Not sure if it will do any good but....

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Roger i responded to at least one of your posts. One of the drawbacks of not being able to quote.

[Cain]

But could it be effective the other way around? Could a petition be worded in such a way to inject a new idea into the publics consciousness? And what would be the best way of doing that? If im going to start playing around with this id probably want it to be more omf than trolling.

Could it?  Maybe.  But unlikely.  The media are usually Harvard-Yale-Princeton grad types, or employed by them, and they see themselves as part of the same socio-economic background of those in government, in the think-tanks and governmental institutions and so on, and so their critical faculties (not very developed to begin with) are even less active than normal.  Even most of the blogs are instutionalized along party/think tank affiliation now (and any blog started later than, say, 2006, has virtually no chance of going big now).  You could get lucky and go viral....but the chances are very, very low.

Hell, look at London.  2000 black guys put on a peaceful march to protest at police cruelty.  No-one pays attention.  Muslims put on numerous marches to condemn Islamic terrorism.  No-one pays attention.  Some black guys riot, the news cameras are there, with rolling 24 hour coverage.  Some Muslim says something nutty in public, the next day the tabloids are running it as front page news.

Despite the internet, we still live in societies where the means of mass communication still largely reside in the hands of very few people.  Usually their interests align with the elite, or a faction thereof.  Rupert Murdoch, for example, has a penchant for more right-wing governments, but he'll work with the British Labour Party as happily as he will with the US Republicans.  Or the Chinese Communists.  Look at the Iraq War.  Journalists who dissented too vocally were dropped very quickly, while Pentagon propagandists and those who vocally promoted the war were given more and more airtime.  The media still control most of the avenues of mass communication, and they, as a rule, are jealously protective of their access to and the patronage of important political figures.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Roger i responded to at least one of your posts. One of the drawbacks of not being able to quote.

I know.  But then nobody responded to my answer.

I have become the invisible man today, it seems, IRL and on line.

[Cain]

Ok. So why do we have the right to petition at all? And why would the white house website create a forum for petitions if they were just going to get ignored?

1.  You have the right to peaceably assemble.  Petitions are pretty peaceable.  Also, amendment IX says you have all kinds of rights that aren't listed.  Sometimes I count them all, just to make myself crazy.

2.  To get a list of the malcontents.

In addition, I would add "because the USA deems it inconsequential that you still have these rights".  It's like the adage that if voting changed anything, it would be illegal.  The US can afford for you to have these rights because they do not affect the operations of government at present.

If they did start to, I'm sure that they would be quickly circumscribed.  This is why I tend to argue that democratic governments are actually much more resilient and entrenched than so called totalitarian regimes.  Said regimes are violent, all controlling etc because they are fundamentally weak, and so are on constant lookout for enemies, real or imagined.

Modern liberal democracies, on the other hand, are far more strongly entrenched, and so more dismissive of public opinion and political pressure.  Ironically, democracies can afford to not care about public opinion far more than tyrannies.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Well i cant buy cnn so i guess it will just be trolling with it. It will be amusing at any rate.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

In addition, I would add "because the USA deems it inconsequential that you still have these rights".  It's like the adage that if voting changed anything, it would be illegal.  The US can afford for you to have these rights because they do not affect the operations of government at present.

Yep.  Rant all you like.  They don't care.

[AFK]

I think an argument over whether online petitions work or not misses the point.  Effecting change is a marathon, not a sprint.  Moreover, it's more like a tri-atholon, or maybe, a decathalon or a 30athalon.

The point being that one tool isn't going to fix the problem.  And even an arsenal of 30 tools isn't going to fix the problem quickly.  I mean, look at how long it took to enact change around civil rights as relates to African-Americans and we clearly still have more work to do there.

But I don't think that means that we don't do anything or that we resign ourselves to trolling the internet.  It just means that if we want to be in the game of change you have to be in it for the long haul if you want to, maybe, see results.  What can we do to effect change in our tiny corner of our world? 

But the other piece is that you really have to define what it is you want to change and then work backwards and really come up with a strategic plan on how you are going to move towards that goal.  It will be a lot easier to do as part of an organization than as a lone citizen.  It is a monumental challenge for sure but it is not impossible.  It just takes persistence and planning and evaluation. 

[LMNO]

A few thouand signatures.  How many divisions do they have?

Cutting through the crap, here, this is the most relevant and correct post on this subject so far.

Obama is not going to listen to fucking petitions.  End of story.

Ok, I get that Americans exist in a country where any opinion that goes against the federal plutocracy will be either ignored or disappeared.

But, as RWHN showed, the process appears to have some traction when scaled down.

And what about the plutocrats themselves? If a handful of whackjobs in Florida can change where Lowes puts its money, then the theory shows itself to have some merit.

[Cain]

Local and, to an extent, state politics are areas where petitions, protests etc can have some traction and noticeable effect.  I won't deny that.  I actually encourage voting in local/city/county council elections, and you know how I feel about voting in national elections.  You can actually get the potholes fixed.

However, if you petitioned the Federal government to fix your potholes, it would either a) make more potholes, citing "economic necessity, or b) send in no-bid contractors to fix the potholes, flanked by Blackwater mercenaries, who would then shoot up a school bus and set a puppy on fire, while the actual repairs would take three times as long, cost over four times what the original estimates suggested, use dummy corporations as third party contractors to embezzle money and then hire some local company at 10% of what they were given to do the job anyway.

Thats how the Feds roll, yo.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

But could it be effective the other way around? Could a petition be worded in such a way to inject a new idea into the publics consciousness? And what would be the best way of doing that?

Buy CNN.

[LMNO]

Local and, to an extent, state politics are areas where petitions, protests etc can have some traction and noticeable effect.  I won't deny that.  I actually encourage voting in local/city/county council elections, and you know how I feel about voting in national elections.  You can actually get the potholes fixed.

However, if you petitioned the Federal government to fix your potholes, it would either a) make more potholes, citing "economic necessity, or b) send in no-bid contractors to fix the potholes, flanked by Blackwater mercenaries, who would then shoot up a school bus and set a puppy on fire, while the actual repairs would take three times as long, cost over four times what the original estimates suggested, use dummy corporations as third party contractors to embezzle money and then hire some local company at 10% of what they were given to do the job anyway.

Thats how the Feds roll, yo.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Local and, to an extent, state politics are areas where petitions, protests etc can have some traction and noticeable effect.  I won't deny that.  I actually encourage voting in local/city/county council elections, and you know how I feel about voting in national elections.  You can actually get the potholes fixed.

However, if you petitioned the Federal government to fix your potholes, it would either a) make more potholes, citing "economic necessity, or b) send in no-bid contractors to fix the potholes, flanked by Blackwater mercenaries, who would then shoot up a school bus and set a puppy on fire, while the actual repairs would take three times as long, cost over four times what the original estimates suggested, use dummy corporations as third party contractors to embezzle money and then hire some local company at 10% of what they were given to do the job anyway.

Thats how the Feds roll, yo.

Cain wins the internet.  Again.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Since this is now actually a good discussion about politics can i request that it gets moved to aneristic? Will post more itt later. Battery is almost dead.

[Kai]

Local and, to an extent, state politics are areas where petitions, protests etc can have some traction and noticeable effect.  I won't deny that.  I actually encourage voting in local/city/county council elections, and you know how I feel about voting in national elections.  You can actually get the potholes fixed.

However, if you petitioned the Federal government to fix your potholes, it would either a) make more potholes, citing "economic necessity, or b) send in no-bid contractors to fix the potholes, flanked by Blackwater mercenaries, who would then shoot up a school bus and set a puppy on fire, while the actual repairs would take three times as long, cost over four times what the original estimates suggested, use dummy corporations as third party contractors to embezzle money and then hire some local company at 10% of what they were given to do the job anyway.

Thats how the Feds roll, yo.

I find it really interesting how the voting hype is always in the opposite direction. Most people who get riled up over national politics hardly notice local government, yet local governments are the ones that get things done which are most relevant to our everyday lives. It's not clean execution either. My mother, who is the director of the local library, sits on the city council as one of the department heads. She has told me stories of outrageous embezzlement by the former head of parks and rec that wasn't found out for years, and seriously drained the city's funds in that department. So I totally agree with your sentiments.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Local and, to an extent, state politics are areas where petitions, protests etc can have some traction and noticeable effect.  I won't deny that.  I actually encourage voting in local/city/county council elections, and you know how I feel about voting in national elections.  You can actually get the potholes fixed.

However, if you petitioned the Federal government to fix your potholes, it would either a) make more potholes, citing "economic necessity, or b) send in no-bid contractors to fix the potholes, flanked by Blackwater mercenaries, who would then shoot up a school bus and set a puppy on fire, while the actual repairs would take three times as long, cost over four times what the original estimates suggested, use dummy corporations as third party contractors to embezzle money and then hire some local company at 10% of what they were given to do the job anyway.

Thats how the Feds roll, yo.

I find it really interesting how the voting hype is always in the opposite direction. Most people who get riled up over national politics hardly notice local government, yet local governments are the ones that get things done which are most relevant to our everyday lives. It's not clean execution either. My mother, who is the director of the local library, sits on the city council as one of the department heads. She has told me stories of outrageous embezzlement by the former head of parks and rec that wasn't found out for years, and seriously drained the city's funds in that department. So I totally agree with your sentiments.

I think that people tend to think more along the lines of, "this stuff's more important because it's higher up." And, it's for some weird reason more noticeable. Technically what's going on in your neighborhood should be more noticeable. But maybe that's the whole thing. It's all too close for people to be able to focus on.