Text Comments Out In YouTube "National Discussion" of Health Care

theodp writes "While the White House has invited the nation to Join the National Online Discussion on Health Care Reform, it is currently only accepting 20-30 second YouTube video responses — text comments have been disabled. Which raises a question: Should a video camera be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest? BTW, the response-to-date has been underwhelming — 101 video responses and counting — and is certainly a mixed-bag, including a one-finger salute, a talking butt, a woman "Showing my Apples", and other off-topic rants and unrelated videos."

Article title is flat-out wrong

[Curien]

From TFA:

Don't know how to respond to the President's video with your question? Check out this tutorial from YouTube about how to create your own and add it as a response.

If you are a Twitter user, you can also ask your question with this hashtag: #WHHCQ or head to Facebook and ask your question there.

If I were the staff member in charge of wading through the discussion, I wouldn't want to have to use Youtube's craptastic comment system either.

You do not need a camera to post vids on youtube

[Lorcas]

You can open up your favorite video editing software and just put some slides of text. No camera involved.

They DO take text comments ...

[Skapare]

... only from Facebook users via their Facebook site. The link is on the referenced page.

Re:Easy answer

[Culture20]

Should a video camera be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest?

Yes. I think we can tolerate the absence of people who can afford computers and not cellphone cameras.

And only land-owners should have the right to vote?
I know people that can afford a computer (at the public library), but who can not afford a cell phone (regular monthly expenses).

Video lectures

[TheLink]

> The "Nobel Prize winner" myth: Every school child will have access to a Nobel Prize winner

In some ways yes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn8PNMTSlwo [youtube.com]

Plenty of other lectures/talks from MIT, Stanford, and other universities around the world are available online.

> it is doubtful that Nobel Prize winners will look forward to getting a few thousand e-mail messages a day.

I'm sure Feynman isn't too worried about that :).

FWIW, you can learn a lot from people without sending email to them, or communicating with them.

Re:One-finger salute, talking butt, 'see my apples

[rockNme2349]

Just as intellectual as the rest of the farce known as politics. The only difference is that the professionals wear fancy suits and genuinely think they are saying something insightful.

Sounds a lot like slashdot to me.

Re:Opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Promises of financial "transparency", yet his actions regarding this are more of the same Bush policy. Banks still get to lie about their solvency, GS, JPM, and others still have their hand right in the taxpayers wallet via the treasury. Bailout Nation continues.

Ending the war in Iraq. Still no exit strategy. More money being spent, more people being sent over.

Re:Opinion

[anothy]

you make a good point about Toyota jobs in the US. your conclusion as to the reason (unionization) is totally unsupported, but at least the question is interesting, and is something not talked enough about.

on the financial situation, though, you're way, way off. the "Fannie Mae regulation" you're thinking of wasn't a Fannie Mae regulation - otherwise it wouldn't have applied to other banks. you're presumably thinking of the CRA, which did apply to other banks, but wasn't designed either to put banks at the crazy risk they put themselves in (it contained explicit language against such behavior) or to support securitization of the loans (enabled by a later amendment). the numbers on CRA default rates, compared to the "general population" also doesn't support putting much blame there.

the notion that there is some idealized money supply inherently consistent with a given level of economic activity is laughably naive. you set monetary policy as a tool to achieve a given end; the current economic level is context for that activity. i've not seen (but would be quite interested in seeing) any serious, quantitive analysis of the Fed's handling of money supply that makes a strong case that they could have avoided the housing bubble without serious consequences (like astronomical inflation).

and no, of course greed is not new. but we've spent 20+ years disassembling the regulatory structure designed to keep our greed in check, which had worked very well for about 50 years before that. greed drove the disassembly, of course, coupled with a religious devotion to a particularly warped conception of the free market and crypto corporatism.

Re:"national discussion"?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Excellent point. Its ridiculous to think that we the people have any control or influence over our government. They do what they want and make it appear as if you asked for it.

They rarely ever do what the people ask them to. They instead will give them a bill for example: "National Health Care reform act" which sounds great on a glance but it will be full of corporate hand outs and designed in a way that doesnt help the people at all get what they voted for.

Its all a magic trick with lots of misdirection. Politicians do not care about or say or do anything that voters want them to do.

An election is a method of being elected into wealth. It has little to do with what the people want or representation.

Support Universal Single Payer health care...

Re:Who cares what random people think anyway?

[superwiz]

In 20-30 seconds, one could ask a simple question: which article of The Constitution gives you the authority to do any of what you are proposing? If you can't name the article, how do you reconcile your proposals with the 10th amendment explicitly prohibiting you from doing anything you are not explicitly authorized to do by The Constitution?