41–50 of 133 posts
Petitions are encouraged precisely because they're completely ineffective: a safety valve to allow people to believe they're effecting change when in fact nothing is changing. If petitions actually worked, they'd be banned.
What (now) 100k votes gets you is a guaranteed response from a White House spokesperson. That's all. For a WH person to even look at a few sentences of text, it takes 100k people. For the most part, neither petitioners nor the spokesperson take those things seriously. As it is, a petition carries less weight than a reporter asking a third-tier aide a policy question.
I'm sure someone at the WH has made the argument internally already if something appears on the "petition" website, that's a pretty good indicator not to do whatever is asked.
The "petition" site is also a genius move as far as fake openness and the illusion grassroots democracy goes because it neatly captures and binds both crackpots and armchair activists in a safe bundle where they are guaranteed to have absolutely no impact whatsoever. Politics is not made by internet people, nor is politics made for people in any way.
Calling whatever is going on with that website "petitions" is a pretty misleading move, and it has been from the start. The "petitions" carry even less weight than ones gathered manually by interest groups, and they certainly carry absolutely no weight if you compare them to legally necessary petitions (such as putting candidates on ballots). What (now) 100k votes gets you is a guaranteed response from a White House…
And it might even be customized for your exact case, rather than "form letter gun control response #27".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you suggest then? Resigning ourselves to apathy would seem to play right into their hand. Obviously a lot more than a petition is necessary to effect change, but it seems a reasonable place to start.
A more reasonable place to start appears to be making a lot of money and then using it to lobby relentlessly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Obviously a lot more than a petition is necessary to effect change, but it seems a reasonable place to start. If you live in the United States you have a congressperson. Contacting them is a much more reasonable place to start.
Okay, but a petition is a public focal point that takes 30 seconds to contribute too. The cynical attitude "I'm not going to do this because it won't help" is probably a greater negative to one's personal effect on the cause than however much time it might waste.
Calling whatever is going on with that website "petitions" is a pretty misleading move, and it has been from the start. The "petitions" carry even less weight than ones gathered manually by interest groups, and they certainly carry absolutely no weight if you compare them to legally necessary petitions (such as putting candidates on ballots). What (now) 100k votes gets you is a guaranteed response from a White House…
>What (now) 100k votes gets you is a guaranteed response from a White House spokesperson. And it might even be customized for your exact case, rather than "form letter gun control response #27".
Whether the threshold is 100K or 100M, nothing has happened yet as a result of a "successful" petition. Sure, the stupid petitions give them a chance to giggle at the rubes. The most reasonable petitions get essentially the same reaction, however. ["Legalize pot? I think we can guess what they were smoking when they signed that one! Hahahaha!"] As much as I wish it were otherwise, I expect the same for the current "f…
The purpose of the petitions is to provide input as to what issues concern people, not to provide a list of things to be the subjects of immediate executive orders. The kind of action we should expect from a successful petition is to put the issue on the agenda, which may lead to policy changes and legislative action.
Makes sense. In the UK we need 100k signatures and the population is obviously much smaller. The government probably got tired of having to respond to things like building the Death Star.
Their loss, really.
I'm half joking - putting more money into space research might net us interesting things like cheaper energy (solar panels with no atmosphere or clouds to obscure them) and materials (asteroid mining). A major space station would certainly help with that.