Jim Harper, of the Cato Institute, has taken a good hard look at the REAL ID Act. Here's his conclusion: If the REAL ID Act had been in place before 9-11 the 9-11 terrorists would have had no problem acquiring REAL ID's.

This leads us to reprise the Groucho Marx quote we featured last week: "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies."

The REAL ID Act is Exhibit A. It won't work. It isn't needed. It costs too much. The only people it will burden are innocent Americans.

So how does Congress respond? It wants to fix the REAL ID Act, and a Senate subcomittee is holding hearings today (Monday) for that purpose. This is simply another wrong remedy.

Please send Congress a message telling them NOT to try to fix the REAL ID Act, but simply to repeal it.

Then cut and paste the above section and send it to friends.

DOOMSDAY DEADLINE:

We're reaching a real critical point. The month is almost over and we still need to raise $5,520 to meet budget.

Even though we've made budget for seven consecutive months, I'm concerned. An expert I trust says we've relied too much on email for our fundraising. I responded, "But we save money on fundraising expenses so we're being more efficient with our donor's money." And the expert said, "It takes money to make money."

Well, I'd like to prove him wrong. Will you help me?

The amount of money we need to raise in the next five days is considerably more than we've raised in any week long period since mid-January. Our email fundraising started slowing down at that point. The last two weeks, it's slowed to a trickle, despite the fact that we've delivered a lot of good news, like swelling our "Read the Bills Act Coalition" by more than 1000% and achieving our best month for recruitment so far in 2007. 

We need your support to keep pushing ahead, so please, contribute now. If you can give the entire amount, please do. If you can give just a small portion, please do so.

It matters. We're counting on you. Thank you for being a DC Downsizer.   

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.