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Tell congress to stop SOPA with a physical letter

sendwrite.com

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Re: Tell congress to stop SOPA with a physical letter

#91

Post by zeratul »

wallawe wrote: post #55

Although I applaud the efforts here, as a former staffer and intern for a congressman, I hate to be the bearer of bad news... The truth is my job as an intern, as was the job of all other interns that I met while in DC, was to take constituent calls and also open constituent mail. However, no information was ever actually relayed to the congressmen. We had a formatted response to each and every issue that the House c…

Wallawe: Do you think this on-line petition system is useful? Instead of going through a congressman, one could go through the White House?

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/how-why/terms-partic...

Re: Tell congress to stop SOPA with a physical letter

#92

Post by jbooth »

wallawe wrote: post #90
jbooth wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got a pretty good pattern-matcher between your ears. Staffers have them too, they can note "hey we got a bunch of calls about this issue" at the end of the day.

You are mistaken if you think that 18 and 19 year olds taking phone calls as interns are in any way an effective means of conveying information to those in charge. Sure, they can note trends. Do they? No. The primary concern was which lobbyist reception with free alcohol everyone was going to at the end of the day. And although many of them may have a good grasp on a lot of issues, some like SOPA may be lost on them.…

I've never worked as a staffer but from what I've heard, if there was unusual volume on something it usually got escalated. If it's bumps in the noise, yeah, no big deal.

Re: Tell congress to stop SOPA with a physical letter

#93

Post by draebek »

riordan wrote: post #43

Here's the problem: after the 2001 anthrax scare, all mail sent to Congress has become incredibly delayed (on the order of weeks) while it gets tested and radiated. What some lobbying campaigns have done to get around this is send mass faxes to congressional offices overnight. It's like having access to someone else's office printer and that person has 1/538th of control over the federal government. The takeaway is,…

This is the second or third time I've read the problem of postal mail to congresspeople in these comments. I really like what SendWrite is doing here, but what riordan and others have said here rings true to me. Are they going to get my mail weeks after it mattered?

Re: Tell congress to stop SOPA with a physical letter

#94

Post by wallawe »

zeratul wrote: post #91
wallawe wrote: post #55

Although I applaud the efforts here, as a former staffer and intern for a congressman, I hate to be the bearer of bad news... The truth is my job as an intern, as was the job of all other interns that I met while in DC, was to take constituent calls and also open constituent mail. However, no information was ever actually relayed to the congressmen. We had a formatted response to each and every issue that the House c…

Wallawe: Do you think this on-line petition system is useful? Instead of going through a congressman, one could go through the White House? https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/how-why/terms-partic...

I think it is probably more useful and would get more attention than an individual letter or phone call to your congressman.

Re: Tell congress to stop SOPA with a physical letter

#95

Post by TeMPOraL »

KleinmanB wrote: post #35
danielsoneg wrote: post #10

I was briefly skeptical, but on reflection, I like this for three reasons: First, email just doesn't work for contacting Congress. They get entirely too much, and it's entirely too easy to get lost in the pile. It's the preferred means of communication for most of us on HN, but it's just not effective outside our industry. Phone is better, but there's nothing quite like flooding someone's office with paper to convey…

If Google understands what's at stake hear, they need to stage a "government backed hijacking of their search engine" for a couple hours during peak business with a written statement explaining the evil of the bill.

Or just blacklist all government IP addresses for a day or so. That could bring some attention to the issue.

Re: Tell congress to stop SOPA with a physical letter

#96

Post by cWallace »

zeratul wrote: post #91
wallawe wrote: post #55

Although I applaud the efforts here, as a former staffer and intern for a congressman, I hate to be the bearer of bad news... The truth is my job as an intern, as was the job of all other interns that I met while in DC, was to take constituent calls and also open constituent mail. However, no information was ever actually relayed to the congressmen. We had a formatted response to each and every issue that the House c…

Wallawe: Do you think this on-line petition system is useful? Instead of going through a congressman, one could go through the White House? https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/how-why/terms-partic...

This wasn't addressed to me but I thought I'd comment.

The We The People petitions, I believe, are there to make the people believe they are making an impact in policy by signing one. Most, if not every, response from the White House has been a generic, basically meaningless response from an unknown staffer.

Case in point: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/we-demand-v...

Notice how this petition has been signed by more people than most of the others...

Re: Tell congress to stop SOPA with a physical letter

#97

Post by dan_illustrate »

My Congressman and Senator here in Massachusettsmust understand the ramifications of this bill and protect the individual's citizen from corporate and government control of the internet. They must be educated and read up on this abrogation of civil rights and government protected and constitutionally guaranteed free speech and discourse. Dan Osterman, Boston
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