First step- a normal, weekly political program, focused just on the highest priority issues, not party or personalities, with significant citizen involvement, so the voters have a trusted information source, create their own narrative and then find the candidates.

 The biggest danger to the country is the uninformed voter. The t.v. media, with some occasional exceptions, is mostly a 50 year long bust. The web is a huge help for specific inquiry, but for many casual consumers it echoes a lot of the old media narrative. DC in general is institution dominant. Outside voices are rarely welcomed. The level of discourse is far from commensurate with the depth of the problem. Too many citizens are left misinformed.

  Underneath the conventional dialog lies the truth. We must now go beyond criticism and take more responsibility. There are opportunities in many media environments. We just need to have open minded, non emotional, intellectual pursuits of truth and find the best ideas/data from anywhere. 

  Citizens/researchers/bloggers etc., affiliated or not, could be sharing referenced topline information or just common sense with each other and then a larger audience in a flexible, but successful process.

  Citizens actually already know a lot about policies, judging from the accuracy of poll responses. (Gallup archive). Representative samples of citizens can therefore be used in a more proactive way and included- roughly 45% independents, 27% Ds and 27% Rs  ('party affiliation Gallup').

  Objectively worded polling is lacking. Although Rasmussen and others, including the newer 'Scott Rasmussen' site, have made stellar contributions, many important questions are asked belatedly, if ever and some polls mischaracterizing public opinion remain unaddressed.

  These types of elements used in an edited compelling one hour of segments with less emphasis on who the hosts are and more on the best 45-58 minutes of material that fills in the gaps and dispels the myths would set the stage for informed voters to bring about the necessary changes.

  Too much is left out. Single round voting gives us the 2 party system and the media amplify the negativity against the sole opposition. 5-7 'ranked choice' elimination rounds, open ballots/no primaries and a simple recall option could help find better employees and restore the social contract. (Non spoiler 3rd presidential candidates are even possible for 2024. BeyondTrumporaGovocrat.) Aside from a possible billionaire wealth tax, CBO data shows the top 2% earners paying their fair share of taxes.. and even a progressive rate.. before the 2013 increase. The fundamental economic problem, including for the middle class and poor, is the roughly $3 trillion of waste out of $12 trillion of government related annual costs within a $25 trillion economy. That's more than the total assets of the lower 50% of the population. To increase access and address the biggest spending problem- the lack of price consciousness in health care, gov. and private, increasing the supply of practitioners and an optional direct care loan might help. Price based conservation methods such as replacing business energy tax deductions with lower tax rates can bring environmental benefits. (53%GovernmentCostCrisis.) There are worthy ideas from many known and as yet unknown sources.

People just want to hear all the unfiltered good options. There are those who can look at policies from all sides in a sufficiently deep and reflective way and are strongly confident they can demonstrate why their information is unfairly ignored and/or distorted in conventional treatment. Citizen samples could virtually connect for questions, share info sources, determine which information is "moved up the chain" of exposure and eventually come up with their own policy plan. All political persuasions welcome, but one should be able to support a position. For example, wanting more loans going to the 10 million or so renters in a housing crisis, but with $2 trillion annual federal deficits, how will we specifically pay for it? 

  

2018

 

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