As you know I have been a supporter of the GOP for sometime. I served as the host/mc for the fundraiser for President Bush in 2000 in Chicago.
While I have not always been in agreement with everything that the govt does, I do feel the dems seem to be all talk and no action.
On a recent issue with a federal agency, I reached out for some help from the illinois senators, Dick Durbin, and Barak Obama and got silence as an answer, not even an acknowledgement of the receipt of my inquiry and request for help.
I sent the same to Dennis Haestert’s office, could not get thru on the automatic submittal form on the house website so left a message explaining my situation and my contact info. Did not hear anything back..thought it was same ol same ol..tyhen i found one of my buddies who is involved in the republican party in chicago and he said oh lets call Haestert’s office, i know exactly who in his staff can support you. so we called, so on the fly right then we place a call.. we get to the right person..and as I am talking, this person says…oh yes, I have your inquiry right in front of me and actually narrated what my issue was before I even told it.
I like it when my elected reps give a damn about their constituents.
Re: whats your personal experience with republican or democrats
not quite
I talked to my friend, he said lets call the office, and we called on the spot, we were routed to the right person and she knew the details of my case. That means someone read it.
I could see your point had he alerted her and then we called and by then she found and read up on my inquiry. We called her without warning and she was familiar with the details of my inquiry and request. oh and before you start saying she pulled it up on a computer, she did not know my first or last name under which the inquiry was submitted, I was introduced by my nickname only :)
To me it seems that Haestert's office staff were atleast reading it. Since our contact she has been in touch with me several times already and getting more specific info to resolve it or further escalate it if she does not get the right cooperation from the agency in question.
Re: whats your personal experience with republican or democrats
Im assuming this issue with some federal agency was related yo your work?
Lets hear about what other personal issues you have had which you felt the GOP or Bush in particular has addressed effectively than the Dems, since 2000.
Re: whats your personal experience with republican or democrats
as far as I know they have read it and are waiting to contact me, and I am so hard to locate due to my busy schedule with my record release tour and my movie shootings and all the space trips that I am taking or .... they are slow....or they simply ignored it.
Aside from emails, I have followed up by phone calls as well, but the right person is never around.
hey I could be pleasantly surprised and the Obama's staff decided to go and resolve my issue without contacting me and they will call me saying, hey we solved it. Unlikely though.
On the other hand, Haestert's office has been in touch with us several times already to get more info and to get clarifications. maybe dems are just slow readers and are still reading..maybe they get so much fanmail that mine just got lost in the pile.
Point is, I am interested in outcomes, and the only place I am seeing that is with Haestert's office.
Re: whats your personal experience with republican or democrats
5Abi
hey I shared my story, you guys are more than welcome to share yours.
As far as my run ins with local level politics, while chicago is mostly a dem city. when we had massive issues with the builder for my last townhouse with not keeping up his end of the bargain in warranty and all, it was a local rep politician who finally solved it.
thats kinda the only real run ins I have had, oh yeah back in the late 80's when Mike Hays was the Governer of Kansas. I as part of the assoiated students of kansas lobbied to keep tuition hikes under check, and he agreed, although I cant take full credit for it, there were several hundred students from all Kansas state colleghes lobbying on the hill that day.
Re: whats your personal experience with republican or democrats
Don't have one so can't talk to him. They used to call him Delay.. but when he tried to remedy this by flying privately to be on time, they nailed him for illegal campaign contributions. damned if u do.....
Re: whats your personal experience with republican or democrats
Should someone have contacted you Fraudia, absolutely they are there to work for you, that said I'm not sure what the issue is and perhapes the sent it on to the correct department and it's being bogged down by nonpartisan bureaucracy, is this possible?
The reason you are getting a response from the Republican party is because your friend pointed you in the right direction, as you said they weren't responding to you either.
Re: whats your personal experience with republican or democrats
Should someone have contacted you Fraudia, absolutely they are there to work for you, that said I'm not sure what the issue is and perhapes the sent it on to the correct department and it's being bogged down by nonpartisan bureaucracy, is this possible?
The reason you are getting a response from the Republican party is because your friend pointed you in the right direction, as you said they weren't responding to you either.
Re: whats your personal experience with republican or democrats
I've met both, including governors and state reps. I have to say I have had better experiences with democrats. But that is just my individual experience.
Re: whats your personal experience with republican or democrats
As they say, politics is very local. On a personal level it really doesn’t depend on if a person is a democrat or a republican, but rather if he is in politics for service or power/money.
I write emails or sometimes fax letters to congressmen and senators and on average I get an acknowledgement from both sides. But my emails are generally venting sessions, rather than asking for a particular favor etc.
It is also the case that if you live in a Republican state, most likely the Dems will be nice to you and vice versa. It’s just like the company that has the monopoly sucks at customer service.
Re: whats your personal experience with republican or democrats
utd, what impressed me was that the person I talked to was familiar with my case which means she read it. Now assuming that dem senators offices have not read it but an acknowledgement would have been nice.
utd, so since you are a major democrat, you got any connections which can get me an audience with someone with an ability to help? this is not a personal favour and this is not something that soemone has to go out of their way. It is basically trying to have a particular office be responsive and do what they are chartered to do.
Re: whats your personal experience with republican or democrats
Not necessarily party affiliated by when writing to the state Senator numerous times, I got zero acknowledgment.
When we contacted the state representative, we received a better response.
That's just because senators probably receive a whole lot more emails/letters than state reps do, so the senator's office doesn't bother responding to any of them.
Re: whats your personal experience with republican or democrats
Fraudz, I am not a 'major democrat' in any way, shape, or form.
Why don't you post your issue? Perhaps others here have run across a similar situation and could share what they did to get it resolved.
Re: whats your personal experience with republican or democrats
utd this is the situation, a certain US consulate has not been responding to our inquiries, and when they do respond they send a generic pdf and not answer specific questions. When we get thru to them they claim the work we need done there is not something that the consulate does and we need to talk to CIS and homeland security here. When we talk to CIS here they note that indeed the work needs to be done at the consulate. we relay that info tro consulate including specific reasons as provided by homeland security, and the consulate does not respond. Then the person from homeland security directly writes to them and they still dont respond, now the officer in homeland security has to escalate it to superiors to have the consulate respond. I have reached out to our elected representatives to help us deal with unprofessional consulate. We are not asking for any special treatment, all we are asking is that the consulate do what it is expected to do, something that is listed in its list of services, which they claim they dont do, which homeland security has shown that they have to do as a matter of policy.
Re: whats your personal experience with republican or democrats
Revisting this topic to set the record straight Obamas office did respond bak to us and one of his staff members was assigned to our case who personally called the consulate in question and got the information that they were holding back on.
An official letter went from Obama's office to the consulate and they got their act in gear. His office put direct pressure on the consulate to get things done right and get them done quick, and as a result whern we went to teh consulate for the visas, aside from an initial hiccup or two wth general consulate staff, when we got ot the immigration visa desk we were treated liek VIPs.
hastert's office helped us with getting some last minute quir that the consulatehad thrown in, where his staff personally made sure that the papers that were sent from teh consulate, to homeland security, to then the national visa center ere all tracked and ppl at each location were expecting the papers and had set timelines in which they needed to get their work done. Had it not ben for this office our paperwork would have been stuck in the last minute curve ball the consulate's imiigrant visa section chief had thrown in.
Durbin's office sent a half assed response basically adressing the first issue we were having with a local state institution noting that its not something he deals with since its not a federal issue, but did not address teh issue we were having with the consulate. btw the letter from his office came a few weeks after the kids were already in the country.