Report: WH sending unsolicited e-mails touting O-Care to federal employees

There’s something soooo familiar about this.

The Department of State employees, who receive hundreds of official government emails every day, have complained about the annoying and partisan emails but are nervous to go public for fear of retribution. The emails are addressed to the federal employees by name and use the official .gov address.

The unsolicited emails also request that the federal employees take action in order to ensure that Obama’s health reform package is passed and the federal budget isn’t at risk for bankruptcy. One federal employee was so concerned about DeParle’s language in one email that he questioned whether his department’s budget would be cut or eliminated without passage of Obama’s bill. DeParle uses scare tactics that some assume are meant as threats:

“No ifs, ands or buts about it — if we do nothing to reform our broken health care system, costs will continue to skyrocket and break the budgets of American families, small businesses and the Federal Government,” read the March 12th email from DeParle…

DeParle’s solicitation requests federal employees act on behalf of the President’s agenda by making this directive: “You can help raise awareness by sharing this email with your friends, family and online networks,” read the March 11th email from DeParle.

These sound like the sort of robotic talking point blast e-mails Organizing for America sends out to its mailing list, not personal missives drafted by some White House lackey. Even so, remember when Major Garrett was chasing a similar story last summer? At first the suspicion was that O-bots were signing up their friends for White House spam without asking them, then the suspicion turned to the possibility that the recipients had e-mailed a Democratic senator or congressman from their account and their address was transferred from there to a White House mailing list. You would have thought that they’d tighten up their procedures after the scrutiny from Fox and the GOP, but nope: Evidently they can’t be bothered to filter the list to even the minimal extent of removing .gov addresses.

Normally I’d chalk it up to an oversight, but after the last 10 days or so of The One’s economic collapse roadshow and the arm-twisting, brow-beating, and procedural glory in the House, why give them the benefit of the doubt?

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