Today's Downsizer-Dispatch . . . Today's message will be short. We want to share our latest growth numbers, plus give you a quick action item so we can maintain our AGGRESSIVE ACTION. We've blown past the January 2006 mark for messages to Congress by 4,605 messages. This time last year we sent 5,946 messages to Congress, but so far this month, in just 4 days of activity, we've slammed Congress with an eye-popping 10,551 messages. Congratulations DC Downsizers! We've also recruited 122 new Downsizers in just 4 days. That compares to 190 new Downsizers recruited in all of January of last year. We need just 68 more to beat what we did in 2006. We're also just 56 new recruits away from reaching the milestone of 16,000 total Downsizers recruited since we began operation. Our funding continues to rise too. In just 4 days of AGGRESSIVE ACTION 5 Downsizers have made one-time contributions of $1,190, and 17 Downsizers have started new monthly credit card pledges worth $272 per month, which will amount to a whopping $3,264 over the course of the coming year. Thank you Downsizers! Now, let's take a little AGGRESSIVE ACTION today . . . I just learned some exciting things during a conference call with one our coalitions. The REAL ID Act is in REAL trouble. We're going to have a lot more details to share, probably later this month, but let's add to the trouble by sending the new Congress another blast on this one. For those reading this who don't know, the REAL ID Act is a law Congress passed that will eventually impose a national ID card on the American people. This ID card would have many features of an internal passport, like the old police states of Europe used to have, and it will also impose tremendous new burdens and slow-downs on you every time you have to go to your local Department of Motor Vehicles. One of the worst features of these cards is likely to be RFID chips that will allow the government (and others) to track you electronically. We strongly believe this is a law that must be repealed. We also believe it can be. The new Congress hasn't heard from us yet on this one. So let's make the first noise they hear on this issue a LOUD ONE. Please send a message to Congress right now demanding the repeal of the REAL ID Act. You can do so HERE. If you have a new Representative or Senator, please consider calling them, because Congress still doesn't have its act together, and most of these new people don't have Internet communications yet. The Capitol switch board number is 202-224-3121. And let's keep our funding rising too. We're already more than half-way to our January budget, and we have high hopes of doing some advertising this month, once we reach that mark. The sooner the better. You can start a monthly credit card pledge or make a one-time contribution by clicking HERE. Thank you for being a DC Downsizer. Jim Babka President DownsizeDC.org, Inc.