White House Obfuscates Email

markgo2k writes "Do you want to email the president? This John Markoff, New York Times story (reprinted here in the non-subscription Seattle PI) details how the White House no longer promises to read anything you send to president@whitehouse.gov. Instead, you must navigate a multi-page website AND confirm your submission via email. Oh, and they only want to talk about subjects that are of interest to them." The web-form system appears to be a bit overloaded at the moment.

Comments

I'd rather not have to deal with the DOJ...

[sweeney37]

He said he particularly disliked being forced to specify whether he was offering a "supporting comment" or a "differing opinion" to Bush.

So when those emails come in, I guess they go in either one of two mailboxes. "With us" or "Against Us".

The "Against Us" email automatically get forwarded to Ashcroft.

Mike

Re:I'd rather not have to deal with the DOJ...

[sosume]

The "Against Us" email automatically get forwarded to Ashcroft.

Gueass again where that's going.. (and you along with it).. ever been to Cuba? I heard it's got this lovely bay with lots of friendly people in orange suits. Gua .. Guanta .. I can't remember. ;)

Re:I'd rather not have to deal with the DOJ...

[TopShelf]

This does raise an interesting point - will this buildup of email addresses marked "for" or "against" the current administration find its way into political party hands, and thus used for a spam list?

It would make perfect sense for the Republicans to send out emails for contributions to those on the "for" list.

Re:I'd rather not have to deal with the DOJ...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a question regarding policy? I mean how can you know whether you are for or against the policy of the administration if they haven't said anything about some important issue?

The Bush administration doesn't talk much about policies in the Middle East except those related to Iraq or to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Try asking about Israel's nuclear weapons.

Or Saudi Arabia - definitely intimately involved with Al-Quaeda, unlike Iraq.

Re:I'd rather not have to deal with the DOJ...

[rusty0101]

I am sorry, he is not alledged to be the President. Since the Federal Court system was involved, we have to come to the conclusion that he was Convicted. With good behaviour he may be parolled after 4 years.

Re:I'd rather not have to deal with the DOJ...

[arkanes]

"Please check this box if you'd like to be contacted by the President or his authorized partners regarding special offers and discounts only available to our valued subscribers"

Re:I'd rather not have to deal with the DOJ...

[ajs]

Your comment is funny. The situation is not, though. This has been the case with congress-critturs for a decade or more as well. They get paper mail, faxes, what-have-you and sort them into two piles for each major issue (pro or con) and then measure the height of those piles. If the content is too complex to interpret quickly, it is junked.

Contributors to the campaign, friends and relatives have other means of reaching these people, the public points of access are just garbage chutes for straw-polling and allowing the Secret Service to gather and track death-threats and such.

This is not ALWAYS true, but from talking to people who have worked on The Hill, I'm certain that it is the case far, far more often than not.

One time, I sent mail about Echelon to my Senetor. I was frankly stunned and awed to the point of voting for him in the next election because I got back a letter than addressed what I had said, and outlined what he had done as a result, and what the results of his actions were.

It wasn't a lot, just one page and not a lot of action as a result, but the fact that this Senetor cared about the concerns of a constituent got MY vote! I urge you to discuss the things that matter to you with your representitive government, and when they work on your behalf (not just send you a form "Yes, this is a pressing issue which all Americans should vote for me over") you should reward them by voting for them.

Re:I'd rather not have to deal with the DOJ...

[Flamed to a Crisp]

If you were really serious about getting a message through to the "president" I would check "supporting comment," then say something nice about him (if you can think of anything) and then offer some "supportive criticism." This method actually works for me on a regular basis. (Although I haven't tried it in the scenario) It saves me lots of stress and the other person is more likely to listen.

However, if you just want to send flaming messages, that's a different story.

Re:I'd rather not have to deal with the DOJ...

[pmz]

I was frankly stunned and awed to the point of voting for him in the next election because I got back a letter than addressed what I had said, and outlined what he had done as a result, and what the results of his actions were.

The fact that U.S. senators and representatives are so far removed from the public that responses are, by default, not expected is a very strong argument, in my opinion, why most issues should be handled by state and local governments and not the federal one.

Local officials are much more accessible by their constituants (constituant to politician ratio is an order of magnatude less), and local officials are more accountable in thier communities. For example, the local state representative is very likely a local businessperson who is a member of the local chamber of commerce and lives in a known neighborhood on one end of town. He may even be active in a local church or civic group and may even know local people by name (imagine that!). Simply, the "pro" and "con" piles are just much smaller for local representation and are more likely to be given attention.

Compare the local people to national people like Hillary Clinton or Dick Cheny, for example, and there is no comparison. Besides the Letterman show or the Weekly World News, do the constituants of New York really understand or have the resources to care about what Ms. Clinton does for their state?

I just think that human society scales poorly (suburban spawl, for example), and that smaller groups are more likely to make real progress towards a genuinely happy community than very large ones. Smaller groups are also more accountable, and, if a person can't cope, moving to another group is not a big problem. If a person can't cope with a federal government, or the approaching global government, then what?

And, to be clear, "small" doesn't mean, necessarily, on the scale of nomadic tribes, but more like regular towns of several tens of thousands of people each. It seems that once an area gets into the hundreds of thousands of people, people start clashing in their everyday lives--traffic, for example--and don't find effective ways to deal with that scale.

Re:I'd rather not have to deal with the DOJ...

[poot_rootbeer]

It would make perfect sense for the Republicans to send out emails for contributions to those on the "for" list.

It would also be an enormous ethics violation, and thanks to those geeks among us who use a different email username for each site we submit data too it would be simple to prove what was happening.

The "liberal media" (if any) would have a field day with it.

which movie?

[mcgregorj]

"When it comes to a Web site, it's a bit like a movie," Mr. Orr said. "Some will say it's a tour de force; some will say it fell flat."

This website must be "Cabin Boy."

Hmm

[deman1985]

I don't find it very encouraging that the government doesn't promise to read anything we have to say anymore. Isn't it their job to listen to what the public has to say to make informed decisions for the good of the country? What are we paying them for?

Re:Hmm

[elwinc]

You want to talk to Bush? It's easy -- just raise $100,000 for his re-election campaign and you'll get 10 minutes of face time! No problem.

Re:Hmm

[pen]

When a government doesn't have time to listen to the people it's supposed to govern, you know that it's grown too large. Solution: More power to local governments, less power to governments that are so far removed that we cannot reach them.

Or have we forgotten the lesson we learned from being a colony of Britain?

Re:Hmm

[the gnat]

Bear in mind when you say this that the modern "states rights" movement largely grew out of the federal government's efforts to end segregation. This isn't a general rule, but there certainly are some occasions where we need a strong federal government that won't listen to popular opinion.

Re:Hmm

[the gnat]

It's not worth it. With the last president, $100,000 got you a night in the White House.

Re:Hmm

[letxa2000]

"The White House no longer promises to read anything you send to president@whitehouse.gov"

You think that this or the previous administration read all the email that it got? At best they had a bank of secretaries reading and responding to it. That's arguably the same as not reading it.

When a government doesn't have time to listen to the people it's supposed to govern, you know that it's grown too large.

While I agree that a government should listen to its people, that is largely done at the ballot box. I don't think it's reasonable to expect that in a country of nearly 300 million people where it takes just a few seconds fir anyone to rocket off an email to anyone--including the president--that the president or even the staff is going to be able to reply or even read every submission.

More power to local governments

I agree with you there.

Re:Hmm

[NixterAg]

The Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign has posted their donor list for the most recent quarter on the web. It not only includes the names of contributors but also the size of their donations. Interestingly, a large majority of the contributors to the Bush campaign contributed less than $200.

The campaign Web site www.georgewbush.com on Tuesday posted collection plate statistics that reveal the names of more than 105,000 individuals who have given $1 or more to the re-election campaign. The list includes information on 85,591 individuals who have given less than $200, as well as larger donation contributors.

Don't hold your breath waiting for any candidate from the "party of the people" to make a similar disclosure. One of the closely guarded secrets that is an embarassment to the Democratic party is that the size of the average donation to their party is larger than the average size contributed to the Republican party. In fact, the mean size of political donations to the RNC during the past election cycle was about $50. The Democrats (always taking the moral high ground) claim that the mean size of contributions is unimportant and will not publish it for that reason and because it somehow would invade the privacy of their contributing base in aggregate.

The Democrats also have the whole problem of Chinese-Americans and foreign companies funneling millions from the Chinese government into Bill Clinton's re-election campaign in 1996 (during the same time period Chinese received favored trade status and managed to pilfer nuclear used-to-be-secrets).

In sum, your statement could easily be:
You want to talk to any elected official? It's easy -- just raise $100,000 for his/her re-election campaign and you'll get 10 minutes of face time! No problem.

Re:Hmm

[bpowell423]

Actually, the "states rights" movement comes from the tenth ammendment:

Amendment X.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

In other words, if the Constitution doesn't explicitly give a certain power or right to the Federal government, it is reserved for the states.

Re:Hmm

[urbazewski]

Interestingly, a large majority of the contributors to the Bush campaign contributed less than $200.

If you want to know whether or not a politician is beholden to large contributors it doesn't matter how many people donated small amounts of money, but what percentage of the total money raised came from the political interest groups in question. What we need to know, from both parties, is the distribution of "income from supporters", the same way that the distribution of income is measured. What percent of the money was raised from the smallest 20 percent of contributions? What percent came from the top 1 percent?

And most definitely, all contributions need to considered, not just donations from individuals.

Re:Hmm

[JWW]

Clinton isn't the one that killed president@whitehouse.gov. Bush is.

Did you ever stop to think that nowdays, perhaps president@whitehouse.gov has a spam problem many orders of magnitude greater than your e-mail does?

Its easy to find conspiricy theories in all of this, but just imagine how much staff time was probably being allocated to filtering spam out of this mailbox.

Re:Hmm

[mcc]

He said "the modern states rights movement". He's not talking about the idea of state's rights, he's talking about the modern version of the "movement" in favor of them, which makes a difference. States Rights have been brought up and then dropped in various ways at various times throughout america's history, and it just happens that the current thrust toward the meme of increasing state's rights has its origin with federal attempts to end racial segregation.

All of these states rights movements have of course had their basis soundly in the tenth amendment. However, in general I think it's safe to say there has not been a time in american history when states rights have been advocated in a generalized way in an organized manner-- every time a states rights advocacy group pops up, it tends to have some kind of specific agenda, for example (as in the 1860s and 1960s) protecting a racist system. Today states rights advocacy groups, if you look, seem mostly to be doing so just as a tool with which to advocate either lesser restrictions on gun possession and use (if they're on the right) or lesser restrictions on pot possession and use (if they're on the left). Of course, a lot of these people seem to be much less enthusiastic about states rights' if "states rights" seems to mean that a federal anti-abortion law would be unconstitutional (if they're on the right) or that a state that doesn't allow same-sex mairrages would be allowed to view as invalid a same-sex mairrage initiated in a state that does allow them (if they're on the left)..

Incidentally, somehow, while I hear people on tv and in the newspaper all the time talking about how the 10th amendment means that rights the federal government doesn't explictly have control over should be in control of the states, I never seem to hear any press time being given to people claiming that the 10th amendment means that rights that the government doesn't explicitly have control over should belong to the people. Funny, that.

Waste of the President's time.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't imagine why anyone would think the president of the United States would bother to read unsolicited email.

Re:Waste of the President's time.

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

I can't imagine why anyone would think the president of the United States would bother to read unsolicited email.

OK, so I assume you disregard as "unsolicited" any email that comes from your bosses, too...

Since many people use...

[fruey]

...president@whitehouse.gov, nobody@nowhere.com and others as email for lots of signups, it's hardly surprising that they don't just let you email directly and promise a response.

Head over to the real whitehouse alternative, much more fun.

Because...

[Scalli0n]

This is probably because emailing is 1000x easier than:

a) Mailing
b) Phoneing (being on hold for hours then talking to a nobody)
c) It gives you a warm happy feeling.

So why shouldn't they filter out their most popular form of communication given that most of it is crap anyway?

That, and my second point:

You shouldn't be emailing your most important concerns to the president - do your congressman, your senator, and your local government, they can probably help you more specifically.

convenient

[salzbrot]

It is really convenient to have the political opinions of your citizens stored in a database together with name, (e-mail-)address and the like!

Snail Mail...

[Tsali]

It's a pain to use that thing, too... wife actually broke out the pen to mail the president about the redesignation of overtime for professional occupations. She heard back from our congressman within a week but hasn't heard squat back from G.W.

Considering G.W. runs a press conference once every six months, before an invasion, or after he beats up on some third world country, you expect better treatment?

Security through obfuscation, just like the ports.

Bah.

Deluges of mail

[AndyBusch]

I can appriciate the need for them to implement a "confirmation" action (Did you send this?), to stop spoofing, spamming, etc. However, the "pre-email questionaire" seems a little extreme. I suppose the goal is to ask "are you an insightful commentator or a raving lunatic?", but it takes a "are you a patriot or a terrorist?" tone about it.

Of course, it's now harder to complain to them about it, as well.

re: deluges of mail

[ed.han]

perhaps the admin staff who pre-sort the e-mails use a variant of the slashdot moderation system and the president only sees the ones rated +5. i can just imagine the modifiers now...

+1 campaign donor
-1 civil liberties kook
+1 convenient ally
-1 democrat
-1 libertarian
+1 republican
+1 useful tool

ed

This is a good thing

[Cire]

This is not a big deal. In fact this was a good thing. Before, they had some poor secretary who had to sit there getting a vague idea of what the emails were about. Let's face it, they almost NEVER made it's way up to the top anyway.

Now with the new system they can have some DBA write script to pump out statistics on what kind of feedback/problems/etc most people are writing about. They can actually get a real number and say "we got 10,000 emails this week and 67% of them disagreed with such and such policy." Plus, they can weed out the junk mail. Can you imagine how much spam he must've gotten. Do you think the Pres was using SpamAssassin?

Cire

Re:This is a good thing

[Lumpy]

well :-)
I cant think of ANYBODY who uses president@whitehouse.gov for filling out those required forms for adobe, random Foo downloads, etc...

in fact I have NEVER given a good email addres to any of those companies looking for me to fill out to gain access.

Just like I never use to give Radio Shack the 1600 Pennsylvania Addrerss in Washington DC every time I bought something.

It's irrelevant anyway...

[billmaly]

Bush declared early on that he would not be "doing" email as President, mostly to avoid ANY messages that would or could be construed as incriminating to himself or others.

Chances are, he won't be reading what you send anyway. Frankly, I suspect the concept of "mail your representative/elected official" is largely a thing of the past. Lobbyist's and big politcal money have largely ended any sort of grassroots effect.

Use snail mail

[s20451]

Instead of firing off that e-mail, why not click "print" and mail it using the regular postal service?

In Canada at least, sending a letter via regular post to any Member of Parliament, including the Prime Minister, is free. Your letter is also far more likely to be read.

This isn't news, it's "DUH"

[Ignorant Aardvark]

The president never really read e-mail anyway. It was just a lot of paid interns who went through it. But because the e-mail address is made public on a very popular site, I'm sure they got a lot of spam and such. In these times of economic concerns, do we really need to be paying people to go through George Bush's e-mail?

I agree with "representing the people" and such, but going through George Bush is just a bit too unfair. He has to look over 300 million people ... you can't expect him to read messages from everyone either. Instead, if you want to make a difference in government, start with your local representatives and senators. They are there to specifically represent the people in your district/state. You can get a message to the president much more easily through them than if you try directly via e-mail. This is how representative democracy works.

Remember...

[WIAKywbfatw]

"...government of the people, by the people, for the people..."

What with the general assaults on personal freedoms, Abraham Lincoln and the other Founding Fathers must be spinning in their graves. Democracy isn't dead, but it isn't exactly at its zenith right now, least of all in the USA.

Can anyone think of a time when the freedoms of the average American were more at threat from their own government?

Like I've said before, the ideal of America is beautiful, it's just the reality that's becoming fubar.

Re:Remember...

[tweek]

We are not a democracy for chrissakes. When we people learn the difference?

A few links:
Link #1
Link #2
Link #3
Scary quote #4
Scary quote #5
Quote #6
And from our own government:
Link #7

We are not a democracy. Get it through your head. Democracy is a terrible for mof government where 51% of the people take rights away from the other 49%.

Just like a bunch of other corporations

[teamhasnoi]

Paypal for instance, hides its phone numbers deliberately so as to force email responses to issues. (email is easily ignored). Taken from paypalwarning.com (was an expired article on msnbc))

Any Paypal customer with a problem typically has an impossible time calling and talking to a real live person, and personal attention to electronic mail is virtually non-existent. According to Vince Sollitto (PayPal spokesman), Paypal intentionally makes the phone number very difficult to find in order to save costs. This is fine, except their Email "customer service" also leaves a lot to be desired. Many times you will get a canned response that doesn't address your initial Email message, if you get a reply at all. It doesn't do any good to complain anyway. When asked about customer complaints, Sollitto said the company reads them, but takes them with a grain of salt...

Just reminded me of the White House. Congress hardly responds to what the people want (file sharing, etc) why should the President be any different?

Barriers to entry

[XianDeath]

I noticed this policy the other day while looking for a method of having the daily press briefings emailed to me. I believe this is really just a form of crowd control. The easier it is to contact your elected official, the more often you'll do so. Make the barrier to entry higher, i.e. a phone call which costs you money, and you raise the barrier to entry. I can imagine how many emails they get a day especially since they're probably on every spam email list in the world.

On a side note, for what it's worth, the daily press briefings contain more 'hard' news than I see in the average evening news broadcast. (On a politically snider note, it's also much easier to understand how bad off things are when you can actually read the daily obfuscations with your own eyes, and in most cases, watch them in streaming video sans interepretation by talking heads.)

Also, say what you will about Clinton, but he was the first president to really make an effort at utilizing the internet to diseminate information regarding the executive branch, though granted he was the first president of the 'internet era.' There are several cool innovations he made and several excellent articles over at Slate regarding the White House web (Article #1 and Article #2) historically.

We've come a long way baby

[Arbogast_II]

Pretty amusing, when you consider that once, long, long ago, in an America far, far away, the President was an accessible private citizen.

Once, the President of the United States recieved visitors who just walked up to the White House. Once, the President used to walk out to Pennsylvania Avenue and hail a passing buggy for a ride.

My, how times change...

Re:We've come a long way baby

[cybercuzco]

He was an accessible private citizen until he got shot. Then he wasnt quite asacessible as before, but could still ride about in the open, Until another one got shot. Now his freedom is curtailed in the name of security, and he has neither security or freedom.

Re:We've come a long way baby

[mvpll]

So if another one gets shot, will they declare firearms a valid method of casting your vote or just give the whole "president" thing a miss?

Re:We've come a long way baby

[chia_monkey]

I agree...times sure have a changed. But then again, the Prez could get shot just for walking down the street. And sheesh...you Halloween isn't fun anymore 'cause of all the wackos out there. Remember walking around with a couple of your friends, alone, at night, taking candy from strangers? The age of innocence is gone.

Re:We've come a long way baby

[BreadMan]

Here's food for thought: the White House was fenced in the 40's. Not long befor that, you could walk-up to the front door, but typically not be admitted. Sales folk and appointment seekers would show up at all hours and annoy the butler and the residents. One Garfield was shot by a disgruntled appointment-seeker who felt slighted because the President would not meet with him.

I think Eisenhower directed the near gutting and restoration of the building, installing bullet-proof glass and other modern security features. Before WW I/II, the US was a fairly isolated country with a small federal government. If you had a gripe with the goverment, it was probably at the state level.

Re:We've come a long way baby

[jandrese]

There aren't really any more whackos out there now (as a percentage of the total population at least) than there have ever been. Haloween became less fun with the news media realized that "scare" stores sell at lot better than regular stories. These stories were also helped along by right wing Christian conservatives who never liked the "pagan" holiday anyway and would rather it just go away.

Snopes has a long article on this very subject.

Re:We've come a long way baby

[cactopus]

Please punch a hole in the president you don't want.... ...I can't the butterfly presidents confuse me....I accidentally shot Pat Buchanan... oh wait accidental?...er.... so that's why they call that talking heads show Crossfire

Re:We've come a long way baby

[fmaxwell]

He was an accessible private citizen until he got shot. Then he wasnt quite asacessible as before, but could still ride about in the open, Until another one got shot.

The average Slashdot reader is too young to remember this, but Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn walked hand-in-hand from Capitol Hill to the White House on inauguration day. Right down the middle of the street.

I also remember all of the Republicans who called Clinton a coward and paranoid for blocking off Pennsylvania Avenue. You may notice that the only change since Bush has taken office is more armed guards and greater restrictions. Funny thing: I haven't heard any of those critics of Clinton's apolgizing...

Re: we've come a long way baby

[TheCarp]

Other than that its right.

Frankly ive always felt that unless the cause for war is good enough for the commander in chief to pick up a gun and lead the troops off to battle in the name of truth and honor and whatever else he might be fighting for, then its not a good enough reason to send a single lowly infantryman.

But maybe I hold warmongers to too high of a standard? Ya know, thinking the onus should be on them to justify their actions, inisting they be truthfull in their assertions and even to back them up. You know, silly things like that.

I don't think leading the troops is too much to ask. Afterall, How can you give an order that would cause people to die if your not willing and ready to be counted among the dead?

Guess you could say I just think hes a yellow bellied coward more than anything. War is easy. Diplomacy I guess is pretty hard.

-Steve

Re:We've come a long way baby

[DaBunny]

First was McKinley? For the history geeks, there was this obscure president named Lincoln who got shot about 35 years before McKinley. You may have heard of him?

Re:We've come a long way baby

[welshsocialist]

Actually, one did. First was McKinley, then Kennedy, then Reagan. The only difference being that Reagan survived.

Looks like someone slept through history class. The first attempt on a President was Jackson in 1835. Lincoln was killed in 1865 by Booth, an actor. The next President to be shot was Garfield in 1881 by Charles J. Guiteau, a disappoined unemployed guy. The next assassination happened in 1901 when McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist. Between 1901 and when Kennedy was shot in 1963 by Lee Oswald, there were two attempts on Presidents. One happened in 1912 against former President Theodore Roosevelt on a campaign stop. The second happened against Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. The shots missed Roosevelt but killed Anton Cermak, the Mayor of Chicago. After Kennedy's death, there were three attempts on a Presidents life. The first two happened in September 1975 against Gerald Ford while in California. The third happened against Reagan in 1981.

BTW, I am an history geek!

Re: we've come a long way baby

[dspeyer]

I think Arthur C Clarke propsed that any leader that commits a country to war be excecuted at the end of it. If it's worth making other people die for, it should be worth dying for yourself. I sounded like a good idea to me (I do realize we'd have very few ex-presidents alive at this point, but the hope is to change presidential behavior).

The big problem is that the president currently declares when the war ended. Maybe we could have the excecution when the president leaves office, whether the war's ended yet or not. Keep the two term rule, of course.

"Supporting comment" / "differing opinion"

[dpbsmith]

Many years ago, my mother wrote to a former President, protesting a policy. She got back an elegant card thanking her for her "support." The next day, that President addressed the nation from the Oval Office and said that 90% of the mail he was receiving was in support of the policy.

Maybe that button isn't such a bad idea.

No excuse

[pergamon]

Contacting the President should be a process simple enough that anyone in the USA, even those with limited technical, communication, and cognitive abilities could perform.

There's no excuse for a confusing system like this reaching the public, as the White House has someone "in-house", so to speak, who is a great benchmark for the lowest common denominator in those three areas. From the description, I believe there is no chance this procedure would have passed the "Dubya" test.

Better fact check it

[b-baggins]

Folks, this story is from the NY Times. Better check out what snopes.com has to say about it.

Apparently they've gotten over 1000 e-mails....

[PsiPsiStar]

... in favor of Bush enlarging his penis. That's gotta count as a refferendum or somthing.

Re:Innovative use of the tag

[WebMasterJoe]

Yep, that's some fine work on FrontPage. Lemme just tell you what's wrong with this, in case any of you aspiring young web designers need to know.

• Put up a nicer message. This page is typically only going to be seen for a few seconds, if at all, but when the destination is down, would you want your visitors to be looking at that?
• A link would have been nice, to accomodate those who have turned off javascript. Yeah, I know this doesn't apply to many, but it's not difficult to do. In addition, instead of making users refresh (thereby burdening this server), users can just keep clicking the link if the destination page doesn't load.
• PERSdata??? What the hell is up with that? First, use all lowercase. Second, don't give your directories scary names like that. It scares the children.
• I think we're beyond the 8.3 filename conventions now. mv intro.htm index.html

If this is my first impression of a site, you can be sure I won't be trusting it to deal with my personal information.

Elected officials reading e-mail - joke punchline

[hoover10001]

One of the interesting parts of the LBJ biography was how he made sure that his staff replied in a personal letter to all mail and phone messages.

I would suspect that current pols don't give a $*()@*#)( about their e-mail or messages anyway. Local officials are too powerless for most people to communicate with. State and National pols are too busy talking to lobbyists and paying attention to the polls and statistics to worry about what Joe Schmoe is ranting about today.

why do you believe that?

[cascadingstylesheet]

Contacting the President should be a process simple enough that anyone in the USA, even those with limited technical, communication, and cognitive abilities could perform.

There's no excuse for a confusing system like this reaching the public, as the White House has someone "in-house", so to speak, who is a great benchmark for the lowest common denominator in those three areas. From the description, I believe there is no chance this procedure would have passed the "Dubya" test.

Why do you believe that? Do you really believe that Saturday Night Live parodies are reality?

I never thought much of Clinton's wisdom, morality, choices, etc. but I never deluded myself into thinking he lacked cognitive ability. Nobody gets to positions like that without it.

If you really don't like it...

[YrWrstNtmr]

....send a message to the Whitehouse Web dev team, and let them know what you think.

"The Web Team does not answer or forward e-mail, but all messages pertaining to the technical operation and usability of the White House web site are read."

Classic IT and bad PR, but it's a real attempt

[ianscot]

The White House says the new system, the Web at whitehouse.gov/webmail, is an effort to be more responsive to the public and offer the administration "real-time" access to citizen comments.

Why would you do this? Because given the overwhelming number of e-mails that come in, you can't process it and get it into a database with any "meta"-info attached. This way you let your users organize it for you, would be how the IT people sold the change. Then you really do have a better sense of the layout of all the mail you're getting, and you really do know more about what people think.

Not to say that this isn't incompetence on the part of the Bush folks. Anyone with a clue about PR would know the multi-page form that starts with stuff like "Do you Agree or Disagree with our beloved Kim Jong Il?" or "Are you a donor?" would be a mistake. Even if the Web guys told them they needed to use a revised front end to sort stuff, they should've realized how that form would read. In particular, they really needed to maintain the perception that every note got read -- to blow that off in any way just looks awful. The IT people had the same blindspot for that one -- ever decide to call an 800-line instead of using a tech support form you weren't sure would ever get responded to?

So this speaks to the blinders of both IT people and the Bush regime, sure -- but it probably was an honest try to address the volume of mail that comes in. I worked at the Ford Presidential Library for a while, and they've still got boxes and boxes, and shelves and shelves, of letters people sent abot pardoning Nixon -- categorized as pro and con, and that's about it.

(What they need is the text grinders to do the sorting automagically -- but wait, wouldn't that cost serious tax dollars?)

So?

[Performer Guy]

Why should you be able to email the President? You can't call him, you can't pop round for a cup of tea and a chat, why should he have to read email from complete strangers on whatever pops into heir head. More importantly, why should I as a taxpayer have to fund the staff it takes to read all the email that he gets sent just so you get a cozy feeling about the democratic process?

You want to communicate with the President? Vote.

Re: it all gets there anyway

[ip_vjl]

The "Against Us" email automatically get forwarded to Ashcroft.

Why bother with the web-form at all?

In a couple years (if they all get their wishes) any email you send will end up in their hands anyway, so there'll be no real need to send mail directly to them.

Send regular mail anyway...

[Capt_Troy]

Im my experience, snail mail is far more effective in getting your point heard and something done about it. I ALWAYS write a letter if I have a problem, and 90% of the time, the situation is adequatly dealt with.

I have never had any luck with email complaints, and only marginal success with phone complaints.

Just last night in fact, I heard back from AT&T wireless because I sent the CEO a letter about how his company was attempting to defraud me on my bill. Fixed, no problem. And a free month to boot. I had previously called 5 times and had been told that is was "impossible" to fix.

So use email for normal communications, but when you need something done, write a letter and fork over 37 cents for a stamp. The results are well worth the cost. I imagine that a letter to the president has a much higher chance of actually being read by someone than an email does, especially now.

T

Re:Or worse

[ncc74656]

The IRS is a great agency for exacting revenge on people idiotic enough to declare themselves your enemy.

Indeed it is...as lots of conservative organizations discovered during the Clinton-Gore regime.

Re:Israel's nuclear weapons do not matter

[Mnemia]

I'm sure you've read this already, but for those who haven't, there is an excellent history of the Israeli nuclear program available here:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/f arr.htm

The Christic Institute

[bluethundr]

The IRS is a great agency for exacting revenge on people idiotic enough to declare themselves your enemy.

That's no joke. Just ask the Christic Institute. The Christic Institute is a government watchdog agency that has been a thorne in the side of Uncle Sam for a great many years.

I first hear about Christic during the Iran Contra "guns for drugs" scandle in the mid 1980s. They were the ones who actually brought the suit against the government.

An apt description of the Christic Institute (as appearing in this article)"The institute has won several landmark civil lawsuits, including the "Greensboro massacre" case against members of the American Nazi Party and Ku Klux Klan who assassinated demonstrators in 1979, and the "Silkwood" case against the nuclear industry. The institute does not charge legal fees and depends entirely on contributions from churches, Jewish philanthropies, private foundations and individual supporters."

Another decent (and slightly more in-depth) history of the organization can be found here. The sad truth is that the IRS is likely to revoke their not for profit status making them liabel for back taxes for all of the years they have been in operation. Many feel that this is in direct retaliation to the Avrigan vs. Hull lawsuit. The government is alredy quite fond of issuing hefty fines to the institute for what it deems to be "frivolous lawsuits" (I'll let you judge that one for yourselves) as a means of intimidating them into not persuing their just causes. But if this IRS thing the IRS has in mind at the prompting of ultra conservative members of the house, it could mean the final curtain call for a heroic agency that has done much to keep america free.

Re:Israel's nuclear weapons do not matter

[hendrix69]

Wow, that's some fancy logic!
Reasons why Israel should have WMD:
1. Maybe it's because Israel is the only democracy in the middle east.
2. Or because Israel has had WMD for more than 20 years now and never even thought about initiating an assault (unlike the US, mind you). In fact Israel doesn't even declare officially that it has these weapons, unlike many arab nations that declare how much they can't wait to use them on the Infindels (that's you!). The fact that these weapons are quasi-secret just goes to show that they're there for intimidation - in order to keep the arms balance between then Billion arabs surrounding Israel and it's 6 mil. population.
3. Maybe it's because Israel protects the interests of the US in the middle east, provides intelligence for example - the only worthwhile intelligence the US has about the middle east, IMO.
4. Maybe it's because Israel isn't run by "crazies" - at least not more than the US is run by a war mongering illiterate. Such claims are prejudice.

Get your facts straight. The fact of the matter is that Israel has the same right to bare nuclear arms as the US has. Israel hasn't started any of the wars it was engaged in. Israel hasn't sponsered any military coos in south america or east asia. Israel didn't give the Taliban billions of dollars and training to fight the soviets. Israel's foreign policy is much more peacefull than the US's. You might not agree with it's current internal security policy - with regards to the palestinians - but that's a very complicated issue and peace isn't going to come in two years just because Bush decided to draw a RoadMap-To-Peace. It's going to take seperation from the palestinians. It's going to take generations of healing and trust-building. It's going to take a sane palestinian government that would put an end to suicide-summer camps for 6 year olds and fanatic islamic religious text books in the schools. Palenstine needs to be built on a stonrg democratic foundation and not on Jihad. The area in Israel has no natural resources like Saudy Arabia or Kuwait and if a palenstinian state is to rise it has to have a free market, an educated working market that could support it financially. Otherwise, what's stopping it from becoming another Syria? Nothing.
The worst thing you can do is fulfill the stereotype of the ingnorant american cowboy by oversimplifying a painful and serious situation and thinking every problem can be solved by using power and money. Take the time to really study the issue and don't post your Israel-bashing opinions until you read at least a few books about 20 century middle easy history.

Re:He didn't go AWOL

[frankie]

This is just an urban legend

1. Cecil Adams doesn't lie
2. You can look it up
3. Here's a summary

Re:Or worse

[dup_account]

Or maybe they were organizations that NEEDED to be audited, but were never gotten around to during the Reagan/Bush I era

Mailing lists

[Derkec]

I thought the exact same thing. I agree with the President on a handful of issues and I'll send him a supporting letter on one of those. I expect several requests for money from the RNC thereafter which I will promptly throw away smiling and knowing that I have fined the RNC bulk postage for their stupidity.