a meta-page about political posts.

What I want from political posts is a one page overview of important facets of any particular issue. What I usually find is an expanded version of a tweet, missing both a story of what came before and forward looking next steps. :sad:

I’m writing this up to remind me to focus on this resource creation.

Background

First principle: government exists to address problems - especially those that are not solved when everyone is acting locally. For examples, ensuring clean air & water, preventing cheating in business, and coordinating with other states.

So not all problems start with government solutions, but as the rules enforcer it’s usually at least involved. We’re not at specifics yet, so the problem at hand is either a negative impact to reduce or goal to achieve. Identifying a problem that no-one else sees is extra difficult, and rarely necessary - because there are already a lot of folks living and finding problems as they go. As a result, it’s faster to look for folks working on a problem and then seeing if you agree with both what the problem is and how to address it.

Questions

  • Who is working in the area?

  • What has been tried, what is recommended?

  • How do we know what works, or measure success?

  • What are the headwinds?

General stages

  1. Start from an article - (something started you looking, right?)
    • who is quoted?
    • what groups do they belong to
  2. Find those groups
    • are they members of a larger coalition?
    • do they link to other groups?
    • do they propose specific actions?

  3. Continue 1 + 2 to collect a reasonable scoped set of groups and experts.

  4. Hopefully follow expert links to research, measures, and actions, to fill in the rest.

  5. Share the results.

[Here’s where I should figure out how to link to blog posts with the ‘politics’ tag.]