About Us
FAQs
Cost of Good Government
1st Newsletter
Founder
Frequently Asked Questions
Table of Contents
Is PoliticalSheepdog.com legal?
Information from attorneys suggests that PoliticalSheepdog.com, in certain configurations,
will be legal at a national level, certain states, and certain counties. Research
will continue on its legality in other configurations and in specific states as
appropriate policies become available. The biggest obstacles are laws forbidding
contingency fees for lobbying in most states, but these laws appear unconstitutional
and obstruct the stated intention of these same laws. In addition, the First Amendment
should protect PoliticalSheepdog with the right to advocate and to assemble to protect
consumers and to be paid by the government according to a fair, competitive, and
contingent process.
While unconstitutional laws prohibiting contingency fees for lobbyist are one challenge
in some jurisdictions, PoliticalSheepdog could probably function to pass laws in
some counties, in states like Montana, where the Montana Supreme Court has ruled
that prohibitions against contingency fees for lobbyists are unconstitutional, and
states like West Virginia, and in Federal legislation, PoliticalSheepdog.
In addition, an obsolete 1910 Supreme Court precedent, Brooklyn Daily Eagle v. Voorhies,
might make it difficult to operate during elections in order to fight moneyed special
interest groups and to provide a clean for-profit incentive for constituents to
give to the campaigns of candidates for their districts. These contributions would
be clean, because no one would profit unless consumers benefited, because system
is competitive, and because the system is constituent driven. The precedent might
find that PoliticalSheepdog would be considered a lottery and not a market, even
though candidates and not PoliticalSheepdog would receive money from constituents
and even though PoliticalSheepdog would increase wealth of the public through greater
efficiencies and not redistribute wealth. This precedent could be overturned in
a state with a simple one sentence recognition from the governor’s office that PoliticalSheepdog
is a market and not a lottery or in the Federal government by a similar sentence
from the executive branch. Since PoliticalSheepdog.com in this format could be used
to fight corruption, failure by the Federal or state executive branches to provide
this sentence would be a tantamount to an endorsement of corruption by a governor
or a President of the United States.
How is PoliticalSheepdog.com funded?
This is a good and necessary question. PoliticalSheepdog.com is a privately held
company owned by Dr. James L. Gamble, III. The sole purpose of the company is to
make good government profitable, and, thus, sustainable, whenever and where ever
possible. Good government is one that optimizes resources for its citizens, which
can be done best through improvement of market processes and which avoids the application
of the violent resources against groups, based purely on race, origin, or religion.
The funding has come from the private individuals. During the operational stage,
funding will come from a share of the portion of savings or benefits for consumers,
realized by the passage of effective, efficient public policies. This approach is
necessary in order to avoid the conflicts of interest that advertising might create.
While PoliticalSheepdog will initially use savings for consumers, including monetized
savings of health and life, as a measure of success and compensation, other better
parameters of good government could be used, it they became available and feasible.
Payments to successful policy innovators and citizen lobbyists will come from money
saved by the public policies they support. Actual savings will be determined after
the law has been enforced for a period of time. The means of collecting and the
amount of compensation will be negotiated individually with the appropriate government
agencies or through arbitration with that agency. Negotiations would be enforced
with penalties for the most unreasonable party.
As an example of how PoliticalSheepdog, policy innovators, and citizen lobbyists
could be compensated, connect the “Book length explanation link” and read chapter
2.
Negotiations will attempt to provide the innovators of good laws with pay equal
to the equivalent of the fair market value (marginal revenue product) of the savings
created by the good law. As a possible alternative to negotiations with legislators
when sufficient support is lacking within a legislature, PoliticalSheepdog.com could
use sponsorship auctions in addition to the citizen auctions to support the good
law. The sponsorship auction would be necessary to protect a system that provides
fair pay for those citizens who protect the national good.
How can we trust the PoliticalSheepdog.com process?
1. PoliticalSheepdog.com must stand up to public
scrutiny.
2. Citizens will have a new voice in supporting
effective, efficient public policies.
3. Empowering ordinary citizens helps defeat corruption.
4. Legislators will have a new forum for hearing
their constituents.
5. Checks by legislators and constituents.
ACCOUNTABILITY - PoliticalSheepdog.com directors will be respected people
who are known for their integrity, humanity, and contributions to social welfare.
Policies proposed by innovators will be reviewed by economists and accountants (“bean
counters”) to determine their value. Some complex policies may be shaped by citizens,
using auction technology. Our long-term profitability depends on our integrity.
FREE MARKET DEMOCRACY - PoliticalSheepdog.com trusts the intelligence, concern,
and creativity of individual citizens as guardians of social welfare as described
in the book, The Wisdom of Crowds. The investment of trust in individual citizens
is the great principle of democracy and a necessity for a free society. Prior to
the year 2003, there was no free market for individuals, who create and support
better laws. PoliticalSheepdog.com allows the public to take back control of the
legislative process.
PoliticalSheepdog.com will be strictly nonpartisan. To avoid partisan squabbling,
long-term savings, including savings in health and lives, for the consumer will
be used to measure the success of a particular reform.
BALANCE - PoliticalSheepdog.com challenges the concentrated caches of special
interest money. Special interest groups can corrupt the democratic system if they
lobby legislators for laws that increase their profits and thinly spread the costs
to individual consumers. In the past, for instance, common tools wound up costing
the government dearly due to the laws that governed their purchase. Although $100
for a wrench might seem high, spread across millions of voters, it becomes too small
a matter to elicit individual response, since the cost of challenging such a law
is beyond the means of the average person who will pay taxes. Yet the commercial
interests who benefit from such policies have large amounts of capital to convince
legislators to enact laws that favor their corporate profits. Because individuals
can more easily pay a few pennies in taxes than band together as consumers to fight
against hidden waste, big special interest groups have held an advantage.
Special interest groups that “peddle influence” within our legislatures draw from
their free market profits. These commercially backed lobbies target a few
key people in government with a large pool of money. It is hard for individual
citizens to counter that kind of influence. This kind of influence also has
a corrupting influence. PolicitcalSheepDog.com will create a new type of citizen
lobby that reward citizens for guarding the social welfare. PoliticalSheepDog.com
will give the citizen lobby a voice that can counter-balance interests of commercial
lobby groups that threaten social welfare. Special interest groups have monetary
influence, but constituents lobbyists will hold their legislators accountable with
their re-election votes.
The PoliticalSheepdog process will compensate innovators and citizen lobbyists out
of large pools of savings that result from improved public policies. Influence
peddling tends to corrupt because it puts large sums of money in the hands of a
powerful few. On the other hand, paying citizens to lobby for better
public policies will improve the democratic process without corrupting it.
NEW FORUM – PoliticalSheepdog.com will act as a real-time, interactive forum
for participating in a democratic society. PoliticalSheepdog.com will revitalize
the relationship of legislators and their constituents.
CHECKS AND BALANCES – Legislators always have the right to reject the legislation
associated with PoliticalSheepdog.com. In the PoliticalSheepdog.com arrangement,
constituents associated with PoliticalSheepdog.com act like sales persons for policy
innovators and legislators act like purchasing agents for a large firm. Constituents
can also refuse to lobby for legislation supported by PoliticalSheepdog.com.
These actions of constituents and legislators can then check the actions of those
associated with PoliticalSheepdog.com.
When is PoliticalSheepdog.com available?
While there was working version of PoliticalSheepdog, it could be available in approximately
two months, whenever anyone brought an appropriate policy due to PoliticalSheepdog.
The program is now inoperable due to the need to update its auction program to meet
current internet conditions.
The present activities are principally attempts to promote the concept that markets
and their incentives could correct imbalances of insight, incentives, and power
created disasters like the 2008 banking collapse, like the Katrina disaster, and
like the Federal deficits, when individuals with the insight, who could have prevented
these problem, but did not have the power to prevent the problem, while those with
the power did not have the insight, and neither had enough incentive. In addition,
PoliticalSheepdog is probably the only available system that could correct these
imbalances. Thus, the reality is that the United States really does not have an
alternative to PoliticalSheepdog and must accept it before it is too late before
the next disaster.
PoliticalSheepdog.com:
NOW is the time…