I recently lauched a website, The Petition Archives, which I entered into the Apps for America contest.

The Petition Archives collects, geocodes, publishes, and preserves personal email petitions targeted at public figures, including government officials, corporate executives, and media personalities. Instead of sending a private email to a public figure, the Petition Archives allows you to send a public email. The Petition Archives digitally preserves and publishes your email petitions, so that they are searchable via location, keyword, and issue.

Please vote up The Petition Archives at the Wired Magazine website.

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Lipstick on pigs and pitbulls, pandas and parrots? Nader’s video criticizes the mainstream, corporate media, both the liberal and conservative echo chambers, which continue to ignore the very serious issues that confront our nation, especially electoral reform and a return to televised journalism. That the major news networks, including CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, continue to censor independent and 3rd party politicians, and continue to favor the Democrats and Republicans, and that the government tolerates this political censorship, is an affront to our democratic process. Even if we do not agree with the independent and 3rd party candidates, we should be ashamed of all the laws and policies that prevent the public from considering diverse political discourse.

We should be ashamed that we are accepting the presidential horserace as peddled by CNN, MSNBC and Fox. We should be ashamed that we are almost exclusively listening to a bunch of liberal and conservative pundits, mostly political strategists who tell us how to interpret these candidates and ignoring our national priorities. Why are we not listening to policy experts? Where are the informed debates? Apparently, Americans must watch a string of silly political rallies from the two entrenched and enchanted parties instead of tough and open policy debates between a diverse group of informed politicians.

Where is our outrage people? We are giving up our presidential debates to the corporate media and the partisan hacks that run the Commission on Presidential Debates. The Commission on Presidential Debates is so afraid of the public and their disapproval of its exclusionary practices, that its website at debates.org does not even provide a way to contact them by telephone or email!

This partisan commission, run by the Republicans and Democrats, is a major obstacle to our democracy. Its criteria for participation in the presidential debates is designed to exclude 3rd party candidates. It requires that a candidate have an average of at least 15% of the public’s support in 5 national polls. Why not use the 5 top presidential candidates from different parties in the polls instead? They know that this number prevents 3rd party candidates from participating. They know that the polls are low because the corporate media does not cover 3rd party candidates. They know that the vast majority of people want to watch more than two presidential candidates debate. The Republicans and Democrats that control the Commission on Presidential Debates know all of this, and they know that they are intentionally preventing 3rd party candidates from participating in an open presidential debate. Shame on them. Shame on us for not stopping them.

I sent the following message to CNN:

Please provide serious coverage of Ralph Nader and other 3rd party presidential candidates.  Today, the Situation Room totally missed the story.  The story is not that Nader used a parrot in a campaign ad, or that he’s using YouTube videos, but that the television media, including CNN, will not cover 3rd party candidates. 

As a graduate student in the Digital Media program at Georgia Tech, I am seriously disturbed by CNN’s historic failure to include 3rd party candidates in the presidential debates and in the daily political discourse.  Many Americans like myself rely on CNN and other news networks to champion the public interest and to provide access to diverse perspectives.  We need the news networks to seriously report on 3rd parties, so that the public can make an informed decision in the ballot booth.  We need CNN to seriously cover electoral reform issues.  We need CNN to recognize that political polling is highly influenced by their media coverage.  We need CNN to know that by refusing to provide fair coverage of 3rd parties, they are influencing political polls against 3rd party candidates.

I encourage CNN to investigate the fairness of the presidential debates.  I encourage CNN to bring 3rd party candidates into the same room as those from the two major parties.  Why doesn’t CNN provide more pressure on Obama and McCain to publicly debate the 3rd party candidates? 

To serve their public purpose and maintain a record of ethical journalism, CNN must seriously cover the 3rd candidates and allow the public to hear their perspectives in the context of a debate with the other political candidates.  Otherwise, CNN is prejudiced against 3rd party candidates, and prejudging the outcome of the election.  It does not suffice to point to polls, which are highly biased by the mainstream media in favor of the two major parties.  CNN has a journalistic duty to inform the public of their options for the presidency of the United States. 

Please do the right and preserve our democratic process; please seriously cover the 3rd party candidates.

Why are independent and 3rd party candidates largely ignored and censored by the mainstream media and the two major parties?

Here’s the perspectives of Ralph Nader, Jesse Ventura, and Matt Gonzalez:

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So the question is raised: Is C-Span’s Qik group, like many other social media experiments, mainly a public relations gimmick for C-Span, or is it a serious attempt to gather and publish public information to the public? While showing largely silent scenes of the convention is better than nothing, it falls far short of the potential for the medium of online video.

For example, C-Span is not allowing the public to join their Qik group:

Link To the Video

The best they offer is providing a link to your Qik videos on their blog. It appears that C-Span does not want to open up the publishing process to the public because it does not want to allow the public to publish content under its label.

How hard would it be for C-Span to allow the public to join their Qik channel and moderate user-generated submissions? How hard would it be for C-Span to use their camera to interview a protestor outside of the convention, or invite the protestors to join the Qik group? How hard would it be for C-Span to carry a laptop around and invite the people they videotape to use it, and post their comments to the website?

It is not enough to simply advertise the use of a new technology, like Qik. C-Span must encourage new social norms of contributing public comments to their system. The policies surrounding public comment are extremely important for the credibility of C-Span and its social media consultants.

That C-Span is moving in the direction of public media is commendable, but intentional half-measures are not.

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Link to Howard Dean On C-Span Video

The C-Span caller was obviously angry, and did not provide sufficient justification for his claims, but Dean’s response did not respond to the caller’s conclusions in a serious way. Dean took the time to defend Bill Clinton, but provided no justification for his conclusion that Lyndon Johnson was not a war criminal.

The issue here is not just whether Democratic presidents were war criminals, but whether the rhetorical manner in which Howard Dean responded to a C-Span caller was appropriate, respectful, and responsive to public comment. Even angry C-SPAN callers deserve careful answers from our political leaders.

Unfortunatly, Dean evaded the tough question of whether Lyndon Johnson was a war criminal for his leadership in the Vietnam War. He simply did not mention Lyndon Johnson. With respect to Clinton, he argued that Clinton was not a war criminal because the Kosovo war prevented genocide. Howard Dean did not answer the tough ethical and legal questions of the Kosovo War. For example, he did not justify Clinton’s decision to drop bombs on civilians in Kosovo, other than claiming that it saved many other lives. It’s not clear from Dean’s argument, that these civilian bombings were necessary.

Overall, Dean’s defense of the Democratic Party presidents was largely a straw-man, a misleading one he could easily disprove, and a non-sequitor, one that did not respond to the major claims at hand. Dean said, “You can’t run away from using force. Sometimes you have to use force”, as if the C-Span caller had suggested running away from using force, or that he is opposed to using force. The caller did not suggest either of these claims.

What do you thing? Did Howard Dean dodge the tough ethical and legal questions of war? Did any U.S. presidents, Democratic or Republican, commit war crimes?

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1. C-SPAN does not allow you to embed its videos onto your blog or homepage.
2. The link to the video, provided by C-Span video player, sends you to a page without the video. The linked page only tries to open a pop-up window with the video.
3. C-SPAN separates its video library from the search results of the main site. This means that many users need to perform the same search more than once.

Moreover, the C-SPAN site, which is supposed to be the premier video resource for Congressional coverage, lags behind the video sharing of other non-profit sites, such as the Internet Archive because:

1. C-Span does not allow you to download the video for free.
2. C-Span does not allow you to download the video in mutliple video formats.

Finally, C-SPAN lacks many obvious features for an increasingly web savvy public. For example:

1. C-SPAN does not allow you to clip the video into a smaller relevant interval for re-publication.
2. C-SPAN does not allow you to add video widgets to your website (unlike Hulu.com’s video widgets)
3. C-SPAN does not allow you to download and save its videos.

On the upside, C-SPAN Video does allow you to:

1. Search the transcripts of the video for keywords and fast-forward to those sections.

However, this feature is a moot point for those who want to embed videos of Congress onto a blog or other websites to begin a discussion.

It looks like C-SPAN needs to provide the public with better access to our public information. Congress has a special relationship with C-SPAN, giving them excellent access to record Congressional hearings. In return, Congress needs to require C-SPAN to provide the public with complete access to the content they record. Otherwise, Congress should sever their special relationship with C-SPAN in favor of a more civic-minded organization. In general, C-SPAN needs to release their video and audio recordings to the public or lose their special access to recording our public institutions.

A good first start would be for C-SPAN to:

1. Loosen their copyright restrictions to permit unlicensed commercial use. The current copyright restrictions hinder file downloads and “Any other use that C-SPAN believes enhances the value of an organization or entity”. The provisions would restrict people from using public information to create “Documentaries, films, or television progams”, as well as compiling “DVDs and the like”. It also hinders embedding content on blogs, many of which include for-profit ads. As a public service, C-SPAN should release all of their public content into the public domain.
2. Partner with multiple video sharing websites from the public and private sectors to freely syndicate their video recordings to the public.

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How can we improve communication between poor people and their elected representatives?

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After winning a coin toss, Barack Obama answered Pastor Rick’s questions first. During this time, according to Pastor Rick, McCain was supposed to be in a “cone of silence”, so he would not know the questions before they were addressed to him.

But after he defined marriage, McCain asked, “Are we going to get back to the importance of the Supreme Court Justices or should I …” This is an odd question for a person who was supposed to be in a “cone of silence” because Pastor Rick had not yet asked the question about Supreme Court Justices.

It appears the proper procedure for this question and answer session was not observed by McCain. However, McCain is not alone in this regard. The moderator, Pastor Rick, did not ask the candidates the exact same questions. He prefaced the questions differently. Moreover, he asked John McCain more questions than Obama. You can watch the entire Saddleback Forum videos yourself.

It is important to point out that Pastor Rick’s forum was hardly a public forum. While Pastor Rick did collect many questions from his readership, he did not implement any democratic mechanism for their selection. For example, readers did not vote on the questions that would be asked of the candidates. Moreover, Pastor Rick’s “public” probably did not proportionally represent the public at large, or the variety of religious communities in America.

What we have is another facsimile of a public forum hosted by MSNBC. MSNBC couldn’t host a fair debate between the first round of presidential candidates, and now, they cannot host a fair forum for the presidential nominees they brought to center stage.

The communication channels of our democratic institutions are fundamentally broken, and yet we continue to clap our hands.

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The Web Chat page only asked for my first name. I assume this is to protect my privacy. I entered my first name and was put in a short queue to textually chat with a nice person named Maria. I did not know exactly who I was talking to. There was a level of anonymity between us. The site only displayed her first name and the initial of her last
name, at least I assume it is her real name. I felt like an anonymous customer talking to an anonymous employee of a large corporation - well, maybe that’s the way it was designed.

That we are only using text chat is another filter between us. Anyways, I asked the USA.gov representative some questions about whether they can provide me with the public email addresses of elected officials. I’ve enclosed the transcript of my communication below:

Maria A.: Hi, my name is Maria A.. How may I help you?
Will: hi maria

Will: i have a question about contacting elected officials
Maria A.: How may I be of assistance?
Will: does the government have a publicly available list of email addresses to all federal, state, and local elected officials.
Maria A.: Unfortunately, we are not aware of such list.
Will: do you know why so many elected officials do not publish their email addresses?
Maria A.: We would not have that information.
Maria A.: You may contact both senators and representatives by e-mail via their homepage.
Maria A.: Would you like information concerning how to contact elected officials?
Will: the senators and representatives only have web forms, which do not publish their email addresses
Will: i want a way to send an email directly to elected officials
Will: without using their web forms
Maria A.: You will need to contact their office directly and request an e-mail address.
Will: do any of the federal agencies have a list of publicly available email addresses?
Will: do you have a directory of email addresses for federal agencies
Maria A.: Again, we are unaware of such listing. You may wish to contact the Government Printing Office (GPO) to see if such list exists.
Will: thank you very much for answering my questions

Maria A.: You may access the GPO homepage at: http://www.gpo.gov/
Maria A.: I hope you find this information helpful. Do you have any other questions?
Will: can i get an email receipt of this conversation?
Maria A.: Just one moment.
Maria A.: Unfortunately, we can not provide you with an e-mail receipt of our conversation.
Will: is there any way i can prove to others what you have told me?
Maria A.: You can copy and paste this conversation to a word document and print it out.
Maria A.: That would be my only suggestion.
Will: an email receipt would be better proof than copying and pasting
Will: this is why i don’t want to use webforms. they lack receipts
Maria A.: I apologize.
Will: thank you for your time and help.

Maria A.: It was a pleasure to chat with you. Thank you for contacting USA.gov. We would like your feedback on our performance. You can let us know what you think by copying and pasting following link into your browser’s address bar: http://www.info.gov/NCCsurvey.htm
Maria A.: Have a nice weekend : )
Will: you too.

Maria A.: Thanks!

Even though Maria A. works at the federal government’s premier e-government web portal, she could not provide me a simple list of email addresses to elected officials. I’m not blaming her personally; just the design of the system. The government has provided the public with a sophisticated live chat feature, but it cannot or will not disclose a list of email addresses to public officials. I wasn’t asking for the private email addresses of government employees; I was asking for some basic electronic contact information in order to communicate openly with my government as a citizen.

To hold our government accountable, it’s really important for citizens to have the ability to record and publish their communications with government employees. We need this ability to authentically express our grievances and to exercise our First Amendment right to petition. The information and communication technologies we decide to use really impact our potential for political communication. In many ways, the design of digital media is the design of our democracy.

As a citizen, we have a right and an obligation to openly and fairly communicate with our government electronically. That our public officials may be contacted by many of us, and that they have to deal with voluminous communication, is no reason to limit our important communication. We cannot blindly accept how elected officials prioritize and filter our communication with them. As part of the communication equation, we must demand the most basic first step - to be able to send them free form text electronically via email.

I’m still looking for the public email list of elected officials.

If it doesn’t exist, we need to build it. If it does exist, we need to get it. As a first step, let’s compile a public list of contact information for elected officials.

I’ve enclosed screenshots of my communication for your review:

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Here’s the comment that I posted in response to this perspective with respect to McCain’s war policies:

When we talk about McCain’s potential impact on the economy, we need to include some common sense, Main Street perspectives and not only the prognostications of entrenched Wall Street insiders. I don’t really support any of the presidential candidates, but it seems like McCain’s steadfast financial support of the war has really increased the national debt. We have spent over 528 billion dollars on the Iraq war so far - that’s over 528,000 million dollars. So I think it’s very hard to make the case that McCain’s policy of military spending is good for our economy. War is very, very expensive, and what we purchase are not capital investments or new markets, but more guns, blood, and enemies.

Before we decide on whether McCain or Obama is better for the economy, we should answer the following questions with respect to military spending:

What fraction of the national budget goes to military spending, is this an appropriate fraction, and how have the presidential candidates voted with respect to military spending?

Which presidential candidate is most likely to increase military spending?

Which presidential candidate is most likely to decrease military spending?

Which bills did McCain vote for to finance the Iraq War?

Which bills did Obama vote for to finance the Iraq War?

Did other presidential candidates, such as Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, Mike Gravel vote for any bills that financed the Iraq War?

And of course, we need to ask questions about other kinds of spending as well. How will the candidates spend money on transportation infrastructure, health care, the environment, and energy? To improve our economy, we not only need to stop spending money on services we do not need, but we also need to start spending money on services we do need. With respect to national security, we need to seriously reflect on whether our military spending is increasing our security or decreasing it. I am not convinced that the Iraq war has improved our national security. We must ask ourselves, was it worth it? We must ask ourselves, did the Iraq War really improve our economy, our quality of life, and our moral standing? And, we must ask ourselves, which politicians voted to go to war, voted to stay at war, and voted to forget the war?

With all of this in mind, it seems as though we must reform our initial question. The deeper question is:

Is there a viable presidential candidate who is for our economy?

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