User:Aleister/abp

When politicians and lobbyists want to get something done in America they don't take their ideas to the voters, or throw-down on the floor of Congress, or even appeal to the opinionated talking heads on the cable networks. They meet their peers, policy wonks, and the big money guys far away from the general public and untrusted media, and engage in American backroom politics.

Let's follow the path of a very good idea and see how a bill really becomes a law.

An idealistic aide

Fresh from college, clear-eyed, pumped up, and ready to change the world, a young woman reports for work after easily getting a job in her Congressman's office in Washington D.C. Let's call her Susan.

Susan has had an idea about how to save the world ever since the first time her mommy and daddy took her into a real forest when she was seven. Why, thought Susan, doesn't every city that was built on forests and prairies now allot funds to purchase an equivalent amount of protected land and give it to the Nature Conservancy, which will protect it forever (or at least until the GOP gets control of the Board of Directors, then "there goes the neighborhood").

the art of the possible