After contacting the officials, multiply your efforts by urging your friends to join you in pushing for an honest deal. You can do so easily. Copy the following message as a starting point, if you wish, add something personal at the beginning so your friends know it’s really from you, and e-mail it to them:
Hi [Friend’s Name],
I recently took some steps to help repair the breakdown in our federal government and ask you to join me.
A root cause of the breakdown is this: A half-century ago, elected officials of both parties in Congress and the White House adopted a new system for enacting laws and spending programs, one that lets them take credit for promising good news, while avoiding blame for the government producing bad results. Basically, the people we elect avoid accounting to us for what the government actually does to us. No wonder it’s broken.
All this is documented in a new book, DC Confidential: Inside the Five Tricks of Washington, by David Schoenbrod. The trickery is explained at www.dc-confidential.org. The book also shows how Congress can stop the trickery by passing the Honest Deal Act. A summary of the act and chapter explaining its design is available at www.dc-confidential.org/honestdeal.
The next step is for some of us to write our representatives in Congress to ask them to pass the Honest Deal Act. I, of course, have done so myself. To find out how you can too, just go to www.dc-confidential.org/action.
I would be interested to hear how it goes!
Best,
(your name)