(From http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/0 ... outit.html)
WHAT DOESN'T WORK
1. Write or call your congressman. When you see what kind of response you get, you'll understand that this is a hopeless approach to bringing real change. Hint: most likely you will never be permitted to speak to the congressman, nor will he ever read your letter.
2. Vote for honest politicians who will change the laws. Even if this were not an oxymoron, 98% of all incumbents are re-elected. Hence, there is really only one political party, the Incumbency Party. It takes so much money to run a political campaign that you need to be independently wealthy or you need support by wealthy patrons, who will want something in return. The largest campaign contributors are corporations that support BOTH Reps and Dems, and don't much care which one wins as long as they remember who helped them get elected. And then there is the fiasco of computer voting, which makes it so easy for insiders to control who wins a close election (which is most of them). Voting today is merely to deceive the "flock of timid and industrious animals" that their wishes are being consulted, thereby making them more willing to accept the results, and even accept responsibility for them.
3. Create another political party. You are fighting uphill against the venerable "two-party" system that has ruled America since 1800. Third parties have a track record of only being spoilers for one of the Big Two. We already have a Constitution Party that attracts little interest. Most people feel that to vote for a third party candidate is to waste their vote, since it is assumed that this candidate cannot win. We do not have a parliamentary system where a minority party can win a few seats and hope in time to grow large enough to influence policy. And worst of all, the majority of Americans are corrupted because they receive government benefits that they are loath to lose. As Tocqueville so presciently wrote, "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." This already happened many years ago, and today we live in the American Oligarchy.
The author goes on to say tax resistance is also futile, as the game is rigged, and monkeywrenching is illegal and can get you jailed.
Yes, the article is just another biased political polemic
but do you agree or disagree? Personally, I applied the "squeaky wheel gets the grease" approach for congressional action on two separate occasions, and they finally got tired enough of my persistence that I got both issues resolved satisfactorily with their intervention.
