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."

Comments

Re:It's an attempt to filter out the crazies

[davester666]

or rather, it could be to get the public to get used to not being able to make anonymous contributions easily, because this makes it easy to deny comments by people unwilling to step in front of the camera.

Sure, if you are adapt at editing video, you can produce a video with your comment in it, with some kind of talking head, but regular folk aren't able to do this, unless they have a Mac :-)

And in my role cynic of all things government-related, this makes an excellent way for people to identify themselves as being troublemakers, and include a picture of themselves while they're at it.

conspericay theories

[supervillain]

this string of celebrity deaths is clearly a backhanded tactic by barrack obama to pass universal health care.

Re:"What can you do for ME?"

[frank_adrian314159]

What part of the Constitutional gives you authority to do this?

Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the right to pass laws that regulate interstate commerce. Several health care insurers, providers, and drug providers operate commercially across state lines and therefore fall under the mandate of this clause. You are correct that the President does not have the right to define this legislation. However, as the head of the executive branch that will have the responsibility to carry out the legislation once passed, he should have input to the legislature. Furthermore, he certainly has the right to gather public opinion and comment, given that he must decide whether or not to veto such legislation.