Politics and other Hoodoo

Unlike many people I know who dispair of government altogether, I still hold out hope that there is something left worth saving.
It's a radical idea I know but somehow, the urge to tear everything down and start over that my Anarchist and Libertarian friends seems fond of strikes me as a little lacking in forethought.
I was minding my own business one day, just trawling around the internet, when the EFF were kind enough to bring to my attention the latest assault being waged by corporations upon a free internet.
This was a while ago and not that long after ACTA/SOPA was stopped by online mobilization initiated on Reddit.
It was pretty depressing.
My first thought was, "Shit, really?  We have to do this again?  Already?"
I'd gone to the great lengths of actually filling in the personal message beyond just the form letter on whatever .org was heading the fight against ACTA/SOPA, contacted my representatives and signed the petition and to be quite honest, that was a bit of an effort.
The trouble is, as I soon discovered after I started receiving emails from MoveOn.org, this stuff never stops!
You get fatigued really quickly trying to keep up with all the stupid laws being pushed through congress by the corporate shills we call the House and the Senate.
But here's the thing.
We stopped ACTA/SOPA.
Enough people contacted their representatives to make said representatives take a second look, and ultimately vote against the bill based upon feedback from their constituencies.
The problem we have is not one of money in politics, it's one of access.
Yes, often money buys access, but if we focus on the Money, we risk loosing sight of the WTF - What's This For.

So here is my first "Good Idea I Don't Have Time Fore" or GIIDHTF as it will never again be called.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was one place you could go, create one user profile, and aggregate all your political action feeds?
Imagine a site where you could see all the political issues you care about in one place.  Where you'd never have to enter your name and address again once you set up an account (seriously, I have no idea if I should trust those petition sites with that information).
Just log in and click one button to send a from letter to your representatives and sign the petition for each bill, petition etc. you wanted your voice heard on.
There's a ton of features you could add to such a platform.
Users with a bit more time could post and share the letters they had taken the time to write themselves, and other users could click to resend their agreement with their fellow users in the same district.
Rather than the pet projects of individual groups like MoveOn dominating the signal, an up-vote arrangement would make it easier for people to address issues they really care about both locally and nationally.
Being able to tune your feed to the issues you care about most would help with the information overload problem and keep people more engaged.
Finally, a system of tracking specific issues would create a historical record of victories and losses and that's important.
One of the biggest problems in keeping people engaged is the feeling of hopelessness when we have to fight the same battles over and over again.  It makes us want to give up.
But if we could see that the record showed that every time corporations tried to seize control of the internet, we the people stopped them.
If we could see that we can be effective guardians of our own democracy, then perhaps the fact that the struggle between a few with much and the many who have little is, thanks to a rather good piece of writing some 226 years ago, balanced in our favor.
Democracy is hard and it always will be.
We will NEVER be able to stop fighting this fight, but with a little creativity, we could certainly make the process more rewarding, more fun, and easier to be a part of.

So there, a social network for democratic engagement wich tracks the peoples successes and forms issue based support groups to keep people engaged.
I think it's a good idea and I don't have the time to do it but maybe someone out there does.
If that's you, please go ahead and make this thing real.  I'd love it.

P.s.  Should you feel inclined to comment on this post, detailing the reasons it could never work, I will actually snort coffee out my nose laughing at you.  If I wanted to engage in any sort of debate on this topic, I'd be doing it beside a warm fire with a glass of brandy.