Who are Republicans to quibble over less than a trillion dollars of
taxpayer money? Your actions insult the American people.
Your party had no problem rubber stamping the $10
trillion of just the National Debt ($200K/American citizen) Bush
accrued during his eight years. President Clinton had a surplus
(negative zero dollars). Trickle down is not working. Where was
Reaganomic free market practice when Bush provided socialism for the rich
banker CEOs with $350 billion. Capitalism only for the poor is not fair
here. $20 billion for CEOs and the purchase of a bank in China for $6
billion…give me a break. If China wanted to nuke us financially,
they would just ask back the $2 trillion your party allowed Bush to
borrow. Does this demonstrate patriotic principles?

It looks like the Republicans just want to win the upcoming elections
so you can reward the ultra rich with more tax cuts. Don’t you people
get it? There are already so many people who can’t pay taxes. Those
that could will horde it at a time like this. Bankruptcy surpassed
divorces many years ago, and the number one cause of bankruptcy is the
need to feed one’s children.

I fear you guys more than the terrorists because it seems like the
Rush Limbaugh ditto head group-think is dominating your organization
for our country to fail. I hope the concentration camps of neocon
legacy are not used for all those people freaking out because they
can’t feed their children. Those are the people that won’t be able to
pay congress for their best lobbyist-fortified-interests–let alone
prosper from tax cuts….

I hope green-lighted Stem Cell research discovers many cures so that
Big Pharma will
not continue to be rich enough to own so many of you and the
Democrats. Nancy Reagan was so righteous in snubbing Bush for
ignoring the suffering of so many people for the sake of securing Big
Pharma’s profits from costly meds and doctor vacations for prescribing
the quotas.
Heart disease, cancers, Alzheimer’s, and other such diseases should
NOT be a part of your
profit motives–think about that when your loved ones become Big
Pharma cash cows of suffering. When Kaiser and Nixon figured out
denial was profitable, the group-think of healthcare as profitable
gave birth to health insurance HMOs–mainly insuring the millions of
dollars to the CEOs and you guys–including limousine liberals like
Daschle–to be owned by insurance corporations….

If your party really cared about the American people over your
wallets, you would provide a plan for a new industry that could pull
us out of this mess your party has mostly got us into. Instead of
quibbling over the Democrats over a budget that is less than 10% of
the debts you got US into during the past 8 years, inspire a new
industry, I don’t mean the usual disaster capitalism via
Haliburton-like ways (they are the true winners of the Middle East
wars–the American tax payers lost here too). The only reason I can
think of why we are still there is that Big Oil can’t get American
CEO’s confidence that they will not be kidnapped and get their heads
chopped off–meanwhile we bribe warlords with additional taxpayer
money to keep the peace. So backing out before securing oil profits
has caused a standstill for $10 billion/month of taxpayer money mostly to
Haliburton. Who obviously would benefit from the tax-cut mantra for the rich.

Exxon is the most profitable corporation in the history of humanity,
and your party would rather cut their taxes. If they were patriotic,
they would make solar panels cheaper so people could start a new
industry with that (Big Oil owns most of the solar PV patents, China
mostly makes them, it was an American invention). I and many people
are freaking out over what your party has done. Offering a solution
with a new industry that would generate more money for Americans is
the only way we can get out of this because the Baby Boomers are
starting to retire and take their money out of the markets for Big
Pharma’s expensive meds….

The only solution I’ve seen so far is offered by:

solarroadways.com

It is analogous to the Railroads being built to provide
infrastructure for the Industrial Revolution to take place. Can your
party stomach ushering in the Energy Revolution instead of coddling
immediate gratification of Saudi sheiks and enrich those that want to
blow US up? It’s now Peak Oil. Prove us Progressives wrong by
foregoing Big Oil or Big Pharma profits for the future of our
children. Everybody can see through your special interest motives
after Bush–so it’s time to represent the middle class for a change.
Capitalism is great when there is capital left to use.

I will have hope for Republicans if they can transcend old-money
corporate interests to pull us out of this mess your greedy associates
have mostly gotten us into with disaster capitalism and unrealistic
mortgage schemes. I believe the Dems are just the lesser of two evils
when it comes to greasing the wheels. However, right now there is no
engine to move those wheels even though the recent bill is really
lubricating it. Your party quibbles about how we will pay for
this–well what about the ten times more of debts incurred during the
past eight years? It is shameful and the reason why our country is in
danger of a catastrophe.

What happened to all that money? Wealth does not disappear, it merely
gets transferred (or inflate-printed at the convenience of the Federal Reserve
since it has not been backed up by gold for many years). Harvest time
for all the banks since the Federal Reserve is controlled mostly by
their interest anyway…. Since it’s not backed up by gold, it can
only be propped with confidence in our markets.

Please offer a solution that will increase our confidence instead of
starting wars for Big Oil or
tax cuts for Haliburton. It will take integrity and patriotism–not
corporate interest (even though they got most of you there). North
Korea could have lopped a nuke to San Francisco, but they just had
twigs for their citizens to eat–not crude oil for machines…. The
defense issues fall apart here.

I’ve also been deeply offended when the Republicans used their
so-called ‘fiscal responsibility’ by spending our tax money to have a
national gossip session over President Clinton’s office misbehavior–a
personal indiscretion–for over $150 million for impeachment. Compare
this value with the 9/11 Bipartisan Commission Investigation budget
the Bush/Cheney Neoconservative Republicans who deemed to only be
initially $3 million, and was increased to a mere $15 million. Whatever
happened to family values? These cases show gossip trumping tragedy
in terms of monetary value in the recent history of your party.
No wonder there are so many conspiracy theories….

As far as the tragedy of 9/11, wasn’t the CIA started to prevent
events like Pearl Harbor? What happened to that? Instead, color code
panic-mongering Homeland Security was started and somehow all that
money also enabled the Talibans to increase heroin use among the
developed world’s youth by 90% (including our own)–seven years in the
making (PBS Frontline). If they can’t prevent heroin from coming into
the county, how
can they prevent bombs? Our jails are filled with heroin addicts.
These actions are the wrong way to stimulate the economy.
This all sounds too much like the drug traffic histories of Vietnam
and the wars in South America where drugs were also used to lay the
ground work for disaster capitalism….

Speaking of jails, I just heard the budgets to spend for incarceration
now exceed funding to our universities for the first time. A case of
putting more
monetary value in the imprisoning of individuals rather than
educating them. Is this because our jails are more profitable than
our schools? Instead of releasing violent criminals in your
Ditto-head wish to make our country fail, they should
at least have these people work to help our economy since all congress
seems to do is reward the multinational corporations that declare
losses that are actually in overseas bank accounts after giving away
American jobs to cheaper overseas labor….

I heard five years ago that California alone has a
larger penal population than all of Europe’s prisons. No wonder your
party embarrassed
US to the world by sinking to terrorist levels and stepping on our
constitution with torture.
Infringing on basic citizen rights to privacy is something your party
has in common with fascists too.

Also, it’s individuals making up to $500K per year that pay most of
the taxes–not corporations. If you make more than $500K per year,
you are usually too rich to pay taxes when you can put assets in all
the tax-free accounts in different world banks via a team of
accountants and lawyers you can hire to help figure it all out for
that tax year. Your beloved corporations that own most of you deposit
money into
overseas tax-free accounts and declare the money as a loss so they can
fill your pockets with
“donations” from lobbyist directives.

The Democrats are not much better though. I am losing my faith in a
centralized government in general for allowing us to hang ourselves in
an abyss of bad credit for short term gains of wealth in your pockets.
I sincerely hope we Americans can transcend consumer zombiness and
manifest a more visionary destiny sacrificed by our previous
generations. Especially when the European pioneers slaughtered 100
million native Americans to ’start’ this country (and our
representatives act so holier than thou to over the 6 million killed in the
Armenian Holocaust with the Turks…). Now they are at least allowed
to take some of our money in the casinos since they enrich your
beloved sponsors of tobacco & liquor….

All you need to do is search “tent cities” in youtube.com and you will
be informed why tax cuts will not help people in a catastrophe you
helped to create. Again, I sincerely hope we don’t need to use those
concentration camps ex-lushes (three DUIs each) George and Dick left
us in case of Martial Law
from people suddenly in poverty when they are not used to it.

If your party wants to get its groove back, provide a solution, and
stop the next election posturing activities separating us all. Think
about how we can increase
exports (not the fake value muscled-in kind either). Inspire and
capitalize on the brilliance or our citizens before they leave this
great country in search of jobs and healthcare elsewhere. A brain
drain will surely be our downfall.

I will be grateful if you can answer all this–please tell me if I’m
wrong. Many people who don’t have the money for tax to be cut are simply
more worried about feeding their children. What is your financially
egalitarian solution?
For the sake of this country, please work for majority interest
instead of the few ultra rich multinational corporations that fund
your campaigns the next election. Obama won because he reached out to the
nation’s youth and majority–not the bank & corporate elite Enrons of
today that seem to propel most of your party’s efforts. Bush already
rewarded the “foxes
who raided the henhouse” before he left even though former Controller
General, David Walker, told everyone the sky was falling several years
before.

Sincerely,

Joel F. Mariano

so while technically it is possible to mine great innovative ideas out of the collective intelligence, the amount of skepticism that will be raised by the whole process will outweigh any benefits.

Submitted to Digg by shakyguy 7/11/2008
The title of the story as it appears on TechCrunch tells the story and asks the question that many people who heard this news were probably wondering:
“The GOP Launches Site (And Facebook App) To Solicit Po…

Will that happen. Nope. Outlook, dim.

That said, the Republican party’s brand is clearly tarnished so marketing research via social media can only help them. It’s also worth noting Republican Congressman John Culberson’s efforts to use Twitter and Qik to capture political events and to create a political conversation. In general this if good for America if we can have all politics become motivated by people’s voices. No guarantee that politicians will listen, but it’s a start.

The vision of our company is to utilize a network of distributed widgets, social media apps, and a member-based portal to develop an unprecedented, comprehensive picture of public opinion. Our applications are rooted in a simple notion: namely that the media has conditioned people to expect their political content in sound bytes…so why not enable them to participate in sound bytes as well? We administer very short polls, laden with brief questions. This approach not only encourages high response rates but allows us to engage the casual, latent voters who are otherwise ignored by the political process.

Our portal, meanwhile, is being designed as a tool for people to participate in democracy, at whatever level they deem comfortable, and then use sophisticated propensity scoring techniques and matching algorithms to map users relative to other users, to Members of Congress, to historical figures, and to their friends. Users will then be able to identify, connect, and mobilize with like-minded individuals, if they choose. We will do this with obsessive attention toward user privacy and anonymity.

I’m sure all of you will run to our site and tell us how dreadful and under-developed it is. Indeed, our portal is barely out of Alpha phase…so you won’t hurt our feelings by tearing it apart But, rest assured, we are very confident and very excited about where it’s heading.

This isn’t reserved for American Politics either. In Canada we always have these emergency meetings like the one for Dufar that do nothing but get some bobble head’s name in the paper.

Plus our population is aging and old people vote for whoever they voted for 20 years ago, thus us young folk are stuck with the prehistoric car salesmen they elect.

No wonder we simply do not care. You want to talk about how disechanted we are just look at the second Vietnam. We are so distracted with our video games, iphones and Facebooks, we stood still while a war was fought over oil. Even worse the very foundation, the reason for the War WMD was a complete and utter lie. Yet we did nothing except blindly believe the war war for human rights even though we have done nothing to stop the gencide in Dufar. No woodstock, no marches for peace..nothing.

We have become the indocrinated society presented in fahrenheit 451….that is our legacy.

DemocracyLab is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization building an interactive online think tank that uses participants’ posts and votes to build a dynamic map of political thought. The result will be an engaging public forum where the best thinking rises to the top, creating a community-driven alternative to traditional politics.

We’ll have a booth at the upcoming Open Source Convention (http://en.oreil...ic/content/home) in Portland July 21-25, and will have a working prototype up then.