Here are some responses from my Senators after listening to some recent TFTC Pods that got me to pursue some more direct Political Action. Thanks!
“You may not care about Politics but Politics cares about You.” ✌🏻 🇺🇸 nostr:nprofile1qqsywt6ypu57lxtwj2scdwxnyrl3sry9typcstje65x7rw9a2e5nq8spz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduq3kamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwvf5hgcm0d9h8qctjdvhxxmmdnq2374
As someone who spent nearly seven years working for two different United States Senators, I'd like to share a bit of my experience on how this process works. In my experience, writing letters to your representatives is one of the least effective ways to make your opinions known.
When you send a letter to a Member of Congress, the letter is automatically batched with other letters that use similar language in the office's CRM (Constituent Relations Management software). When I worked in the Senate, we used IQ, which is created by Lockheed Martin, now Leidos (https://leidosiq.com/us-congress). For each issue that gets enough public attention, the office generally creates a pro, con, and neutral response, basically explaining their position in a way that is well received by the constituent.
The responses are usually written by a Legislative Correspondent (LC). These are the most junior legislative staffers in Congress. In the Senate, their main job is responding to constituent letters. In the case of Angus King's office, their hostility to bitcoin is so strong that they can't even temper their position in a pro-response letter. In the letter from Senator Susan Collins' office, the LC couldn't even be bothered to match the font to the opening and closing paragraphs of the form letter that never change.
If the email you send is part of an email campaign — meaning you and others are sending letters with the exact same text — it's very likely your opinion will be disregarded entirely, since the email is considered low effort from the constituent. These letters usually never make it to the member; at best, numbers are tallied and provided to the member in a report.
Letters sent by donors, business leaders, government officials, and the like are usually batched in a different category along the lines of "VIP" or "BFD" (Big Fucking Deal). These are the individuals who really have the ear of your representative. I find this practice reprehensible, but unfortunately, it happens frequently.
I don't say this to dissuade you from contacting your representatives; in fact, I encourage it. Personally, I believe the most effective way to make your opinion known is by calling the member's office and speaking with the staff assistants who answer the phones. If you're respectful and lucky enough to speak with an open-minded staffer, you stand a much better chance of influencing someone who actually has meaningful contact with your representative.
This isn't to say that calling your representatives is always an effective way to influence your elected officials. Unfortunately, the reality is that they don't need to take your opinion into consideration. If the member already has very strong opinions on the issue you're reaching out about, there's almost no chance of changing their mind unless there's overwhelming resistance to their position, to the point where it becomes politically untenable for them.
Good luck, and keep up the engagement; it's the only way to ensure our positions aren't disregarded entirely.
He won one of those races thanks to ranked choice voting, which is something that needs to be adopted nationwide. He’s also a former Susan Collins staffer, which I find very interesting. Democrats need to do a better job of listening to these candidates. They know what it takes to win in swing districts.
“It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?”
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Sam Bankman-Fried gets 25 years of the 100 years recommended by the probation department. This is after violating the conditions of his parole and engaging in at least two acts of witness tampering.
Meanwhile, Ross Ulbricht is serving a double life sentence plus 40 years for running the Silk Road, plus some trumped up charges related to alleged murder for hire that he was never convicted of.
Disgusting.
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Anyone can pay to have a flag flown over the Capitol by a member of Congress. Just go to any member's website and look for flag requests: https://www.warren.senate.gov/services/flags