Becoming a Member of the Reform Party

Persons who can relate to the issues that the Reform Party highlights can join and become members. Some of the issues that pull new members to the Party include immigration, being opposed to free trade agreements and the election of the President by popular vote. There are two main ways to become a member of the Reform Party depending on your State of residence. The process may be different from State to State. An easier way in some States is to simply change your voter registration.

The best way to join the Reform Party is to contact the particular affiliate in your State. These affiliates will be happy to provide all the information you need to become a member and start volunteering in your area. Finding State affiliates can be done by searching online as many have active web presences. If you live in a State where there seems to be no Reform Party affiliate, contact the main office. Active State affiliates can be found in California, Florida, Mississippi and New Jersey.

Once you become a member you can volunteer to help in various ways. These include assisting others to register and vote, and placing signs in your yard promoting the party and its candidates. The word can also be spread via call-in radio shows and by working at fund-raising events.

Members are also able to assist with finding candidates to run in local, regional and national elections. The main body of the Reform Party needs the help of its members to find independents to run in States where there is no ballot access. In those States where there is ballot access, members help to with fund-raising for candidates that have been identified to run on the Party ticket.

Ballot access refers to the regulations that determine who can run for political office. Each State has its own rules for setting ballot access.

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Total Bankruptcy Implies More is Lost than Just Finances

It might be that never before in America’s history has political reform been more necessary than in the early years of the twenty-first century. Seemingly without fail, news coverage of politicians and their deeds revolves around the crimes which they engage in during their time away from the office. Whether it involves illicit trust violations such as marital infidelity, or the less frequent but by no means uncommon event of hiding one’s true sexual nature, it seems the ranks of politicians are populated with troubled people.

Ignoring the risks to their reputations and careers, politicians from both main parties have seemingly embarked on self-destructive courses of action which have shed their parties in a poor light. It’s never a good thing to hear or read that a senator has been caught in a sex sting. It makes their party look bad, it makes the country look bad, and it wreaks havoc on the façade that they’ve been living at home of pretending to be a happily married person. Engaging in such actions outside the home or office can lead to total bankruptcy.

It’s not just a financial bankruptcy that occurs. The subsequent media explosion and exposure also often offers a glimpse into the moral bankruptcy involved, as the politician, with dry eyes, laments their disgraceful actions which have led to this moment of shame. Accompanying the script, there will be inevitable references to trying to take some time to spend with their family to work things out. Americans should expect more out of their leadership. Leading implies having someone at the helm that is capable of recognizing that things need to be “worked out” long before they feel a need to go engage in less than respectable acts with another person. It is a rare news story that portrays this sort of true leadership, and as such, one can expect the bad news to continue.

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Identifying Political Party Symbols

When it comes to politics, you either know your information or you don’t. You’d be surprised at the amount of people who don’t really know much. Here’s the first little lesson in politics. Each political party can be identified by a symbol. This symbol will pretty much set each political party apart. If you know the symbol, you’ll know what each political party stands for.

So the main concern for newbie’s is identifying political party symbols.

First, it’s important to know which symbol is what color. For liberal political views, the color is blue, red is for the conservative and white for third party or independent. Green represents the American political symbol.

To fully understand the political viewpoint, try and remember how the image on the symbol is facing. Is the symbol left-facing? That would mean it stands for liberalism. Right-facing means conservatism and if the symbol represents centrism and liberalism it will be right dab in the center.

Take a look at the symbol for the American Independent Party; it will have an image of an eagle. In the eagle’s left talons you’ll notice some arrows. The eagle will also be over a rose and it will have a banner saying it’s political party right at the bottom of the eagle.

For the Democratic Party, the symbol is a blue donkey facing left. While the donkey itself is blue, the head isn’t. It’s red.

The symbol for the Republican Party is an elephant facing right. The bottom half of the elephant will be red and the top half is blue. In the blue area you will also notice three stars.

If you see a symbol with a bald eagle against the American flag, that’s the Constitution Party.

Lastly is the Green Party. The symbol for this group is a green sunflower. You’ll notice that there’s an image of Earth on there as well and it has the sunflower’s leaves wrapped around it, protecting it.

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Joining the American Reform Party

There are many things people don’t know when it comes to politics. For example, the American Reform Party, which began with the campaign of Ross Perot in 1996.

The American Reform Party was the advocate for limited government and lowering taxes. However, it recently started to promote a coalition of third parties in the U.S. By joining the American Reform Party, you’ll be fulfilling its goal of political coalition.

To join the American Reform Party you will need to contact your state’s American Reform Party off. Let them know you’re looking to join the organization on either the state or national level. While there is a membership fee, it’s pretty low. With this, you get full access to news on party activities all through the United States.

Browse the Internet and other message boards on the American Reform Party and third parties prior to joining the organization. Online boards allows users talk with other members throughout the country.

After joining the American Reform Party, this is your chance to get involved with creating a huge platform at the national committee meeting.

Now it’s time to find independent candidates you feel would fit perfectly with the agenda the American Reform Party believes in. Those with a more conservative viewpoint could join without getting in the way of political independence.

It’s good to work with third parties in your state in hopes of pushing for ballot access. You even have the option of working with members of the Green, Libertarian and Constitution Party. Doing this helps with getting signatures and finding people that would be interested in having a better choice when it comes time to vote.

Try and get local media attention or the Internet to help promote the American Reform Party that you decided to join. It’d be more beneficial to work with volunteers who have more experience when it comes to promoting the tenets of the Reform Party to different newspapers and radio stations.

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Becoming a Democratic Party Candidate

Brian Colón, past Chairman of the Democratic P...
Image via Wikipedia

Becoming a Democratic Party candidate means you care about the environment, want to reform the government, help with human rights and of course to stop those companies that are greedy. If you feel that there isn’t a great candidate out there to do the job, why not become a running candidate for the Democratic Party?

You will need to be super organized and have some pretty great ideas. There are just a few steps that can take you from just being an ordinary person to a Democratic candidate.

First thing to do is head over to your town hall and make sure you register as a Democrat. Then you’ll have to file all the necessary paperwork with either the federal or state election commission. Without the proper paper work you won’t be able to start taking money for your campaign. It’s always good to check with the commission’s office to make sure you have everything in order.

Next is the somewhat tricky part- getting support from the delegates to get nominated. These delegates are representing different towns that will select the main candidate for the Democratic Party. Think of this part as an election before the main election.

Start building your organization early. Try and recruit a staff, volunteers and start brainstorming ideas that you plan on bringing up during the platform. It’s really important to get everything planned out before anything.

Another big part in the planning process is creating your budget and sticking to it. Try and see if you can find people to donate money.

Once everything is in order, get a hold of the secretary of state’s office and have them put you on the ballot. Make sure you stay in touch to make sure you get on the ballot.

Now it’s time to convince people why you should be elected. All thing things you’ve learned along the way will help you in the long run.

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Finding Real Politics

People who have been to Oklahoma will realize that it is just like any small town in America, but still find something very peculiar about this place. A few people will not know and many other will not even care to find out. But Oklahoma is one of the few political power houses of America.

This fact is written in the famous book “Tiny Tracts Put Political Zip in 2010 Elections” by Dave Levinthal. This was released on Opensecrets.org and has cause quite a stir with its hair raising facts about he American political scene. Among lots of other things one thing it mentioned about Okalahoma was the realization that Oklahoma is indeed one of the big power houses of America that plays a significant part in the Republicans or the democrats run for the elections all around the state. If you look at Okalahoma closely you will find casino’s being run by big political parties or people with big political connections. Take for example the Cherokees running casinos when they should be illegal. They have the only casino in this place thanks to other politicians. THer are among the largest contributors of money for the smooth running of the election campaign in Okalahoma. In comparison Levinthal has also compare zip codes of other cities powerful Manhattan and Hollywood with their politically powerful zip codes are among the nations the nations few partisan codes. These are the places from where most of the election money comes from and helps politicians run the government. Of the $23 million contributes by the entire state, the zip 6831 which lies in Greenwich has contributed more than $3 million on its own. Thou nothing illegal happening here but it just lets us common people know the business of elections and what and all can money buy.

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A Short Biography of Thomas Paine

Cover of "Common Sense"
Cover of Common Sense

Thomas Paine is a fascinating figure from the history of American politics. Born in February of 1737, he published numerous pamphlets and contributed valuable insights to the political discourse of his time; the depth of his impact on American society is impossible to know.

Tomas Payne was born in rural England. In early life, he attended grammar school and then was apprenticed to his father, who was a corset stay maker. After a brief stint as a privateer, he became a master stay-maker and opened up a shop. He married in 1759, but his wife died of complications from her first pregnancy. In England he was involved in a brief second marriage and various business and civic ventures until, legend has it, Benjamin Franklin suggested that he immigrate to America. After a difficult passage that took him some weeks to recover from, he gained citizenship in the colonies and started work editing Pennsylvania Magazine–a post he would follow with an illustrious career as a propagandist and writer.

The pamphlet Common Sense, first published in 1776, was a breakaway success in American society. It was also one of the essential political texts of the American revolution. Other works he wrote include a book against deism. Many of Paine’s political contributions would be considered still relevant, but astonishingly radical, even by today’s standards. He was also heavily involved in the French revolution, and, without the ability to speak French, was elected to the French national convention in 1792. Paine’s involvement in French political life continued through the regime of Napoleon, a political figure of of whom Paine was extremely critical.

Thomas Payne died in 1809 and was buried in a sparsely attended service; his open criticism and mockery of the Christian faith had lost him many friends in society. Despite this, he is remembered as one of the great contributors to American political discourse and American society, as well as the revolution.

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Is it Time to Return to the Polis?

THORNTON, CO - AUGUST 22: Rep. Jared Polis (D...
Image by Getty Images via @daylife

A lot of Americans are concerned these days with keeping politics local, but few of them are aware that this concern literally dates back to the dawn of democracy. For the ancient Greeks, the polis, usually translated city state, was the center of civic, religious, and political life. Not every polis had the same system of government, but an important factor in the polis was the fact that they governed themselves. A primary function of all the poleis was to maintain freedom and autonomy, from other city states or from larger powers. When the Romans and Macedonians eventually took over Greece, many of the poleis fought hard to maintain their autonomy in local political affairs wherever they could.

The Greeks new something about city planning, and they knew something about democracy. Each polis would set up its own political system. A few of these were dominated by an aristocracy of the most wealthy landholders, or even by some form of royalty. However, most polis political systems were democracies, often with much more egalitarian organization (between the citizens; not much good can be said for the condition of Greek slaves) than exist in modern political systems.

In the modern age, taking over other people’s governments doesn’t quite have the same cache that it had in ancient Greece. Generally, anyone doing it has to offer some plausible explanation that frames it as some form of self defense. We don’t have a great system of slaves to build our society, but we do have the advantage of technology which accomplished hundreds of times more than what a Greek slave could in a given day. The federations of city states failed to protect ancient Greece, but perhaps it is not foolhardy to believe that some form of modern political configuration could do better. And, in doing so, perhaps we could see politics truly return to the local.

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How to get Involved in Local Politics

For most of us, memories of high school civics class are a blur; it was a long time ago, and we were more interested in other things. To add insult to injury, generally, they didn’t even teach us the most important part! Fortunately, you’ve found just the article. This is the right place to be for learning everything you need to know about getting politically active in your community.

The number one rule of local political involvement is, show up. You can find out when and where to show up by looking at your city website, or calling your political friend, or even just walking in city hall. On a local political scene, you aren’t competing against millions of straight ticket voters. If there are ten people at any given meeting with the same opinion at any given meeting, those people will probably win. You have ten friends, right?

The number two rule of local political involvement is, listen. Yes, you should probably listen during all of those incredibly dry meetings, but that’s not what I mean. Listen to your friends. Listen to your neighbors. You wouldn’t be here unless there were something important to you in local politics; maybe you’re concerned about how your child’s school is funded, or the liquor store that just opened down the street, but something matters. Find out what matters to the people around you. Pay attention to what they care about, when they talk about it, and when it comes up at meetings. People will appreciate your vigilance, and support you in your political efforts when you need it. The greatest factor alienating the American people from government is their keen awareness that it is not by or for them; this is your chance to reclaim.

Lastly, pay attention to a few matters of form. Most local political meetings follow bizarre and complicated etiquette, which you can learn about by reading Robert’s Rules Of Order, looking at your council bylaws, and asking questions to the people who seem nice.

Now, keep your chin up, and go take your local political institutions by storm!

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The Political Activism Theory of William Domhoff

William Domhoff is a professor of psychology and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is also the author of a book called Who Rules America. Domhoff basically does sociology about power structures in the United States, tracking down decision making, power, and patterns at many levels. He also, as a social scientist, has some very specific advice for those who wish to change society. Here are the findings he says social science indicates for political activists.

What Domhoff calls “change agents” are people who are deeply devoted to creating social and political change, to the point that they will give up having a normal life. Change agents have to understand the differences between themselves and everybody else. Everybody else will not step outside their routine, and look for a way to change the world for the better, unless something disrupts that routine. Change agents must be patient and wait for something to naturally disrupt those routines, or they must find ways to disrupt the routines without alienating the people they wish to ally themselves with politically.

The research tells us that those labeled “extremists” can be effective agents for social change, because extremists can also be moral exemplars. However, it warns that those extremists who are too far outside the mainstream are not listened to at all; they will be politically ignored. Therefore, the goal for an activist is to be just extreme enough to be effective. The research also shows that a small group of very organized, very disciplined, and very motivated individuals can be extremely effective. Such groups gain a lot from the strength of their ethical beliefs, and from their shared understanding of how the political world works.

Lastly, according to Domhoff, the research indicates that to be successful, change agents must be extremely respectful of the existing structures and culture of the society they are trying to change.

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