July 18—Don’t try communicating with the White House by e-mail—especially if the subject is on the nation’s soaring unemployment rate.

Concerned citizens sending messages to president@whitehouse.gov this week received automated responses redirecting them to a series of complicated webpages at www.whitehouse.gov/webmail. There, they were asked not only to give their addresses but also to pick from a list of issues and indicate whether they support the Bush position on those issues.

Given the 6.4 percent June unemployment rate, the highest in 10 years, and the loss of more than 3.1 million private-sector jobs since Bush took office, a couple of topics from the list provided by the White House were noticeably missing: “jobs” and “unemployment.”

In The New York Times front-page article today, national web design authority Jakob Nielsen called the new White House e-mail system “a very cumbersome process” that was “probably designed to cut down on e-mail.” The website’s privacy policy, he noted, was deeply buried.

The White House move to convolute its e-mail process comes on the heels of hundreds of thousands of e-mails sent by workers to protest Bush’s attempt to take away the overtime pay of as many as 8 million workers.

The White House appears to have retooled its new e-mail system after its Internet news director spoke with the Times reporter. As of today, its automated response at president@whitehouse.gov was changed again—it still directs e-mailers to the new webpages but now acknowledges receipt of the e-mail. And at www.whitehouse.gov/webmail, a “privacy policy” link now appears clearly at the bottom of the first webpage.

“Jobs” and “unemployment,” however, are still missing from the approved topic list.

More

Check out graphs revealing the job crisis in America.

Learn more about the nation’s job crisis.

Find out more about proposals to cut overtime pay.