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sally.canzoneri

User Profile Image sally.canzoneri
Member since : May-29-2009 (Verified)
0 Ideas, 5 Comments, 122 Votes

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Voted On Idea : Hi again 9 months ago

Comments Posted

sally.canzoneri 9 months ago
Yeti,
Thanks for your sympathy. However, it looks like bothersome e mail won't be a problem much longer after all.

If you look at the Open Government blog, http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/blog/ it appears that the brainstorming phase is over and teh vast majority of what is being said here now is irrelevant.

In fact, I guess everyone is supposed to be moving on to the Open Government Initiatives Discussion Phase at another site. (It would have been nice to mention that at this site.)

After looking at the blog I am frustrated because the issue I cared most about (involving more people in the rule making process) seems not to have moved on. As far as I can tell, the Discussion Phase is primarily about transparency -- as in the government making lots of information readily available to voters -- but little on procedures to educate voters about the info and give them ways to use it to be involved in government.
sally.canzoneri 9 months ago
I agree. Also, can you tell us how to remove a comment we foolishly made on a topic that generates a huge amount of repetitious comments. I respect the "birthers" right to state their opinions, but I do not want to get multiple e mails stating those opinions every day. I have gotten thoughtful comments from other topics where I posted comments and I'm afraid that if I filter out messages from Open Government I'll filter out the messages I want to get as well as the ones I don't want. I've tried setting my preferences to digest, but I'm getting comments in real time.

Finally, would it be possible for you to create a category for the people who feel that Barack Obama is not legally qualified to be president. Perhaps giving them their own category (e.g., "Qualifications for Elective Office") would give them a sense that their concerns are being recognized (rather than censored)and would make it easier for those of us who do not share their concerns to concentrate on the issues that we care about.
sally.canzoneri 9 months ago
Regardless of how you feel about the Obama Administration's actions, it helps no one to raise the citizenship issue here.

This site is meant to promote a discussion about how to improve our government and make it more accessible to ordinary citizens.

The question of whether Mr. Obama is a native born citizen and thus qualified to serve as president is one that can be decided only by our courts. So the appropriate action for people who believe that he is not qualified is to file suit in Federal court. (In fact, I think someone may have done so already.)

The government staff who are working on the Open Government Project and the citizens contributing comments and ideas cannot do anything to resolve the questions some people have regarding Mr. Obama's citizenship & patriotism.

It is not fair to ask people to spend time on this issue here. Moreover, it is a waste of the time for the people who doubt Mr. Obama's citizenship to bring up the issue in this forum.
sally.canzoneri 9 months ago
I agree with the overall thrust of this post, but I am confused by the idea of FACA acting as a barrier to participation.

FACA requires that meetings of Federal Advisory Committees be public which, if anything, should add transparency to government.

Many people were not happy to have Dick Cheney meeting privately with an energy advisory group, while most of us did not know what was said and how much influence the group had on the Government's energy policy. Those meetings were probably held privately in violation of FACA, not because of it.
sally.canzoneri 9 months ago
This is an excellent discussion of a crucially important topic. I was a government attorney in the pre-Internet era, and it was frustrating to see that regulated industries were able to influence rule making far more than ordinary citizens could. Now that the Government can use the Web to "level the playing field" the Government should do so.

However, even the most the most transparent & accessible rule making process won't be worth much if citizens don't learn more about rule making and how much it affects their lives.

Right now, most Americans are clueless when it comes to rule making; so the Administration needs to make sure that community groups & ordinary citizens understand Federal rule making.

This kind of citizen education effort is an ideal project for the "grassroots group" (for lack of a better term)that used to be the Obama campaign. The campaign organization had plenty of lawyers & other people knowledgeable about rule making, and Obama campaign volunteers were very good at organizing events on their own. I think that many people who were active in the campaign would appreciate being asked to do something more active than donating money and contacting members of Congress in support of the Administration's initiatives. Other community groups, from the League of Women Voters to the Boy Scouts, could get involved too.

Civics education in the US has been dismal for years, which has contributed to our problem of low voter turnout and citizens' ignorance about important government actions.

One of the first things any good community organizer tries to do is to educate the community about its rights and its opportunities for action.

If we expect voters to actually "take back" their government, then educating voters about their government & important government activities such as rule making should be given high priority.