[Campaigns-l] Re: Campaigns-l Digest, Vol 1, Issue 21

[Andrew Jones]

It is a mystery to me that, in all the new 'good government' websites
> (like wikia) that I come across, I never find any that stress the fact that,
> in order to effect REAL reform, it is necessary to have a legislature made
> up of 'citizen' legislators, rather than the current crop of careerist
> professional politicians. ( tenurecorrupts.com/#americasfirst )
>
> And to eliminate professional politicians, it is necessary to change
> politics from being a livelihood or career, to merely a civic duty, where
> one will try to change government for the better during a short stay, then
> return to private practice. That's the way it was for the first 150 years of
> our history, before the enticements of politics became too good to give up.
> ( tenurecorrupts.com/#followthemoney )

While a more distributed form of government is certianly possible
thanks for the internet
One of the reasons I joined this list was to ask if it was possible to
make any of the following things.

A. the u.s. government allows anyone to draft a bill (even people
outside of the U.S.). It would be interesting to create a wiki where
people could edit and comment on proposed bills and endorse them i.e.
drafts could be like petitions with people signing that they endorse a
bill and then a copy of the bill is sent to all represenatives that
have constituents that signed the bill. This would give represenatives
a good idea of what people in their districts want and would also take
some of the pressure off staff to read through 600 page bills etc.
Represenatives do not have to introduce drafts from their
constituents, but if this would let citizens lobby for bills they want
while gaining expertise and comments from a wide variety of people.

B. Referendums are quite common in the U.S. and are an excellent way
to avoid the usual problems of politics and have ranged from stem-cell
bills in California to bans on gay marriage. A site that let's people
propose referendums, keep track of referendums in their state or city
and other things like that would be great. And again, you post a
referendum, discuss it, and edit it, and then people could download
and send it in, so you could start collecting signatures. I might add
that the Florida Gerrymandering ref, is already being done in this
way. You can download a statement, sign it, and mail it in to have
your signature counted.

Anyway, wikia seems like a nice attempt to chroncile how the u.s.
government works and what people want to change.

Kind Regards,
A