Congress considers us SPAM!

quote......
Congressional offices began to adopt new software that blocks the delivery of email their constituents send from a wide range of nonprofit organization websites
snip.....
be able to talk to their representatives, but people who wish to communicate as part of a movement through nonprofit organizations will be blocked. A wide array of organizations--left and right--came together to oppose this with one voice.
end quote...........
https://secure.npsite.org/cu/site/Advocacy?JServSessionIdr003=1i9ju40ce1.app5a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1161

Now this may not sound like a big deal but MASS emailing through moveon.org is a lot more effective than individual emails to a congressperson.

and just one more way to quell the non-corporate voices that advocate for poor, working class, and middle class people, in other words, everyone except the very small percentage of "elites" who this government actually works for and caters to.

while I still can.

blocking them in large numbers. One hacker, a couple of minutes, leaving no trace.

but rather collective voices....IF they can destroy NGO's, both sides would be happy.

Well, it's not enough to ignore our voices in polls, you now want to block our voices from reaching you through mass e-mails we use to get your attention.

Manage to get yourselves a raise lately, while brushing off the very idea that the underclasses could use a minimum wage hike?

Feeling a little elitist, are we? Must be nice to be so important you don't need to hear from us little folks.

Support NAFTA to the detriment of not only the American workers, but the citizens of neighboring countries as well? Okay. We get you. If it serves the interests of your campaign contributors, I suppose it's just the price we pay.

Vote for bankruptcy reform that harms the average consumer while it protects predatory lenders? Sure, why not?

Support an illegal war? All in a day's work, I guess.

Ignore evidence of election fraud that renders our votes meaningless? Why not?

Stand idly by while the Constitution is stripped of its power by a thuggish President and his minions? Good job!

When did this become an elected aristocracy? Was I sleeping that day? Or did it creep carefully up on us while we were paying attention to flag burning, gay marriage, and Grand Theft Auto?

I expect this sort of behavior from Republicans. The majority of THEM, regardless of what nonsense they've managed to slip by their constituents, couldn't give rusty rat's rump about protecting our freedoms or ensuring our civil rights.

I expect better of our democratic representatives. I honestly do.

I sincerely hope that YOU are not one of those who did any of these things, nor are you one of those who would block our collective voice to preserve the sanctity of your "beautiful mind." (Please disregard the sarcastic Barbara Bush quote--I'm feeling a bit snarky right now).

Senate....it's physical, they have to touch it, and read it.

It's more effective than emails, so I've heard.

Oh...and if you call your representatives, make sure you ask for the Aide that is dealing with the topic you are calling about.

Don't bother sending it to Reps or Senators out of your state or district, that usually goes straight to the shredder from what I have learned over the years. Save the stamp money for contributions with a note, they rarely shred those.

an send it through my own email rather than use the forms. But when I really want attention, snail mail.

Seems to me like this is an infringement on that right.

If campaign donation money can be equated with free speech, then certainly emails can be considered as an important means to petition your elected officials.

Although I do believe independently emailing, or better-yet, snail-mailing is more effective than those mass email petitions. Still, it's the principle of the thing.

This is an insult to the very basic principle of democracy. It isn't about what's the most effective means to petition the government, it's about the right to do it any way you want.

Send an email to Consumer Union and lets see if we can find out who are the 30 that have already blocked the emails....that may very well be the best way to get to these people....right in the pocketbook

I don't see anything here that prevents me from contacting my elected officials. I can even still contact them "as part of a movement" by putting that in my email/contact form. ("I am united with the other members of Citizens for Good Taste in my demand that garden gnomes be banned from lawns that can be seen from the street....")

It just takes a little more effort. And by "a little more effort" I mean "very little more effort." As in clicking on a link and doing a C&P.

These things are majorly problematic for elected officials.

For one thing, I work with a web site (not brazenlyliberal - another nonpolitical site) that uses contact forms. There are spambots that can and do - with a few keystrokes - flood hundreds of contact forms with thousands of contacts a day, all offering to sell cheap Viagra or demanding the removal of garden gnomes. Or insisting we bring the troops home/stay the course/redeploy them to Outer Bumfuck. This is a HUGE problem, let me tellya. I have logged on some mornings to find more than a thousand spambot-generated emails waiting for me. Using a captcha program like the one described defeats most of the spambots, thus reducing the spammers to those willing to sit there and fill out the form, which is a tiny percentage.

Secondly, with these online fill-it-out-and-we'll-send-it-for-you deals, they can never be sure just how large a group of people are advancing a cause. And I mean how large in terms of order of magnitude, not how large by a dozen. I can go to one of these sites and fill out the form using 50 different names and email addresses. And, in fact, there are people who do exactly that. And remember that for every person who fills out 50 saying "Bring the troops home NOW" (or "Ban the garden gnomes!") there is likely someone filling out 50 saying "Stay the course!" (or "Keep the garden gnomes and give them concrete geese in cute outfits for company!") I believe the additional step will cut out a good percentage of this stuff.

Your last statement is way off the mark. 50 emails demanding the same or similar thing from 50 disparate individuals is MUCH more effective than 50 sent as an organized effort. One seems to reflect the public mood while the other can be seen as an effort by a passionate special interest group. The ridiculous ease with which the numbers are fudged by anyone who cares to do so only intensifies that.

I think this can be very good for groups like MoveOn.org. Theirs are causes people do care passionately about. Their members WILL make that extra small effort clicking on a link and doing C&P and will confirm the legitimacy of their advocacy.

You make some excellent points.

50,000 individual emails would be way more effective than 50,000 emails with boilerplate text sent from moveon.

It's simple to understand. The impact of a message is largely related to the effort made in sending it. Clearly, many people will click a button to send an email for the slightest concern. You need more concern to write a personal letter and even more concern to show up at their office.

The only problem is 50,000 people WONT send an email but will click a button.

There is a physical and technical problem with those mass email scripts bogging down Congress and taking time away from real work.

Is America really so uneducated we all can't take the time to sit down and write our own personal message? When you just click you have a false sense of feeling like you are doing something, when a personalized version would be much more effecitve!

I also think it could give us another opportunity to confront politicians face-to-face. I'm thinking about the Downing Stret Memo petition drive by one of the groups, probably Move On. In that drive, we lefties signed the petition and then signed up to print out pages and hand deliver them to the elected officials. We all took shifts, so that 50 pages (or whatever) were delivered in 15 minute increments. I brought about 50 pages to Sen. Nighthorse Campbell, and I recall that the person in his office who took the papers added them to an already existing stack that was about 2.5 feet tall. While this it was an unfortunate amount of trees that had to be sacrifiecd for this endeavor, the Senator certainly couldn't have gotten away with calling it spam.

Edited to add I still k&r'd this thread. :hi:

EVERY snail mail contact WILL be OPENED (might be money inside).

If you want to ensure YOUR voice is HEARD in DC, find a way to attach MONEY.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$


HELLO!!! Washington, Are you listening????

Look at how the majority feels about some of the issues that you'd think would be gospel to a real Democratic party:

1. 65 percent say the government should guarantee health insurance for everyone -- even if it means raising taxes.

2. 86 percent favor raising the minimum wage (including 79 percent of selfdescribed "social conservatives").

3. 60 percent favor repealing either all of Bush's tax cuts or at least those cuts that went to the rich.

4. 66 percent would reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

5. 77 percent believe the country should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment.

6. 87 percent think big oil corporations are gouging consumers, and 80 percent (including 76 percent of Republicans) would support a windfall profits tax on the oil giants if the revenues went for more research on alternative fuels.

7. 69 percent agree that corporate offshoring of jobs is bad for the U.S. economy (78 percent of "disaffected" voters think this), and only 22% believe offshoring is good because "it keeps costs down."

The Democratic Party is a BIG TENT, but there is NO ROOM for those
who advance the agenda of THE RICH (Corporate Owners) at the EXPENSE of LABOR and the POOR.

USPS mail - used to be a "caution" statement, due to the ol' anthrax issue, that postal mail
to the Capitol would be delayed up to three weeks due to the detox process. Is this still in
effect? The recommendation was to fax or e-mail for time-sensitive messages (aren't they all?)

Local offices - Senators and Reps have some offices in-state; phone, fax or postal mail them
(won't be delayed, IIRC.) Usually not as hassled as DC, the local staff will take your message
and are supposed to pass it to DC; one hopes this is effective.

Fax to the DC office - usually a 30-second call, not too costly, even to an entire committee.
Many long-distance plans have some minimum of free call-time. At least with faxes, there's
a hard copy in the bin in the DC office. I use fax for this reason, plus you can design the page
for emphasis of main points, etc. Although unwieldy, I often print out a copy for signing or
other unique marks and fax from the glass...just my quirk. I don't have the latest bells-and-
whistles software, so may be seriously out-of-date on simpler ways to fax.

Unless you're from the recipient's district or state, don't expect a response. But they do pay
attention - so it's said...

keeps many poor people alive, as well as other folk during natural disasters...due to its long "shelf life" when unopened. Also, hasn't Spam perservability resulted in its being uused as food for our soldiers during War?

While I don't like receiving BAD malicious "Spam"-labeled advertising mail, WE-THE-PEOPLE merely mass emailing our government constituents certainly should NOT have our emails considered "SPAM." After all, wasn't it the HUGE stacks of our emails used by rep's like Conyers and Boxer carried to the floor of the Senate and to other Repug-dominated meetings...that made the IMMENSE impression of Dem grassroots opposition to MOST Repug policies?

So let's rethink the origins of the word "SPAM" when referring to We-the-People's most expeidient and direct "conversations" with our elected officials. Phone calls to their office staff just does NOT as
well "legally document" our collective "voices."

SPAM on...in a positive light to our Reps, I say!

that if you use those easy tools to contact a rep about an issue you're passionate about, you'll give your real name and home address. Those should not be considered spam! As they're easy to check out against voter records.

It's probably a lot of whining from the 'pugs, since they're on the receiving end in my state about progressive issues they vote against! (That would be Warner, Allen and THELma Drake, who couldn't attend her own fundraiser Bush was a guest at!)

BTW, I always get thoughtful email responses from John Warner, not the other two!

if push comes to shove, we now have the name of our new party.

the SPAM party. the internet savvy party that the politicians didn't want to hear from, so they designated us as SPAM, to block our millions and millions of emails, our attempts to communicate with our elected leaders, who were the LAST people they wanted to hear from.

that lobbyist, though? he has an appointment tomorrow morning, at ten.

and i post this only party in jest.... ;-)

I get great e-mails from Tom Davis, but a few from Allen and never got any from Warner. That's interesting.

like the corrosive poison it is.

Not whether one way is more effective than another. And I happen to think 50,000 emails sent through a group that has the power to get attention from the press is a lot more effective than random emails from across the country. With a group like Moveon, Congress knows they can't pretend nobody cares when Moveon has the number of emails to say otherwise. This is bullshit. They can direct their email to special servers to handle the load. That expense is the LEAST we should expect from our government.