Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

This part is probably the most important one of the presentation, as it describes the process by which Energize America came to life, and the unique caracteristics of DailyKos that made that netroots-based drafting process possible and give it its qualities of transparency, democracy and the ability to vet information.  Governor Richardson, who participated in the panel, specifically commented that this process was indeed particularly interesting.

Again, both the plan and the full presentation can be downloaded in
pdf format from www.ea2020.org.

For reference purposes, the  photograph of the panel, with Bill Richardson (Governor of New Mexico and Secretary of Energy under Bill Clinton) surrounded by the Energize America team: from left to right: Mark Sumner (devilstower),  Jérôme Guillet (Jerome a Paris), Gov. Richardson, George Karayannis (Doolittle Sothere), Adam Siegel (A Siegel).

Again, I am posting the relevant slides as they were shown during the panel, with a summary of the points I made during my speech.

This slide is pretty explicit. I recalled how energy is intertwined with economic policy, international relations (sometimes murky), military activity and Washington politics (even murkier), and how intimidating it can be, with huge numbers flying around (a billion dollars is a small sum in the energy sector), bigger companies, and strategic or national security considerations often used to obfuscate the stakes and stifle debate.

I recounted briefly how I came to blogs through a desire to correct some fears or wild theories about energy projects or the behavior of energy companies - for instance the conspiracy theories about the Afghanistan pipeline (a complete diary on that topic was posted here last year: Pipeline economics - why the Afghan pipeline will NOT be built).

I talked briefly about my son, his disease, and my hopes that he will grow up in a world of peace, prosperity and sustainability which can
allow him to contribute to society and to benefit from its solidarity when needed, and not in a world defined by resource wars.

As a first point on process, I noted the role of my diaries which became, through sheer repetition and persistence, the meeting point of the energy wonks on dailyKos, and compared this aggregation role to that of dailyKos for progressives in generals. We come there because others interested in that topic are there as well: the "location" information begins to have as much value as the content itself (i.e. people come to dailyKos not necessarily because they love the content, but because thye know that this is the place where
others, friends and co-progressives will be there, and where the topic of urgency to the community that day will be discussed).

The second point on process is linked to the technology of dailyKos.  The ability to recommend diaries gives them visibility if there is
quality - or a desire by enough to give a topic, in this case energy policy, prominence. That visibility attracts more participants and more comments. Comments provide input, corrections, additional information. Ratings can then be used to assess that additional information, and to flag the most relevant, interesting or useful.

This allows the community to provide content and to vote on content, to provide expertise and to provide an idea of the general opinion of the kossacks. It allows to vet information and to give a feel of what the community prefers, policy-wise or politically.

With all the input and propositions provided all year long by kossacks, and with the attention of the community focused on the topic after Katrina struck, it made sense to try to propose something to actually use all these proposals. Thus the first draft of the plan was born, posted on the site and critiqued, complimented, complemented, criticised, "get real'ed", and supported.

Several iterations of the process were run with the support of Meteor Blades (whose absence at Yearly Kos we deeply regretted and noted, but he was travelling) and devilstower initially, and Adam, George and many others afterwards.

The important point to note here is that Energize America is STILL a work in progress, and we do not pretend to detain the truth. We request, and indeed hope for more criticism and help to correct any errors, shortcomings or weaknesses. We will come to the
community in the near future with more specific requests on the weaknesses we have identified ourselves, and we will welcome any other comments in that respect, provided that they are given with the goal to do better and not just to slam the plan.

Other plans exist. Many are of great quality (and indeed have inspired us for part of EA). What we propose is not just a new plan, but a process whereby the plan can evolve - at all times under the scrutiny of citizens.