PeopleCount is not just an idea. It began as an investigation. Continue reading
Tag Archives: politics
What’s Missing: Effective Political Communication
In the past 12 years, politics worsened. Unnecessary wars were waged, often poorly, rights were violated, climate change denied, huge economic mistakes had global repercussions, the national debt soared, unemployment surged, and wealth became increasingly concentrated. And all of it happened as citizens became more and more disempowered and political discourse became more divisive. How can this be turned around?
Systems have behaviors. Problems are usually caused either by an anomaly or the design of the system or both. Though we have plenty of anomalies, what I see is that the results we have are a natural consequence of the design of our system.
Our system of government was designed during a time when travel and communication were slow, the country was sparsely populated and industry was primitive. During the past 200 years, people have always tried to game the system and use it to their advantage. People fought back. In the past 30 years, the practice of influencing government has been honed and refined. It’s time to fight back again.
Today, with modern communication and organization technologies, large, wealthy organizations have gained political power. Our government is almost completely manipulated by these organizations- the parties, corporations and special interests. While our constitutional foundations are sound, they weren’t designed for today’s world. Our current system cannot deliver a responsive, effective and accountable government capable of supporting a thriving society. It can only deliver what we have, a divisive, dysfunctional government that often not only can’t avoid problems, but can’t even react well to them and often can’t solve them. Some kind of government reform or political transformation is required, but what?
This state of America is roughly inevitable. Little power is left in the hands of the people because we, the people, are not organized. We retain the ultimate power, but it’s almost useless to us because we don’t know what we all want, and we can’t communicate effectively, either with each other or with our politicians. Without effective communication, we’re left with broadcasting and ads, shouting into the political din. A natural side-effect is that elections are expensive.
The problem with America is that we, the people, don’t have effective political communication.
And we can remedy this. If Americans vote on issues at PeopleCount.org, we can know what we want and we and politicians can know what they’re accountable for. After attracting users, PeopleCount’s next goal will be to show the results, so we and our politicians can see what we want in our districts, states, and in the country. We’ll then add to this site an accountability system, a revolutionary communication layer allowing politicians to communicate effectively with us. This inexpensive system will both enable officials to be accountable and allow more challengers to communicate with us, giving us real choice in elections. Our promise is that, with your participation, within four years we’ll have able people representing our interests, with solutions in place to our deficit and debt problems, global warming, campaign finance and much more.
PeopleCount.org is a system that enables millions of people to communicate effectively so we can design our future together. It’s the missing piece to bring America back to having a government of, by and for the people.
What works in America can go global, for global issues, to solve conflicts between countries, and to empower democratic communication in other countries. The world is ours. If we work together and can constructively and clearly communicate, we can achieve anything. Come begin this journey with us. As part of your civic participation, vote today on PeopleCount.org.
The Top 10 Political Blogs: PeopleCount.org Picks
PS: This post was from February, 2013. Now it’s 2017: Try this post instead.
Staying on top of the latest issues in the political realm is important. But instead of turning on the TV, many citizens worldwide are now visiting the Web, social media sites, and niche blogs to get the latest information.
Why? Modern media consolidation means U.S. mainstream news channels are now owned by only a few companies, including Disney, GE, Viacom, and Time Warner. This severely limits the number of voices and investigative journalists that have a platform in our modern media landscape.
But a free and open Web means there’s now an opportunity for citizens of any background or political leaning to have a platform to voice their opinions and share relevant political news. In the past few years, plenty of new websites and blogs dedicated to politics and political commentary have popped up all over the Web.
Millions of Americans visit these blogs every day, so which ones are the best for news and commentary? Here, PeopleCount.org lists our top 10 political blogs, in no particular order: Continue reading
4 Ways to Achieve True Bipartisanship
Bipartisanship…the stance many politicians claim to have, but rarely adopt in full. I often wonder why it’s so hard to work together to achieve a collective goal: improving the lives of constituents. Ultimately, many leaders got into this business to help others. Why is it so hard to make it happen on a larger scale?
We all have different stances and opinions. However, when those stances and opinions become rigid and righteous, cooperation is almost impossible. Further, what does it say when 70 percent of Americans believe there needs to be a new party dedicated to compromise, conciliation, fiscal discipline, and economic growth that draws on the best ideas from both sides? Continue reading
The PeopleCount Story, Part 1
PeopleCount.org started as most organizations do: an unmet need was found and we sought a way to fill it.
In late 2010, I realized I wanted to do more with my life. I was a software engineer with a small, successful company in the heart of Silicon Valley. Over the years, I had grown to enjoy working with customers much more than plugging my mind into software to build applications.
I was already taking Landmark Education seminars (ten evenings over a period of about 15 weeks), and I had heard about their Wisdom Unlimited course (five 3-day weekends over the course of ten months). So I signed up with the intention of creating a more fulfilling career. In the course, we looked at ourselves in completely new ways. After the first weekend, I began intently “listening” for a new opportunity, asking myself “What’s next?” and “What do I want to do?” Continue reading
The Key To Knowing What You Want From Your Leaders
According to Gallup, two-thirds of Americans are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country. This leaves only 30 percent of people who are satisfied. What’s most surprising about this statistic is that the satisfaction rate was actually much lower in October 2008 at 13 percent.
There are two things to note here:
1. We are becoming more satisfied with the state of the country.
2. The satisfaction rate could be much higher.
So we’re not satisfied with the state of our country, but what are we as citizens doing to change this dissatisfaction? Continue reading
The State Of Online Political Discourse: How You Can Make An Impact
The Internet has provided us many unique and increasingly important outlets for discussion, factual analysis, and communication. With almost half of Internet users (48 percent) going online to look for information about a public policy or issue, open political discourse is essential.
We the people have the ultimate power and the party majority. So we should be uniting on a common ground — political parties and opinions aside — to generate change. Continue reading