If you're old enough you might remember this:
Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Roberto Durán II ... is one of the most infamous fights in the history of boxing... It gained its famous appellation in the end of the eighth round when Durán turned away from Leonard, towards the referee and quit by saying "No más."
Wikipedia
The White House has effectively put a stop to new petitions at 'We The People'.
Yesterday they announced a new policy increasing the threshold for a guaranteed formal response to 25,000 signatures from 5,000 signatures. By doing this they are all but guaranteeing that they will never have to respond to any newly created petitions:
"No Mas!"
'We The People' has been in existence for a week and a half, and as I type, only two petitions have managed to exceed 25,000 signatures: one for marijuana legalization and one to forgive student loan debt. The odds of any new petition reaching 25,000 signatures, now that the intial impetus for the site is past, are twofold: slim, and none.
Why are they doing this?
"Let's just say our estimates were ... ahem ... a wee bit on the low side! In one week, more than 7,800 petitions have been created, more than 600,000 signatures have been logged and more than 375,000 people have created an account to participate in this platform. It's by far the biggest online engagement event ever for the White House - and we're just getting started...
The massive participation on We the People means that in the first week over 30 petitions reached 5,000 signatures, the initial threshold to generate an official response from the White House. At our first internal review meeting Friday, two things were clear: (a) everyone is thrilled about this new challenge and excited to process the first batch, but (b) this many petitions challenges our ability to offer timely and meaningful responses to petitions in the long term.
The Administration has, to their credit, stated that any existing petitions which have reached or do reach the original 5,000 signature threshold will be given a formal response. And that has an interesting implication: existing petitions of interest to someone but below the 5,000 threshold are much more valuable now than they were yesterday.
For example, no new petition to stop the war in Afghanistan has any plausible chance of getting a response out of the Administration, but this one by the author would still only need 5,000, not 25,000 signatures!
stop all military operations and withdraw all combat forces from Afghanistan by Ocotober 1, 2012..
Right now it's half way towards viability -- 73 out of the 150 signatures it needs so it will appear publicly on the site.
Another example. There's not going to be a new petition with any chance of success that requests that the President issue an executive order banning Federal contractors from discriminating due to sexual orientation, but this one:
Issue an Executive Order barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation for federal contractors.
would still have a shot if it reached viability.
The White House may be happy with the response it has received. 375,000 accounts is a lot, any way you look at it. But the progressive community should not be as happy. Out of the thirty-seven petitions that have reached 5,000 signatures and will thus be responded to, not a single one directly concerns such progressive issues as:
- The war in Afghanistan
- Alternative energy policy
- Health care policy
- Immigration policy
- Taxing the wealthy
- Looser monetary policy
- Mortgage relief
- The Defense budget
- Trade policy
- Labor rights
- Voting rights
While such interesting topics as
- space aliens
- animal homelessness
- puppy mills
- software patents
- Sholom Rubashkin
- Mary Emery
are among those top thirty-seven. These may well be worthy causes, as are the three in the top ten that deal with marijuana legalization; but is the marijuana legalization caucus and animal rights groups the only organizations that know how to organize?
Here are some -- mostly invisible, a few viable but not yet at 5000 -- petitions initiated by Kossacks. There's a lot of good, progressive ideas here that wouldn't hurt by being given a chance to be reviewed by the White House, even if many would require Congressional action.
You can also scan a bunch of petitions relating to the #OccupyWallStreet Manifesto and favor the best of them.
If the President and his Administration are going to issue a formal response as to whether space aliences are engaging the human race, shouldn't he and his be responding to our concerns as well? Let's get more of these petitions over the 150 signature threshold so the world can sign them.
Please sign any of the petitions I've noted above that you agree with, and scan through the visible petitions at the site for other solid, progressive ones that you would like to see answered.
Thank you!