Bootstrapping the Open Source Party

[Dan White]

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I'd like to propose that this group approach the formation of the party in
two steps. The first is focused on the creation of a constitution (of the
organization itself), a social contract, and a process for establishing a
web of trust of volunteers, all *roughly* based on Debian:

http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution
http://www.debian.org/social_contract
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMaintainer#Becoming_a_Debian_Maintainer

Doing so would likely provide much needed media attention and direction.
It would also serve as common ground (a big tent) for those who have a
desire to change the status quo, as well as define what we don't wish the
party to be.

I feel that the party itself should be non-partisan. As an organization, we
should take no stances on immigration or taxation. However, our social
contract should promote freedom and democratic principals, with which we
base or direction (step two) on.

We can all agree that the current system of government (where ever we may
live) can be improved by the application of open source principals. Such
an application does not necessarily require constitutional amendments (here
in the US), which would present an insurmountable bootstrapping problem.

I believe we should focus on the legislative branch of government, which
appears to be the most broken, and least open, and therefore most ripe for
change. I've seen a lot of different ideas in this group, and other places
online, about how to accomplish that. The most compelling to me are those
which promote fixing government through democratic principals (one person,
one vote) and volunteerism.

- --
Dan White
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[Matt Lemmon]

Hi Everyone, I am new to the group, and very excited to be here. I wanted to start an open source party, but it looks like somebody beat me to it!

My involvement in politics has primarily been at the field level, as a volunteer for the Obama campaign in 2008 and 2012. There I saw a lot of things that worked really well, and a few things which could have been improved.

I think that the biggest opportunity for achieving an impact is in reaching out to independents and moderates. And I also think that there is a big opportunity to make an impact specifically in the 2014 elections for seats in the House of Representatives.

Just as the presidential campaigns focused on "Swing States," there is also an opportunity to focus on "Swing Districts" (house districts where seats were won with less than 55% of the vote) in the 2014 House races.

I do not think it is necessary to establish a political party in the strict traditional sense - which would mean trying to get "Open Source Candidates" elected in competition with the other parties. Rather, I think that by getting involved in the political process at the primary caucuses level and trying to help people - Republicans and Democrats mainly - to win the primaries - by supporting candidates who are open, thoughtful, informed, non-ideological, non-dogmatic - by supporting people who are optimistic, positive, caring, compassionate - and especially by supporting people who are able to make personal, human connections with others - - - - I think that by supporting people like this, particularly in "swing districts," we could make a big impact in 2014.

I also have a field campaign strategy in mind which I think could work....

I will be focusing my efforts on the Colorado 6th congressional district. This House seat was not competitive in past election cycles, but due to redistricting, it is now competitive. It is also the area where I volunteered in 2008 and 2012 for the Obama campaign. My idea is organize volunteers in a new and unique way. One of the keys to winning political campaigns is running effective voter registration drives, and keeping an accurate database identifying supporters. My idea is to send out volunteers to register voters, and the unique part is in the way we would identify ourselves to voters. Instead of trying to get voters to register as democrats or republicans, and instead of trying to convince them to support one candidate or another, we would tell them that we are open to both sides of the isle but we are trying to identify candidates who espouse principles of clear-thinking and good decision making which might appeal to independent voters. Then we would try to get people to show up and vote at the primaries.......

Well, those are my thoughts. I am interested to know what you all think.

Best wishes,
Matt Lemmon

[Ben Goertzel]

Hi Matt,

Welcome!

Basically nothing has happened with the Open Source Party since the
idea was first formulated...

We discussed it a bit online, on this list and then on Facebook (I
don't like Facebook so I didn't participate there much) ... but nobody
really did anything so far as I know...

During the time since the Open Source Party was conceived, the Occupy
movement popped up and then mellowed out, and it seemed to have some
overlap with the Open Source Party ideas...

Someone needs to emerge with the energy and time to take the OSP idea
and run with it and actually do something. Maybe that's you! I'm
simply too busy with other stuff, and it seems the other OSP
enthusiasts on this list are in the same boat...

Your vision of OSP is more focused on mainstream electoral politics
than I've been thinking.... But, whatever! Doing anything real and
OSP-related would be great, and could lead in all sorts of interesting
directions...

So IMO .. by all means... go for it!! ;)

-- ben goertzel

--
Ben Goertzel, PhD
http://goertzel.org

"My humanity is a constant self-overcoming" -- Friedrich Nietzsche

[Luke Mulks]

Hey Matt!

Welcome! Ben did a great job summing things up. We had been kicking a few ideas around within the group, and admittedly I got slammed and had to focus attention elsewhere.

I love that you've got the field experience, and I feel it's a very useful skillset you're bringing to the table.

IMO this effort has been a bit tricky to navigate off the ground, especially given that it started pre-Occupy, pre-Citizens United, pre-ExtraJudicial Drone Kill Lists and pre-2012 election cycle. The conversation has evolved on a national level a lot in a short time in some ways, retrograded in others.

I was kicking around the idea of having something like an OPS caucus that we could court more forward thinking and open legislators around at one point, but to be honest, my own personal perspective on that has changed a bit after seeing the political discourse map and track out the way it has.

Not to be a cynic, or piss in anyone's, bowl of Cheerios, but I think short of either pushing to change the way campaign finance operates, or starting a new party, I am likely going to have a tough time throwing support towards either of these two political parties. There's just too much that they seem to agree with (NDAA, upcoming Enemy Expatriation Act, Extrajudicial killing of American Citizens and their 16 y/o son in Yemen via drone with bipartisan support, DEA raiding medical cannabis in violation of the 10th Amendment in California under a Democratic Admin, and the pentagon shipping surplus military armaments to state/local PDs to use against myself and others simply using our right to peacefully protest), and I can't really support either party in good conscience.

I don't mean to rant or irk anyone's personal perspective on the topic, and despite what I mentioned above I actually read a piece CA Rep Darrell Issa wrote this week about government and the internet that actually sounded like it was written by someone who knows what a web browser is without having to ask an intern about it. I can't believe I would ever put Issa and good in the same thought space, but these are strange times and it's worth mentioning when something that sounds real actually comes out of a politician of any stripes. I will dig up the link and share.

I am not totally opposed to listening to the sharing of ideas on here by any means, and highly encourage and love the participation by everyone. I am in the adworld now, w/a solid career in print/web media production dev/design and am down to help if needed. I'm also slammed too, but definitely willing to aid if it's a team effort.

I always love seeing these emails, and still am for the OSP if we can get focus and energy around it.

Thanks,
Luke 

[Dan White]

I mostly agree with this.

The idea of focusing on swing districts is interesting, in that you may
force one of the lead candidates to address the issues presented by a new
ideology - a 3rd party candidate, and perhaps influence the system not by
actually electing 3rd party candidates.

That is probably one of the greatest successes of the Tea Party,
politically speaking. They framed the issues by presenting them in the
primaries, which then framed the issues within the general election, and
probably won a few (and lost a few) elections in the process. But that's a
net gain if your goal is to influence the national debate.

It also make sense to focus on districts with a high number of self
identifying independents. If the goal is a smarter government, ran by
smarter people, then we'll need to get those people elected. Simply running
under the banner of "smarter government", and backing it up with talking
points to frame the debate, may be effective in such districts.

>I also have a field campaign strategy in mind which I think could work....
>
>I will be focusing my efforts on the Colorado 6th congressional district.
>This House seat was not competitive in past election cycles, but due to
>redistricting, it is now competitive. It is also the area where I
>volunteered in 2008 and 2012 for the Obama campaign. My idea is organize
>volunteers in a new and unique way. One of the keys to winning political
>campaigns is running effective voter registration drives, and keeping an
>accurate database identifying supporters. My idea is to send out volunteers
>to register voters, and the unique part is in the way we would identify
>ourselves to voters. Instead of trying to get voters to register as
>democrats or republicans, and instead of trying to convince them to support
>one candidate or another, we would tell them that we are open to both sides
>of the isle but we are trying to identify candidates who espouse principles
>of clear-thinking and good decision making which might appeal to
>independent voters. Then we would try to get people to show up and vote at
>the primaries.......

Some great ideas.

I find it fascinating how the Americans Elect party was able to organize so
quickly. That should be a case study for our own efforts. They were able to
obtain the required number of signatures in my state (Oklahoma) to field a
presidential candidate, in their first election cycle, when even the
Libertarian and Green parties could not. Why they weren't actually able to
field a candidate is the reason why I believe our efforts could be focused
more on legislative races, where domestic ideas and government reform
issues might have a much better change of gaining a foothold, than in
Presidential politics.

On 11/16/12�20:20�+0800, Ben Goertzel wrote:
>Hi Matt,
>
>Welcome!
>
>Basically nothing has happened with the Open Source Party since the
>idea was first formulated...

I know I've already floated the idea, but I really do believe the
development of a Social Contract would do much to focus our efforts, and
attract others to the movement.

On 11/16/12�09:33�-0800, Luke Mulks wrote:
>IMO this effort has been a bit tricky to navigate off the ground,
>especially given that it started pre-Occupy, pre-Citizens United,
>pre-ExtraJudicial Drone Kill Lists and pre-2012 election cycle. The
>conversation has evolved on a national level a lot in a short time in some
>ways, retrograded in others.
>
>I was kicking around the idea of having something like an OPS caucus that
>we could court more forward thinking and open legislators around at one
>point, but to be honest, my own personal perspective on that has changed a
>bit after seeing the political discourse map and track out the way it has.
>
>Not to be a cynic, or piss in anyone's, bowl of Cheerios, but I think short
>of either pushing to change the way campaign finance operates, or starting
>a new party, I am likely going to have a tough time throwing support
>towards either of these two political parties. There's just too much that
>they seem to agree with (NDAA, upcoming Enemy Expatriation Act,
>Extrajudicial killing of American Citizens and their 16 y/o son in Yemen
>via drone with bipartisan support, DEA raiding medical cannabis in
>violation of the 10th Amendment in California under a Democratic Admin, and
>the pentagon shipping surplus military armaments to state/local PDs to use
>against myself and others simply using our right to peacefully protest),
>and I can't really support either party in good conscience.

I afraid the 'Fix it by Reforming Campaign Finance' route is just doomed to
failure. I believe it's an attempt to fix the wrong thing. Even if strict
laws were passed, it doesn't *directly* fix anything. It's an attempt to
fix a lot of other problems indirectly. So I guess I'm on the 'New Party'
band wagon, or at least one where we attempt to get candidates with Open
values elected.

I'm of the opinion that the direction most likely to fix government is
direct democracy, and online voting (but not necessarily online elections).

--
Dan White

[Trevor Tomesh]

Hey Matt!

Good to have you aboard. The "party" as it stands is still (still... still... still) an "exploratory campaign". There's a lot of questions that need to be answered about how you would approach ideas of open governance, management, etc.

I admit that it's been a bit like herding cats, and the leadership is just not there. Perhaps we need to get a structure together in order to start "running" the party? Assign a BDFL and introduce an open-source constitution for our party (with version control)?

Trevor

[Ben Goertzel]

> Not to be a cynic, or piss in anyone's, bowl of Cheerios, but I think short
> of either pushing to change the way campaign finance operates, or starting a
> new party, I am likely going to have a tough time throwing support towards
> either of these two political parties. There's just too much that they seem
> to agree with (NDAA, upcoming Enemy Expatriation Act, Extrajudicial killing
> of American Citizens and their 16 y/o son in Yemen via drone with bipartisan
> support, DEA raiding medical cannabis in violation of the 10th Amendment in
> California under a Democratic Admin, and the pentagon shipping surplus
> military armaments to state/local PDs to use against myself and others
> simply using our right to peacefully protest), and I can't really support
> either party in good conscience.

I think the Republican Party, today, is fundamentally much more evil
than the Democratic Party

However, this is faint praise. The Democratic Party is also corrupt,
bureaucratic, stupid,
and unable to either empathize with ordinary people or grok the future
of technology.

There are great individuals in both parties. But I am speaking about
the organizations.

I would be more interested in an Open Source Party advocating for
radical change, such as a new
US Constitutional Convention...

But, really, I'd be happy to see *anything* cool come out of this ;)

-- Ben G

[R. U. Sirius]

Much has happened since I first came up with the idea for the Open Source Party. It was before…

Tea Party
WikiLeaks as a big phenomenon
Anonymous as a political-ish entity
OCCUPY!!!!!
The pluses and minuses (mostly minuses) of Obama
The little noticed voting down of an audit of the Fed by the US Senate (Democrats)…


I'm sort of vibeing that maybe Open Source Party isn't a populist enough "brand"… and have vaguely ruminated about raising again my idea for The Revolution party. But I'm open to whatever.

I'm thinking a lot about a Campaign For Transparent Currency as being a main thrust for me… it seems like it could be the educational prequel to Debt Strike or something along those lines.

R>

[Ben Goertzel]

I suggested before replacing "Open Source Party" with "Open Party" --
I think this would have a broader appeal ...

-- Ben G

[Matt Lemmon]

Hi everyone. Wow, it is great to hear so many different insightful ideas about the concept of political organizing based on Open-Source principles. I am definitely moving forward with organizing a team in the Colorado 6th Congressional District. I will keep you all posted as to how it progresses. I have been gathering a lot of information during the past days, as well as communicating with my personal network of volunteer friends.

There is so much to discuss with regards to the idea of an Open Source Party. Without going into too much detail, I will first say that I find myself nodding my head in agreement with the comments I have read in this group, and I really like the name "The Open Party". I personally like the idea of a model where, in the short run, the group tries to get candidates into office within the existing Democratic and Republican parties. In the long run, I believe that America needs another viable political alternative besides Rep. and Dem. In the short run, I think we can get a lot accomplished without having to jump through all the hoops of registering as a separate party. 

I understand and relate to the feeling that neither the Republican party nor the Democratic party really represents all of the ideals of the Open Source movement. I think each District is a little different, and obviously each candidate is different. My personal focus right now is on eliminating a guy named Mike Coffman - a diehard conservative who has ruled over the Colorado 6th District for many years. In my opinion, the most awesome result that I could hope for, would be to defeat him - not in the general election, but in the Republican primaries - just to show how effective grassroots organization can be.

I randomly ran into a volunteer friend at the movie theater in downtown Denver the other day. I was there to see Wreck It Ralph in 3D. She was there to see Lincoln, which I had already seen. (BTW, Lincoln is an AWESOME movie in my opinion, and WreckItRaplh is pretty good too.) Anyway, she lives downtown, not in the Colorado 6th District, but she's willing to join the team just to try to get rid of Mike Coffman.

Well, I want to provide a list which I made, which summarizes the most competitive House races in 2012, which will likely also be the most competitive seats in 2014. I would be interested to know if any of the locations identified in this list are close to home for any of you. The list is here in this google doc.

Information in the google doc comes from the NYTimes' reporting of the election results.

The Colorado 6th District is fairly low on the "Top 31 Most Competitive Seats List", but it is still a close race - and it is a place where I have personal relationships with lots of active grassroots volunteers who would be sympathetic with the idea of unseating Mike Coffman, so that's why it's an important area for me personally.

Another seat that jumps out at me from the list of competitive House battles is the Minnesota 6th District, where Michele Bachmann won re-election in 2012 by only ~4,200 votes - a pretty dang close margin of victory.

And then the other places that get my attention are the places where I have lived and/or have family and friends. In my case, these are the California 26th District and the Utah 4th District.

U.S. House Districts across the nation were re-gerrymandered in 2012 based on the 2010 census, and are not due to be redrawn again until 2022, to the best of my knowledge.

K well it's really good to have a dialogue with this group. I look forward to ongoing interesting conversations in the future. I am especially interested to know if any of you live in or near the "Swing Districts" I have identified, or went to college in one, or grew up there, or that kind of thing.

Best wishes,

Matt Lemmon

[Eric Newcomb]

Hi, Matt.

I haven't been active on this list since pretty much its first six months of existence, because of a number of things, very few of them having anything to do with this group. But I've been reading whatever came my way by email, and I think your experience and energy can go a long way.

I've been working a bit with the local Green Party, and I like a lot of their approach, especially the idea of less focus on national elections, more focus on local and state level. It would be wonderful to have a president from pretty much any party that's not interested in the "business as usual" status quo. From what I've seen, that pretty much rules out both Democrats and Republicans. A lot of people want to see real change in our government, but few of them are politicians associated with the current established major parties. I think your ideas are really good ones, and if they can be applied on the local and state levels, they are far more likely to succeed than if you go straight for the national offices.

I'm not by any means suggesting that the national offices should be ignored. But the reality is that local and state politics have a lot more direct impact on the every day life of most Americans than the big elections do, but they get a lot less attention, because only the British do spectacle and extravagance better than we here in the USA, and there is no greater extravagant spectacle than what has become of our national elections of late.

I'd like to see this group move toward educating and encouraging local and state level political players on what is meant by open government, and on helping people with similar aims get elected where they can do the most good. Maybe with your experience and energy, you can help guide us from an idea list to something more active, to help get the ideas and information to the people who can make them happen. And yes, include the two big parties, but if I may offer a suggestion ... don't put your energies "primarily" into the Dems and Repubs. They have the least to gain from change, and the most to gain from things staying the same. Include them, but put equal or greater effort into the groups that already want to see real change in the way our government does business.

[Dan White]

On 11/21/12�17:54�-0500, Eric Newcomb wrote:
>I've been working a bit with the local Green Party, and I like a lot of
>their approach, especially the idea of less focus on national elections,
>more focus on local and state level. It would be wonderful to have a
>president from pretty much any party that's not interested in the "business
>as usual" status quo. From what I've seen, that pretty much rules out both
>Democrats and Republicans. A lot of people want to see real change in our
>government, but few of them are politicians associated with the current
>established major parties. I think your ideas are really good ones, and if
>they can be applied on the local and state levels, they are far more likely
>to succeed than if you go straight for the national offices.
>
>I'm not by any means suggesting that the national offices should be
>ignored. But the reality is that local and state politics have a lot more
>direct impact on the every day life of most Americans than the big
>elections do, but they get a lot less attention, because only the British
>do spectacle and extravagance better than we here in the USA, and there is
>no greater extravagant spectacle than what has become of our national
>elections of late.

I would agree that state and local politics *should* have a more direct
impact, but I disagree that that's actually the case. One of the failures
of our representational government is that representatives have a vested
interest in wielding power, influence, and money in political ways (it gets
them re-elected). The result of that is a federal government that takes up
too much room, and an inefficient system.

One way to change that trend is to push decisions down in the direction of
local government, in whatever way that might be achievable.

Another way is to replace the federal government with a very small shell
script [1]. That is, I'd like to find some way to reduce the
self-importance of our elected representatives, and strengthen the will of
the electorate, and in the process bazaar[2] the hell out of the system.

1. http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/374d/
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar

--
Dan White

[Matt Lemmon]

Hi guys.

Thank you Eric and Dan for your comments. Once again I find this forum very insightful and very relevant to my current efforts. I am currently bringing information together and contacting my volunteer friends to get this very specific, very local group going - based on open source principles. I appreciate the comments about the importance of local efforts, these are very timely for me. I hope to make a combined approach in the Colorado 6th district. Our first focus will be the U.S. House seat, and hopefully we can achieve some other good things along the way. My volunteer friends come from the Obama campaign, where we were able to learn a lot of simple methods of organizing. We didn't all love everything about the campaign, but I think most of us saw a lot of things that were being done correctly and could easily be replicated - such as maintaining a database of voters in each "turf" (small geographic district), and updating the database to reflect who voters support, whether they registered to vote by mail, etc. Some of my volunteer friends got involved with local politics between 2008 and 2012, at the county level, on the democratic side, and they had a bad experience. They still care about local politics, but they don't want to work with the Arapahoe County Democratic party any more. So I am hoping to bring some of them on to the Open group. In case anyone wants to check out the basic information I've gathered so far about the district, here is the google site I set up for the District. The thing I am most proud of is the google map I created, with the District boundaries on it.

Today I found my way to the opensourcepolitics google site, related to this discussion group. I plan to spend some time giving it a detailed reading - but not tonight because I'm packing to travel tomorrow. Eric, it is cool that you are involved with the Green party. Do you do "get out the vote" drives when it is election time?

One point that I will make about the Swing Districts (the most competitive house districts in the country) is that these districts are areas of opportunity, not only for Republicans and Democrats, but they are also the districts where, statistically, independents would have the best chance of winning.

TTYL,

Matt

[Eric Newcomb]

Hi, Matt.

No, I'm disabled and can't get out of the house much, so most of my efforts take place online and behind the scenes. I offer server space, do a little web development, data processing, that kind of thing. I'd also be happy to do similar work for other groups that I can really get behind, like open governance groups or a US version of the German Pirate Party or something similar.

Eric

Eric

--
The only time it's appropriate to yell out "I've got diarrhea" is when you're playing Scrabble, because it's worth a shitload of points.

[Eric Newcomb]

Dan ---

First, thanks for the link. I plan to buy that T-shirt. It's perfect!

Second, I definitely understand what you're saying, but I think that in an age of twenty-four hour cable news coverage of every time a national politician sneezes or a former candidate fills up their gas tank, it gets easy to think federal politics are bigger than they actually are. And there are groups that want to make the federal government the supreme power, that want the federal government to decide what medical procedures a person is allowed to have and what an employer must provide to his or her employees and a host of other things. But I really do believe that the policies of the state I live in have a lot more direct impact on my life, and the lives of everyone in the state, than the policies of the Federal government have.

My reasoning in this is based on how resources are allocated and distributed. The federal government, to my understanding, provides little to the general population. It regulates interstate commerce, and sets policies on things that must be consistent between states, and funnels tax money to the states to help them with their needs, but for the most part it's the individual state that determines how best to use those resources. That's why, for example, Massachusetts has a far better health care and mental health care system than, say, Louisiana, and it's why California is a far better choice for a tech business than North Dakota. It's state policies, I think, that directly affect the lives of individuals.

That said, I do agree with your assessment of our representative government, and I'm personally in favor of a move to direct democracy, but that's a discussion for another day and/or venue.

Eric

[Trevor Tomesh]

So, just throwing this out there... what do we think about hosting everything on a repository like github? I certainly could set something like that up.

By "everything" I mean:
- The Open Source Party website
- All the party documents (e.g. the constitution, statements of purpose, etc)
- A discussion board

All there... all open. (Maybe we could even host our own private git repository).

Trevor

[Matt Lemmon]

Hey gang,

It is always a pleasure to read the posts in this group. During the past days I have spent a some time reading through the content on the Google site, the wikia site, and the Facebook page, and going through old posts on this group, as well as clicking on links, reading content there, and clicking on other links, and so on. I feel that I now have a little bit more of an idea of who is who in the group, and what kinds of topics the group has been discussing. Nonetheless, I still have more reading to do to come completely up to speed...

Eric, that is cool that you are helping the local Green Party in areas like web development and data processing. I can imagine that this type of support is immensely helpful, and greatly appreciated by your colleagues.

On the topic of whether we can do the most good at the local level or at the state and federal level (and even at the international level) - looking at the discussion between Dan and Eric, my opinion is that you are both right. I think there are lots of important things which we could accomplish at all different levels. I believe that the key to making changes, whether at the local level or at the national level, will be local community organizing. And I think that getting voters to support us in their local polling places might be a good measure of our effectiveness as grassroots community organizers. In this area I have some experience, and my opinion is that this group could be highly effective at turning out voters.

It seems that this group was originally set up with the plan of first, creating a formal political party, and then building momentum and gaining support. I have spent a little more than a year contemplating the formation of a new political movement, and I have written more than 100 pages of draft essay material on the topic. I originally planned on calling the movement "Occupy Congress," but eventually settled on "Open Source Party," which of course brought me to this group. I have envisioned the process a little differently, and this is not to say that my way is the best way to do it, but at least it represents a unique perspective, and I will be interested to know what this group thinks about it....

The simplest way I can think to describe my idea is in a way that might sound vulgar and offensive to some - a Tea Party model. I know, I know, it sounds vulgar and offensive, but I am not proposing that we copy the Tea Party in any way. It's just the simplest way to describe the idea. The Tea Party does not represent an actual political party, it is just a bunch of disparate, angry, Republican campaigning groups. In a very short time, they achieved a lot of influence, not by forming a separate political party, but by by getting candidates who support their distorted vision elected in Republican primaries, both at federal and local levels, across the country. (I know not everyone in this group is in the U.S., and I apologize for the U.S.-centric nature of this discussion. I myself actually live in Honduras, and I came back to the states in October to volunteer for the Obama campaign, and to visit my ailing grandparents.) My idea is that if we can get candidates who share our values elected into office, then we will be in a position to start making some changes. And I know this may sound radical, but I think it would be cool to try to find support not only among Democrats, Independents, and Greenies ("Greeners?" "Greenicrats?"), but also among Republicans and Libertarians.

I think that in the long term it would be very cool to get a formal party established. And everyone I know seems to agree that a viable third party would be beneficial to the U.S. political system. But I think that we could achieve more influence by starting out by supporting candidates within the existing parties, and then expanding to a formal party status in five or ten years.

One of the difficulties with third parties is that they rarely win elections. Also, third parties can have the effect of cannibalizing votes from their side of the political spectrum. This occurred, notably, in 1992, when Ross Perot helped Clinton win (I like to say, "It's not the economy, stupid, it's Ross Perot"), and, tragically, in 2000, when Ralph Nader made it possible for Bush to win. I actually voted for Nader, but I was living in Utah, where I knew my vote wouldn't affect the electoral vote count.

Where my approach to things would differ greatly from the Tea Party model is this: the Tea Party is an angry minority, who have achieved influence by getting lots of financial support, and using that money to run negative attack ads against their opponent. They do not have majority support, and they are not particularly good at grassroots organizing. By being better organized, and more adaptable, and by appealing to a broader base, I think we could be much more effective than the Tea Party.

In my opinion, and in agreement with some points made by Eric, too much attention is paid to the Presidential election, and not enough attention is paid to state and local elections. This year I travelled back to Colorado to volunteer for the Obama campaign, not because I thought the campaign needed me, but simply to get back in touch with the volunteers who I worked with in '08, so I could try to get them interested in working together in 2014. They are a very well-organized team, and in 2008 they accomplished some great things, but in 2010, the Democratic party didn't get organized nationally the way it did in 2008, and it got its butt kicked. Since Republicans gained control of most of the state legislatures in 2010, they controlled the redistricting decisions that went into effect in 2012, and which will stay in effect until 2022, to the best of my knowledge. Here is the result: In November 2012, there were more votes for Democratic House candidates than for Republican House candidates, and yet Republicans retained a substantial majority of House seats. Here is the breakdown of the results of the 2012 elections for seats in the US House of Representatives:

Republicans:  234 seats.  57,825,039 total votes.

Democrats:  201 seats.  58,829,851 total votes.

That's good, old fashioned, American gerrymandering at its finest.

I agree with others in this forum that neither party holds the solution to the world's problems. However, I also think that most people here would agree that the Republican party, in the hands of the Tea Party movement, has been causing a lot of unnecessary problems. I believe that by becoming active in the 2014 primary elections, a few important things could be accomplished.... We could possibly help the Democratic party to pick up some more seats in the house, although I somewhat doubt that the Democrats will gain a majority in 2014. More importantly, we could get a few Democratic congressmen elected who support our values. And the most ambitious thing which I think we might be able to achieve would be to participate in some Republican primaries, and eliminate some aggressive Tea Party Republicans, as well as possibly getting some Republicans elected who would caucus independently, and not just go along with everything that the Tea Party says they have to do. All of this is pretty ambitious and might all be pie-in-the-sky. Looking at things from a more humble perspective: if we could get just one candidate, from either party, elected into the House, it would get us on the radar, and bring a lot of positive attention to the movement.

I think the Republican party is very weak right now, and that is why the Tea Party is having such a heyday. I think that a reasonable alternative to the Tea Party would actually be welcomed by many Republicans. Moreover, I think that with shrewd planning, and effective community organizing, we could catch some of them off guard in the primaries. That is what I hope to do in the Colorado 6th Congressional District.

Again, my apologies for sounding U.S.-centric in this discussion. I think that, in principle, these ideas could function in more or less the same way in other countries.

As you can see, my thoughts here are heavy on strategy, and light on ideology. I guess the main thing I would say, from an ideological perspective, is that the main concept I believe in is the idea of participation. I don't think it is necessary for us to have a complete party platform established in order to start moving forward. I actually think that a more spartan platform is best, with the selling point being: "The platform is up for you to decide."

I hope that I have not written too much. I haven't even gotten into the idea of organizing rallies. Nor have I gotten into any of my specific policy suggestions. If this post gives you a flavor of what I'm about, I guess you might anticipate that my policy ideas are equally unorthodox and ambitious.

My best wishes to all of you, especially Ben, Eric, Dan, Luke, Ken (RU), and Trevor. And also my greetings to Jon, Devin, Patrick, and James, and everybody else.

Oh, I almost forgot - Trevor, I am pretty new to programming and github, but I think a github space would be very useful for this group, and I would definitely be willing to try to help facilitate github-related activities. I am just barely beginning to learn how to program - I am in the process of installing Ruby on Rails - and I recently installed Linux (Ubuntu) on my laptop, which for me was a major accomplishment as well as a major affirmation of the awesomeness of Open Source. However, my four brothers are all pretty skilled computer programmers, so I feel like I might have the right genetics for learning code. It would be cool to work on a webpage together as a group. The google page is great for right now, but there are obviously some limitations on functionality. K, enough said for today. I am going to post this now. :)

[Matt Lemmon]

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to let you all know that in the spirit of the Open Source movement, I decided to go ahead and add some content to the wikia page.

First, I added a little greeting comment on the "wiki:talk" community discussion page.

Then, I added an extra page to the wiki, called "Party Initiatives."

I hope and expect that you will all find this to be acceptable use of the wiki.

Best regards always,

Matt

[Matt Lemmon]

.... While I was at it, I went ahead and added a Site Map to the bottom of the main page on the Wikia site.

[Luke Mulks]

Hey all,

I came across this interview piece with Robert David Steele (most of you are probably familiar w/him on some level....for those that aren't, he's a former CIA operative among other titles that's been railing on about intel apparatus failures, etc for a while).

Steele's focus with the interview was on the Open Source Everything Manifesto he's promoting, but I immediately thought of this group as I read through it.

Anyway, I found it to be an interesting read, so I thought I'd share with the group. His vantage point has a unique twist, given his background.

Here's the interview URL:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jun/19/open-source-revolution-conquer-one-percent-cia-spy

All in all, I feel like I am seeing more and more conversations pop up in different places that have mirrored a lot of what has been discussed in this group, which I find a little more hopeful than the alternative. The spirit behind this effort appears to be alive, which I'd likely expect as the underreported realities of the status quo continue playing out.

I hope you're all continuing kicking ass in your own areas of influence.

Keep rocking the command lines.

Luke

[Seth Itzkan]

Thanks for keeping the faith Luke. I know this list doesn't get a lot of activity, but I'm glad it's there, and I'm glad I'm on it.

- Seth

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[Luke Mulks]

Same here. Thanks Seth!