Is the White House is Listening to Average Joes Across the Nation?

The American people, quite possibly due to high unemployment and mortgage foreclosures, could be writing in more to the White House than ever before in history. The new administration has also offered many more new high tech ways to contact the president including the use of text messages and smart phones, just to name a few, in addition to the good old fashioned hand written letter sent to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

President Obama's new administration has made it their goal to be "committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history," according to the The White House.

With this flurry of increased correspondence to the new President and his staff, it only leads one to naturally wonder if they are really getting the messages and listening. In fact, if you decide to contact the White House which is the preferred method to use? The American people want to know what is the best method to get my message through to the new man in charge.

If you call the comment line at 202-456-1111, many times it is busy on the first try. However, if you call back eventually you can get through. Then you are given the option to either press 1 to continue or hold if you have a rotary phone for an operator. Though a phone call is convenient, it is probably best to get your message across in writing whether through a letter, email, message sent at The White House Contact Us, or another form of texting or messaging available.

After deciding on a method, the next obvious question is "are they listening to my messages" or "are my messages really getting to an legitimate destination?" At first, when I sent my first messages through The White House Contact Site I wondered if someone would actually receive them or if they would head to a junk message destination heading straight for a delete folder in the cyberspace world - this is equivalent to the circular file from the olden days.

Earlier this year, in January and February, as I began to actively write in about issues, I found that the word limit was a meager 500 words. If you are explaining any kind of policy, problem, or solution - or an intelligent response including all three plus some respectable traditional proper writing etiquette to a public official, you will run out of space quite fast. This concerned me greatly as I had to send several messages to get one point across with the policy, problem, viable solution, several alternatives, research, plus sources.

So I decided to send in a request to have the word limit increased to something more reasonable on February 5, 2009. However, nothing changed yet. So I sent another request on February 10, 2009, to increase the word limit especially in the light of the economic circumstances as electronic messages are practically free (if you would already have your Internet service anyway) and the price for postage stamps is going up again mid-year.

Then on February 13, 2009, I decided to enlist the help of my friends, family, and network to request for the word limit to be increased as well as to ask for total transparent reporting of how the funds from the bailout were being spent. This seemed only fair since it is the American people's money, it is our country, and since smaller governments must report their spending if they want to issue bonds and such. I started sending out my email idea starting with letter A in my address book and getting to letter C. This was going to take a little longer than I realized as I have accumulated a lot of contacts in the last decade.

February 20, 2009, was a special day. When I went online to write on The White House Contact page the limit said 5000 words. 5000 words! I had to do a double take and make sure that I was not still sleeping. If that was not the icing on the cake, the President also created www.recovery.gov to track the spending from the stimulus.

This administration is listening, they are listening to "average Joes" and "Ms. Joes" and that my friend is news. This is big news. World news. Because we are fortunate to live in a government and a country where we can have the opportunity to send a message to the government who will consider our concerns, ideas, and solutions since it is not that way in many parts of the world. We are fortunate that our Presidents' have staff devoted to listening to the people. And we are blessed to have all of the various methods of accessing our government and communicating what it important or meaningful to us publicly.

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