Hat tip Miggie
Like some of you, I got an e-mail from Organizing for America (They think I am a supporter somehow.) inviting me to call in and talk to President Obama last night.
Right.
Well, guess what. It crashed. Just like the ACA rollout website.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/18/another-website-another-problem-for-obama/?ref=healthcarereform&_r=0
My co-respondent, Siarlys, was supposed to call in and talk to the President. Still waiting for his report on that.
I got one of those too. But I was too busy washing my hair to attend.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if it crashed, but what I got was a page with a still picture of the president on the phone, a pattern of black dots emulating the appearance of a speaker, flashing on and off in unison, and the word "reloading." I never did get any sound. However, having registered via email, I did get an email back thanking me for joining the conversation, and saying "I hope you're as fired up as I am."
ReplyDeleteI don't mind posting that on Fousesquawk, because when I REPLY to emails from OFA, I get messages that the email address cannot receive messages. Besides, Gary seems to believe the White House staff monitors this site, so maybe this is the quickest way to get their attention.
I think this sort of criticism is healthy, not because I want to trash the ACA, but because I want them to fix the substandard administration and technical apparatus that is preventing me from signing up for some sort of health insurance policy.
Also, if they really want to communicate with the people, they need better channels to do it.
Last year, I got a phone call about Mittens having a "town hall" conference call, and I actually got to hear him responding to pre-arranged softies asking him easy questions after using up most of the time telling him how happy they were that he was running for president.
Mittens must have gotten my phone number from the Republican congressman who wanted to bring me to Washington for some conference on the needs of small business several years earlier. I told the aide, I'm a union shop steward. It turned out, because I tried to make a living free lance and filed a Schedule C-EZ and SE most years, they randomly picked my name for their group photo op.
This is what communicating with the people amounts to in the modern era.
Why do they call it a "Conference Call" if no one can ask or say anything but Obama? Some schmucks may have actually believed he would answer their unfiltered questions. My guess is that they probably played a rehearsed recording which only a small number of people were actually able to hear.
ReplyDeleteFurther, hundreds, perhaps thousands of public companies have stockholder conference call meetings every month. That includes actual questions from investors and responses from the CEOs. There are several companies that set these calls up with codes for the specific call. They set up the sequential queue of questions as a matter of course.
That the government of the US under this administration can't do this simple telephone technology is depressing. They don't even know how to outsource what they don't know how to do themselves.
It is even more depressing that this incompetent amateur has hoodwinked so many people. The fact that some people actually believe that he is soliciting advice in a conference call is a prime example of the mind over reality phenomenon.
They were expecting 200,000 callers.
ReplyDeleteGary,
ReplyDeleteI believe Apple, IBM, Microsoft, AT & T, and dozens of other large corporations also expect that many callers on their earnings reports and other announcements and they routinely handle it. I've never heard of any technical problems on any of them.
Miggie,
ReplyDeleteOf course, but you are talking about professionals who depend on their livlihoods to get these things right.
Gary,
ReplyDeleteYou're right! Big oversight on my part to overlook this basic difference between the profit motive and accountability to result in competency and a bureaucracy where political donations, connections, and appropriate political views will preserve your job no matter how bad a job you do.
Say, has the president invited you to another personal conference call chat as a "do over" for the one that didn't quite work out right?
Of course conference calls trying to reach hundreds of thousands of people, or 150 million voters, are going to be highly controlled affairs, with very few getting their real questions in.
ReplyDeleteOrganizers did provide an email address for submitting questions. I sent in a rather complex question, and have no idea if it was offered to the president for response. Statistically, its unlikely, since they must have received tens of thousands. Now if someone over the next week went through those and developed thoughtful answers, I'd be satisfied.
Political offices don't have TIME to respond any more thoughtfully than those silly boilerplate letters Gary gets back from Barbara Boxer.