Tankman was born of a benevolent cynicism that is perhaps best encapsulated through the words of a wise scholar:

“Show me the money” – Jerry Maguire

Encouraged by the beauty of imprudent alcohol consumption on a cool summer evening, the founders of Tankman stumbled upon a profound question: is it wiser to trust a fox to guard a henhouse, or to trust politicians to implement campaign finance reform? Ultimately there was not much debate— the fox was clearly the better option.

The implications of that answer struck a chord with our group. Where else in life is the person who is empowered to create the rules also the primary beneficiary of the rules he creates? Apart from all of our bosses, we could think of no one. And so we parted ways that evening, left to wonder how you can outfox the fox who has enjoyed eating from the roost for so long.

It is no secret that the financial foundations for politics are littered with a dizzying array of complex entities: IRS-527s, PACs, GOTV 501c3s, blind trusts, and even something called a “non-individual ‘person’” (a term we couldn’t have invented ourselves). In particular, the IRS-527 soft money loophole enables affluence to act as a proxy to influence, and insures that our electoral process is driven by those with deep pockets (Bauer, 2004). It is, after all, the great American way. Democracy is for sale ladies and gentlemen, and the auction goes to the highest bidder.

Rather than wallow in indignity, we at Tankman have accepted that truth to be self-evident. However, we also take it to be self-evident that enterprising ventures have always found ways to compete with established entities by delivering a better product to the marketplace. And so that is exactly what we are proposing to do: build a better, market-driven, policy product.

iTankman LLC, a for-profit entity, has developed a patent-pending technology that is exclusively licensed to PennyParty.org, a non-profit IRS-527 political party based on open source principles. The patent-pending Tankman technology is designed to “democratize democracy” by micro-financing the political process to build better policy platforms for our communities. It harnesses the best ideas in our society by soliciting the average citizens’ two cents- literally and figuratively- on the most pressing issues we face today.

Do you have an idea on how to shape your community, state, or nation? Tankman builds simple democratic principles into groups of any size— from local boy scout troops, on up through municipal, state, and national electorates. Tankman technology amplifies the merit of an idea in such a way that no matter how small the creator, the best idea wins.