I have long realized that, as with almost every other social problem, the problem of dishonest communication between government and its citizens is best solved by going back to basic, well-established principles. And in the case of written documents, those principles are simply the basic rules of good writing, including grammar, word usage, and sentence structure.
          Indeed, it may well be argued that the Constitution itself, in spite of its being our most precious of founding documents, has flaws in its writing that have led to many of the most devastating political problems we face today. Think, for instance, of what a difference it would have made if "interstate commerce" and "general welfare" had been just a little more clearly defined. Perhaps government wouldn't be so easily able to invoke the interstate commerce clause in the name of any substance or transaction it wished to control. And perhaps the general welfare clause (and its use in the Preamble) wouldn't provide such an easy excuse for government to try to correct every ill of society, regardless of the inevitable impact of its heavy hand.
          And in the Declaration of Independence, couldn't we have made life a whole lot easier if we had just defined "men" a little bit better — you know, in that phrase, "all men are created equal"; that could have resolved a lot of problems, maybe even helped end slavery, prevented the Civil War, and stopped segregation.
          So I see good writing skills — and any tools that help improve those skills — as essentials of good government and good citizenship. Government must communicate with America's citizens more clearly and, therefore, more honestly; and in so doing it will increase its transparency and accountability. (That's one reason why we're carrying in our Writers SuperCenter Store the StyleWriter Software, which converts writing into plain English. Tools like this are excellent for getting government to write in simple, understandable, plain langage. And they also are useful for businesses, organizations, and individuals for making any written communications — emails, reports, essays, term papers, etc. — more readable and, therefore, more honest. So I encourage everyone who needs help with their writing to consider using it, and I am especially proud to be promoting this to government agencies.)
          Laws, regulations, and even day-to-day correspondence between government and citizens are filled with legalese, bureau-speak, jargon, and gobbledygook, not to mention poor grammar and overall problematic writing. And if government bureaucrats learn to write in simple, direct, plain English, much of the problem will disappear. Even when government intentionally (or unknowingly) subverts the Constitution and foists illegitimate constraints upon the People, government is, at least, far less able to hide behind false words when it must write with clarity and consiseness.