From: jcburt@gatsibm.larc.nasa.gov ()
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.elections,alt.politics.perot
Subject: Re: Will the Clinton Administration be on Internet?
Date: 5 Nov 1992 14:00:07 GMT
Organization: NASA Langley Research Center
NNTP-Posting-Host: gatsibm.larc.nasa.gov

In article <1992Nov5.055827.6939@telesoft.com> trevor@telesoft.com (Trevor Bourget @ignite) writes:
>In <1992Nov04.220123.102771@zeus.calpoly.edu>
>dfield@zeus.calpoly.edu (InfoSpunj (Dan Field)) writes:
>
>>Such a fast forum as the net is, I would hope that the Clinton
>>Administration will be available on the internet.  At the very least
>>there should be an e-mail address.  Ideally they should make available
>>via ftp files like press releases and transcripts of press conferences.
>>Active participation in open forum discussion/Q&A dialog would be
>>heaven!
>
>>Have they expressed any intent in this regard?
>
>Have they expressed any intent other than that they wanted our vote?
>Of course not.  If you want something from your government, you have
>to make sure somebody goes up there and demands it.  Let's join up and
>do it.
>
>Seriously, I don't want the "Clinton Administration" on the network.
>No presidential staff I can remember was answerable to or directly
>connected to the people's interests.  However, you have elected folks
>from your district and state who ARE supposed to represent YOU.
>

Trevor,
  I agree with the rest of you're posting (e-mail, BBS, etc for congress
critters) and I think they are excellent ideas...But I would also extend
that to the Executive branch. I think that the President and staff *should*
be answerable to *all* the people in the U.S. since we're the ones that
put them there...

John

PS : What???? me agree with something you said??? I sure hope Satan has
     a winter coat on!!! :-)


>I would like to propose to the UWSA organization that they push Congress
>to obtain an e-mail address on the internet for each congressional district
>(e.g. ca_district_51) and one for each senator (e.g. ca_feinstein).  One
>problem with this is that it is so easy to flood such a valuable channel
>with junk mail, but I think the risk is worth the intelligent exchanges
>that COULD occur.
>
>A more important part of this proposal, however, would be to dedicate a
>small network of minicomputers (HP9K's, SPARC-10's, RS6K's, SGI's, etc.)
>to running a bulletin board which would have scads of dial-in lines (V.32bis
>or V.fast and perhaps ISDN) that would allow the kind of people who dial
>into Prodigy to use their home computer to call Washington D.C. and exchange
>mail with their representatives and chat with other concerned citizens
>(forming special interest groups that could rival the power of today's PACs).
>
>The key to making this work is to make this call cost money, but not a
>lot of money (maybe the same cost as a postage stamp for a letter).
>This could be easily accomplished via 900 numbers with a flat per-call
>rate accompanied by a maximum connect time per day of perhaps three hours.
>In this way, every "letter" received is counted as valuable because it
>cost the taxpayer money to make that call.
>
>Finally, I'd like to see weekly "diaries" from the representative's view
>of what happened in D.C. this week.  This should be posted to a USENET
>newsgroup like dc_happenings and available on the above-mentioned BBS.
>A possible variant on this would be to have DAILY reports, but only two
>of the 600-odd critters would provide the report each day (one from the
>senate, and one from the house); the duty would rotate daily.
>
>If this proves to help solve the problem for national representation, it
>might be worth investing some money at the state level.
>
>-- Trevor Bourget (trevor@telesoft.com)


Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton