Reform America

Statement of Purpose

It is our belief that politics in America have degenerated to the point of not addressing the issues that impact the daily lives of Americans because there are more sensational albeit less substantial emotion evoking issues that generate better headlines. Many media savvy politicians and their handlers know that by using hot-button issues to campaign, they don’t have to work to address the real issues that impact their constituents’ lives. With support from special interests these politicians who would use the process more for personal gain than protecting the interests of the people they serve have been able to hijack the political process in America for years to the detriment of the working people of America who have primarily paid for the things that the politicians have given to the special interests through legislation and appropriation. At Reform America we think that the people paying the bills should have more say in how that money is spent.

Our primary goal is to reshape the political debate in America by soliciting the viewpoints of people from all walks of life on substantial issues and giving voice to those ideas through a media or print forum. By giving voice to the ideas of people from all walks of society on solutions to real problems in a public forum, we bring them into the political arena and force the politicians to refocus from emotional issues impacting primarily smaller groups to every day issues impacting the majority of people’s daily lives in America. It is our intention to bring politics back to the kitchen table and bring the people of America back into the political process by giving them a voice and an opportunity to tell the leaders of our nation what they are really concerned about.

Polls are designed to frame the debate and serve a specific political agenda by asking questions in very specific ways as to solicit a particular response regardless of the respondents reply to the question and do not serve the overall purpose of finding out what is important to the people of this nation. By going into the communities and asking people to share their thoughts in a way that can be shared with other people across the country, we create the debate that the politicians are not currently having and shift the framing of the debate from the politicians to the people that they were elected to serve.

Our nation was founded on the principle of government of the people, by the people and for the people. We believe that it is past time to return to that principle and let the voice of the people be heard in our political arena. By forming an organization with the purpose of giving the individual a stronger voice in government, we are able to bypass the influences filtering the voices of working Americans in the current political process by quoting polls instead of asking open ended questions that allow for the free expression of ideas. Reform America will publish the grassroots views without bias of any Americans who wish to present plausible solutions to the problems we face in our nation, regardless of their political affiliation or social group, and we will make every effort to force those issues to the forefront of the debate in every election cycle until the issues in question are resolved by the leaders elected to solve the problems of our nation.

The two-party system has led to a level of apathy within those two parties that dissuades participation in the process by people with ideas outside of the parameters of the preformed platforms of the parties. We at Reform America believe that the only way to solve the problems faced by the American people is to involve the citizens in finding the solutions. Politicians don't always understand or experience the same realities that average Americans do and therefore need the people to tell them what the realities of life in America are for the people that they serve. Reform America is committed to giving voice to those realities and making sure that all sides of a debate have the opportunity to be heard.

We believe that, as an organization, Reform America should be working toward the actual goal of reforming our political system and will focus the efforts of any project we take on to that end. Our greatest hope is that one day politicians will ask the people what they need first and foremost every time and that our organization will no longer be needed in America and will be able to fade from existence. Until that day comes, Reform America will offer an open forum to all viewpoints and make every effort to be an advocate for the ideas and concerns of the American citizen in the world of politics.