I’ve been a voting member of society for a long time. I enjoy following politics and, when I think it’s prudent, attempt to voice my opinion. That’s why, when I received a survey from my state representative I was pretty excited.
The other day I got a “voter opinion survey” from Rep. Eric Eisnaugle. The survey itself was about 10 or 15 questions covering a few broad categories — education, transportation, etc. What’s interesting about this is that it’s the first time I can remember an elected official directly seeking my opinions. It’s always the other way around, I want to voice an opinion I have to seek them out. I like the way this freshmen representative is going.
At the bottom of the survey it asked if I’d like to be contacted with the results to which I obviously said yes. I’d like to see what the rest of my community thinks about adding a sales tax to internet purchases (I sure hope not) and funding for education, but more importantly I’d like to see if this survey effects Rep. Eisnaugle’s voting at all.
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As you know by now, I’m an avid twitterer. On Mondays (and sometimes Fridays) I enjoy watching the CNN Newsroom with Rick Sanchez, a news show that injects comments from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace about the stories being covered. Today I joined the conversation and made it on CNN. Check it out:
Is that legit or what?
The full text of my tweet is:
@ricksanchezcnn These people in positions of power just think they can do whatever they please. Kind of sick actually.
and was in reply to two tweets about Ted Haggard and Portland’s mayor, both who had illicit.
So there you have it. I’ve now been published (can I say that?) on CNN. What have you done today?
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You know that digital tv transition, the one that every time you’ve turned on the news in the last year and a half you’ve been reminded it’s coming? You know how you’re so thankful because there’s only a few more weeks until the end of the countdown? Well evidently you might need to get accustomed to seeing the countdown for another few months. I know, it sucks.
They're going to need a new clock.
Evidently there isn’t any money left in the program designed to give people $40 gift cards to buy the things. You know, the program that began LAST JANUARY with a set amount set aside? There’s now a waiting list and Congress is considering putting off the transition date until June so they can get these people their free or reduced cost digital boxes.
Here’s the thing, if they didn’t request their gift card six months ago then oh well. Those are the breaks. If you don’t pay for cable/satelite/IPTV then go buy yourself a digital box, or don’t and read a book instead. The last thing the government needs to be doing right now is shelling out additional money to people who waited to the last minute. If that’s the case, I might as well go collect an unemployment check for the sixteen years of my life I didn’t work. I’m entitled to that too, right?
Give me a break. Obama has vowed to go through the federal budget line by line eliminating useless programs. Let’s hope he starts by refusing to add additional money to a program that people have been adequately warned about. You waited to long? Oh well. Get over it.
Update: Despite the Senate voting for and extension to the transition, the US House voted the bill down thus killing any hopes to prolong the thing. Thank. You. God!
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A week or so ago I decided to prepare for the political debate season by doing a bit of research. I have no idea who I’m going to vote for in this year’s election so I’ve been waiting for the debates to make up my mind. While I was reading through Obama’s tax plan I was intrigued, but had a question. A fairly simple question in the grand scheme of things, but a question that wasn’t answered on the website. So I did what any person would do (well, maybe not any person but people like me) and clicked “Contact Us.” The question I asked was similar to this:
The tax plan you are putting out is very interesting. Cutting taxes for people with income under $200,000 is certainly a good thing. However, how does this effect sub-chapter S corporations which file business taxes with their income taxes? If their business makes more than the $200,000 cut off, their taxes will increase. If their taxes increase it will be more difficult to employ people and continue running the business. I’m curious how this factors in.
-An Undecided Registered Independent from the State of Florida
Yeah, I laid it on pretty thick with the closing in the hopes that someone would actually read it.
Shortly after clicking send on the email form I received a canned response email, much like you would see from any corporation saying something similar to this:
Thank you for your interest into Barack Obama. Due to the very high volume of email we regret that we cannot reply to your message. We encourage you to read Barack Obama’s plan for our nation by visiting… blah blah blah.
Basically thanks but we don’t do email. Which I found very odd considering Obama being considered the more technologically advanced candidate. Either way I felt like my question would go unanswered. A few people suggested I contact the local campaign office but I figured they wouldn’t be able to tell me anything other than what was on their talking points. I basically forgot about it.
What did happen, which I wasn’t exactly happy with, was that I got automatically subscribed to Obama’s various email lists. I got an email from him thanking me for my support — which I thought was tacky considering I asked a question trying to make a decision and instead got added to a list. I also got an email from his wife encouraging me to get involved in some for of campaigning, again, tacky. On Twitter I called this a “courtesy fail.” Needless to say I unsubscribed pretty quickly.
With the idea of fairness I sent John McCain an email asking a question about something in his economic policy just to see what happened. Even stranger than the Obama response, I got nothing. Not a canned “thanks for your interest” email, not a “we don’t respond to email” email, nothing. Basically I figured despite being 2008, neither campaign had figured out how to directly interact with email questions. So I forgot about the whole thing.
Then just before noon on Friday, the day of the debate, I got a response to my Obama email — sort of. What I got was a five paragraph email response detailing a bit more of Obama’s tax plan with links to a few fact sheets hosted on the Obama website. The email was addressed Dear Friend and was signed Sincerely Barack Obama. Now chances are this was not written by Barack Obama, but the fact that I got a somewhat thought out response at all is somewhat impressive considering the first response basically said they don’t do responses.
Did the email answer my question. Not specifically, no. The fact sheets that were linked to talked more about specific cuts that would actually benefit sub-chapter S corporations, but did not address the issue of the $200,000 income tax cut off. It’s not a perfect answer but I guess it’s an answer.
So what does all this mean? I don’t really know. I still haven’t made up my mind. I’m not exactly keen on either candidate right now. There are things I like about both of them and things that I have issues with for both of them. What I do like, is that despite saying they don’t respond to email, someone actually took a few minutes to — at the very least — compile a few pre-written paragraphs and send it out. If I ever get a response from McCain’s people, I’ll be sure to update this post.
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