Whitehouse.gov Catching Up With Change.gov

Michael Scherer:
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Wow, that’s really…elegant, like a private-public partnership.

more than you know, Stuart:
“Questions and voting are hosted by Google Inc., but whitehouse.gov owns and has access to the data related to the questions and voting, which will be treated in accordance with the whitehouse.gov privacy policy. Google never receives your email address and does not store the IP addresses related to Open for Questions.”

I think it would be fascinating to study how questions and ideas evolve through the system. Is it effectively self-policing? Is it possible for a question to draw a bandwagon effect and rise to the top even though most individuals don’t like it compared to their favorites?
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The mechanics of the process holds almost as much fascination as the contents of the resulting forum.
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Thanks for posting…

Michael Scherer:
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LOL.
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That’s very interesting; now you’ve got me going to read whitehouse.gov’s privacy policy line by line.
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You’re correct, that’s another private-public partnership.
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My snark stands, however:
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What possible definition of “elegant” are you using that could describe either this endeavor or the “private-public partnership” that is the Geithner version of the Troubled Asset Relief Program?
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As a programmer, I’m quite accustomed to this definition:
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elegance:
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scientific precision, neatness, and simplicity (the elegance of a mathematical proof)

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What definition were you thinking of in your description of the Geithner plan as “elegant”…”tasteful richness of design or ornamentation (the sumptuous elegance of the furnishings)”?
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Seriously, thanks so much for the response, Michael Scherer, as well as this valuable post.

Here are some questions I submitted for the change.gov version, and here’s a discussion of why the voting system they and others use is a sham.
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Despite being limited by 250 characters, any one of those five questions at the first link are tougher than anything Michael Scherer would ever ask, and Scherer could never understand the flaws in their and similar systems (and wouldn’t discuss it even if he understood it).
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It’s a two-fer!

Michael Scherer:
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No need to respond or acknowledge; I thought that you should read this little piece on an important distinction between liberal Democrats (as opposed to centrist Democrats, appropriately labeled “apparatchiks”) and movement conservative Republicans.
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In its description is how many of us see ourselves.

But the White House has nothing on Twitter. Maybe they could bring on John McCain as Twitter advisor…

http://www.political-buzz.com/

How about a post about when Mike Scherer will catch up to Jake Tapper and ask a frikking question at a presser. Are you not even good enough to ask Gibby a question? Inquiring minds want to know.

Have you guys seen this guy Jake DeSantis’ resignation letter which he published as an op ed in the NYTimes? I really hope he wasn’t looking for any sympathy, because I have the worlds smallest violin playing for his punk ass.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/opinion/25desantis.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

SZ,
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Thanks for excellent link to Greenwald. I want to believe that Obama is the anti-Bush – i.e. a president so obviously correct about everything that it would be a kind of treason to go against any part of his agenda – but reality keeps intruding.
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Of course, when I consider what President McCain would probably be up to right about now, I’m very happy Obama didn’t lose, even if he’s not idealogically pure from Greenwald’s point of view (or mine or yours).

Wow! DeSantis informs the entire world via the NYT op-ed page that he’s a pathetic, whining, self-absorbed loser. Wonder what Phil Gramm thinks about all this?
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The best tragicomedy still writes itself.

sgwhite –
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Dear Mr. DeSantis:
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Boo-effing-hoo. If you’re so righteous why not also give to charity a goodly chunk of the lucre by which you “have benefited more than most during the economic boom…” or return it to the treasury so that we, not you, decide how best to use it?
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The greatest flaw in your self-pity manifesto is your reliance on a claim that “The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation.” If you didn’t contribute to creation of sustainable economic value you deserve ZeroZipNada once the paper profitability goes south.
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Yours truly,
The Real World

I think the most arrogant part of the whole letter is when he talks about how he and his co workers could have taken jobs at more stable companies but decided to stay at AIG. Well how about the fact that the AIGFP division MADE AIG unstable? Huh, what about that? Right now AIG is the biggest charity case in the country so giving his bonus back would fulfill his need to be altruistic. The level of presumed entitlement in that letter is truly stunning. That the New York Times would publish it raises questions about their judgement also if you ask me.

SG — you are on it this morning. This DeSantis guy is full of crap! He portrays himself as a good guy — staying with the company to save it, working for only one dollar, not benefitting personally by giving the bonus money away to people hurt most by the economic downturn — yet I didn’t hear one word about not claiming a tax deduction for the charitable donation.
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I admit that in the 15 years since I left New York my bull crap detectors have lost some capability — but even in this current state of disrepair it can sense a snow job this big.

To the Editors of the New York Times:
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I read Mr. Jake DeSantis’ resignation letter that strangely found its way onto the editorial pages of your newspaper, and I was puzzled and intrigued by the sentiments expressed in that letter.
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Mr. DeSantis doesn’t seem to take into account that his continued employment at AIG didn’t simply depend on his willingness to work there, it depended on an unprecedented amount of taxpayer dollars injected into the company –without which, there would be no AIGFP.
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While I certainly sympathize with Mr. DeSantis, in as much as that I take him at his word that the financial products with which he and his fellow employees at AIGFP were associated were not the cause of the company’s misfortunes, it’s very difficult to imagine another situation in which a firm that is one foot in the door of bankruptcy would continue to pay millions of dollars in bonuses to their employees as if nothing at all was happening to the company’s cash flow.
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It is this strange myopia with respect to the firm’s financial situation, that seems to point to a disconnect between Mr. DeSantis’ frustrations and the realities of a normally functioning labor market in a capitalist system. Perhaps this is our fault, as taxpayers, for not insisting that our government completely take the firm into receivership, dispose of its debts as safely as possible, and then put that firm back on the market for sale to its competitors.
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Nobody who has previously worked for a profitable division at a company in desperate financial straits, and then who has been laid off with the rest of that division’s workforce due to the firm’s condition as a whole thinks of writing the New York Times to complain about the treatment they’ve received –unfair as that outcome may be. Neither does anyone who works their hardest right up until the very day that their entire company closes its doors due to the disastrous results of poor executive decision-making write to the New York Times to complain of the injustice inherent in that situation.
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And yet, these two scenarios in which people, through no fault of their own, are suffering the unjust rewards of the asymmetrical nature of our capitalist system –a system in which we accept a certain amount of unfairness as necessary– don’t seem to enter Mr. DeSantis’ mind as being comparable to his own.
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Obviously, two wrongs don’t make a right. It is not that taxpayers are insisting on deliberately visiting another unfairness upon Mr. DeSantis and his fellow Financial Products employees in retribution for the sins of others.
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It is, however, that taxpayers insist on AIGFP (and AIG the parent) function as if they were any other company whose continued existence was not the result of the commendable fruits of Mr. DeSantis’ and other employees’ daily efforts, but the result of an emergency redistribution of wealth. That means, in practice, that compensation must not be lavish at the expense of the company’s bottom line, must necessarily be below prevailing wage standards, and must be as frugal as possible –commensurate with the firm’s new struggle to escape taxpayers’ debt. In short, taxpayers insist on AIGFP starting to behave as if they were any other company in this situation.
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If, because of these eminently normal steps with respect to limiting compensation during a company’s financial hard times, Mr. DeSantis chooses to leave AIGFP for greener financial products’ pastures, he will re-enter a labor market that is the result of such proper –and unfair to him personally– actions on the part of his employers. It will be one in which there exists recent downward pressure on wages for jobs like his, certainly. I can’t imagine that any person familiar with our system of capitalism wouldn’t agree that this is all as it should be.
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I fail to understand how Mr. DeSantos’ situation is more unfair, or significantly unfair in comparison to what happens in a contracting economy to millions of other individuals whose fortunes rise or fall sometimes with those of the organizations for which they are employed. The two exceptions, perhaps, being the gross injustice of AIGFP employees’ jobs being saved by tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer dollars, and the odd lack of recourse for those millions of unemployed to the opinion pages of the New York Times.