People powered government is very overrated.  What can people do better than machines.  I'll tell you.  Nothing!

Arnold Schwarzenegger
http://www.arnoldspeaks.com

Government doesn't get much more "people-powered" than allowing the people the propose and pass legislation themselves.

1. Referendums dilute the concept of a republican democracy: sending professional politicians to engage in what they do best - negotiate and compromise over technical and legally-intensive legislation. Referendums also cater to the passions of the moment. One could say the same about legislatures, and to some extent that's true, but legislatures provide one layer of protection from 'tyranny by the majority.'

2. Matt, what you mentioned above is happening right now in Massachusetts, where Governor-Elect Deval Patrick has formed 15 groups of 200 community, business, political, and grassroots leaders to get public input for the issues challenging the Commonwealth during his transition to office. Bluemassgroup.com, a fellow progressive  blog, covers this movement on a daily basis. In fact, one of its editors - David Kravitz - is in charge of the "Civic Engagement" transition group.

Great idea, and quite practical as an organizing tool.  The more engaged people are, the more outraged they get.  There's nothing like taking a conservative mom through the school funding cycle to turn her into a liberal -- if you've got the right mentoring chops.

Another dynamic of "immersed citizenship" is that it helps fuel the electoral fires, by supporting useful, issue-based connections during that long Novemberless period.  I'm not just waiting to walk my precinct; I'm making friends who also enjoy pissing the mayor off about recycling at every monthly borough meeting!

Matt,

I like the general concept.

But your plan does not have sufficient mechanisms to be practical, in my view.

First, to make legislative (and rule-making) activities more transparent, there must be a public deliberative process.  For example, we should push for procedural rules requiring at least 2 weeks notice between publication of a finally, fully amended bill, and a final vote.  This would permit time for public review, comment, and pressure on pols before a vote.  Currently, there are numerous mechanisms that make the final bill (the nature of the "choice" imposed upon the pols) a matter of ambush.  Forcing pols to make awkward choices is a means of control.

Second, to make legislative activity more transparent, we need to create meaningful political parties.  One role of the party structure should be to publish specific bills that the party advocates, and make those bills publlic (and open to comment) and the position of pols within the party public.  This would force the caucus to resolve conflicting views in advance, and would open up a role for the public (including bloggers) in shaping proposals.

Third, we need a more organized effort to review and catalogue what Congress is doing, day to day.  I think a consortium of universities should pool resources to develop a "year abroad in DC" for college juniors, who would investigate, analyze, and create non-partisan websites.  This effort would create a fount of information available to bloggers of all viewpoints.

Fourth, the Kos committee watch idea is a neat concept, but in practice, the Kos crowd has no inside info.  As an interim measure, blogger volunteers need to build partnerships with established liberal lobby groups -- who can get inside info.

As one who knows the Congressional Committees Project fairly well, all I can say is watch out for what you wish for...You might find that it happens!  There is finally, real power in the blogsphere, and it is endorsed by elected officials.

Good things are about to happen.  I promise.

Here's a radical idea I want to share on the topic of people-powered governance. Let's use the Internet and the grassroots revolt that was reflected in the 2006 elections to radically shift the point of origin of policy formation and legislative oversight away from politicians and political parties to self-organizing groups of citizens at the grassroots.

Here's where I got this idea. On a cold winter evening in early 2004, I attended a meetup for Howard Dean in Northern Virginia with a couple dozen people I had never met before. As we sat around waiting for him to teleconference with us and other meetups around the country to get his message out (namely that we have the power), I got to thinking about what we could be doing other than sitting around waiting.

It occurred to me that since thousands of us had used the Internet and Dean's website to find out about the meetups, we could also be using them to initiate our own policy agendas, individually and collectively, and forward them up the line via our home computers so they could influence Dean's platform. When he lost the primary and I switched my support to Kerry, I had the same idea when I attended a Meetup for Kerry.

With the Internet, we can move towards 21st century forms of electronic democracy. Citizens at the grassroots can use the Internet to build self-organizing political action networks that create their own political agendas and run their own candidates for office on their own platforms rather than passively subscribe to those of the major political parties.  

I wondered how we could do that in small, self-constituted, self-organizing groups. Two years later, the ideas I came up with have become the mission of a website I launched last September, Citizens' Winning Hands (you can see a prototype at www.CitizensWinningHands.net). It provides political action tools and services that citizens and voters can use free of charge to set their policy agendas and build winning voting blocs that elect representatives who will enact their agendas into law.

My ideas are still in formation and I invite feedback, input and collaboration from all interested parties. Whether Citizens' Winning Hands by itself or in combination with other initiatives can play an instrumental role here remains to be seen. The need and technology for online people-powered governance, however, is beyond doubt.