A great article on those White House Petitions:
About a month ago, I said that the White House’s “We The People” online petition site was “ensuring its legacy as a total joke.” I know, that’s pretty harsh. But at the time, it really looked like the experiment in active citizenship was going to burn out. When I made that statement, the site had a whopping 48 petitions that were sitting, unanswered by the White House.
That’s not 48 total petitions. That was 48 petitions that had crossed the 25,000 signature threshold, meaning that by rule they warranted an official response from the White House. 48 (about half of them were crazy secession petitions). Since then, 2 of the 48 have received responses (and one had to do with building a Death Star)….Thankfully, the White House has done just that. Starting today, new petitions must receive 100,000 signatures in 30 days in order to receive a response from the administration. That’s up from the 25,000 that clearly wasn’t working, and 20x what was originally required when the site first opened up in 2011.
The White House allows people sign petitions to get “Important issues” addressed, and the White House Ignores the bulk of them. So they’ve raised the threshold of petitions, so hopefully they’ll be able to ignore LESS of them.
Frankly the only use for this site is to laugh at how popular gun control is in America.
“In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
*COUGH*
There is but one question. They asked it. There can be but one answer, and it is 200,000,000 strong. There can only be one reply from birth to death…WE THE PEOPLE…
Our laziness has led us into this sad situation. Our strength can march us back out.