American Blogger--The Winner Is...mitchipd!

by: Paul Rosenberg

Mon Jul 14, 2008 at 09:12

He began his proposal by writing, "I don't have much time and haven't thought this through very well, but..."  Well, now he has the time to do it up right.  Get to it, mitch!  We eagerly await your diary.

mitchipd's winning entry is reproduced on the flip.

OpenLeft + OpenCongress = Open Legislation 2.0 I don't have much time and haven't thought this through very well, but since Paul is asking for more ideas and I'd like to see this feature continue, I'll give it a shot.  Regardless of whether I get "voted off the island," I'll try to find time to evolve it in a diary, and I invite others to build on it if they're so inclined. The idea emerged in response to a post by Daniel De Groot called "Why Economics Matters" and a comment by Mimikatz.  Here's the link: http://www.openleft.com/showCo... Since then its evolved a bit in my mind, after I checked out OpenCongress and started remembering the Open Legislation experiment we did awhile back on Internet policy issues. Since it focused on a policy area I know and care more about than most others, I found the OpenLeg experiment very invigorating and recognized at least a glimmer of the potential to build follow-up mechanisms that could turn it from a one-time experiment into a process for integrating netroots expertise and political clout more directly and more continuously into the process of crafting legislation and turning it into law. The basic rationale is that we're likely to have a Dem president and Congress that we'll agree with on some issues, disagree with on others, and that, regardless of the issue, is likely to need a lot of pushing and prodding from the netroots to craft good and effective progressive legislation.  And given that Obama has shown interest in moving in the general direction of "open and transparent government", it makes good sense to me that we should be as ready as possible to take him up on this and, as much as possible, on our terms. The goal is to maximize our collective ability to influence the legislative process in strongly progressive directions, hopefully in ways that put the nation on a progressive course that will be difficult to undo and that will effectively address the many and great challenges we face.   Some underlying assumptions behind the idea: 1) The netroots includes a large number of individuals that, on one hand, share a lot in common in terms of many fundamental values and issues, but also are quite varied in terms of a) the particular issues they care most about  b) their particular levels of expertise related to these issues; c) their knowledge and skills related to key elements of political/legislative strategy and execution and; d) the amount and consistency of time and effort they are able to contribute. 2) The process of creating good progressive laws requires, among other things, a combination of: good progressive underlying principles; practical ideas for creating and implementing specific policies, programs, etc; careful and transparent crafting of legislative language; smart political strategy and tactics backed by effectively deployed political muscle. 3) Given the critical nature of many issues/problems we face, the evolving state of the netroots and the likely election of a relatively sympathetic president and Congress, the 2008 election marks what could be a one-time oppotunity to fundamentally upgrade our democratic system.  At the very least, its an opportunity worth taking advantage of. So, relying on my earlier comments, let me sketch out the idea a bit more [new text I'm adding in this post is in brackets]. Here's the first comment I made: I'd love to see ongoing discussion of economic policy issues under the OL umbrella, preferably in a "dedicated" section where economic discussion could be more ongoing and focused. There are many brilliant, insightful and practical ideas and analyses out there that address both the necessary critique proposed by Jerome and Daniel, as well as progressive alternatives that address both underlying economic paradigms and specific policies see my diary called "A Progressive Portal/Virtual Think Tank/Wiki" at. What I'd like to see evolve under the OL umbrella is an initiative that included the following, and on an ongoing basis:   1) "guest" posters from among the leading progressive economic thinkers/authors, followed by discussion of their posts by the OL community; 2) periodic posts that attempt to distill and link these "leading thinker" posts into sets of principles and proposals we can all better understand and push forward into the public debate [i.e., framing an integrated progressive agenda]; 3) invitations to Obama's economic team (as well as those of key members of Congress, progressive think tanks, etc.) to participate in these dialogs as both posters and commenters (though they might not be willing to do this very much until after the election)--the idea here is that they're a welcome and important part of the process, but don't control it; 4) the emergence from this process of clear sets of netroots-supported economic principles and proposals, and stronger linkages between leading thinkers and activists.  This would hopefully include (and influence) key members of Obama's economic policy team. This same model could be applied to issues like healthcare, energy, telecom/Internet, national security, foreign policy, etc.   And, since all of these are fundamentally interconnected, we should, over some period of time, be able to develop overarching principles (e.g., democracy, dignity) and integrated sets of policies that address all of them in synergistic ways. If we could make it work, this approach has the potential to evolve strong and practical progressive policies, while simultaneously increasing their visibility and influence within the revised Beltway power structure that will follow the 08 election.  Put another way, it would give us a more coherent and more credible set of proposals to bring to the table when we get our "seat" at it.  In fact, it might help insure we get that seat, and increase the number of seats we get and the number of tables at which we get them. My sense is that this could be started with existing OL features (e.g., tags), which have been used before to create threads that focused on particular projects and themes.  Over time, it might be good to evolve this functionality, but I don't think that would be needed at the start. I then followed up with this comment, which begins to tie the idea to the OpenCongress effort and OL's Open Legislation experiment: We could take this process to the point of developing consensus support for specific pieces of legislation and/or key provisions of them.  Our consensus proposals (and there could be multiple options if there isn't a clear consensus on one) could be based on existing bills that have already been introduced, or they could be bills/provisions developed organically from our online discussion/collaboration process. A related element could be a system for tracking the progress or lack thereof of our preferred legislation and proposed alternatives to them, including reasonably detailed critiques of the latter and why they fall short of what we seek [This might be built along the lines of OpenCongress, and potentially as part of that effort] Parallel to this could be ongoing discussions of strategic and tactical options for turning our proposals into law.   Aside from the "guest/author/expert" posters I mention in my first comment, the netroots contains plenty of expertise (of varying levels) related to both subject matter and political strategy and tactics.  One thing this initiative would accomplish is to link these two subsets of our community (which presumably overlap somewhat) into a working relationship geared specifically toward expanding our influence on legislation and the legislative process. As someone with expertise in the telecom arena and limited knowledge but strong interest in other issues like healthcare, energy, etc., and very limited knowledge of legislative processes and strategies, I could see myself plugging in at various levels in this process, depending on the issue.  I'm pretty sure this also apply to many members of the OL community [and the progressive netroots in general], though the specifics would vary depending on each person's background, expertise and interests.  For example, some folks might focus mainly on legislative strategies/tactics, which would be a necessary ingredient for success regardless of the issue being addressed.   Certainly this idea can be criticized as both too ambitious and too sketchy in its current form.  But I also think the general direction in which it points is one we need to (and will begin to) take during the next Administration. Another related element not specifically addressed here, but which I've discussed in previous comments and diaries here and even earlier at MyDD, is the integration of netroots-friendly online video/multimedia/social media into this Open Legislation 2.0 system.  Its only reasonable to expect that these new media will continue to evolve technically and in terms of their prominance and influence in the political media landscape. A few of my earlier OL comments on this can be found at: http://www.openleft.com/showCo... http://www.openleft.com/showCo... http://www.openleft.com/showCo... My sense is that the necessary capabilities to move in this Open Legislation direction will evolve organically in response to needs and opportunities.  But I also think this evolution and the further integration of netroots tools, expertise and energy could be accelerated if there was dedicated funding focused on it, which I'd love to see, and which I'd suggest is a high-return investment, especially at this particular point in time. I hope that's enough to lay out the basic idea, or at least point in the direction.                                                         by: mitchipd @  Sat Jul 12, 2008 at 19:54

[Comment]

Very exciting idea... or set of ideas really! I've always been interested in some way to help streamline and facilitate a process by which ordinary but well-informed folks in the Netroots could develop a consensus set of iteratively-refined policy proposals. Perhaps these could even be "code blocks" of policy - pieces of strong ideas / frames / language that are the building blocks of more complex policy proposals).   This would be valuable on several levels: -    1) It'd encourage those of us with good ideas to develop them, and hone our own ability to articulate policy.   -    2) It'd draw more people in the Netroots into the policy process, engaging and increasing the general expertise out there. -    3) It'd channel these proposals up to the level of government through media, legislative staff and the like. I appreciate your point that we in the Netroots have existed almost wholly under a political landscape in which progressive legislation was basically a pipe dream (unless you count MoveOn as a response to impeachment, our mile markers as a movement are mostly post-2000 election).   Given this, if (WHEN!) the landscape changes in November, we will all need to rapidly realign away from our to-date primarily electoral mindset, over to a primarily legislative one (while continuing to fire on all cylinders with progressive movement-building, of course - this is Open Left after all!).     Your idea sounds to me like a way to begin directing Netroots ideas legislatively, and building a toolkit of progressive legislation (I shy away from "platform") to hone and wield in the coming years.   Let's say for a second that your proposal (which has a lot of great detail in it, I know it's not so simple!) could be boiled down to a simple premise: "have the Netroots develop good progressive legislation."   Structuring participation is the big challenge.  I see this as a design problem, with the following constraints: -    1) Highly complex, specialized tasks and subject matter -    2) Large, diffuse, all-volunteer amateur work force -    3) Limited time and resources -    4) Substantial barriers to communication and collaboration That's what we're dealing with when we talk about "having the Netroots develop good progressive legislation."   Final quick question - it honestly mystifies me that this hasn't already happened.  I mean, the Netroots is essentially an enormous network of thousands upon thousands of armchair policy buffs - why hasn't this happened spontaneously, organically?  Am I on to something with the list of design constraints? If you or someone else gets this off the ground, I'm at your service to help.  I'm fairly experienced with local and federal environmental policy law, legislation and related issues (I work in the field), and would be very pleased to push in that area.  Even the Progressive States Network, the only semi-grassroots group I can even think of developing a broad platform of progressive policy, doesn't focus the way I'd like it to on environmental issues, so any help I can be, let me know! by: Syrith @ Sat Jul 12, 2008 at 22:26