Forum Post: Introducing PlainSite

Hi everyone,

For the past several weeks, due to my frustrations with the legal situation surrounding FaceCash in California, I've been working on a new project. It's called PlainSite (http://www.plainsite.org), and I hope it will change the way that people approach government.

Right now our society is governed by laws that we can't easily see, that we don't understand, and that we can't hope to improve. A select few lawyers, lobbyists and legislative staff at the highest levels are the only ones who really understand how the country is run. If there is any hope of re-claiming the political process from the so-called 1% (it's more like 0.001%), this fundamental fact must change.

PlainSite un-ties this knot by casting a type of accessibility and transparency on the law that has never been done before. You don't need to be a legal expert to use it, though legal experts will certainly be among those who do. Average citizens can simply post or vote up the problems they have, and optionally, propose solutions. Then everyone else can comment, tag, and vote accordingly. Voting a specific solution up in significant numbers will hopefully give lawmakers the impetus they need to do their job, i.e. fear of being voted out of office--and PlainSite can get specific, down to each and every clause in every law.

That's because unlike "We The People," a recent petition site from the White House, PlainSite can actually tie problems and solutions to specific clauses in the law. Soon it will even let you propose changes to those clauses in whatever way you think makes the most sense. It's not a liberal site or a conservative site; it's a democratic site in the most direct sense there is. So you should tell your friends and encourage them to participate. I'm sending this message to 100 people I know, because I think PlainSite will end up being the most effective form of protest possible.

For the moment we're limiting sign-ups to .edu, .gov and select .com addresses to manage growth (if you have a FaceCash account it will also work for PlainSite), but if you're interested in signing up and you can't yet send me an e-mail at aaron.greenspan at plainsite.org. And if you're interested in helping you should take a look at http://www.plainsite.org/contact/contribute.html.

Thanks, and vote up the issues you care about!

Aaron