We the People - the White House's petition website

[gman003-main]

[url=https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions]WE THE PEOPLE[/url]

To quote Wikipedia, "We the People is a section of the whitehouse.gov website, launched September 22, 2011, for petitioning the current administration's policy experts. Petitions that meet a certain threshold of signatures will be reviewed by officials in the Administration and an official response will be issued."

Basically, you can write a petition, and if it gets 25,000 signatures in a month, it will get a response from the government.

It's not perfect. Some of the responses have been disappointing (the marijuana response in particular), and some of the petitions are absurd (there's one calling for the US to ignore the Geneva Convention, and several dozen about rather minor issues). But it's still a fundamentally good idea, and one that needs some publicity.

You will need to make a user account there to do anything, which takes a few minutes (the site's kind of slow at sending the email). I think you have to be a US citizen, which kind of makes sense. Still, it's worth it to be able to communicate more directly with the government. Or at least mildly annoy them into submission.

Anyways, here's some of the petitions I think are important:

[url=https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/stop-e-parasite-act/SWBYXX55]Stop the E-PARASITE Act[/url]

The E-PARASITE Act is basically the DMCA on steroids. It's a rewrite of the defeated COICA Act from last year. It would let the government shut down any website that distributes copyrighted material.

You remember the Righthaven lawsuit against FP? If E-PARASITE had been passed when that happened, there wouldn't have been a lawsuit. They would have just shut down the entire site.

[url=https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/repair-and-modernize-america%E2%80%99s-crumbling-public-schools/027ggWsL]Repair and Modernize America's Crumbling Public Schools[/url]

Fact: American public schools suck.

Fact: Improving them would be an investment in America's future. We need smart people, educated people. Giving them modern textbooks, safe and clean buildings, and effective computer systems would pay for itself several times over in the long run.

It's a no-brainer.

[url=http://wh.gov/bWP]Simplify the tax code[/url]

Full disclosure: I started this petition.

Basically, the US tax laws are complicated as FUCK. Just the Internal Revenue Code is 3,939,919 words long (I mis-typed while writing it, putting "nearly four billion" instead of "nearly four million" - my bad). That's six copies of "Atlas Shrugged" back-to-back. That's the entire Lord of the Rings, eight times over. That's over three copies of the entire seven-book Dark Tower series. OpenOffice crashed when I tried to figure out how many pages it would be. It's 28 megabytes of plain ASCII text.

That's ridiculous. There's no need to have that many loopholes and exceptions. It unfairly biases taxation towards the rich and corporations, who are able to afford the kind of expert it takes to understand it all.

While everybody has ideas on how we should substantially change the tax code, I think a good start would be just simplifying. Don't change how much each tax bracket is paying (yet), just make it so that everyone can understand what they're paying.

[url=https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN]Actually Take These Petitions Seriously, Instead of Just Using Them as an Excuse to Pretend You're Listening[/url]

This site is a good idea. Really.

But the initial few responses have been, disappointingly, rehashes of the government's stance on the matter. You've basically said "we hear you, but this is why you're wrong:", and then justified yourself, rather than actually do anything.

[url=https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/examine-government%E2%80%99s-failure-investigate-and-prosecute-church-scientology-crime-fraud-and-abuse/L27wg021]Investigate Scientology[/url]

The "Church" of Scientology has done a lot of illegal stuff. Like, WAY illegal. There's more than enough evidence to convict half their top leadership. Many foreign governments have launched investigations, or even sanctions and judgements. Why hasn't the US Government done anything?

[url=https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/abolish-tsa-and-use-its-monstrous-budget-fund-more-sophisticated-less-intrusive-counter-terrorism/c7L94bFB]Abolish the TSA, and use its monstrous budget to fund more sophisticated, less intrusive counter-terrorism intelligence.[/url]

The Transportation Security Administration has been one of the largest, most expensive and most visible blunders of the post-9-11 homeland security reformation.

It has violated countless constitutional rights of average Americans, caused miserable and expensive delays in an already-overburdened air travel system, and allowed multiple known instances of harassment, theft, extortion and sexual abuse by its employees. It has failed approximately 70% of undercover efficacy tests, and for all its excesses, has been unable to catch even a single terrorist since its creation.

In our current economic situation, we can no longer afford to continue wasting taxpayer dollars on this kafkaesque embarrassment. Let us instead invest in saner, more effective solutions.

[url=https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/repeal-patriot-act/JF1pdPKg]Repeal the Patriot Act[/url]

The Patriot Act, the piece of anti-terrorism legislation repeatedly passed by our US Congress since the tragic September 11, 2001 attacks on our nation, seriously damages and infringes upon the constitutional protections that are enshrined in our Bill of Rights.

It is not patriotic, but rather Un-American to destroy the very freedoms which cause Americans to love their country. The “sneak and peek” provision of the PATRIOT Act, infringes our 4th amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure by denying citizens their right to be aware that their property is to be searched and their right to protest such search. The PATRIOT Act destroys e-mail and Internet privacy.

"Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither"

[url=https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/grant-voters-ability-vote-president-united-states-dissolving-electoral-college/GZQtFSPV]Grant voters the ability to vote for the President of the United States by dissolving the electoral college.[/url]

The Electoral College made sense in the early United States, when it was technologically impossible to allow all people to directly vote on a president. But this is 2011, not 1811. There's no reason for this unnecessary complexity.

The elections of 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000 produced an Electoral College winner who did not receive the plurality of the nationwide popular vote - that is, the American people did not get the President democracy should have selected.

[url=https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/reallocate-defense-funds-nasa/HrxpT8pf]Reallocate Defense Funds to NASA[/url]

The US Army spends more on air-conditioning than NASA has in its entire budget.

But which will be better for America in the long run - funding a group of America's best and brightest to explore the last great frontier, or funding missile strikes and bombing runs on third-world countries?

So, those are some of the ones I think are important. Are there any others you think are important? Any thoughts you have on the whole system, or individual petitions? Have a petition of your own you want support for?

PS: I did several searches, didn't find any other threads on the subject. If this is accidentally a dupe, sorry.

[CrispexOps]

*Sigh*

The government put this site up so people would quit bitching about how they have no rights, no freedom of speech, etc. etc.

The government doesn't give a shit about what the people think. Face it.

[gman003-main]

[QUOTE=CrispexOps;33090341]*Sigh*

The government put this site up so people would quit bitching about how they have no rights, no freedom of speech, etc. etc.

The government doesn't give a shit about what the people think. Face it.[/QUOTE]

Some days, I'd agree with you, but I'm trying to stay optimistic about it.

[Shiftyze]

Has any petition seen the other side? Otherwise you shouldn't feel to optimistic.

[CrispexOps]

[QUOTE=Shiftyze;33090867]Has any petition seen the other side? Otherwise you shouldn't feel to optimistic.[/QUOTE]

I don't think so. Everyone was holding such high hopes that the legalization of marijuana one would pass through, even then it'd simply be shot down.

[Missing User]

We the late

[editline]2nd November 2011[/editline]

although, credit for at least searching

[gman003-main]

[QUOTE=Shiftyze;33090867]Has any petition seen the other side? Otherwise you shouldn't feel to optimistic.[/QUOTE]

The responses so far are about 50/50. The "Fair Tax" response was logical and cited some good evidence, and the Sholom Rubashkin response was "this is, unfortunately, a judicial branch responsibility", and the "repeal the Defense of Marriage Act" response was "we're working on it; here's what we've accomplished so far".

There were some bad responses. The "ban software patents" response was full of crap, and the marijuana response was worse. But still, I'm trying to be optimistic here, because my other option would be organizing a revolution, and I just can't be assed to plan any assassinations today.

[stabbykat]

[QUOTE=CrispexOps;33090902]I don't think so. Everyone was holding such high hopes that the legalization of marijuana one would pass through, even then it'd simply be shot down.[/QUOTE]No one was expecting marijuana to be legalized through a process like this, the fact that they didn't listen at ALL and instead gave a bullshit 'just-cause-we-have-to' response that didn't address ANY of the points raised in the actual petition (Is the government too lazy to read one paragraph? No, but they apparently believe we're stupid enough to believe thats what happened) is reason enough to me that this site is 100% for show and no actual change will ever come of any of the petitions.

[editline]2nd November 2011[/editline]

[QUOTE=gman003-main;33090992]The responses so far are about 50/50. The "Fair Tax" response was logical and cited some good evidence, and the Sholom Rubashkin response was "this is, unfortunately, a judicial branch responsibility", and the "repeal the Defense of Marriage Act" response was "we're working on it; here's what we've accomplished so far".

There were some bad responses. The "ban software patents" response was full of crap, and the marijuana response was worse. But still, I'm trying to be optimistic here, because my other option would be organizing a revolution, and I just can't be assed to plan any assassinations today.[/QUOTE]So basically, if the petition is something that agrees with what they're already doing, that's the only time it will have any effect, even though it doesn't really have an effect, because that's what the government was already doing before the petition. Like everyone has already stated.