Introduction: I have had a love/hate relationship with the PPA, but instead of participating in the nvg threads on the ppa, I've decided to test the waters here and make a new thread.

Background: I felt TE is wasteful of the members collective efforts, and was over-extending himself on the whitehouse petition here whereas I felt like "what is the alternative place where we could steer the sheep's collective effort instead?" so here I am making a thread, after having tried to peruse the ppa website on my own, and find this information.

Speculative criticism: The "white house petition" idea, is just a reelection idea, just like attackwatch. I remember the thread where Mason Malmuth warned the ppa to take down a communist/socialist banner, and I'm curious if poker players are being duped into thinking that the whitehouse petition is anything other than a spam-harvesting site to collect email addresses for Obama's reelection efforts (sure you get a free hat, along with an "official response" which just means nothing more esteemed than a white house "memorandum" just like they gave for Joe Sestak)

Conclusions: The PPA "daily action thread" is brilliant! How do we improve it? How do we trawl the internet looking for upcoming opportunities for us to steer the sheep into daily action? Who is the monarch who evaluates the merits of each consideration? How can we democratize the process so that it motivates people like me (with a real entrepreneurial spirit) to help look for places where a poker player can "flood" an unnoticed, "under the radar" type of event designed for some other pretense (such as women's rights--we shoot the angle that we are all "female poker players" or NRA and angle-shoot that the government can take away our guns if we let them erode the rights of poker players, or angle shoot tea party websites like theblaze.com and say how government wants to regulate too much of our economy: health care & online poker).

Cliffs: The more we branch out and "infiltrate" non-poker groups (such as feminist rights groups, the NRA, black panthers, etc...) the more we can put pressure on politicians from more than just one constituency group!

Warning: If we don't powerfully pursuade the future of online poker, then it will be on unfavorable terms: higher rake, 21+ rather than 18+, later rather than sooner, and less fish being baited into the poker economy. We gotta "push" against Caesars and the American Gaming Association or they'll reduce the average grinder's edge next to nil.

My central question: How does the PPA identify & isolate upcoming opportunities for the Daily Action Thread; and, how can it be improved before we lose the poker community's transient momentum while we still got it?

Thanks in advance, especially to TE (who at least hears me out) and to Sajeffe (who advised me through pm to be less rambly, as I hopefully have done here) and to anyone who is willing to devote their time to helping out the PPA reach its goals, through average regular members, so that people like me can get back to April 14th, because Black Friday should have never happened in the first place.

The Daily Action Plan is not a PPA effort. It's a poker community effort that Rich happens to efficiently organize. We are all encouraged to suggest targets and methods of advocacy. Several of us have contributed thusly.

This is an excellent idea imo! I played in the PokerStars Women's League before Black Friday and through the league I virtually met a lot of women poker players. According to some market studies "Poker Mom's" were one of the biggest growing poker demographics and why PokerStars had added a couple of "Poker Moms" as online pros. Online poker provided a way for the average Mom to play poker after her kids were in bed or when they were in school. Many of them had improved to the point that they actually supplemented their family's income with their poker earnings. Because they have children to care for playing in a casino really isn't an option. I think using this information with women's rights groups might gain some additional leverage. Same with the other groups.

I'll attempt to see what more I can find out about women's rights groups and post back what I find.

I disagree with you, but I do thank for sharing your thoughts. IMO you've clearly and completely missed the value of us using a platform to reach the White House, especially for something that takes less than a couple of minutes to complete.

FWIW, you've spent more time complaining about the petition than the combined time we all spent signing it.

There is no PPA daily action thread. I have a daily action thread that is coordinated with the community that is independent of the PPA.

The best way to improve it is to participate.

Me

Just post your ideas to the action threads.

Everything is easy until you try it.

Think up some ideas and see if you can generate the enthusiasm of others. Then, see if you can get results.

UIGEA made Black Friday inevitable. Unless legislation licensing online poker passed, the only open question was when it would happen.

LOL. So, that's what all this is about?

Speaking of hats:

FWIW, the American online poker community is MUCH smaller than I thought. If we can only get 7700 people to sign a petition to the White House regarding online poker in the U.S., we SUCK as a community. The community is full of lazy asses or apathetic people or both.

And, I'm tired of seeing criticisms about the PPA when it's the PPA MEMBERSHIP we should be criticizing. Lazy bastards.

The OP wants us to infiltrate the Black Panthers?

Don't hold back now, say what you really think

You're right of course and apathy is truly the problem. If people in general hadn't gotten so damn apathetic we wouldn't still be in the damn Iraqi war and the patriot act would have already been repealed. We as a collective people are ridiculously apathetic so while it's pretty disgusting to see how few poker players are pushing for legislation it's honestly no surprise.

What amazes me the most is how many lame ass excuses for not doing anything people can come up with. They spend enough time typing their bull**** excuses than it would take to do the daily action every day for 2 weeks.

Do you really think that petition will change anything? The government is run by lobbyists who are backed by corporations. When all the casinos decide they want online poker it will happen. What the people of the US want doesn't matter.

One reason some people believe that is that that believe they are in the majority

Unfortunately for us, many on Capitol Hill believed Americans were united in their desire to ban the "scourge of online poker" from the Internet back in 2006 and before. They thought this because no one told them otherwise.

We've been telling them what we want over the past few years, and are now seeing fruits of that effort. We need to keep it up.

If we are going to join with another group that has really nothing to do with online poker, maybe we should join up with medical marijuana users. Obama's government has decided to crack down on them.

In all seriousness, I think we should stick to the black panthers, lol. But really though, I think we need to join up with as many as "representative groups" of society as we can--recreational groups (as I'm guessing medical marijuana users identify with) and political action groups and social groups. The poker community is less than 10,000 strong, according to people who signed the white house petition compared to the marijuana petition at over 50,000. I sincerely think the way for the community to "grow" is to sprout like weeds into various other groups, and I'm really sad this idea has never been specifically covered to the extent other "opportunities" have been covered. I belong to other "groups" but I feel weird starting up a random conversation about why they should care about online poker political issues. If you think poker players are apathetic (which is unthinkable to me) then you should watch how little someone else cares too. I feel like a creep when I share my pro-poker-online beliefs with other people.

Has anyone else tried "infiltrating" other groups? Has anybody ever had good experiences, and other communities responded positively? I'm very serious and passionate about helping the PPA with looking for unconventional opportunities. I'm a very crazy guy, lol. My ideas are usually bad, but some are good, and one opportunity can lead to miraculous utilization by the active ppa members.

I really care so much about bringing back online poker to pre-uigea and pre-blackfriday. I feel like the ppa itself has a doomy-gloomy feeling because we're so powerless. I sometimes which we had a delusionally optimistic leader who makes us excited about our slim chances of success, because the thing which saps my passion the most is how powerless we are, and how slim the chances are of anything we try ever working.

Anybody else feel this way? How not to give up?

That or these ideas are at least interesting. One thing we do NOT want to do...is to be seen or to be able to be accused...of anything that smacks of underhanded or backdooring something. In order for this to succed,we must take and hold the high road. anything else, we lose. Think about it. good energy, lets co-ordinate things with our leaders. They are leading this effort for a reason. And in the case of The engineer...I can tell you, it's not for his looks I'm jess sayin

Yes there are. If you are looking for a slightly louder voice (although no where near as effective) as Rich...there is a web site called downbythedocks.net they put up an article about 1500 words two days ago, that used PPA talking points, but not PPA's patience. No, don't ever give up! Read the other sites, digest what they have to say. My advice, for what it's worth (about $1.10) is to let the PPA do it their way. The changes in PPA from Blk Fri to now, are remarkable. Lets let them try, all the way. Lets back them up, even if we personally don't agree with everything they do. A united front, that's hard to calculate the value of that!! jess sayin