunately without voting for the enemy of your enemy (and maybe convincing others to do so), you don't have any other tool to punish these politicians."

This sounds awfully like "I Voted for Kodos".


From experience (see the NRA in particular), a largish single issue voting block that is willing to support either party can be enormously effective at advancing their issue.




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