Along with poetry, personal complaints about service at a restaurant or gas station, and 3,000-word discourses on the Illuminati, the newspaper also gets a fair amount of astroturf—i.e., fake grassroots stuff. At present there is a campaign afoot regarding HR 2749, concerning regulation of the food supply.

At least some organic and other small farmers suggest the bill would be a disaster for their way of life. Maybe that’s just paranoia run rampant. Or maybe they’re right: Consider the largely liberal, countercultural artisanal toy makers who found themselves making common cause with right-wing congressmen and free-market interest groups after the Chinese toy scare led to new regulations on the manufacture of children’s toys—detailed in the excellent Reason magazine article, Dangerous Toys, Strange Bedfellows a couple months ago.

But I digress.

The small farm movement has launched a letter-writing campaign, which has led to a ton of letters like this one:

Sadey this well intended bill is a disaster for small farms and does not address the fact that agribusiness farms are at the heart of compromising food safety and yet they are not the ones who will be over regulated by this bill.

I urge you to stop this nonesense of trying to regulate at a federal level a matter that is best suited for State management.

Small local organic farms will be what feeds this nation as oil peaks and people are now demanding, in ever greater numbers, food from these safe clean sources.  This bill as an attempt to over regulate small farms and is government regulation at it’s worst.

And that’s it. The letter never says what “this bill” refers to. It doesn’t identify the “you” who is supposed to “stop this nonsense.“ If you read that in the paper, you’d have no idea what the heck the writer was talking about. 

In most cases, letters like that are generated by websites where someone has read about an issue and been urged to write a letter about it. They dash off a few lines about whatever it is they have just read in a template and hit send to direct the letter simultaneously to members of Congress, an advocacy group’s petition, and multiple media outlets. Sort of like what you can do here.

Sometimes, people will ask, “Why the heck did you run such-and-such a letter?“ Sometimes, the answer is: Well, it was better than the alternative. . .

Ha ha Well sure it can, U’no. Me, I get more out of ebonics than I do from backwards-looking Libertarian dribble. Those burnt-out kooks think we can do things the exact same way as we did when we were the 13 Colonies!

Hey Radio 10, if it is not written in ebonics, can the document be timeless?

“Great timeless document RSmith! Please explain what the first one means!“ (posted by U’no)

Its just typical Libertarian trash U’no.

I’m still getting a heaping helping of emotion and attitude and very few facts.

HR 2749 is like everything else these days a kneejerk issue just an opportunity to get folks all stirred up and bothered.

And an opportunity to slip in some politics.

There are no doubt real pros and cons attached to it but what I’m hearing is a lot of extreme attitude.

Great timeless document RSmith! Please explain what the first one means!

Ha ha ha I’m tempted to make comparisons with some fellow Barticles-mates, but nah, it ain’t right for me to take cheap shots behind a keyboard. Maybe Monday morning when my mood is different I will.

Speaking of stupid letters….here’s a doozy!

“IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.“

I found that one on some wingnut militia neocon reichman site. Talk about a bunch of nuts!!!

I found this one on a left wing site.

“We the people want stuff but we don’t have any stuff and other people have stuff and it’s not fair for other people to have stuff when we don’t have stuff and we demand social justice and diversity and we ain’t getting any because the people who have stuff won’t give us any because they’re greedy capitalists and racists.“

Not THAT’S a timeless document!

Well there’s also another way to look at these ‘letter writing campaigns’ too: Its better than the alternative.

Ps. Hey guys—look, I’m sort of likin’ this day-off here, but isn’t this getting TOO silly? A big holiday for July the 3RD???? How much lazier can we get & still expect economies to ‘rebound’????

“Namely, I’ve never heard of this bill and I have no good idea what the pros and cons are; I need facts. Instead, Roger’s link gave me a heaping helping of attitude and raw emotion”

Ummmm…then stop waitng for other people to give you links that you then criticize and go dig up some information yourself.

Or wait for Paul Krugman to point you in the right direction. Rememeber, he went to Yale!

We just want to start a letter writing movement and we started.Purpose is just highlighted the issue with people support.I think if lot of people write letters to officials then chances of solving problem are great.

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