I just saw a quote from Sen. Evan Bayh on Yahoo that pissed me off royally. I immediately went to his website and told him off via e-mail. I could care less if he doesn’t read it or respond (I actually imagine he will), but MAN did that feel good!
Last time I wrote my senators, one of them didn’t respond, and the other sent me a long form letter that began with the sentence, “Thank you for contacting me with your concerns about <some completely random issue that wasn’t the subject of my letter>.”
Yeah, the system works, baby.
I know it doesn’t make sense in this age of email, but Western Union used to offer a special rate (IIRC it was $4) to cable the President. I fired off a few to Reagan, but eventually decided that if I didn’t already have an FBI file, I was just askin’ for one.
Wrote a letter to one senator once making a point about the struggle for black rights and gay rights.
Got a letter back (since I wrote it online) about funding for minority schools and a moratorium on the internet tax.
Got a letter back from the other senator that didn’t address a single argument I made and told me he thanked me for my views/opinions (not his exact words) and told me he voted to uphold the tradition of marriage, or summat. Somewhat better, I guess. I haven’t gotten anything back from the pres, vp or anyone else in that cabinet, which surprises me nil.
It seems to me the only letters to members of Congress that get noticed by the member are those that begin, “Enclosed find $10000 check as a contribution to your reelection.”
Columnist George Will once wrote a scathing rebuttal to the Grace Commission Report on waste in government. For Will to disagree with such a report would indicate to me that it must be pretty bad.
California Senator Alan Cranston was a big fan of the Grace Commission so I wrote him a letter and sent a copy of Will’s column detailing the failures of Grace et al.
The letter I got back said “Thank you for your support of our efforts to eliminate waste in government using valuable resources like the Grace Commission.”