The White House wants you to tweet health insurance reform into law

I am getting scared by how people are framing this. I thought this was an attempt to get people involved in their government. The elected representatives in our government should represent the interests of their constituents, not merely be beholden to their corporate contributors (read: lobbyists). This is one of the ways that legislators are communicating with their constituents, so I don't see what's wrong with using twitter to keep our representative government in tune with the vox populi.

Before this, it just seemed like those inside the Beltway did what they pleased with no real accountability to the people. Whether you want this voted up or down, please let your congressperson know through phone, post, email or twitter.

This isn't a partisan issue, it's one that people of all opinions should weigh in on so as to allow our legislature to create law that represents the people and reflects the current mood of our incomparable nation.

Um, what?

How is encouraging people to communicate their desires to their representatives using New Media anything even remotely like "passing a bill with zero input from the people or their representatives"? It seems like this is the exact opposite. But then, I don't live in bizarro world where secession is patriotic and "family values" means having an Argentinian mistress...

My shock is that a standing president is making it easy for people to harass their elected representatives about a bill. When has ANY president told/asked the public to encourage a bill to go through to this extent (even taking Twitter out of the equation)?

Also, people should want laws based on facts and logic, not good squishy feelings. Sure, I'd love to live in a world of free health care. But unless you want a volunteer doctor, it ain't going to happen.

Obama doesn't even have his own numbers right:

http://www.factcheck.org/politics/obamas_health_care_news_conference.html

This appeals only to good squish feelings.

I tweeted against it. If anyone REALLY wants to get involved, I suggest you read the actual bill:

http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf

And here's a little guide to point out the most interesting bits:

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2009/07/whats-in-healthacre-bill.html

As you can see, what Obama says, and what is really being voted on, are completely different. I've never said this about any president before, but Obama is clearly lying about this. And racist jumping to conclusions concerning the Cambridge police department have really caused me to distrust the guy, and anyone who supports him.

Obama is much more of a populist president than we've seen in quite some time. The most prominent example of a similarly citizen action-oriented president is probably Andrew Jackson, and he definitely didn't have The Twitter to use as a tool for promoting his agenda between the people and Congress, though I suspect he would have used it in much the same way.

That said, someone pointed out that the "tweet your senator" page is on barackobama.com, which was Obama's campaign website, but has since been reclaimed by the Democratic National Committee as a political call-to-action site (it says so at the bottom of the homepage), so DLS may actually be overstating the President's direct involvement in this campaign... Democrats in general are pushing hard for healthcare reform, and are trying to convince recalcitrant members of their own party to vote for a bill that reflects the Democratic agenda, as set by the president (as is his wont, since he's essentially the most powerful member of the party right now).

Taken as a DNC operation, rather than the president personally advocating a bill directly to the people, this is nothing out of the ordinary; just a more novel and new media-oriented approach to the traditional letter-writing campaign.

I think it would be a good idea to append that disclaimer to any posts involving politics. As you can see, a few of us here are not big fans of the current administration, and if this were the Bush admin or any other Republican admin, it would have its critics present as well.

To Zaxour and the rest. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Download Squad posting about this. Zero, zilch, zip.. nada. If you look back, we've several times posted web things which touch or relate to politics on both sides.

What you're doing, is politicizing the post by attaching your own views. And, that's fine. You're welcome to say whatever you want, up to a point. Although AOL is a publicly held corporation, and we're at liberty to pull any comment we see fit, we'd rather comment threads like this just work themselves out, and we'd like for you to continue to feel that you can say what you like here. As long as that doesn't degenerate into insults, name calling or trolling.

What I or Download Squad won't be doing, is appending a disclaimer to posts which run afoul of your personal political views. I wouldn't do it for the right *or* the left. It's just a lousy idea.

Think about it for a second, should I place a disclaimer at the bottom of retrocomputing posts which states that Download Squad isn't trying to promote the resurrection of old computers, or offend those who use only the latest and greatest technology? Should we place a disclaimer each time we post about Facebook, which says we're not promoting Facebook over any other social networking site, and we remind you that you're free to use Meebo, Myspace or any other services you like?

It's a very slippery slope, and one we won't be addressing as an editorial team. Take a deep breath, relax a little, and if you still feel the need to go political, there are many other fine web publications both on the right and the left where you can promote or bash the administration to your heart's content.

I hope you understand.

Cheers,
-Grant

*cheers Grant*

Good call, sir. I do not necessarily approve of some of the steps Obama is taking, and I know a lot of people that approve of even less. But a lot of those people, myself included, find it fascinating how his administration is using social networking and the internet in general as a tool to get things done. This is the first administration that has really done any of this stuff, and some of the ways he is using the internet are ways that many of us hadn't even considered. Even if I disagree with some of the man's policies, I still find it refreshing that he is using technology to get stuff done.