The inevitable futility of the White House petition site
Because here’s the rub, and it’s a little provision contained in the site’s Terms of Participation:
“The White House may elect to respond to petitions at any time, including those that have not crossed the first or second threshold.”
Translated, that basically means the White House will respond to your petition if it gets over 25,000 signatures in 30 days, except that they might take months to respond to a particular petition, if that, and also they might respond to petitions that haven’t crossed the threshold if they deem it important enough. Which, again, all basically boils down to “we’ll answer what we want to answer.”
Maybe the White House website has become less about petitioning the government to seriously address policy, and, in the spirit of the Festivus season, perhaps it’s simply become nothing more than an airing of greivances.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
This is the ‘funniest’ petition from the WH.
Goebbels orgasmed again. His ultimate dreams are all realized by Obama.
Schadenfreude on December 28, 2012 at 1:03 PM
Which is why I choose to partake in the farce.
BigGator5 on December 28, 2012 at 1:07 PM
The petition site was never meant to aid the Administration / Government in policy-making. It is there as a “feel good” measure for those who believe anything the Government tells them. They think, “Hey! Somebody in the Government cares and is listening to me!”
Mitoch55 on December 28, 2012 at 1:11 PM
Its a data-ming op.
novaculus on December 28, 2012 at 1:12 PM
National petitions are not very American. We have a federal government not a national one. This petition cr@p is part of Barky’s non-Americanism and trying to fundamentally deform our system. Dems love it because it’s makes them feel European.
The White House is not supposed to even be dealing with individuals domestically. That is not the job of the federal Executive branch. When Americans want to petition their government they do it through their representatives and the federalist chain. Not everything goes right to the Executive branch. That’s how thinking goes in a non-American government. We don’t have a King in the White House who is there to handle every problem. He has a specific and limited set of responsibilities, and responding to popular referenda is certainly not one of them. America doesn’t do national referenda and certainly doesn’t do them addressed all to the Executive branch.
Sure, this petition stuff is funny at times, but it’s entirely unserious and seriously un-American.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on December 28, 2012 at 1:14 PM
I try real hard not to get on any site that has ‘.gov’ on it! big bro has way way enough information on me and I sure don’t want to give them any more!
The only thing that bho/mo is interested in at the wh petition site, ‘how much money are you going to donate to us’?
L
letget on December 28, 2012 at 1:19 PM
It’s more than that……
Exactly. You beat me to it with the exact same comment.
Out of curiosity, I visited the site, and found that you have to register before you can even sign a petition. There is no way in he11 that I would willingly give any of my personal info to this corrupt regime.
Sure, they have ways to find out anything about me that they want, but I’m not going to make it easy for them.
UltimateBob on December 28, 2012 at 1:21 PM
I’m sure you meant to say data mining.
UltimateBob on December 28, 2012 at 1:25 PM
Government contract employees were warned a few weeks ago that signing the petitions related to secession could impact security clearances. The company lawyers were looking into it.
Somebody, somewhere, is mining that data, for certain.
GWB on December 28, 2012 at 1:38 PM
Yes.. It is a vapid meaningless website that Barry and friends were using to make their minions feel like they were part of gov’t. Nothing was going to come of it and I’d like to sell anyone who actually believed the opposite a bridge in Brooklyn. What is genius about the Death Star petition and the Deport Piers Morgan petition is that they expose the site for the stupid meaningless thing that it is. I demand more incredibly unrealistic petitions on the website.
Illinidiva on December 28, 2012 at 2:18 PM
Yup. I still say it was a smart idea to quell the useless idiots. I’d bet the WH staffers get a good laugh at a lot of them and none are ever seen by BO.
I hadn’t thought of the data mining angle and I have my doubts it is of much use. Who is stupid enough to put their real data on it. Other than liberals who it was made for anyway.
Dr. Frank Enstine on December 28, 2012 at 2:22 PM
Maybe not. BO has been described as the “Spock” of our times. Spock was all about logic and data. “Ming the Merciless” in “Flash Gordon” was all about oppression and having total control of his subjects.
So, I’m totally okay with labeling BO as “Data-Ming the Merciless” and it being one of his “ops”
Dr. Frank Enstine on December 28, 2012 at 2:27 PM
I did mean “data-mining“. Sometimes my mighty brain gets ahead of my fumbling fingers. But I like the Ming the Merciless angle.
If I had photo-shop skills, I would paste Zero’s head on Ming’s body just for fun.
novaculus on December 28, 2012 at 2:35 PM