The Federal Reserve has a printing press, why shouldn't our movement?
Or if not a money machine, perhaps a money cannon, or a money laser that we can constantly focus and fire on the liberty candidates that need it the most.
Ok, before I get too carried away in metaphor, let me explain where I'm coming from. I was reading the thread 10 Lessons from Rand, Amash, and Schiff and found myself agreeing with the key argument that we need to do a better job of supporting liberty candidates at the state and local level.
In particular:
That's the goal I'm aiming at here. With a grassroots money cannon.
As for the evaluation, I'm happy to defer that problem to others. But I do recall that Campaign for Liberty had a test or pledge that politicians could take. I'm sure we could re-use that, or do our own, or just start with their list. So let's call that problem solveable for now. More below.
To me, the more interesting and challenging part of the equation is how to fund these people. I've seen in the 2008 and 2010 races that a few big national players or projects (blimp) tend to get the majority of the movement's mindshare and funds. If we could distribute those funds even just a little more proportionally and efficiently to all qualified candidates, we could perhaps create a rising tide for all our boats in the next election cycle. Another great quote from that thread:
OK: DOWN TO SPECIFICS
I propose that we build a web application that can serve as THE GOTO PLACE to contribute funds to liberty candidates.
I said web app, not just website. That is because this site will be intelligent. It will use a fairness algorithm to distribute donations to candidates according to criteria we decide upon. The simplest algorithm would of course be that everyone gets an equal amount of visitors (pledged donors). In computer science, that is called "round robin". We might decide to go with round robin, or perhaps we could attempt to equalize results (total funds per candidate) or even have a committee or other decision process that weights races according to potential impact, likelihood of a win, etc, in order to be most effective with our funds. That's a detail that will need to be pinned down and made clear to all of course, but it is not critical to the overall system design.
Here are the major components of the site, as I envision them:
1) candidate sign up. Here we can have a registration form and a pledge or test that candidate can take. We will require a short bio, photo and URLs for their website and for contributions. And probably some technical donation tracking info, more on that below.
2) Donation distribution system. This will be visible right on the home page. Visitor simply shows up, and is presented with a recommendation for donating to a particular liberty candidate (with bio, photo, current donation total, etc). If visitor does not want to donate to that candidate, s/he can press "Who's Next?" button and get the system's next recommendation. Upon clicking "Donate" button, visitor will be taken directly to candidate's own donation page. Important points here are:
a) The user has complete control. The system is providing recommendations, but is not forcing a particular candidate down anyone's throat. Instead, we provide an information source (candidate X needs more funds relative to candidate Y) and try to guide or steer aggregate donations towards the overall best outcome. In software terms, we are providing default settings, and users rarely change the defaults.
b) we are NOT taking the money directly and redistributing. We have no bank account, we don't touch any funds. As such, this is simply a recommendation system and organizational tool, and therefore should not fall under PAC rules. ( my belief, IANAL )
3) Donation tracking system. This is the trickiest part. Because the system is not capturing funds itself, it needs to be informed of donation amounts through another mechanism. I see two main alternatives:
a) automatically from the candidate's website. Either the candidate's site must publish those details in a standard manner that we can regularly retrieve (polling) or the candidate's site must make a webservice request to our site to inform us of the donation. This is an opportunity for us to create some standards. always fun. I tend to think that polling is simplest and best, as their site should always have the authoritative totals. So what we can do is to publish a standard specification (file format) for candidate's website's to publish their donation data in. At a minimum, this format should identify overall donation totals, and totals that come from our domain. These can help us distribute better. We can also specify a very simple URL format so that candidates sites can recognize a visitor from our site and optionally return the visitor to a "thank-you" page on our site after the donation completes. We should of course publish technical usage docs for candidate's site developers, and perhaps even a php library, or at least example code. The earlier we get out there and promote ourselves seriously, the more likely we are to get candidate buy-in.
b) If we can't get info from the candidate's site, then we must rely upon the the visitor to tell us how much s/he plans to donate. This of course is not very reliable. People may change their minds, etc. It also doesn't tell us how much money has been collected from other sources. But it is still better than nothing.
4) Donation graphs. Perhaps we can work with author of RonPaulGraphs.com, but extend it to ALL our supported liberty candidates. Indeed, I hope he reads this post, as I'm sure he can offer details of how donation totals are currently being published and collected. Is there already a standard of some sort?
5) Pledge and Email reminder system. A mechanism for people to pledge X amount of money monthly to liberty candidates, with an opt-in email reminder system.
6) Offsite promotion. This can take the form of:
- web widgets, snippets of HTML that can be posted on liberty friendly sites to promote our liberty funds cannon.
- Facebook page, maybe an RSS or twitter feed of streaming donations. Overall and by candidate
- YouTube Videos. I still remember the original Lyman Nov 5th video. Perhaps a remake, or similar...
- Email promotion. Perhaps campaign for liberty, ron paul meetups, freedomworks, etc.
- Liberty friendly Radio. Alex Jones. KSCO in Santa Cruz. RonPaulRadio if it makes a 2012 comeback DJLoti.
- Blog and news article comments. y'all know that drill.
- etc.
7) Onsite promotion. Kickass design and video(s).
Ok. So that's the big idea and system design. I have the expertise, experience and resources to make the technical side of it work. ( Amongst other things, I authored the original RSS specification as well as the ron paul mosaic upload site. ) But a site like this is much bigger than me. I think that to be successful in the 2012 timeframe, we would need to build the core website application soon, and start promoting it within C4L and with individual liberty candidates. We would need people to make videos, make a nice HTML/CSS design, maybe some nice GIMP/Photoshop imagery. I myself have limited time at present, so if someone else wants to take the idea and run with it, that would be wonderful. really, take it. RonPaulGraphs guy, I'm looking directly at you. You too Josh.
anyone? Bueller?
Ok, if no one else steps up, yet there is enthusiasm, I believe I could find the time to build something functional if not pretty by Jan or Feb 2011.
Oh, and of course we need a catchy domain name. I suck at this part. Please throw out your better ideas, or indicate which of these you like:
LibertyMoneyMachine.org
PrintingPress4Liberty2012.org
ThrowTheBastardsOut.us
FreedomMoneyBomb.org
LibertyCannon.org
AngelsOfLiberty.org
I've mixed feelings about mentioning TeaParty as I personally feel that movement has been co-opted quite a bit. Of course, perhaps this could be a way to co-opt it back...
TeaPartyFunds.org????
But supporting only TRUE liberty candidates?
Also, if you have skills with web programming, web design, video production, or web marketing and would like to help out, please reply here.
Likewise please reply if you have contacts within C4L or other organizations that could help promote this concept to candidates. Or just good general communications and promotion skills.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Or if not a money machine, perhaps a money cannon, or a money laser that we can constantly focus and fire on the liberty candidates that need it the most.
Ok, before I get too carried away in metaphor, let me explain where I'm coming from. I was reading the thread 10 Lessons from Rand, Amash, and Schiff and found myself agreeing with the key argument that we need to do a better job of supporting liberty candidates at the state and local level.
In particular:
That's the goal I'm aiming at here. With a grassroots money cannon.
As for the evaluation, I'm happy to defer that problem to others. But I do recall that Campaign for Liberty had a test or pledge that politicians could take. I'm sure we could re-use that, or do our own, or just start with their list. So let's call that problem solveable for now. More below.
To me, the more interesting and challenging part of the equation is how to fund these people. I've seen in the 2008 and 2010 races that a few big national players or projects (blimp) tend to get the majority of the movement's mindshare and funds. If we could distribute those funds even just a little more proportionally and efficiently to all qualified candidates, we could perhaps create a rising tide for all our boats in the next election cycle. Another great quote from that thread:
And the key to that goal has already been stated: "a SYSTEMATIC" approach.
OK: DOWN TO SPECIFICS
I propose that we build a web application that can serve as THE GOTO PLACE to contribute funds to liberty candidates.
I said web app, not just website. That is because this site will be intelligent. It will use a fairness algorithm to distribute donations to candidates according to criteria we decide upon. The simplest algorithm would of course be that everyone gets an equal amount of visitors (pledged donors). In computer science, that is called "round robin". We might decide to go with round robin, or perhaps we could attempt to equalize results (total funds per candidate) or even have a committee or other decision process that weights races according to potential impact, likelihood of a win, etc, in order to be most effective with our funds. That's a detail that will need to be pinned down and made clear to all of course, but it is not critical to the overall system design.
Here are the major components of the site, as I envision them:
1) candidate sign up. Here we can have a registration form and a pledge or test that candidate can take. We will require a short bio, photo and URLs for their website and for contributions. And probably some technical donation tracking info, more on that below.
2) Donation distribution system. This will be visible right on the home page. Visitor simply shows up, and is presented with a recommendation for donating to a particular liberty candidate (with bio, photo, current donation total, etc). If visitor does not want to donate to that candidate, s/he can press "Who's Next?" button and get the system's next recommendation. Upon clicking "Donate" button, visitor will be taken directly to candidate's own donation page. Important points here are:
a) The user has complete control. The system is providing recommendations, but is not forcing a particular candidate down anyone's throat. Instead, we provide an information source (candidate X needs more funds relative to candidate Y) and try to guide or steer aggregate donations towards the overall best outcome. In software terms, we are providing default settings, and users rarely change the defaults.
b) we are NOT taking the money directly and redistributing. We have no bank account, we don't touch any funds. As such, this is simply a recommendation system and organizational tool, and therefore should not fall under PAC rules. ( my belief, IANAL )
3) Donation tracking system. This is the trickiest part. Because the system is not capturing funds itself, it needs to be informed of donation amounts through another mechanism. I see two main alternatives:
a) automatically from the candidate's website. Either the candidate's site must publish those details in a standard manner that we can regularly retrieve (polling) or the candidate's site must make a webservice request to our site to inform us of the donation. This is an opportunity for us to create some standards. always fun. I tend to think that polling is simplest and best, as their site should always have the authoritative totals. So what we can do is to publish a standard specification (file format) for candidate's website's to publish their donation data in. At a minimum, this format should identify overall donation totals, and totals that come from our domain. These can help us distribute better. We can also specify a very simple URL format so that candidates sites can recognize a visitor from our site and optionally return the visitor to a "thank-you" page on our site after the donation completes. We should of course publish technical usage docs for candidate's site developers, and perhaps even a php library, or at least example code. The earlier we get out there and promote ourselves seriously, the more likely we are to get candidate buy-in.
b) If we can't get info from the candidate's site, then we must rely upon the the visitor to tell us how much s/he plans to donate. This of course is not very reliable. People may change their minds, etc. It also doesn't tell us how much money has been collected from other sources. But it is still better than nothing.
4) Donation graphs. Perhaps we can work with author of RonPaulGraphs.com, but extend it to ALL our supported liberty candidates. Indeed, I hope he reads this post, as I'm sure he can offer details of how donation totals are currently being published and collected. Is there already a standard of some sort?
5) Pledge and Email reminder system. A mechanism for people to pledge X amount of money monthly to liberty candidates, with an opt-in email reminder system.
6) Offsite promotion. This can take the form of:
- web widgets, snippets of HTML that can be posted on liberty friendly sites to promote our liberty funds cannon.
- Facebook page, maybe an RSS or twitter feed of streaming donations. Overall and by candidate
- YouTube Videos. I still remember the original Lyman Nov 5th video. Perhaps a remake, or similar...
- Email promotion. Perhaps campaign for liberty, ron paul meetups, freedomworks, etc.
- Liberty friendly Radio. Alex Jones. KSCO in Santa Cruz. RonPaulRadio if it makes a 2012 comeback DJLoti.
- Blog and news article comments. y'all know that drill.
- etc.
7) Onsite promotion. Kickass design and video(s).
Ok. So that's the big idea and system design. I have the expertise, experience and resources to make the technical side of it work. ( Amongst other things, I authored the original RSS specification as well as the ron paul mosaic upload site. ) But a site like this is much bigger than me. I think that to be successful in the 2012 timeframe, we would need to build the core website application soon, and start promoting it within C4L and with individual liberty candidates. We would need people to make videos, make a nice HTML/CSS design, maybe some nice GIMP/Photoshop imagery. I myself have limited time at present, so if someone else wants to take the idea and run with it, that would be wonderful. really, take it. RonPaulGraphs guy, I'm looking directly at you. You too Josh.
anyone? Bueller?
Ok, if no one else steps up, yet there is enthusiasm, I believe I could find the time to build something functional if not pretty by Jan or Feb 2011.
Oh, and of course we need a catchy domain name. I suck at this part. Please throw out your better ideas, or indicate which of these you like:
LibertyMoneyMachine.org
PrintingPress4Liberty2012.org
ThrowTheBastardsOut.us
FreedomMoneyBomb.org
LibertyCannon.org
AngelsOfLiberty.org
I've mixed feelings about mentioning TeaParty as I personally feel that movement has been co-opted quite a bit. Of course, perhaps this could be a way to co-opt it back...
TeaPartyFunds.org????
But supporting only TRUE liberty candidates?
Also, if you have skills with web programming, web design, video production, or web marketing and would like to help out, please reply here.
Likewise please reply if you have contacts within C4L or other organizations that could help promote this concept to candidates. Or just good general communications and promotion skills.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
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