Congress threatening to shutdown unless ACA is defunded/repealed immediately.

[guartz]

The natural conclusion of this fiasco is us talking about what will replace the republican party, because it's dead.




Protip: It won't be teaparty.

[guartz]

I'm to tired of the phrase "free market".

It's been abused beyond belief. I agree.

[Moss]

kickstarter

[Cantih]

I've considered trying to get a movement started of a new wave of politicians, but I don't know how one would go about such an endeavor.

You either start with candidates or voters.

You find six hundred trustworthy motherfuckers to go for office, and convince the public to vote for them. There are corruptive and astroturf pitfalls with this one.
Or, you start with the public, build a base that will vote, and then obtain candidates. This is difficult because people.

But either way, if you don't want it to fizzle, you need serious results, or it's going to come apart like an LS killing Einherjar death spiral. (Fail a few runs, attendance drops, failures just get worse, and then it's abandon ship.)


Personally,
I'd build a party platform first, and put it up early. Let everyone put the sledgehammer to it, find out what breaks and what doesn't. The goal is not to shift it just to please to get numbers, but to make it better where it can be because you can't make it perfect just by yourself. You can't just stick to your guns (see GOP), but you also can't just bend to get everyone (because then you're just a slimy bastard trying to get elected).

Then, just after putting it up. You target one major area of your platform, and you build an organization/movement to DO WORK on solving it. The old business chestnut is "Find a need, fill it." (though these days, it's all too often "Create a need, fill it"). Something parallel for government would be "Find a problem, fix it." If it were me, I'd aim for the core trouble. Spoilered because it's not strictly to your topic.

Spoiler: show

I'd look into the two sides of a person's money, and the problems there. Where it comes from (jobs, wages), and where it goes (necessities [food, rent/mortgage, utilities, health, etc.]). Solving something on one side (or both) of that dynamic is going to ease the lives of a LOT of people for who life kinda sucks. You may even need to go outside the box, if the problem is money, find a solution that doesn't involve it at all. Though, you likely won't find anyone involved in housing who won't speak exclusively in money, for example.

Through this, you build up awareness. The people helping, the people you help, and the people who notice you doing it. (This is also why I'd go for a big problem, a lot of people will be associated.) You're also just going to have to solve or bypass the media issue. Unless you can get people visiting your site like google/yahoo, or watching your youtube like TV, you are somehow going to have to get treated seriously by the mainstream media. (See also, the third party in presidential debates issue.) And hand in hand is the money issue. It costs, and as is, you're going to have to be in someone's pocket to cover those costs. Ideally it'll be just be your base's, but as we know, reality so often derails ideal.

Then you need the votes. To start with, that's just big numbers. Take the US population, reduce by those who can't vote, find a base, and build from there.
Lets be honest, it's going to be youth. You're going to have to take all of that, everyone thirty and under (and get them to vote), and then scrape anyone like-minded you can from the older demographics.
I'd even aim for the people who could vote on the day, but technically can't yet. Visit high schools, hell, invite your opponents to join you, fair and balanced and all that. Most politicians are scared shitless about off message reporter questions, if you can handle teenagers with an open mic, you've can take anything else.

Through all this, be unflinchingly honest. It's politically insane, but it's your best tool to break cynicism. Also, it's good regardless. All that shit we see politicians do, and hate, just don't do it.

There is one small blessing. If you try this while there is still an even fight between two parties, you don't need half the vote, you just need to aim for forty. Cold comfort, but there you go.

(Oh, and also, 1. You'll need ballot access, go look for all the bureaucratic hoops you need to jump through for the offices you want to run for. Then do it for a different state, and then another. You'll quickly see you're going to at least hire fifty lawyers nationwide to handle this shit. Hopefully you'll find ones that also... 2. Make sure all campaigns run properly according to state and federal law. Because god help you if you don't. Well, you'll need more than fifty for that, likely far more than one for each campaign. And that's just the pure mechanical process to run, you still need ALL the OTHER people. And remember, they all gotta be saints too.)

[Churchill]

you also need to hire personal security and someone to run intel ops so you know how to pm a mofo

[Psion]

I've personally wished for a long time that there was a sort of public forum where the government could ask the people directly for solutions to various issues, such as how to avoid government corruption, how to increase the efficiency of government spending, which issues to focus on, and the like. It just doesn't feel much like a democracy when it consists of picking one of two people, neither of which really convey your wishes, then pray they don't wreck the country up in their term. I know everyone here is cynical about the intelligence of the general populace, but I feel like if it was on a forum where you couldn't be anonymous, and were banned for improper posts to counter the inevitable trolls, it would slowly weed out the stupid. Add in a rule where you had to make intelligent posts (aka if you make a statement, back it up with facts), and hopefully people would be motivated enough by the ability to make their voice heard and play an active part in government that they would respect it and each other.

Personally, I see government being able to enact change at a glacial pace, and with an inefficiency that would make a room of monkeys look professional. Asking the general populace, with it's lack of political knowledge and professional knowledge of various systems, may SEEM like a bad idea, but crowd thinking is often better than the sum of its parts, because each person can contribute their individual knowledge to a subject, however slight, and get a more complete picture of what solution is needed. Is my idea of a public forum the perfect solution to fixing the various issues of governments? hardly, but I'm hoping that it's at least the seed of a good idea, and that others can poke and prod at it, shaping it into something that is actually close to a perfect solution. That ability to quickly learn and adapt is intrinsic to all living creatures, yet is sadly lacking in our government. Why are we letting something that is inflexible and dumb like our government dictate the lives of flexible, intelligent (usually) beings?

[BaneTheBrawler]

its interesting to compare how slowly government moves vs anything ever done on the internet. i feel like there's probably a huge amount of potential for change to the way democracy functions. talking to representatives in real time, etc. i cant even name my state's reps off the top of my head (except maybe bachmann but i dont remember if shes still in or not), and I'm more much more informed than most people I know. It's not even really apathy, it's just complete lack of market penetration, or whatever you want to call it. People just vote their party or incumbent on everything except city-level and presidential elections. Myself included. I look at a ballot sheet and recognize -maybe- 10 names, and I might even be able to tell you something about two or three of them from the occasional TV ad I saw in a waiting room once.

I don't even know how I would learn anything about these people, because they don't exist on the internet. They don't have pages, they don't do AMAs, nothing. So that could be a good place to start: convince the reps (and those other mysterious elected officials that appear on ballots and nothing else) to make themselves known to their constituents. Maybe then people would care who sat in their chair.

[Cantih]

I don't even know how I would learn anything about these people, because they don't exist on the internet. They don't have pages, they don't do AMAs, nothing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/113th_...tates_Congress
Note all the names are blue, and I checked MN and they do have decently full pages.

Also,
http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Minnesota
it even has state level
http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.ph...urrent_members
http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.ph...urrent_members

I will grant you, this is after the fact material. I wasn't paying much attention to the site a year ago, so I can't say how it is before an election.

[Waraji]

Start at nuclear, and build up from there. Nothing renewable (insufficient), or fossil fuels (not matter how plentiful it is). Hydrogen could be the next big thing.

[Viq]

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz...btzjo6_500.gif

Energy independence... oh man that's a good one.

[Psion]

Well, I think it was the National Ignition Facility that recently was mentioned, because for the first time it put out more energy than was put into it. Of course, I think that was just the laser part, so it's not quite up to snuff just yet, since it still has to produce more power than what it takes to run the whole building, not just the laser part. Still, it's a first. :D

Still, seems like the only real renewable energy, sans fusion power, is either nuclear or solar. (though all three are pretty much related, just a matter of whether your making a mini star or harvesting the energy of the existing one, lol) Wind power is nice, but it has issues with birds in a lot of models, and noise issues as well. Harnessing the power of the tides works, but a lot of people complain about how unsightly they are. I think some models are coming out that aren't an eyesore to beachfront properties though, harnessing the tides below the surface of the ocean. Hydro power alters landscapes and ecosystems pretty drastically, and of course we all know the evils of fossil fuels, with it's air pollution.

I do wish there was more awareness about pollution in general though. Not just the obvious ones about air pollution and water pollution, reducing those has a dramatic positive impact on the health of the general populace. Land pollutions is another important one, but there's a decent amount of awareness for that too. I'm concerned about noise and light pollution as well, however. They're annoying, but on a level that you generally tune out, until there's a power outage and suddenly you experience what true silence is, as all the whirring of fans, electronics, and appliances stops. Then you realize just how noisy the world really is, and how they drown out the quieter sounds of nature. Same goes for light pollution. Here in southern California, you literally cannot see the constellations. On a warm night, you see the moon, and maybe 5 stars, and probably half those are actually planets. On clear cold nights you can occasionally see Orion and thats pretty much it. Yet when I lived in a tiny town in NC, you could see.... well, more than you could count, that's for sure. The difference is stunning, and it's even more so in truly isolated places like the desert, where you can see the milky way. The loss of the night sky's beauty might not seem like much, but it's fueled the dreams of many a scientist, sparking their curiosity for what lies beyond. Oh yeah, and a lot of nocturnal animals kinda need the darkness for survival, you know, nothing big, just the loss of fireflies and stuff. <.< (we had that in NC too. summer nights were really fun thanks to firefly swarms.)

But no, I'm not sure where to look for that, except maybe google scholar? D:

[Blubbartron]

I wish people would stop being so goddamn bitchy about their views being changed because of technological progress that's trying to make life better for everyone. I look at wind turbines and marvel at how far we come - they aren't an eyesore to me.

In other words, changing the way we provide energy may have to start with educating people in order to change societal perceptions of energy. People will never accept nuclear unless we educate them about how safe it is (it will take a lot of effort to undo the fear mongering of the media and big oil propaganda).

[archibaldcrane]

Start at nuclear, and build up from there. Nothing renewable (insufficient), or fossil fuels (not matter how plentiful it is). Hydrogen could be the next big thing.

Pretty sure we're already "energy independent" when it comes to electricity lol.

[Psion]

Oh, I'm not complaining about the eyesore of windmills. Certainly some models can be, but some are actually pretty neat to look at. There is, however, the issue of sound, and it's quite a valid one. a wind farm is loud. like, LOUD loud. I think there's some models that are trying to get around that and the bird issue by making the turbines really huge but turn really slow instead though.

[Callisto]

I think there's some models that are trying to get around that and the bird issue by making the turbans really huge but turn really slow instead though.

lol'd

[Waraji]

Pretty sure we're already "energy independent" when it comes to electricity lol.

Oh, definitely, but we're still seeing complete dependence on practically every facet of transportation. There's no reason why we can't have sustainable hydrogen powered vehicles within the next 20 years, other than Big Oil/Gas lobbying/discrediting the shit out of anything other than what they have a stronghold on.

[Restrat]

What do you mean when you say energy independence? A lot of times when politicians say that they really mean to have a net export of oil for things like gasoline.

Almost all of our electricity comes from coal, natural gas, or renewable resources from the US so we are pretty much "energy independent" already in that regards.

[Psion]

lol'd

Gimmie a break, it's late for me ; ;

[Meresgi]

U.S energy independence = conquer the middle east and take ALL DA OILS

[archibaldcrane]

Oh, definitely, but we're still seeing complete dependence on practically every facet of transportation.

Um, 38% of the total petroleum the US consumes is produced domestically.