Democracy for 15 Minutes a Day [Soapbox]

I'm getting fed up with the SS and all the corruption in politics. I guess that's why I came up with this idea.

I figured you can spend 15 minutes a day to improve democracy. I'm not sure how it works in other places, but in California you're given 15 minutes of break for every four hours of work. If you have a full time job, you get two of these breaks. So I thought you could use 15 minutes or one break to write your representative. You could write your Senator or Representative or both.

You can work on your writing Monday through Thursday. On Friday, you can send it off. Some provide e-mail addresses and some don't. If you fill out the web form on their page, you'll get an e-mail and you can use that e-mail next time. You can save what you write in a Word document or a plain text file. Once you have their e-mail address, you can just e-mail them using something like Gmail and save your draft there. You can just CC or BCC the other two Reps. You will have to provide your name, home address and such so they know you are one of their constituents. Copy & Paste is your friend if you're not using some kind of mail program or web mail.

Just be careful your employer isn't monitoring whatever it is that you're writing. They might not agree with you and may take action. Yes, I know it's illegal, but if people didn't do thing because it's illegal we wouldn't have crime and Skilling wouldn't have gotten a 24 year sentence.

I don't know how much help it'll do with special interests spending ungodly amount of money. Thomas Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Unless you're going to go shoot up some people in Washington, I suggest you write. Err, I mean type. (I'm not condoning or suggesting that you take to arms or violence. I'm more of a make love not war kind of a guy.)

I just thing everyone should be more involved and keep vigilance over democracy. At this rate, either Kim Jung-Il (김정일), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (محمود احمدی نژاد), al-Qaeda (القاعدة) or some other yahoo will do us in. For just 15 minutes a day you can help save our democracy.