"marlinspike" wrote in message
...
But I mean, 4 letters a day, that's 28 letters week (or I could go crazy
and
start making copies of the same letter and send 50/day) they would want to
put a stop to it, no?
Richard

Being a middle management employee in a local government, if you write the
elected officials in our jurisdiction and the topic relates to the technical
expertise of the team that I supervise or relates directly to a
project/program activity that I am responsible for... I get the letter with
instructions on what method of response is desired by the elected officials
(e-mail, telephone call, letter). The direction is called a "tracking memo"
and I have usually 7-10 days in which to draft a response which is reviewed
by my supervisors before it is sent out to the letter writer. Often staff is
asked to essentially "ghost write" the letter which is eventually signed by
the lead elected official for the jurisdiction. From a letter writer's point
of view, you think that you've gotten through to the elected official --
more likely you've solidified staff either against the position you support
or convinced staff the way we are heading is in the public interest.

The most effective way of swaying elected officials is to use your fountain
pen with your check book...

Vancouver Evan