Sounds like a good idea. A bit too right-wing for me, but I wish you well.
Think this is the first time in 20 years anyone has ever accused me of being right-wing ;-)
Ok some clarification here. Sorry for the delay but I've got 5 year old son and 1 year old daughter I don't get time to sit at the computer over the weekend so I sneak a little posting in during work.
First of all when i say progressive I mean from a left liberal perspective. Now I don't want to get too deep into my own politics on this since I don't quite follow traditional definitions but in general progressive politics refers to policies and positions that are considered traditionally politically left and liberal.
I do think a lot of confusion is caused by some inaccurate characterizations of the left by the right. Primarily the concept that leftist ideology is focused upon centralized "big" government.
Myself I view the core politlical divide as being between those who support authoritarian top down heirarchal power structures and those who support distributed flat power structures.
Progressive has just been kind of adopted in recent years to denote people with those types of views.
Now back to the point of this group it is not to press my political views on other people particularly liberals with Democratic tendencies. Will Rogers once said "Of course Democrats don't agree on anythign they're democrats if they agreed on everything they'd be republicans."
Which of course is one of the disadvantages the left has always had when dealing with the right. Conservatives by nature like top-down authoritarian power structures the ones who don't like being told what to do only think that way because they think they should be the ones telling everyone else what to do.
Anyway, my point of this as I said was not to get into political debate but to gather people who are politically left in order to address this problem from a liberal/democratic/progressive standpoint which is naturally going to diverge significantly from the perspective of conservatives even if our goals in the end are similar.
Also much of the resistance to the current regulatory trends is coming from the GOP which frankly has no real power left in the executive and legislative branchs so efforts concentrated on lobbying them are pretty much a waste of time.
The GOP is going to oppose Waxman's bill based primarily on the fact that it is a Democratic bill in a democratic congress with a democratic president and their sole MO at this point seems simply to be to oppose everything.
So the people to convince on this issue are not the GOP they're on board by simple expedience. No the people to convince and bring to our cause that would be useful are the Democrats.
I don't think that Waxman is intentionally trying to kill smokers by denying them access to this product. I think his intentions are sincere and that he's simply misunderstanding the situation. The same goes for Lautenberg and many of the other Demcorats working on passing this legislation.
The thing is to come to these people with arguments that will apeal to their core beliefs.
Understand many of these people are coming from a possition of extreme distrust for industry with frankly good friggin cause. Just look at the history of tobacco. The Tobacco industry most definitely mislead and misinformed the public and the government they spent billions on their cover-ups so I think it is quite understandable that people like Waxman and Lautenberg as well as many of the anti-s are sceptical about this product.
Hell I'm sceptical. That being said I think that the point needs to be made that the potential upside to this product more than out weighs the down.
Consider it was those from the political left who pushed through measures to make experimental aid's drugs more easily available for patients in the United States.
These devices while by no means proven safe are pretty obviously superior to the existing product they replace only a fool or a liar could pretend otherwise.
That being said people like Waxman and the Antis do have legitimate concerns that should be addressed.
This is where I think some advocates with a liberal bias could be more effective in keeping these products available.
Democrats simply aren't going to react favorably to the same arguments that Republican's would. They aren't sympathetic to economic arguments they don't agree with the Republican idea that corporations should have the same rights as a consumer and that it is the consumers are responsible for protecting themselves.
However they are sympathetic to arguments that the current nicotine situation is rigged in favor of two industries with a history of abusing the public while the E-cig universe is primarily made up of a lot of small independents with no current ties to big pharma or big tobacco (neither of which are held in high esteme by the public)
Essentially if approached properly these people could be influenced. The trick is in the approach. This is framing 101 if you come at Waxman et al. with many of the arguments I see commonly put forth on this site then they are going to shut down and ignore you. In fact in many cases these arguments that frankly come from right wing frames are going to ilicit instant hostility.
So my idea here is to form a social group for those who share more leftist idealogy to colaborate on the subject from a left wing frame.
My first idea was to form a group of people who can work together writting articles and blog diaries addressing E-cigarettes from a left perspective then support each others activities by providing recomendations and supporting comments on a voluntary basis.
If we can find sympathetic ears in the progressive community then we can influence this policy from the other side of the political divide.
And don't doubt for a moment that there are plenty of democrats sympathetic to e-smoking every one of the guys here at work who bought on of these to my knowledge voted for Obama and damn near as far to the left politically as I am. So there is a base with in the Democratic party to influence.
Hell the President himself should be sympathetic to us given his own nicotine addiction.
Like I said my goal was just to form a social group of like minded individuals (well as like minded as liberals can get) to advocate for e-cigarettes from a left/liberal framework. Where that goes will be up to the members there will be no central control of framework there won't be marching orders delivered to say "go forth call this person rec this diary do blah blah blah..."
Once I can get enough members I can create a forum (not sure on the numbers) where specific strategies and arguments can be debated and hashed out then the membership itself can decide how best to proceed forward.
