Let's Try Another Experiment

We’ve been focused on improving our infrastructure. That means we’ve paid less attention to expanding our army, because we know we’ll be able to grow faster, easier, once we’ve created some new tools. Even so  . . .

Some of our growth numbers have quietly inched higher. For instance, we only need about . . .

• 91 new subscribers for the Downsize DC Army to pass 30,000!
• 15 new Facebook fans to reach 8,000

We’d like to reach both milestones this week, and see if we can learn something at the same time. We want to conduct another experiment.

Here’s what we know about our recruitment patterns, followed by our current operating assumption, followed by an idea we’d like to test . . .

We know that our most reliable means of growth is “personalized recruiting.” This is when a current DC Downsizer asks a friend to sign-up, much the same way he or she might ask the person to sponsor a 10k walk for charity.

Our assumption has been that it’s easier to recruit people to subscribe to the Downsizer-Dispatch, than it is to get them to register to use the Educate the Powerful System. But this is only an assumption. It needs to be tested.

Here’s how you can participate in this test, and perhaps push the Downsize DC Army past 30,000 at the same time. Just cut and paste the following sample email and send it to people whom you think are likely to favor our One Subject at a Time Act. Here’s the sample email . . .

I need your help to right a wrong. It will only take a few minutes, in return for which you’ll gain a power you didn’t have before. Please write back to tell me if you’ve decided to participate. I’ve pledged to find at least one other person who will join me in asking Congress to introduce and pass DownsizeDC.org’s “One Subject at a Time Act” — OSTA for short.

YOU are that person.

Here’s the wrong that OSTA would right . . .

Congress passed the REAL ID Act — a national ID card scheme. It was incredibly unpopular with citizens and, surprisingly, in Congress! In order to pass the Real ID legislation, Congressional leaders had to combine it with a popular but unrelated bill.

The same thing happened with the law that banned online poker. That bill also lacked the votes to pass on its own merits. So Congressional leaders shoe-horned it into a bill to protect our ports.

These are NOT isolated examples. This is how Congress does business on an almost daily basis. The result is that we are subjected to more and more laws that even most of our “representatives” in Congress oppose! That’s not how democratic government is supposed to work. But sadly . . .

We can’t expect Congress to reform itself. The power brokers prefer this. Change will only come when the people demand it. That means you and I must both tell Congress what we want. Fortunately . . .

DownsizeDC.org has created two powerful tools for us to use — the One Subject at a Time Act, and the Educate the Powerful System . . .

• The One Subject at a Time Act would prohibit Congress from clustering unrelated legislation, and would render any law passed in violation of this act vulnerable to nullification in court.
• DownsizeDC.org’s Educate the Powerful System empowers you to ask your House Rep., and your two Senators, to introduce OSTA.

All you have to do to gain the power to easily send instructions to Congress, is register once, so that your address and zip code can be used to identify the House district in which you live. From that point on you’ll be able to use the Educate the Powerful System whenever you want to tell Congress how you feel on a variety of issues.

• Please go here: https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/83
• Register to use the Educate the Powerful System
• Send the letter to your elected representatives asking them to introduce and pass DownsizeDC.org’s One Subject at a Time Act
• Write me back and let me know you have done it, so I can know I’ve met my commitment to find one more person to contact Congress

That’s all there is to it! Thanks in advance if you decide to help.

Ok, that’s really all there is to it. Give it a go and let’s see what happens. We’ll report the results on Friday.

Also, if you have a Facebook account and want to help us get to that next milestone, simply go to http://www.facebook.com/downsizedc and click the “Like” button at the top.

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.