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Text Comments Out In YouTube "National Discussion" of Health Care
theodp writes "While the White House has invited the nation to Join the National Online Discussion on Health Care Reform, it is currently only accepting 20-30 second YouTube video responses — text comments have been disabled. Which raises a question: Should a video camera be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest? BTW, the response-to-date has been underwhelming — 101 video responses and counting — and is certainly a mixed-bag, including a one-finger salute, a talking butt, a woman "Showing my Apples", and other off-topic rants and unrelated videos."
From TFA:
If I were the staff member in charge of wading through the discussion, I wouldn't want to have to use Youtube's craptastic comment system either.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
You can open up your favorite video editing software and just put some slides of text. No camera involved.
... only from Facebook users via their Facebook site. The link is on the referenced page.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Should a video camera be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest?
Yes. I think we can tolerate the absence of people who can afford computers and not cellphone cameras.
And only land-owners should have the right to vote?
I know people that can afford a computer (at the public library), but who can not afford a cell phone (regular monthly expenses).
> The "Nobel Prize winner" myth: Every school child will have access to a Nobel Prize winner
In some ways yes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn8PNMTSlwo
Plenty of other lectures/talks from MIT, Stanford, and other universities around the world are available online.
> it is doubtful that Nobel Prize winners will look forward to getting a few thousand e-mail messages a day.
I'm sure Feynman isn't too worried about that :).
FWIW, you can learn a lot from people without sending email to them, or communicating with them.
you make a good point about Toyota jobs in the US. your conclusion as to the reason (unionization) is totally unsupported, but at least the question is interesting, and is something not talked enough about.
on the financial situation, though, you're way, way off. the "Fannie Mae regulation" you're thinking of wasn't a Fannie Mae regulation - otherwise it wouldn't have applied to other banks. you're presumably thinking of the CRA, which did apply to other banks, but wasn't designed either to put banks at the crazy risk they put themselves in (it contained explicit language against such behavior) or to support securitization of the loans (enabled by a later amendment). the numbers on CRA default rates, compared to the "general population" also doesn't support putting much blame there.
the notion that there is some idealized money supply inherently consistent with a given level of economic activity is laughably naive. you set monetary policy as a tool to achieve a given end; the current economic level is context for that activity. i've not seen (but would be quite interested in seeing) any serious, quantitive analysis of the Fed's handling of money supply that makes a strong case that they could have avoided the housing bubble without serious consequences (like astronomical inflation).
and no, of course greed is not new. but we've spent 20+ years disassembling the regulatory structure designed to keep our greed in check, which had worked very well for about 50 years before that. greed drove the disassembly, of course, coupled with a religious devotion to a particularly warped conception of the free market and crypto corporatism.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.