Divert the agenda

Divert the agenda! How the “Read the Bills Act” could block a $2 trillion spending bill!

Incentives matter. Please pay attention to them…

• The media has an incentive to foment drama to attract an audience.
• Politicians have an incentive to exploit a crisis to grab power and reward cronies.

These incentives make it likely that the media and the politicians are both distorting public information about COVID-19.

It doesn’t matter where you come down on the various COVID-19 debates. You should remain on guard. Keep your stances provisional. And always remember that…

The agenda is being set by people of power, for their own benefit!

• The media can spend billions broadcasting its agenda of conflict.
• The politicians can spend trillions promoting their agenda of cronyism.

How can you compete with that? And how should you respond to it? You could simply submit to the Agenda Setting as most people do, or…

You could try to use asymmetric tactics to impose your own agenda.

For example, Congress wants to spend $1 to $2 trillion on COVID-19 stimulus. You have no power to stop that right now. BUT…

You do have the power to make your local congressional office take a meeting with you.

If you and 300 other local people did this in groups of 3, 5, or 6 per week, over a period of months, you could get your local rep to co-sponsor our “Read the Bills Act!” And similar groups in other congressional districts could recruit enough additional sponsors to pass the bill.

THINK ABOUT WHAT WOULD HAPPEN THEN!

Remember, we’re talking about incentives here…

There’s no way Congress could sit to read or hear read a $2 trillion spending bill. It’d be much too long. They’d have to break the bill into chunks.

The more chunks they were required to sit through, the more these chunks would fail to even come up for a reading.

No reading, no vote!

And even the chunks would be easier for you to defeat.

All of a sudden they’re not spending $2 trillion anymore!

With this approach, you ignored their agenda and established your own! To set your own agenda, sign-up to be one of The 300 for the…

Read the Bills Act

And if you’re already one of The 300 for RTBA, send an email to your friends and ask them to do what you’ve done. You could forward them this message.

Apathy isn’t warranted. And being controlled by the big agenda setters isn’t necessary. There is a way forward that gives you power.

You can be the Agenda Setter. Seize the opportunity!

Jim Babka, President
Agenda Setters by Downsize DC

Today’s Action: Rewrite the incentives with the Read the Bills Act