Getting the Most Bang for your Anger

Attention Friends,

     In an effort to help my fellow citizens affect civic change, I feel that there are certain tricks of the trade that you may need to know. Every citizen has the right and the responsibility to participate in their government if they want the right to complain about it. Either try to change it or stop bitching. But writer, you may say, I have sent so many form emails blasted out to the entire legislature! Surely they cannot have ignored the opinions of a citizen! I also get a lot of, "I'm going to start a petition". These two strategies would not legislate you out of a wet paper bag in my opinion.

1. There are very few actions prescribed BY LAW that a legislator, executive, administrator, etc. MUST do when faced with a petition. They may make changes for fear of their position if you get enough signatures, but the number required to really make a hardened government stooge look twice would have to be a very large portion of their constituency. They are only afraid of a petition if that petition spells "Lost Election" if ignored. That means that at least half of the voting populace should be on board, and that is an extremely hard thing to do. Just ask Rick Perry, or Newt Gingrich. With millions of dollars and dozens of volunteers, they could not garner the petty 10,000 votes needed to appear on the Virginia Republican Primary ballot this year. Newt Gingrich currently resides in McLean VIRGINIA.

Instead of a petition with signatures, better to take a large group (5-10) in person to meet with the administrator, legislator, whatnot. The group is safely below protest levels, but serves to show that you are not alone in your fight. Having to look people in the eye is also a big draw, rather than cold signatures on a page. The next trick to this is to be an aggressive scheduler. Have a date and time in mind, and slowly work outwards until you can find a foothold in the guy's schedule. A "call back" or an "I'll let him know, and we'll return your call" is far too easily forgotten. Try to make your appointment with ONE call.

2. DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT, take a website form and blast the whole legislature's/department's inbox that they have attached. Not only will you not change anything, they will most likely never see it. The official office email addresses that such issue sites use are available publicly. Odds are a couple of things will keep forms from being seen or cared about. First, with the kind of volume that such emails come in, the task of sifting through them often falls to some underpaid intern or office worker who is looking at hundreds a day and only looks at the town or state to see if the person matters. Also, the email addresses that are used for public servants have stringent spam filters to keep out penis enlargement ads and phishing schemes. Many times, since the server takes in so many of the same email (just with different signatures) it identifies the email as spam.

The trick is to distinguish yourself from the pack and if anything, only email your own legislator. Use a completely different subject line; one that identifies you as a contituent. Letting your guy know that you are right in his own back yard automatically distinguishes you as someone to respond to.

I hope that I have helped future activists. The need for government to change is never ending, and I'm here to help you guys fight for what you think is right.

Tracy Thorne Begland, Explained

Free thinking minds all over the nation and the Commonwealth of Virginia were appalled at the recent rejection for judgeship of one Tracy Thorne-Begland. Begland would have been Virginia's first openly gay judge, and was also a veteran of the US Navy. He has been an outstanding prosecutor in his home district of Richmond Virginia. The move was seen far and wide as an act of bigotry and hate. Delegate Bob Marshall then chose to throw gasoline on the fire, coming out with a homophobic and backwards thinking interview in which he ACTUALLY SAID "Sodomy is not a civil right."

This blogger believes that he has hammered the last blue nail into Obama's victory in Virginia this November, but that is a post for another day. While my beliefs tend towards libertarian, and I am pro gay marriage and gay rights, when I take a look at the reasonings offered by select members of Virginia's legislature, this issue can certainly be seen in a different light. The misunderstanding that many people have is that a judge is a-political. A judge should have no strong convictions whatsoever that could affect their judgements. Judges are important to the legislative process, but they are NEVER meant to make the law. They are meant to interpret the law that exists and no more.

I believe that many of the reservations shown by the House of Delegates were not motivated by hate of gay people, but by a fear that Mr. Thorne-Begland would use his position on the bench to advance a particular cause over another. I believe that the legislature would strike down a devout Catholic activist as well, if the slide went all the way to the other end of the political spectrum. With Roe v. Wade in place, I would expect the legislature to strike down an ardent pro-lifer as well.

I believe that Mr. Thorne-Begland, with all of the support he has been shown, could have a very exciting run for the legislature, and there he could effect the changes he wishes to see. He just cannot do it from a jurist's bench, says Virginia. Thats just what one conservative thinks.