Author Archives: Rand Strauss

About Rand Strauss

Rand Strauss is the Founder of PeopleCount.org, a nonpartisan plan to enable the public to communicate constructively with each other and government by taking stands on crucial political issues. It will enable us to hold government accountable and have it be an expression of our will. Connect with Rand and PeopleCount.org on Facebook. Or leave a comment on an article (they won't display until approved.)

The Real Cause of America’s Political Problems

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This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series Letter to the President

In this part of the letter, I identify the real cause of our political problems, and point to the solution- the piece that’s missing.

The cause: Lack of design.

Our political system simply wasn’t designed to produce the results we want. That’s the fundamental cause of our problems. It wasn’t designed to engage or empower voters. It wasn’t designed for transparency. It wasn’t designed for accountability.

That’s the short-version of the reason we have all these political problems. There was intention and hope. And 240 years ago it was a good design. It produced a lot of the results they wanted. But even back then, the design didn’t take into account political parties. That wasn’t too bad because political parties weren’t well established. And communication was so poor that a country “of the people” mainly meant it meddled very little in people’s lives.

America has changed

In the last 60 years, the world has changed so much that the founder’s original designs are even less effective. There were huge differences when America was founded. Todays corporations were illegal in America. Lobbying was taboo. There was no “big media” much less an internet, radio or TV. There wasn’t even reliable mail service! And political parties were in their infancy. And of course, government was much, much smaller.

No one is to blame

In almost any system, people do what they see is appropriate. In America, citizens have the ultimate power. But we can’t wield it. It’s only natural that others try. The myriad special interests fight over our power. Special interests, including the media, manipulate the people as best they can to win elections. And in the process, politicians are often corrupted.

Changing campaign finance laws might weaken them a bit, but not much. None of the proposed improvements will change this.

What’s missing: accountability.

I’ve talked with many hundreds of Americans. None had a robust definition of “accountability.”

Instead, we believe a myth that accountability happens in elections. But it doesn’t, except maybe a tiny, tiny bit. Especially in today’s elections where incumbents and money have tremendous advantage. Very little accountability is delivered in elections.

Accountability exists in a boss-employee relationship and in a teacher-student relationship. These work pretty well. In these systems there are structures in place that enable the employee or student to be accountable and the boss or teacher to hold them accountable. And it happens day to day, weekly, and month by month, not just once ever two to six years.

This is what’s missing from our system: Practical ways to deliver both sides of accountability.

I hope that hooked them. The next part will be about what happened.

A Letter to the President

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This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series Letter to the President

I wrote another letter to the president. I’ve written many times before, and never receive an answer. So this one I wrote to someone who works for someone who knows him.

It’s probably lousy. It’s certainly too long. Can you tell me which parts to omit to make the next one better?

When I say “too long”, I’m serious. This will be 4 posts.

January 5, 2016

Dear Friend of the President,

It is very, very difficult for a mere civilian to reach anyone who has the president’s ear.

We all see problems in politics. Those like yourself who know it best are well versed in the many reasons about why it’s dysfunctional. Many of these reasons blame certain people or laws.

There’s certainly some truth to them. But much is missing. The 2014 Princeton study found that America hasn’t been a functional democracy for the last 35 years. They didn’t look back further. But the problems stretch far back.

So many parts are broken– campaign finance, lobbying, conflicts of interest, voter disempowerment, apathy and ignorance. Lying into war, creating enemies of other cultures. The main message of this letter is this: Please consider the possibility that there’s more to it than the reasons we tell ourselves.

I’m a software engineer, trained in problem solving. At times I’ve spend full days and weeks and even months immersed in a problem. I did this with politics.

Blame and confusion are often prevalent when first looking at a problem. Blame comes from bias, being “inside the box.” Confusion often accompanies disbelief that things have been so messed up, and for so long. But at it’s core, confusion points to a lack of understanding. So I spend many, many hours with a problem seeing how it works until blame and confusion disappear. With politics, I saw finally that no one was to blame, and that the results we’re seeing are the correct results, given our system.

The next post will start with what I discovered.

Shall We Fix Politics or Complain?

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Shall we fix politics or complain?

On December 8th, Gavin Newsom posted a link to a poll – Do you approve of Trump? Above it he wrote:

With President-elect Trump announcing new cabinet appointments each day, we’re all worried about what’s in store with a Trump administration. Now more than ever, California has to lead the country forward and stand up against racism, bigotry, misogyny and hate.

That’s why I need to hear from 50,000 people before the end of the month: Do you approve of Trump?

I missed the reason- why does he need to hear from 50,000 people? How is that going to help? So I added a comment (I posted it on his page, and his people will review it…)

My reply: Do you want to fix politics or complain?

Here’s my reply:

The system is broken. Trump is not a new problem- we’ve got lots of crackpots in office. And corruption. And worse. But people like you, Gavin, think we just need to fight harder to fix it.

That’s nonsense. It’s nonsense like that which has kept us from doing anything about it for decades. All the fixes- overturning Citizens United, passing the AACA, ending gerrymandering, using IRV- are good, but they’re tiny improvements that won’t solve the problem. They don’t fix the underlying problem, the real cause.

The real cause isn’t that hard to fix, but it’ll take a few million dollars and 12-24 months. Do you want to fix it, or do you just want to complain?

The real cause

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know the real cause. Do you believe it? Probably not. Few people understand it from reading. It flies in the face of so many of our cultural myths. And those myths make up the bulk of our “understanding” of politics. Very, very few people are open-minded enough to withstand the cognitive dissonance of these new ideas.

The real cause is that our system was never designed for a world that contained big media, corporations, lobbying, nor political parties. It was never designed to deliver political accountability. Big media as well as non-print media was unknown to our founders. Corporations and lobbying were taboo. Political parties were either overlooked, or they simply had no ideas of how to quell their power, but George Washington warned politicians not to form them.

The fix is not “politics as usual”

The fix is to supply the missing piece of the design. It’s not that hard, but it’ll take a team and some funding.

Fix politics or complain? I suggest we start fixing. If you want to make this happen, start sharing about PeopleCount in social media. Like our Facebook page. Follow us on twitter. Email your representative and senators in Congress. And join our announcement list.

What’s in a Name? Redskins and Primitive Sports

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In a small forum I read, the conversation about the name “Redskins” arose again.

What’s in a name? Pride?

I find it strange how attached people are to names. As if there’s really any meaning in them. If you’re offended by it, just say so, so people will either opt to appear offensive or change.

I try neither to be ashamed, nor proud of my ancestry/lineage/race/religion. Isn’t pride a sin? Supposedly they’re over-represented in fields of accomplishment. What does that have to do with me?

How many find it offensive?

One listed some stats (this, this and this. Just FYI– I didn’t look at them…) Apparently they attest that about 90% or more of native Americans are not offended by the term “redskins”. Does that mean the term offends 10%? This wikipedia page says about 1.7% of Americans identify as Native Americans, about 5.2 million people. Are we okay with offending 520,000 of them?

One person said that in some predominantly Native American high schools, students “wear the name with pride”? Is that pride in the school, pride in their community, pride in their tribe, pride in being Native American?

Sports are primitive

Let’s face it, sports are primitive. They’re great in many ways, but they’re all about distraction, entertainment, and exercising our emotions, including our violent sides.Often they’re experientially rich- letting us explore lots of emotions connected to our physical sides. They create a drama for us to get wrapped up in. They’re even more shallow than TV, though, which at least gives us new looks at life. They’re fun for many. We should keep them.

Sports are primitive. And their team names are arbitrary, and appropriately primitive. Perhaps we should give them special license for primitive names.

Maybe we should vote on it

My personal opinion is that we should get rid of the name “Redskins” as it perpetuates stereotypes and the significance of race. But I don’t feel strongly about it. It only becomes important when enough people feel it’s important. Maybe native American descendants aren’t there yet. Or maybe they have moved past it, so caring about the name is beneath them.

How about we vote on this every 2 years? Maybe that would get more people out to the polls. And it would provide a tiny bit of accountability, so we can take responsibility for this part of our culture.

And play with it

It’d be great if there were a team called the Christians. And they played the Lions… Maybe we should move the names Democrats and Republicans to teams, too…

Introducing Rand and PeopleCount

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I have a plan for transforming politics.

What I saw: Politics is poorly designed

Democratic systems are inadequately designed. In particular, the US system. It wasn’t a bad design. It had some good parts. But it was “version 1.0.”

When it began, corporations as we know them today were illegal in America. Lobbying was deeply taboo. There was little information of any kind for citizens.There was nothing like “big media”. And there was nothing in the design of our political system about political parties. Over the next 240 years, much changed. Politics adapted. A few times, a few new laws changed some small things. But our system was neither fully designed nor redesigned.

It sorely needs it. While wealthy interests have learned to control politicians, citizens have not. If our elected officials were accountable to citizens many things would be different, and in wonderful ways.

Introducing political accountability

What is political accountability? Few people have an adequate answer. Most say it happens in voting. Americans vote and our politicians are not accountable. Elections do give accountability.

An employee is accountable to his or her boss. A student is accountable to his or her teacher. Accountability is a relationship. Why do we accept political accountability without this relationship? Because we mistakenly think nothing more is possible.

What specific things can politicians do to actually deliver accountability. Very little. Some try hard. A few make enormous efforts. None deliver. They can’t.

How can we change politics to allow politicians to deliver accountability? (Hint: no laws need to be changed.)

And how can we change politics to allow We, the People, to do hold them accountable?

Politics should be designed for accountability

These questions led to the answers of PeopleCount. I have designed a communication system to make politicians accountable to citizens in a way that rewards politicians. And it lets people hold politicians accountable in a way that rewards citizens.

Today, citizens disapprove of Congress. Many of its laws few people want. Instead, Congress could be our representatives creating laws that we desire. Instead of politics being something that frustrates people, it would be our way deciding what we all want. Instead of government being remote bureaucrats spending our money, it would be how we organize ourselves to build the future we want.

Introducing Rand

I’m a guy that was born in Seattle and went to college at Stanford. I studied applied math and computer science around 1980, but what I loved was problem solving. I stayed in Silicon Valley and worked. As a hobby, I studied how our thinking limits what’s possible for us. I married and had two kids and a career.

A few years ago, I was frustrated and resigned about politics. I used my hobby and found that our thinking was limiting what’s possible for us in politics. I used my problem solving skills and put a solution together. I tried to put together a team and launch a product. So far, I’ve failed. But possibilities abound. Join me.

Why it’s Dumb to Say Blue Lives Matter

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It’s dumb to say Blue Lives Matter, as if it’s a meaningful slogan. I write this in response to a blog, ‘Blue Lives’ Don’t Matter Because Blue Lives Don’t Exist. The author makes some decent points, but misses the most important one.

I wrote this because I’m all about accountability. I propose we stop saying “Blue Lives Matter.” But I don’t just propose it. I’m accountable for why.

The author made three points:

His point: It’s a logical error: a false equivalence

This is a good point. “Black” has to do with the color of skin, not the color of a uniform. The phrase is setting up a false equivalence between skin color, or race, and an occupation.

For instance, when a police officer takes off the uniform in the evening and goes out, he or she looks like anyone else. They blend into society. But if a black person goes out for an evening, they are still identifiable by race. They are still subject to increased surveillance. They are more likely to be stopped by, hassled by, and hurt or killed by police.

His point: You sound racist

That varies from listener to listener. You sound racist to me. His point is that by saying this unnecessary phrase, you’re taking attention from the very real problem of abuse of people of color.

His point: There’s no such thing as a “blue life”

I disagree with him on this one. Police are hardworking, often low-paid public servants who mostly keep us civilized. They do this by their mere presence, adding risk to law-breaking. And they do this by apprehending some of us who stray. They have higher suicide rates and other health risks. And their average life expectancy is much shorter. Black life expectancy is 3-5 years less than whites’. Police life expectancy is much shorter.

But these differences are another false equivalence. Joining the police is a choice.

My point: Blue (and white) lives already matter

The whole point of the Black Lives Matter movement is that in our society, white lives and the lives of police in general already matter. They’re of the highest priority. But often other actions say black lives don’t matter.

Police are given training, guns and equipment. They are usually featured as heroes in stories, television and movies. They are paid full salaries plus benefits and retirement. If they are injured, they still get a large fraction of their salary from disability benefits. When a police officer dies, it’s a big deal.

They are given power to manhandle others, almost without impunity. We appreciate how they often put themselves in dangerous situations. The legal system favors them. Everything about how we treat them says they matter.

Black Lives Matter

Certainly all lives matter when ethical people are consciously involved. The problem is that some of us are unethical, and almost all of us are unconsciously biased.

We’re inculcated by the biased portrayals from Hollywood. And by how our society has allowed widespread discrimination for most of the last two centuries. And how the media has often let it go unreported.

When we, or the police, are surprised and feel fear, most of us instantly feel blacks are more dangerous, less peaceful, less rational, educated or civilized than whites. It’s not true. It’s really not. Most of us don’t feel this way on purpose. Many are ashamed of it, later. But in the moment of reaction, the brainwashing of our culture often wins out. And it tells us to act as if black lives don’t matter. This probably happens much more than we know. Most of the time we let it go and take the high road. But all too often, we don’t.

That’s why we’re calling on ourselves to say Black Lives Matter. I say this for me. I say it to consciously admit that I’m not perfect. I, too, am a product of my culture. We can be more than that. We can be conscious beings. We can create our culture intentionally. We can say with our own voices a new culture. One in which Black Lives Matter.

 

The American Political System is Lousy

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The American Political system is lousy. We live in a broken democracy.  But it was never much more than this.

The myth of American greatness has failed

The myth that it was a real democracy was more and less powerful over the years. It seemed powerful at the beginning. In the last few decades it has become less and less powerful. Finally, with the new dynamic of new forms of communication, it have utterly failed.

Our culture is blind to this. But it’s pretty easy to fix.

I’ve spoken with over 500 people about this. One-on-one, in a conversation, people tend to see it. Only a handful, like 1 in 100, have seen glimpses from stuff I’ve written. You can say it’s my fault, that my writing is not compelling enough. Or you can say it’s people’s fault- they’re too inculcated with their own myths. Or you can blame the political establishment. They devote their lives to unwittingly trying to make a broken system work. And pretending that it does.

How about opening your mind once more to my writing?

What have I written to show that it’s lousy?

In America, the people have the ultimate power. But we can’t use it. Voting once every 2, 4 or 6 years for a personality doesn’t control anyone or anything. We can’t wield our power. So others pick it up and wield it. This is a lousy democracy. America is a lousy Republic. What you or I think, or want, doesn’t matter.

If it doesn’t matter what you or I think, then how does it feel to learn and try? Learning feels futile. It just increases our wanting a change. Trying is frustrating. So many stop trying to learn. Many stop trying to make changes. Many stop caring. We should expect things like: many Americans don’t vote. Many don’t even register to vote. Many don’t pay attention to facts or history.

There’s nothing wrong

In a sense, there’s nothing wrong. The results we have are a perfect match for the system we have. There’s only “something wrong” when you compare what we want to our myth that America is a Democracy and we have a great system of government.

The system we have is fine. We’re just not using it well because it’s incomplete. Our system was never designed to have political parties. Our system was never designed to be able to withstand corporations (which were banned in America by our founders.) And, there’s one big thing that was never, ever designed into our system. It’s just missing.

But when you look at our system, you see “our system.” You don’t see anything missing. The way you view politics is crucial to America continuing to be broken.

America’s Failed Elections

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America has failed elections. Another piece of evidence is the talk of overturning Trump’s election.

Overturning Trump’s election

I see three ways to peacefully overturn the election of Donald Trump.

  1. The votes in three swing states are being recounted. There’s a slim chance they’ll find voter fraud. There’s a slimmer chance they’ll simply find inaccurate counting. If the results change, Hillary could win.
  2. Enough electors in the electoral college could deem Trump unfit that they vote instead for Hillary. Some arguments maintain that no electors are required to vote for Trump. Below, we’ll see why.
  3. The Republican Congress could impeach him. There are many charges they could level. A potent one could be his conflicts of interest.

All of these could result in peaceful transfer of power. Though there would be some upset citizens, all of these are legal methods. None are “trickery,” though that would likely be a common accusation.

Our failed elections

Our primitive party system was never designed. It evolved. We struggle under its burden as if we can do nothing about it. Actually, it’s only our own lack of ability to organize and communicate that makes us powerless.

Similarly, or system of primaries has failed. In some states they’re open, in other states they’re closed, locking out independent voters. And while most voters want one or more new parties, third parties are almost entirely locked out.

The presidential election system also has failed. The electoral college idea was never updated. It was never redesigned for our modern world.

1. The electoral college was needed until the last few decades. Elections were slow, expensive, manual processes. And until the 1890’s, the postal service didn’t even deliver to small towns. In the case of the vote not choosing a president, the electors would be together and could choose.

Some founders had two other reasons:

2. They wanted to give small states more power. The smallest states have only one representative in Congress. But they have two senators, the same number as the largest states. Every state also gets the same number of electors as representatives, plus two more. This imbalance was designed in.

3. They wanted an obstacle to tyrants. Quoting the above article: “They feared a tyrant could manipulate public opinion and come to power”.

To many, this is exactly what happened in 2016. To many, Trump is a liar and manipulator and has neither the judgement nor the temperament to serve America. Obviously, many think he’s best-qualified, too. But our country is designed to let the electoral college decide, given the way the people voted, who would should be president?

After the presidency, then what?

Personally, I’m hoping the electoral college recognizes the failed elections. I’m hoping they elect neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton. Since Congress is Republican, I suggest Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. Jill Stein’s a remote possibility. Another possibility is to choose a centrist member of Congress.

But the real question is, what’s next? Should we fix our election system so it produces better choices? There are many ways of doing this, but it’ll take commissioning a new task force, and working with the many groups who are already working on this.

Of course my suggestion is to support PeopleCount: put yourself on our announcement list.

Hillary Should Not Have Run

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Hillary should not have run. On Facebook, someone posted:

Not all Trump supporters are racist.
But all of them decided racism isn’t a deal breaker.

This isn’t true. There are many claims that Hillary is racist, too. (Google: Hillary anti-black) These claims are false, but many people believe them. A lot of them simply weren’t given a decent choice.

For many, Hillary was not an option

Many of these Trump supporters are ignorant people who’ve been filled with hatred for Hillary by the Republican machine, including Fox News, over many years. Yes, they’re believing lies, but they hate her.

Plus, she kept side-stepping the criticisms instead of addressing them- Hillary haters had little help getting past their hate. I recall some “undecideds” being interviewed after a debate. A couple of people were struggling with whether Trump was too bad to vote for. But they were clear they couldn’t vote for Hillary.

Hillary should not have run

From the beginning, it seemed wrong for Hillary to run against these odds. The Republicans had a huge head-start against her. It was not just poor strategy, it was selfish. I don’t think Hillary was any more egocentric than any other candidate, but it still was egocentric. It didn’t put the country first.

Yes, it was a close race. But due to the hatred, she wouldn’t have been able to bring the country together. The right would have staged more years of obstruction. 

We saw the corruption at the DNC. Their staff was strategizing on how to ensure Hillary won the primary, plus they laundered money to her campaign. This corruption with the DNC might have been the fatal blow. All these things added up to more negativity than she could handle.

The Democrats are also not accountable

Politicians in the US are simply not accountable. Many try hard, but they can’t be. The same is true for the parties.

My congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, is pretty accountable. She goes to great lengths to read and answer every letter.

But the Democrats, Hillary and Bernie are not accountable. I’ve never had a letter to them answered, and I reached out many times. Similarly, Obama’s not accountable. He, too, is unreachable.

How to be accountable?

To me, the real question is: How can our officials be accountable? Currently they can’t be.

This is why PeopleCount was created:

  • To craft a way for government to be accountable.
  • To create support for it.
  • To deliver it.

We’ve done the first. Now we need your help, your support. With that, we’ll be able to deliver.

Please add your name to our announcement list and make a donation.

Help Fix American Democracy

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We can fix American Democracy now. But the window is beginning to close.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that the problem with American democracy is that Congress is not accountable to citizens. In brief, accountability happens in a relationship. Relationship requires communication. This requires ways to communicate. At the tail end of an accountability relationship is firing someone- and we have a bit of that in elections. Almost all of the accountability relationship is just missing.

When accountability is missing, government doesn’t work. Instead, you get corruption, fighting, and other forms of dysfunction. Just like America has now.

The most heroically accountable representative is not accountable

Some members of Congress try very hard to be accountable. My rep, Anna Eshoo, reads and responds to, about 100,000 letters, emails and phone calls every year. 300 per day! She keeps her own database of what people call about so when she has news, she can update the right people. That’s amazing! And it means she’s more accountable than almost all other reps. I’ve heard maybe one other is that good.

Some people contact her office a few times per year, some just once. And most contacts are about one topic. This adds up to maybe 40,000 people, about 1/10th of her constituents, contacting her about a couple of their concerns. This means 90% of voters don’t communicate with her about over 90% of their concerns. So she has little absolute accountability, despite heroic effort to be the most accountable representative!

Accountability is possible

Efficient accountability is possible. 4 years ago I struggled for 8 months to form a team, launch a prototype and do some marketing experiments. I launched a partial prototype, but was unable to form a team. I never got to the point where marketing experiments were possible. Money ran out so I went back to work.

18 months ago I tried again. Twice I almost formed teams offering the promise of stock, but they fell apart before they started. (And I wasted lots of time interviewing people who were eager and able, but couldn’t actually work without a salary.)

I then engaged off-shore teams to build it, but they mostly failed. So I worked on it myself and am very close to being able to demo it. With a decent person or two (a bit of angular front end, and some angular/node back-end), we could launch in a month. But that would take money for salaries, which I don’t have.

Why are we wasting our money?

We Americans spent something like $2 BILLION on the past election and are very unhappy with the results. With $300,000, I could hire people and get PeopleCount up and running. With $2 million, I am certain we’ll succeed.

But I simply don’t have the contacts. I keep trying to reach people, and keep trying to finish the demo (and write a book, and pay bills…), but I have failed, so far. Now, money is once more running out, so I’m applying for jobs again…

Unlike other attempts in this “space”, such as Represent.me. Brigade.com, and Simpolfy.com, PeopleCount.org has a great plan for growing, becoming financially stable and delivering results. (No offense to the other sites, and I love you, but I don’t understand how your solution can make a real difference. I’ve talked with the principles of Represent.me and Simpolfy.com. Brigade won’t talk with me. Nor, for that matter, will Change.org…)

Please, help me help you. Add your email address to our announcement list and make a donation. (Currently, about 30 people have added their addresses, and total contributions are about $200…)