chatroulette for Congress

One of the problems with Government is that Congresspeople spend most of their time far from their home district/state and therefore don't often meet with their constituents. One fairly easy solution to this is to create a chatroulette-style system for communicating between a Congressperson and his/her constituents. It would not be exactly like chatroulette, but would use some of the same ideas. Here 's a first pass at how it could work:

The Congressperson would sit in front of a computer with webcam (or better), launch a web browser, and log into the 'Chat With Congress" web site and create a 'meeting'. Constituents use their laptops and webcams to log into that Congressperson's Chat meeting. The Congressperson would click the 'Start The Meeting' button and a Constituent would be randomly chosen from among those logged into the meeting. Each person logged into the meeting would see the webcam feeds of the Congressperson and the currently chosen constituent. The constituent would ask his/her question and the Congressperson would answer it. Once the question has been answered the Congressperson would click the 'Next Question' button, which would result in another constituent's webcam feed to be randomly chosen and displayed in the web browsers. The Congressperson could also hit the 'Next Question' button if the chosen constituent was a crackpot or abusive or asked a question that was already answered. When the meeting is done the Congressperson would click the 'Meeting Done' button.

Pretty Simple. The person who created chatroulette wrote all the code for it in just a couple of days. It would probably only take that amount of time to create something like I describe above. For all I know, you can easily do something like this with Google Wave.

Some good Citizens United / First Amendment articles

What Is the First Amendment For?

How the First Amendment Works

First Coffee Party Meeting

Chrissy and I went to our first Coffee Party Movement meeting last Sunday. There were about 25 people there, which was about what I expected. This weekend's meeting was not a special kick-off meeting so I didn't expect the same number of people as reported on March 13th.

I also expected most, if not all, the attendees to be left-leaning, and it seemed like they were. At least the ones that spoke up and expressed opinions.

I brought my video camera expecting to tape a good portion (or at least the interesting portions) of the meeting, but I didn't feel comfortable doing so. When I asked around to see how people felt about me recording video I got a number of "depends on what you want to do with it" kinds of answers. At least one person asked not to be filmed (and I honored that request). Perhaps they will feel more comfortable with me recording video after they get to know me and I get to know them.

The meeting began with everyone introducing themselves, saying what part of town they are from, then describing briefly why they have come to the meeting. Then, unlike the March 13th meetings where people broke into small groups and created a poster that completed the phrase "Coffee and...", the facilitator discussed how to form a new Coffee Party 'chapter' and what to do during next week's Nation Coffee Summit meetings. They (we) also reviewed a handout from the March 13th meeting. I think the handout is excellent and I hope the above scan of it shows up well.

All-in-all I enjoyed going to the meeting and plan to go to more.

government links for my location

Henry Waxman - U.S. House of Representatives

Barbara Boxer - U.S. Senate
Dianne Feinstein - U.S. Senate

Mike Feuer - State Assembly, 42nd District
Fran Pavley - State Senate, 23rd District

Zev Yaroslavsky - Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, 3rd District

Jerome Horton - California State Board of Equalization, 4th District

Los Angeles City Council - 5th District

Public Officials Roster

Make them work from "home"

There is no longer a compelling reason to have all our National politicians gather together in one location to do their job. It made sense in the past, before modern transportation and communication technology. Today we have phones, FAXes, Internet, secure video conferencing, and jet planes. Our congresspeople and Senators should be required to conduct most of their business (and wheeling/dealing) from their local/state offices. Doing this would have a number of effects:

1) Puts the representatives closer to the people they represent.

2) Makes it a little harder for lobbyists to do their job because power wont all be concentrated in one place. Having all the decision makers in one place, as it is now, makes it just way too easy on them.

3) The historical justifications for denying the vote to residents of Washington D.C. would no longer apply and they could finally be allowed all the same voting options as the rest of us.

4) Removes a single point of attack should terrorists get their hands on a nuke.

With great power comes great responsibility

Anyone familiar with Spiderman would be familiar with that phrase. It applies not only to superheros, but to voters as well. If voters grant government great powers, then voters have a responsibility to act as watchdogs of the government they created, and get involved if the government starts to act irresponsibly.

Money and Politics

It should come as no surprise that money influences politics. This web site shows the contributions made to politicians, and how those politicians voted on specific bills:

MAPLight.org

Recommended reading for all.

If you're at all curious...

... about the Coffee Party Movement then listen to this podcast:

Coffee with Annabel

It's a discussion with Annabel Park, one of the co-founders of the Coffee Party Movement from March 11th, 2010.

I don't drink coffee...

...except in dire need-to-wake-up emergencies. Well, I've decided I need to really wake up to what's going on around me and take a big gulp of Coffee Party USA. This blog will chronicle my experience with the Coffee Party USA (and Coffee Party LA) and also be a place to deposit Coffee-induced thoughts and ideas.