White House Opens Up For Questions About The Economy
from the but-what-about-answers? dept
I've been a bit critical for the Obama administration's lack of transparency and inclusion on certain issues -- or rather, their claims of being "transparent" and "inclusive" by simply asking their mailing list to "sell" the packages put together in backrooms. I was hoping for a much more participatory process whereby citizens actually could take part a bit earlier in the process. So, it's good to see a step in the right direction, as the White House has announced its Open For Questions initiatives (thanks to everyone who sent this in). The site lets people ask questions of the president, and lets people see and vote on each other's questions. The President will then answer a few of the "top" questions.This is definitely a nice thing to add, but I'm hopeful that it ends up going further. At this point, it seems like nothing much more than a glorified suggestion/Q&A box. Rather than involving the community to tackle the questions raised, it simply gives them to the President to answer back. Real participation is about allowing the community to help out -- not just pass big questions up to the top. Obviously, it's still quite early in the administration, so hopefully we'll see more participatory tools on the way as well. This is definitely a good step -- and I don't mean to take away from it. But, I'm going to keep pushing for further participation and further transparency because I think it could be quite powerful and transformative.
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Filed Under: obama, participation, q&a, transparency
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Question 1 - When did "trillion" become the new "billion"?
A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money
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You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than to have him answer your question.
Unless you manage to hack into his teleprompter...
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Re:
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Sure
How many trillions in debt will it take for you to wake up Coward?
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sham
I sadly wouldn't be surprised if we find a giant amount of sock puppeting going onto lower questions they don't want to talk about, etc.
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Question 2
Is "The Obama Deception" Movie true?
Sincerely,
America
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Operators are standing by
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10 questions at a time
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the mewling of girly men
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When this was tried in the UK
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Stop the bleeding
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This is an old tried and true consulting trick. It is nothing more than a moderated workshop, led by the consultant. You bring a bunch of people in a room and talk to them about the problem and then guide them to the solution that you have already came up with. When the process is done, the people in the room actually believe that they came up with the solution and have more buy in.
It is actually a very good technique if you do it right. Of course, it is a sham, but it works.
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Transparency in government
I started to participate, but when I realized there was no discussion involved, opted out.
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Sock puppets?
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Pain 2012
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President Obama
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taxes
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Well, not so open anymore....
I went to take a look and guess what, no longer accepting questions, guess they answered them all already. Time to go home, nothing to see here folks, move along.
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