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Comment by larrys | Hacker News Reader

I'm normally not a fan of that type of thing. To me it's like a ddos attack on the phone system.

Edit: ddos attack on the phone system of the legislators. Nothing wrong with calling. But enabling people to call en masse without even the friction of having to look up a phone number (which is easy for sure) for the purpose of helping the media do their job just doesn't work for me.

Has nothing to do with whether the questions need to be answered or not. But potentially overloading a representatives phone system is not the way I think it should be done. (5 people calling a day is not overloading so of course I'm assuming that this would result in more activity).

Now of course considering how much people don't like spam and junk mail (which are really way less intrusive en masse than the phone ringing) I'm curious why people are disagreeing with my basic point.

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I'm not even sure what this means. Calling your elected representative is one of the most effective ways of getting issues confronted (as long as you're joined by hundreds of others calling). An actual calling human (as opposed to an email) is important here, as we're a lot easier to ignore when we're abstracted behind text (see: greater internet fuckwad theory, etc).

People underestimate the humanness of elected officials. The mere perception that there's a groundswell of support for something is often enough to get someone moving on something, or at least thinking about it. "We need to head this off before it becomes a bigger deal" is your ally, as it's so hard to tell what will become a bigger deal, it makes that perception hard to ignore.

That's why political "scandals"--often so inane and often stupidly inconsequential--can have such a big impact: that perception of pressure brought about by the media or interest groups or whatever, sustained long enough, can reify itself through the actions that people think they have to start making to save face, fix the situation, capture the press cycle, etc.

"The mere perception that there's a groundswell of support for something"

That's a good point. But while I'm interested in the right thing happening that is not necessarily the same as getting people to make a lot of phone calls to make that right thing happen. Seems to me to be very lynch mob-ish.

Legislators simply responding to the most organized group is really no better than legislators responding to lobbyists. Just because a group is able to organize effectively doesn't mean that what they are trying to achieve is right (although it could be).

> Legislators simply responding to the most organized group is really no better than legislators responding to lobbyists.

I don't think that's true at all. Lobbyists require nothing but money. An organized group requires organization, yes, but it also requires a group who actually cares about the issue strongly enough to do something. I think that sounds a lot closer to the ideal of democracy than lobbying.

"also requires a group who actually cares about the issue strongly enough to do something"

True but what I am guessing is that many people simply lemming along with something and don't fully develop their own opinion. Or they will read something that someone says and without any further thought decide to support without vetting any of the facts. We see examples of this on HN where multiple knowledgeable people often chime in to debunk some blog post as being less than factually correct.

Yes, this applies to democracy in general.

Many people see it as a failure of democracy, but it's actually a failure of education. Many people take the easy way out when confronted by issues they don't know about. By taking the popular line, they at least ensure that they won't be on the unpopular side of any conversations they have at social engagements.

Most bad ideas continue on the strength that most believers in said idea don't have the time or will to question it.

> Seems to me to be very lynch mob-ish.

While true on some level, from what I know of the history of legal reform, it's pretty much how most changes have actually gone down: the lawmakers come under intense pressure to do something about X and something gets done. Granted, there are quite a few slight of hand tricks that have been pulled, both in terms of creating artificial pressure and making sure that the thing that gets done is what you want (even when it has nothing to do with the original X...).

> Seems to me to be very lynch mob-ish.

Really? You are comparing calling your elected representatives to a lynch mob? wtf?

You've never lobbied before, right? Emails, letters, petitions - all useless. Although a hand-written letter probably will get read by an official's staff. Probably ignored too; but you might get lucky.

Phone calls are ignored too. There are too many. And most of the calls are from "professional callers" - folk payed by lobbyists to call.

The absolute best way to lobby is to show up. In person. Either in DC, or even better, when they on the road locally. Especially during election years. NOTHING scares a politician more then a scene they can't control at a local event.

Congressmen are easy to get to when on the campaign trail. Senators are harder, but not much harder. But one piece of advice.. BE PREPARED. Know what you plan to say before the meet.

And you'll probably be shuffled off to a staffer. That's ok. Really. Staffers do most of the work anyway.

PS: Another way to get your message out, is of course money. A nice donation to a congressman will get you a meet. You'll get a few minutes with the congressman himself. But much more time with his staff. And if you give enough (a that level 3 or 4 thousand is more then enough) you get his top staff. And that's the best. Of course, the higher you go, the more money it cost. Example: you can get 20 seconds of the President's time (or his staff) if you drop 10k at certain dinners. Depending on your issue it can be money well spent.

By the way, the TSA is not gong away. Despite how much we all hate it. It's a jobs program now. And theres too much money involved now.

> PS: Another way to get your message out, is of course money.

As a european, I find it incredible that politics works this way in the US. It's corruption, plain and simple. Fully institutionalized and out in the open.

On the other hand, 3k is not a lot and gets you a guaranteed meeting.

That's like saying "Hey, a thousand bucks and Jimmy and his boys won't hassle us no more!"

That's exactly what it is. Granted, we didn't start out that way. It's a shake-down scheme now though. Everyone blames the lobbyist but really, it's the elected official. And by extension... us.

Look, most Americans have the attention span of a gnat. And most don't care about anything past their front lawn. A friend of mine, a state senator said it best to me; "Most Floridians want to be lead. They're sheep". And he's exactly right.

I mean when was the last time you researched a candidate? Knew his "real" history and views? Not the splat you're fed 30 second commercials. Half of American doesn't even vote. Even on issues that effect them directly - like the environment (water supply being a classic example). But they sure bitch about the TSA.

Man, I've been playing the political game (as a donor) too long. ;)

> didn't start out that way

Yes it did. Campaign finance was pretty much a free-for-all until the 20th century, and even then could barely be called regulated until FECA in 1971.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the_...

I'm guessing that the state senator would not have said that had their been a recording device active.

Wouldn't it be prudent to assume that there is one recording as they are now all around us?

It's a lot to the average person. By having a paid tier system like this, you're ensuring that only the rich and businesses have access to politicians (which actually goes a long way to explaining why American politics is so biased towards those already on top of the food chain; or "capitalism" as those in power often like to label their corruption)

Shouldn't you be a little more worried about the fact that politicians refuse to talk to their constituents more than you should worry about their phone lines being tied up while their constituents call them?

Explain the connection between this:

"a little more worried about the fact that politicians refuse to talk to their constituents"

and this:

"The agency has been stonewalling reporters"

While reporters are also constituents stonewalling reporters is different that stonewalling constituents.

Today, I learned that journalists are not constituents.

For the vast majority of people and issues, the media is the primary source the populace can rely upon to gain information about an issue. Obstructing, impeding, suppressing or in any other way hindering the access of the press is tantamount to doing the same to the population at large. This is why the Fourth Estate is critical to any democracy.

Hold on. Politicians aren't afraid to talk about the TSA to constituents. I don't know one politician (Rep or Dem) that's doesn't rail against the TSA. It's a hot topic in Florida.

But journalists are not constituents. And no politician wants to be on the record about anything. ;)

This is an absurd, and woefully ignorant comment. A DDOS is one or a few individuals trying to shut down a service by mimicking large volumes of traffic, or sending incomplete packets which 'confuse' a server. Calling your elected official is akin to having a successful site where thousands of constituents are visiting a page. This is why they have publicly posted phone numbers. If you don't like what your elected official is doing it's your right and your obligation to tell the representative. It's called democracy.

We have several ways to demonstrate like calling an official, a petition, and a protest being the most common. Since Bush has neutered protests, and the White House pretty much just ignores the petitions, calling your representative is one of the few ways we differ from an oligarchy.

Making it easier for someone to get engaged in the political process (in this case, by helping them call their representative) is a good thing. Politicians do not receive enough pushback and feedback from their constituents (9% approval rating), yet you disapprove of efforts to improve this?

Spam and junk mail are very different than calling a representative -- this comparison feels disingenuous to me. It is their job to listen to us.

They have systems in place to handle that stuff, man. It's not like the telephone was just invented and we're still coming to grips with the various core problems of making it work. Don' worry about it, just call.

And if you still really really hate the idea of calling, then send a fax instead. Plenty of online fax services with free plans you can just upload a .doc or .pdf to, and the best thing about it - it's asynchronous, woohoo!

Because asking legitimate questions is terrorism.

You are misinformed about the nature of public office. Legislators act on the will of the voters, unless their is influence from lobbying groups. Without the emails and phone calls, an elected official has no idea about the numbers on either side of a debate. Ralph Nader has a quote along the lines of, "if you aren't speaking for your interests, then who will?" Lobbying just became a backdoor access because with money, you could pay for the influence of insiders. But believe me, no amount of lobbying will overcome organized American voters. Just look at SOPA as an example. This is how a democracy works and you probably just aren't used to seeing media do what they are supposed to do--facilitate democracy.

"you probably just aren't used to seeing media do what they are supposed to do--facilitate democracy."

No-one in the last few decades has seen this. Most media is is actually part of the government structure now, and has very little impact on facilitating "democracy". If this were the case, various media outlets would agree with each other (as the voice of the common opinion) as opposed to the current state of affairs, where a media channel controlled by one organization will be at war with a conflicting channel of "news".

I think that looking to the media to "facilitate democracy" is naive at best, disingenuous at worst.

It's not really spam if your job is to represent the people contacting you with their concerns.

Treat it instead as a DDoS attack on your congresscritters' bad ideas.

Spam is, by definition, unsolicited.

When you become an elected representative, you are implicitly soliciting comments and questions from every single person in the area you represent.

The spam analogy is not just wrong, but outright reprehensible. If you don't want to get lots of calls from your constituents, you have two choices: 1) don't piss them off in the first place 2) don't run for office.

Well, isn't that is the whole point of representative democracy? The representatives listen to the people and then prioritize the issues they are working on based on what's important for the constituents. If more people call about one issue over the other, that's the hot button thing, they should give it a priority.

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