RegainAmerica began as a memory of the way things used to be in America, and the belief that by working together we can regain this greatness. It’s a collaborative workgroup / authoring environment and information portal dedicated to promoting positive change on the local, state and national levels.
The first phase will empower members to freely voice their concerns on issues that are important to them. More importantly the goal is to provide a platform where people can not only freely exchange ideas and views, but work together to effect real change. A government information portal will later be introduced focused on laws, lawmakers, and financing at all levels of government (initially the federal level). Simple to use analytics will allow visitors to get a quick and concise view into their government, the laws being passed, and how each of their representatives are performing. This new virtual town square will help empower people to work together to change the present status quo and Regain America.
Information Portal
Getting up to date information on what is happening in Congress and other government bodies can be difficult and very time consuming. How are your representatives doing and are they voting in a manner consistent with why you voted for them? Are they honest or are they there more to profit off the grift machine? Are they showing up and voting or frequently absent? What trends can be inferred through their voting, attendance, and financial history?
Most voters don’t have the time or patience to closely follow what is really happening in Congress and beyond. To do so is a full time job, clearly not practical for most. Instead they rely upon headline news snippets that can be fit in the gaps of their busy lives. One cannot blame most for not understanding what is really happening in the country, trends, and what their elected officials are really up to as they simply don’t have the time, energy, or desire.
Most information is available to the public, but very disconnected and not in a form that can be easily understood. Even very good government tracking sites such as govtrack.us have a difficult time putting the pieces together and summarizing in a concise and easy to understand way. This is where RegainAmerica can help. By building our own web scraping tools, AI agents, private AI models, and automated analysis tools voters will be able to understand the government landscape without having to devote their life to the task. Cross reference links and the ability to drill down on all data will provide the transparency to ensure the data and representations remain honest and trustworthy.
This is a very big project. Not just in the building of our own private AI models and infrastructure, but also in the tool creation, monitoring, and automated publishing of the data. Initially focusing on Congress – the people, voting records, common financial data over time for both representatives and the effects of bills and other data specifically tied to members of Congress. Just this would provide a much needed service, but is not enough. Deep analysis into money flows to members, their families and direct and indirect financial instruments such as layers of corporate structure is an eventual goal, but one that will require new techniques to be developed. Deep analysis into campaign funding is also needed – who, why and how much and how is this tied to member voting? Expanding this to cover State and eventually the County, City and local levels will be challenging.
At the end of the day the goal is for any American to be able to just ask what have my elected officials, as they related to me, been up to and what do they really stand for? The information can be queried online or members can subscribe to personalized email newsletters providing periodic updates. The process of keeping up with government must be made simpler, more reliable, and something that can be done in ones spare time rather than on a full time basis.
Groups
Groups are where members sharing similar interests work together towards their common goals. The purpose of these groups is to get things done and actually effect changes in government rather than just talking about them. The work output can be whatever the group decides is appropriate for a given problem. It could be a petition, email campaign to relevant lawmakers, media exposure, boycott coordination, new counter legislation, etc. Or any combination of the above.
We provide a collaborative authoring environment and supporting tools to facilitate working together effectively and efficiently. These are separate work spaces with different levels of isolation (public, private or hidden). Members can communicate among themselves through on-site messaging, forums, and through the joint document authoring system. Future upgrades are to include file sharing and project management tools (group specific). External links to legislators and other interested parties may also be included. Groups that work collaboratively often share greater resources, communicate better (more focused) and produce joint content faster and more efficiently.
Pause in Development
Work on RegainAmerica is on hold for now. With division in the country reaching new lows and seemingly getting worse by the day, it is unclear if our approach will be effective at this time. Online political forums for the most part have become ugly battlegrounds where insult and slander rule the day. We don’t have the resources or desire to be the playground cop for groups of nasty misfits. Hopefully in time this will change.
This article is an abbreviated version of a recent blog post. To see the entire article see RegainAmerica: Thoughts, Motivations and Current Status on this site. While we continue to ponder ways to provide positive tools for those wanting to right the ship, any and all suggestions are most welcome. I can be reached at tim@regainamerica.com.