Democrats: Party of the Walking Brain Dead.

Democrats just don't get it. They have been facing their Goldwater moment for the past 25 years and have consistently refused to reinvent themselves. The advance of the radical Right has less to do with any compelling message on their part but more to do with the intellectual bankruptcy and lack of strategic vision on the part of Democrats. Going into the 2006 mid-term election it seems their best hope is not to win on ideas but to hope the GOP self-destructs.

There are undoubtedly some very intelligent and perceptive people in the Democratic Party. Yet that talent never seems to rub off on the entire Party. How the Democrats deal with budget numbers... an issue that could work in their favor, provides a perfect example.

For the past 25 years the most radical elements of the Right have had a clear strategy to sabotage the finances of the federal government. They call it “starving the beast”. Rather than debate social safety net programs on their merit, they have preferred to push through irresponsible tax cuts to create massive deficits. Such policies serve a political purpose: they bring home the bacon to their wealthy and business constituents while depriving the Dems of ways to serve their own constituencies. The radical Right has never cared if We The People piss away trillions on interest... some $352 BILLION in FY05 alone... as long as that money was not available to do some good for the American People. To get a sense of immense scale of waste here... taxpayer money spent on interest in FY05 is about 20X the entire NASA budget of about $17 billion. The utter contempt the radical Right has for the average citizen is beyond measure. But you'll never hear Democrats making this argument nor will you hear them educate the public that interest is the biggest waste of taxpayer money in the budget.

While Clinton understood the fiscal trap the Right had set, he never went out of his way to educate the public about what the Right was up to. Clinton just made it a top priority to get to a budget surplus and in doing so intended to protect the future viability of the Democratic Party. Sadly Clinton never sufficiently inoculated the Public against the Right's Big Lies. He failed to build up a large constituency dedicated to preserving that surplus and to paying down the national debt. It was a strategic blunder that may have backfired in the 2000 election. In 2000 Bush was obviously determined to follow in Reagan’s path to again sabotage revenues before any debt was actually paid down. Did the Democrats try to expose the Right's ploy? Hardly. They just proposed their own irresponsible tax cuts! As George Lakoff might say... this proposal just reinforced the Right's conceptual frame that the pubic needed "tax relief". The Democrats never put forth a competing conceptual frame that it was in the national interest to pay down the debt, nor that it was criminally irresponsible for the Right to bribe voters today with money stolen from future taxpayers. How can Democrats EVER expect to expose the Right's Big Lie that tax cuts are a free lunch if they refuse to expose the true extent of the damage created by the Right's scorched earth fiscal policies?

By 2000 nearly 2 decades had gone by where Democrats COULD have been educating the public about the Right’s plans to sabotage government... and refused. This failure is reminiscent of the Democrats ineptitude in devising an effective strategy to protect the federal judiciary against radical Right-wing justices. More on that here: here.

Sadly, the federal budget is like a shell game. On the on-budget side of the ledger we have most of what we consider as government functions... the military, NIH, FBI, NASA etc. Trust funds like Social Security are considered off-budget. But if there is a surplus in these off-budget trust funds as there is today... about $180 billion for FY06, by law this surplus is loaned to the government. If there's an on-budget surplus... a very rare event, the money is used to pay down the overall public debt even as it's adding to the intragovernmental debt.

This point bears repeating: only a true ON-budget surplus can be used to lower overall debt. If there's an on-budget deficit... as is usually the case, the trust fund money is borrowed, then spent. To date according to Bureau of Public Debt the intragovernmental debt is over $3.7 TRILLION.

So why do both parties use the unified budget numbers? The answer is simple: these numbers offer BOTH parties political cover since they make deficits look smaller by concealing hundreds of billions in borrowing from the trust funds and also can make any surplus look larger. Using unified budget numbers Clinton could claim a surplus in FY98 even as money was still being borrowed from the trust funds adding to the intragovernmental debt while being used to pay down the public debt. The unified budget surplus for FY98-00 was $431 Billion yet in reality the true Clinton on-budget surplus totaled only a paltry $90 billion in FY99 and FY00. When compared to the national debt then at 5.8 Trillion, it was a drop in the bucket… and by FY01 the on-budget surplus was gone.

What the Democrats never seem to understand is they can't claim to be the TRUE party of fiscal responsibility if they play such games with the budget numbers. Even when the numbers work in their favor they refuse to tell the American People just how fiscally irresponsible Bush has been. The Democrats can't educate the public about the budget if they continue to propose sugar-coated deficit reduction plans of their own that conceal hundreds of billions in trust fund borrowing. Yet this is exactly what Kerry did in 2004. By using the unified budget figures in his 2004 deficit reduction plan, Kerry concealed about a trillion in borrowing over 5 years. Not only was it a strategic blunder not to expose the Right's game plan... it was a scandalous display of how the Democrats also have contempt for the public.

So here comes election 2006. Again the deficit numbers are outrageous... hitting record highs. These numbers again work to the benefit of the Democrats. But have the Democrats changed their ways? Hardy. They again refuse to even use the true Bush deficit numbers. Here's an example.

From http://www.democrats.org

2001: Bush Deliberately Underestimated Future Deficits. In 2001, Bush predicted massive budget surpluses over the following four years, in order to make the case that we could afford his tax cut plan. Instead, each of those years will suffer an actual or likely deficit. In 2001, Bush predicted a $231 billion surplus in 2002 (reality: $158 billion deficit), $246 billion surplus in 2003 (reality: $375 billion deficit), $268 billion surplus in 2004 (reality: $422 billion projected deficit), and $273 billion surplus in 2005 (reality: $348 billion projected deficit.

Who's underestimating deficits?

The TRUE Bush deficit is the ON BUDGET deficit. Here are those numbers from page 22 of this OMB report.

1999: +1.920 BILLION
2000: +86.422 BILLION
2001: -32.445 BILLION
2002: -317.417 BILLION not 158 billion
2003: -538.418 BILLION not 375 billion
2004: -567.961 BILLION not 422 billion
2005: -493.611 BILLION not 348 billion
2006: -602.141 BILLION estimated

It's just another in a long series of strategic failures on the part of the Democrats to blunt the Right's offensive. Since they don't seem to have the sense to go head to head and expose the Right's lies... their best hope of winning elections is for the Right to implode. If the Democrats win in this manner... that Goldwater moment to reinvent themselves will surely be put off again.

(Originally published in April 06 and updated 10-19-06)

ulTRAX

Rush Limbaugh and the Orwellian Right's Propaganda Machine

Listening to an old Noam Chomsky lecture in which he talked of Tom Friedman, he said it was difficult for people to lie. That when people got to Friedman's level, they were totally steeped in, and believed, the propaganda that they espoused.

While I have immense respect for Chomsky, my take is a bit different. I believe there is a cynical Orwellian Right and that they know the truth even as they seek to mislead. Here's an example that was once up at Rush Limbaugh's site a few years back. He was talking in support of one of Bush's 2001 tax cuts:

"If it brings in, say, two dollars for every dollar of tax relief, we'll have more money in the treasury – and thus safeguard programs like Social Security! The idea behind tax cuts is to get the economy to grow. The economy is not static. The pie is not one size forever, with no new slices. The object is to grow so we have more people working and paying taxes. Presidents Kennedy and Reagan proved this with their tax cuts. The Democratic Congress spent every new dollar and more that Reagan brought in, but the fact is that the revenue coming into the treasury nearly doubled over his two terms."

Note how Rush omits some key facts which discredit his claims:

1: Every recession ends. Tax cuts are not needed.

2: Reagan signed into law some massive tax HIKES yet Rush dishonesty credits all the revenue growth in the 1980's to tax cuts. He ignores inflation and the growth in the economy due to population increases which also increase revenue.

Predictably real revenues under Reagan FELL so much that by FY84 they were still around FY79 levels in constant dollars. One can only wonder how low they would have been without those massive Reagan tax hikes. Here are the revenue numbers from FY77 to FY89 in constant 2000 dollars. They include revenues from Reagan's tax hikes:

FY77 903.8 Billion
FY78 952.5
FY79 1,017.8
FY80 1,028.3
FY81 1,077.4 Carters Last Budget
FY82 1,036.9 Reagan's First Budget
FY83 961.7
FY84 1,016.8
FY85 1,082.6
FY86 1,107.3
FY87 1,196.1
FY88 1,235.6
FY89 1,298.9 Reagan's last budget


Rush implies that tax cuts bring in double the amount in revenues for every tax dollar lost in the tax cut. Essentially tax cuts are a Voodoo Economics free lunch! If true no sane person could be against them. Yet is there ANY proof of this? Of course not! The most optimistic claim I've seen is from Cato. They calculate tax cuts bring in about 35 cents on every dollar of taxes cut. Since Cato has a right-wing agenda, one can only guess what questionable assumptions they used to arrive at this “optimistic” figure. None the less, if true then Cato’s numbers also translates into LOSING 65 cents on every dollar of tax cuts. No free lunch here either.

The so-called JFK tax cuts were actually passed after his death and the economy was already picking up. Much of the expansion of the 60's was from wartime spending. But the Orwellian Right always pretends the credit goes to tax cuts. JFK also proposed that revenues would INCREASE from tightening up loopholes despite the reduction in the top marginal tax rate.

Rush implies that revenues under Reagan doubled. What's critical here is what baseline is chosen. Using Reagan's first and last budgets... in constant 2000 dollars which includes natural population growth and revenue from Reagan tax hikes, FY82 thru FY89 revenue under Reagan grew only about 25% not by 100% as Rush dishonestly claims. Even in current dollars, Reagan's revenues rose only about 62% not 100%. Here are the figures in billions of current dollars:

FY82 617.8
FY83 600.6
FY84 666.5
FY85 734.1
FY86 769.2
FY87 854.4
FY88 909.3
FY89 991.2


Rush does as all on the Orwellian Right do when trying to justify tax cuts: he avoids the bigger context by not comparing Reagan's revenues to Carter's. Just what would revenues have been if there had been NO irresponsible tax cuts?

Clinton proved that an economy can easily expand after a tax HIKE. This is a sore spot for the Orwellian Right. It drives a stake squarely into the heart of their tax cut fairytale. So they often dishonestly credit Reagan for the boom of the Clinton era. Yet curiously they never credit Nixon for the boom of the 80's.

After rewriting history to imply that less revenue under Reagan is actually MORE revenue... Rush is left to explain Reagan's massive deficits. Since his intent is deceive, Rush dishonestly blames the Democrats for spending the fabricated windfall. Reagan’s own spending on an insane military buildup gets no mention.

The unavoidable truth is this: Rush HAS to know the truth to so skillfully avoid it. And knowing that it's clear his ONLY intent is to deceive his listeners. Yet that also implies utter contempt for his own listeners. One is left to conclude Rush is merely an Orwellian Right propagandist who's looking out for his own interests.

Rush's quotes were originally at this URL and that page is no longer up.

(revised 3-19-08)


ulTRAX

Governments Derive Their JUST Power From The CONSENT Of The Governed

On this July 4th, the 230th anniversary of that original Independence Day, perhaps there is no better time to revisit the Declaration of Independence.... particularity on what the signers believed what form of government should replace rule by the crown.

Thomas Jefferson wrote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The belief that governments derive their moral legitimacy not from God but from the consent of the governed was a radical proposition during the Enlightenment, when Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence in 1776. This belief originated with John Locke's concept of natural rights which were rights not contingent on, or handed down from government but existed regardless of government. As such governments were morally legitimate only if they had the consent of the governed.

I'd argue that in the US the very concept of "consent of the governed" has suffered death by 1000 cuts and in the process has been bastardized almost into oblivion. We have elections and a representative form of government... but both are so flawed they can never accurately measure the consent of the governed except by accident. Worst, at times we have a government that has been REJECTED by the governed.

Sadly We The People seem so beaten down by this system that we meekly accept such outrages as Election 2000 where an unaccountable Star Chamber called the Electoral College imposed upon this nation a president and his policies the People clearly voted against. US and world history changed for the worst against the wishes of the governed. The world's only superpower was out of the control of its own people. Bush was then free to abuse the powers of his office to consolidate power in the Senate and the federal judiciary... and he did do... gladly.

At times when I'm most cynical, I think We The People need a new Declaration of Independence.

But perhaps we should just revisit the original.

The Road To HELL Is Paved With True Believers

Before entering into this rather abstract discussion on dysfunctional and dangerous ideologies, here are what I consider a few essential axioms.

1: Like with evolution, belief systems compete against each other… yet those that survive are not necessarily the most rational but those that are best suited to their environment. In this case, the environment may be the human need to make life meaningful and to hope there's cosmic justice for "moral" behavior... but also a social environment, where self-serving power seeks justifications for its own immoral, often inhumane, behavior. The combination these and other environmental factors leads to belief systems that may be widely accepted completely divorced from reality and contain internal contradictions adherents remain blind to.

2: The most compelling yet insidious of belief systems are those that seemingly have explanations for everything. An example was the medieval belief that everything could be explained as a cosmic battleground between Good and Evil. If one dared question that belief, it was assumed they were under the influence of Evil. While certainly not alone, Ayn Rand’s Objectivism would certainly fall into this category. Free Market fundamentalists believe that even market failures are proof of the infallibility of market forces turning economics into a religion.

3: The capacity for human self-deception is infinite made possible by an infinite number of conceptual combinations that can be twisted, abused, and bastardized… with the result that any number of compelling but absurd belief systems can emerge and be accepted.

4: Most humans suffer from a self-inflicted infallibility complex and believe their actions, no matter how destructive, are based in positive motivations. Hitler actually believed history would vindicate his mass murder of the Jews.

5: Humans are not just susceptible to irrational belief systems, which I’d argue, are at the root of most of humanity's problems... but have a desire to perpetuate those belief systems they believe in.

6: As a result we often create/support dysfunctional if not insane institutions to perpetuate these ideologies. We also create a system of incentives to support the underlying ideology and disincentives/punishments for questioning that ideology. Punishments can range from mere social disapproval to death.

7. No matter how the above should be seen as the root cause of most human misery and conflict, True Believers will fanatically claim the superiority of their own belief system over others thus perpetuating misery and conflict which they remain blind to.

8: The above is possible because cultures such as ours lack a key countervailing value: the respect for reality which would create self-correcting mechanisms.

We often don't give much thought to the sanity of institutions or entire nations. We just assume our institutions and our nation are inherently desirable if not superior to those of others. We may be less generous towards the institutions of our friends and allies but at least we would not question their sanity. The thought of insane institutions or an entire nation actually going insane is so disturbing we delude ourselves into thinking it only happens rarely and reserve such condemnations for the like of North Korea and Nazi Germany. Yet what may be of more interest is not whether a nation actually embarks on military conquest and genocide... the worst case scenario, but whether any nation can, under the right circumstances, also go “toxic”. I’d argue that this is what has happened in the US, especially after 911, the invasion of Iraq, and GOP's clinging to ideas that caused the Great Recession.

We're all aware of physiologically-based insanity. But there is a more prevalent form of insanity... the self-inflicted variety by which I mean irrational belief systems. Technically such insanity resides in individuals who self-sabotage their own intellects. But, collectively those who subscribe to these insane belief systems are not satisfied with individual acceptance of a belief system. They want their insanity to become institutionalized. It can be on the level of murderous organizations like those who follow Bin Laden, institutions like the Nazi SS, like in the case of Nazi Germany the whole national purpose becomes devoted to a murderously insane ideology.

Yet, it's a mistake to assume that the most radical and murderous among us are insane. Assuming no organic cause... the more interesting question is what are the necessary preconditions to their insane beliefs?

Perhaps all belief systems, diverse as they may be, fall into two main categories. There are self-correcting modes of thought... such as the scientific method. Granted as we've seen in the news often other considerations undermine the intellectual integrity required for honest research. Then there are the self-justifying belief systems. The most compelling are those which seemingly have an explanation for everything.

Almost by definition the permutations of such irrational self-justifying ideologies are infinite. We see it in racism, patriotism, nationalism, Millenniumism, creationism, Maoism, imperialism, Stalinism, radical capitalism to a hundred other "-isms". Not all are dangerous or toxic but all are share a common defect: and inability to self-correct.

The most obvious self-justifying belief systems are religious in nature. Religion serves as the perfect example of the two key attributes of self-justifying belief systems. The first is selective perception... where reality is rearranged so only data supporting the belief system are acknowledged. The second is the filtering of any data which threatens the belief system. By their very nature such belief systems tend to lead towards more disagreement and conflict. In contrast self-correcting belief systems tend to grow towards more agreement.

If there's any core observation it's this: what makes these self-justifying belief systems so insidious is this: once someone accepts the basic tenets of the ideology they deprive themselves of the intellectual tools to disprove the system. For that individual, the belief system becomes closed, and odds are if the system meets certain requirements, it will self-perpetuate. If institutions or nations are built around these self-justifying ideologies then they then have a vested interest in perpetuating the irrationality of their clients/consumers and citizens. These institutions create incentives for irrational if not insane attitudes and behavior that are compatible with the mission of the institution. It leads to insane ideas such as Monsanto’s “death gene” and those who can’t see past the current imperatives who actually believed the “death gene” made perfect sense. Likewise these institutions create disincentives and punishments for attitudes and behavior that threaten the institution and its underlying ideology. We can expect such imperatives from religious institutions which by their nature are faith based... and largely immune from self-correction. What is more a threat is when we have such behavior in our government and corporate institutions.

A central goal of any sane society should be the pursuit of truth... and an essential aspect of that pursuit is the relentless challenge of its own beliefs. Alas, I see the US being awash in irrational, self-perpetuating belief systems. By this I mean our institutions governmental and economic, and even our citizenry, are not acting in ways that can self-correct. For example, if combating global warming runs counter to the imperatives/incentives the built into our economy then it’s those imperatives/incentives that must be questioned. Sadly, these imperatives/incentives go unquestioned and as these major institutions try to perpetuate themselves, they have developed a vested interest in encouraging irrationality in the public. As for the public, some among us value these dysfunctional if not toxic belief systems even more than life itself. Since these are people who don't suffer any physiological form of insanity, perhaps being a True Believer is the ultimate human pathology.

(revised: 5-2-14)


ulTRAX

MoveOn's Self-Inflicted Lobotomy: Alienated Members

I didn't intend to do a third article on MoveOn's ActionForum but when poking though the forum I saw the stream of negative comments buried 10,000 posts back, I decided to bring them to light. If you're new to this series it may be helpful to start with article 1 or article 2.

It is my contention that MoveOn's ActionForum amounts to a self-inflicted lobotomy.... not just because they are trying to cram all 3.3 MILLION MoveOn members into ONE forum. The forum is dysfunctional because it endlessly churns out goals yet refuses to harness the talent of the membership to devise action plans. There's a rating system but it has so many defects it's worthless. It is my further contention that whenever there are problems at the forum those who run it seem pathologically incapable of rethinking their own dysfunctional forum model. They just further sabotage more features. The last straw was to start screening posts in what was touted to be a user-moderated forum.

The lobotomy analogy is fitting in another way. The forum is also dysfunctional that it pits those who have low expectations of what a good forum can offer and who love to game the rating system against those who believe in e-democracy and have experience in traditional forums that offer features like issue-specific forums, a reply function, an in-house message service, and a search function to find keywords or one's own posts.

How many just leave ActionForum in disgust or been banned for insisting MoveOn provide a decent forum? We may never know for sure. But this may provide a clue. I scanned the first 1000 of the top-rated posts. The top voted-on post in the current Great Goals forum has about 20,200 votes showing that there have been at least that many unique active membership accounts. Predictably it's a very old post, from the first day that forum was created back in November 2004. The highest rated post I've found from the last year was posted last December has some 5350 votes. Have 15,000 members left? Some may come back if MoveOn sends another email urging members to post at the forum. But it would not surprise me so many left since because there's little to hold anyone's interest. Between January and August 2005 there were numerous OTHER FORUMS dealing with these issues:

* What is your top question for DNC Chair Candidates?
* Help Choose A Name for MoveOn's New Organizing Campaign.
* Suggest a slogan for Operation Democracy, our new campaign.
* Tell us what you want Operation Democracy to do.
* Suggest a slogan for an anti-Rove campaign.

While I've certainly given the dysfunctionality of the forum plenty of thought, I think it's important to see what other members have said. I took a sample month, in this case November 2005, and looked for all the posts that criticized the forum. Including myself posts were made by 18 MoveOn members. I’ve edited the comments to get to the point and removed their town names from their sigs.

So since it's the nature of the ActionForum to forever shove posts down into MoveOn Oblivion, here are their words. Note: some complain of 3000 posts to rate, others 13000. They are simply referring to either the top-rate list or the main forum:

This survey
When I came here I had no idea there were so many questions. Hey this is the computer age, why not find a program to consolidate like questions. I responded to over 200, and am sure there many more worthy of votes, but this is unreal, and one
of the ways the NeoCons will retain power, is they know how to use the press and marketing. Get up to speed Move-On!

- Pat Hacker, Designer (November 04, 2005)



too many questions
The excessive length and repetitive nature of this forum reflect a problem with MoveOn.org... too much information. People are tired of being asked to respond to so many issues. Get organized, prioritize! The republicans do it. If we don't get our
act together we will never achieve our goals.

- Anne Berkeley, retired (November 04, 2005)



DAMN IT MOVEON: WE NEED A SCOTUS FORUM NOW!!!
We need a Supreme Court forum ASAP.... a suggestion that I've repeatedly made here starting last July. Just how does MoveOn intend to fight the Right's takeover of the federal judiciary when it has at its disposal a mechanism to efficiently brainstorm and provide input from its membership, yet MoveOn deliberately sabotages, it?
According to http://www.actionforum.com/general/uniquefeatures.html MoveOn claims the rating system is to allow the best ideas to float to the top. Where's the evidence?
With only one active forum here it has become a dumping ground for all issues. Since MoveOn doesn't allow for traditional threads to discuss a topic, the forum is full of disjointed responses to posts. With so much congestion no one has the time to go though all the posts to even rate them... so the rating system is becomes meaningless... and those that make it to the top have more visibility so they get read and voted on more. In the mean time the vote from a single right-wing troll doom a good post to obscurity.
In the past MoveOn has seen fit to create forums on topics as trivial as finding slogans http://www.actionforum.com/forum/index.html?offset=0&forum_id=269 http://www.actionforum.com/forum/index.html?offset=0&forum_id=271
While http://www.actionforum.com/general/uniquefeatures.html says these forums support replies... it's clear that's not true.
Yet MoveOn has had forums that allowed for ratings AND discussion... http://www.actionforum.com/forum/index.html?offset=0&forum_id=265
We have every right to ask why MoveOn is not now providing us with more forums and the option to have simple discussions we expect from every other web forum.
Otherwise this forum is a waste of time and provides only the illusion of member input.

ulTRAX, researcher (November 04, 2005)



Forum Change
This forum is good, but it needs a bit more organization. It needs folders for topics that keep being reiterated. For example, election reform, health care, Iraq, all need groupings. I also agree with another user who said that a discussion type board might be a better format. I agree with portions of some statements, but not all. It would be great to be able to refine some of the ideas presented here through dialogue instead of statements.

- Melissa Angel, teacher (November 06, 2005)



MoveON Objectives
Convert MoveOn's Forum to facilitate communication between MoveOn members. That should be the number one objective to aid in the strengthening of this organization.

- Holly, consultant (November 07, 2005)



good bye
I feel compelled to post a note explaining why I'm leaving you and "your" 3.3 million members. Previously I have supported you quite a bit because I have generally agreed with your stated purposes, but I have always been bothered by your closed system. "Democracy in Action"? 3.3 million "members" and no internal elections? You won't even post your financials, and I never even got a form-letter response to my queries -- both electronic and by paper mail to your offices, I might add. Signing your emails with just your first names only irritates me. You constantly write about "we" and "us" but near as I can tell your own organization is modelled on 14th century monarchies. No thanks. Where is your own accountability? This forum? I don't think so. You can pick and choose and do whatever you want with the millions of dollars that earnest people contribute. Well, I'm sorry Joan and Wes, but you've kept this thing too tightly held, and I can only really vote with my feet, which I will now do. I wish you well in general, because I still agree with most of your positions. But frankly I have to wonder if on balance you are hurting the progressive cause. You have become almost a self-parody, a favorite foil for the Right. Your reactions and positions have become 99% predictable. Everything is a crisis and an emergency now, and always to be solved by sending you yet more unaccounted-for money. When you asked me to contribute $500 to a "matching fund" (matching whom? myself?) that was the final insult.

It's been fun. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

- Richard Minner, Director of Engineering (November 08, 2005)



MoveOn: Is anybody listening?
Below is a copy of an inquiry I submitted to the link provided at the bottom of the Forum home page: To: info@actionforum.com Sent: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 16:12:52 -0500 Subject: Status of action forum Please tell me how the Forum is being used, as it states, to set MoveOn's agenda, when members' postings merely get pushed further and further back as new postings appear daily, making it impossible to track any given topic or its response? Many, many others obviously share my belief that the number one priority for the country right now is to address the issue of impeachment and/or war crimes prosecutions of Bush and his top echelon. Why has this been ignored by you, when the mood of the country has never been more receptive to addressing the war and related criminal policies of this government, and when your own members express growing frustration with your lack of responsiveness?

- Kathy Parsons, School employee (November 09, 2005)



Make MoveOn more accessible!
You're very good at sending out "Do This" messages, and that's fine--but this forum seems to be the only way to contact anybody at MoveOn, and it's damned near impossible to get any sort of response. CONVERSATIONS GO BOTH WAYS. The Forums are fine in a general way, but a person could spend all day searching through them. Is there any way to organize the Forum into categories, such as election reform, environment, Iraq, corporate special-interests, corruption... I realize all of these are affected by election reform, so I think that's the most critical issue if we're going to restore democracy to America ... but posting and commenting here feels like shouting down a well. This is the most awkward, user-unfriendly forum system I've seen anywhere. It doesn't feel like a 'conversation,' because there's never any response from MoveOn management, and the emails urging people to participate here seems more like a PR maneuver.

- Jan Lindner, human being (November 10, 2005)



Action Forum Rating Bias?

I don't see how the neutral, objective Action Forum Rating System keeps an issue that only got 17 votes as the Number One "Top Comments" on Action Forum. I also don't understand how a comment in "Recent Comments" that only got one vote is kept in
the top five "Recent Comments" inspite of other more "Recent Comments" getting higher ratings and more votes. I find it interesting that those two comments that are kept "in view" of Move On readers are probably issues that Move On leaders personally endorse. I am a Move On supporter, however, I have to wonder what is going on here!

- Bari L. Sanger, Self (November 14, 2005)



re: Action Rating Forum Bias? - Reply to Timothy Hansen
Thanks for the reply and information. Today, I posted my first ever comment on Action Forum, "Draconian Mandatory-Minimum Sentencing Requirements". I guess I was totally dismayed to find that my comment rapidly went down the "Recent Comments" list
because, (1) a comment that was made before mine was somehow "reposted" in its entirity above my comment (even though it was an older "Recent Comment" - See "The Graham Amendment..."), and (2) comments that were not in the original listed order somehow appeared in the middle of an already established line order. I guess I was also frustrated because I thought I had an important issue/information to pass along to Move On members. To see it "buried" so quickly made me wonder why I even bothered. Is there a better way to bring up these kind of issues?

- Bari L. Sanger, Self (November 14, 2005)



The forum needs a SEARCH function to truly see what people consider the MOST important!
the basic idea of this forum is great. HOWEVER - if you REALLY want to know what's important to members - don't force people to read EVERY letter on EVERY subject just to FIND the letters that address the topics they agree are the MOST CRUCIAL! - let us search for topics we believe to be the most crucial and let us vote on them - or add our own. There are rare moments when I have the time to read a lot of other people's comments on a million issues. Sometimes it's enlightening. But most of the time it's just frustrating - and counter-productive. So people write their own letters that often end up reinventing the wheel over and over! If you've got the time to write a letter - great. If you've got the time to wade through what everyone else has written about a million different topics - great. But give the majority of people who don't have the time to wade through a million various topics a place to use their time more EFFICIENTLY - let us SEARCH for the topics we DO believe to be the most crucial. We can then vote on letters - or write our own. You don't even have to change the way you're doing it now - just ADD A SEARCH OPTION for the rest of US. THAT would tell you what people REALLY think is important!

- suzanne allison, Graphic Designer (November 15, 2005)



re: Bari - Action Forum Rating Bias? - Reaching Move On
Many thanks to Timothy L. Hansen for his comments, advice, explanations, input, etc. They are extremely welcome and helpful. However, I will still have to admit that I am still somewhat doubtful that the Action Forum is a good place for "concerned citizens" to "take action". Perhaps there is a better way to organize Action Forum into a more interactive media, with search engines, groupings, what not. I am not a "techie", but, I am sure some of you out there know how to really make this work. How about it folks, why don't you let Move On leaders know that we need a better, revamped, and more interactive Action Forum. Make your posting on this today!

- Bari L. Sanger, Self (November 15, 2005)



More Interactive Action Forum? Take a Vote!
Please vote YES or NO, and please mark an "importance rating". Would you like to see a better designed and more interactive Action Forum with the ability to develop threads, replies, groupings, search capabilities, follow-up, etc? VOTE NOW!

- Bari L. Sanger, Self (November 15, 2005)



I Give Up on Action Forum
Action Forum is just too time consuming and frustrating to use. I have made a honest and erstwhile attempt to participate in this forum. I feel like I am just spinning my wheels here. I have no choice but to search for other avenues for better ways to "advocate" and "fight for" for a better America. Good luck folks...

- Bari L. Sanger, Self (November 15, 2005)




WE NEED A SUPREME COURT FORUM ASAP
In the past MoveOn has seen fit to create forums on topics as trivial as finding slogans:
http://www.actionforum.com/forum/index.html?offset=0&forum_id=269 http://www.actionforum.com/forum/index.html?offset=0&forum_id=271
So why isn't there a forum so MoveOn can get member feedback on protecting the Supreme Court?

ulTRAX, researcher (November 16, 2005)



NEXT FIVE!!!!!!!
When I hit next five, that's what I want. Not taken back in your archives to stuff written 6 months ago. And I shouldn't have to go through 120 posts to see the reactions of the post I wrote yesterday. We are interested in what we think is important, not what the monitor wants us to think is important.

- rjhangover, musician (November 21, 2005)



Forum for goals
I do not think this forum format works to set goals. I open up the forum and I see that there are 12,000 submissions for me to puruse. Dempocracy is great but direct democracy for more than 20 people is unworkable. You need a more focused discussion format.

- Steve Cohn, none (November 25, 2005)



13,000 Comments are Too Many
This forum is poorly organized and impossible to use effectively. I calculate it would take 54 8-hour days to read through all the comments. I urge actionforum.com to make the following upgrades to make it useful:
1) break postings down into topic areas
2) make the entire forum searchable
3) make individual topic areas searchable This would allow users to effectively support issues they are passionate about and decrease duplicate posts.
For all I know, there are already 100 posts on this topic, but I'm not going to spend 54 days looking for them.

- Thomas J. Willis, Merchant Seaman (November 27, 2005)



The forum has too many comments and is hard to use!
There are 13000 comments in this forum. How do expect your guests to find topics they are interested in, review them and comment on them? Also, several of the first comments are all on paper ballots and repeat ideas. You need a moderator for this forum to reduce and organize the number of comments.

- Bruce A. Ernst, Information Technology (November 28, 2005)



KEEP THIS ON TOP BY VOTING FOR IT!
My suggestion is to index the actionforum.com. The problem with this system is that when I go to this page, I only see one, maybe two ideas and they float to the bottom
quickly...out of sight, out of mind. How can we all get behind one idea when you have to do a million page clicks to find one that you support?? THIS FORUM NEEDS INDEXING!!!

- Joseph Dowdy, Entertainment & Technology (November 28, 2005)



Better organization of the Action Forum
With over 3000 comments, there needs to be some active knowldge management and categorization. The like comments need to be grouped together under specific headings ie; Election Reform would be the major category with sub-headings of Voting porocess, campaign finance reform, Redistricting. Without someone actively managing this knowledge base, only the items which float to the top get viewed - it is difficult to have time to view all 3000 items, so you tend to start at the beginning and only go part way through the items.

- Linda Stone, Retired Management consultant (November 28, 2005)



Forum Useful??? Not for Us
I guess that moveon will use a word scan program to find out what is coming up over and over... but I don't think it is helpful for a dialogue or communicating for us. I also do not think a word scanning program is the way to set priorities. Just one woman's opinion. :-)

- June Mohns, Property Manager (November 29, 2005)



MoveOn...PAY ATTENTION
This is simply a reiteration of a past comment, but needs to be heard by MoveOn, otherwise what is the point of this forum? An opportuinty to Search Subjects would be useful.

The forum has too many comments and is hard to use! There are 13000 comments in this forum. How do expect your guests to find topics they are interested in, review them and comment on them? Also, several of the first comments are all on paper ballots and repeat ideas. You need a moderator for this forum to reduce and organize the number of comments.

- Bruce A. Ernst, Information Technology (November 28, 2005)
Scores (13) 78% AGREE

- Sherril Smoger-Kessous, Speech Pathologist (November 30, 2005)

(updated 9-19-06)

ulTRAX