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The White House Responds To We the People Petition
First time accepted submitter Nysul writes "The White House, aiming to gather the opinion (or marketing data) of the internet nation, asked for our thoughts by creating the We the People site and now it has responded to some of the more popular petitions, such as marijuana reform and separation of church and state. You probably won't be surprised at the answers."
...I read their claim that marijuana is addictive. You can lie to my face all you want, but don't expect me to vote for you.
The translation for most of these is really simple: The obvious political calculations don't support the petitions. The vast majority of people who support the decriminalization of pot are people who would vote for Obama anyways. (There might be some libertarians in the Tea Party but even bringing up legalization at their rallies had lead to booing. See e.g. http://ricochet.com/main-feed/Pot-Legalization-Brings-Boos-at-Tea-Party-Rally.). The only one that's even more blatant than that is the petition answer about removing "under God" from the pledge of allegiance. The people who care about that definitely aren't going to vote for anyone other than Obama (well, if Huntsman won the Republican primary then maybe, but right now he's polling at 2% among registered Republicans...). That petition response is even more noteworthy for having a nice mix of trying to claim that non-believers make up an important part of the US even as Obama endorses the claim that God is important to nation. The worst part of all this is that his political calculation is correct: Next election I'm probably going to be voting for him. Because the other option will be a lot worse.
a petition to take petitions seriously:
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl
I found a petition to stop software patents, but was unsuccessful in finding one that demanded a drastic reduction in copyright term in order to create a strong public domain for e.g. sound recordings.
Since I'm not a US citizen it wouldn't be right for me to create one, but it makes one wonder: did no one think about this, or have they been removed?
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
I use it medically and I have to choose to take it every day. There is no compulsion to take it, it isn't addictive at all. My town is rather isolated physically so we have several rehab centers here and I meet patients regularly. I have never heard of anyone needing treatment to stop smoking pot. I have met people that stopped and none of them needed treatment or had any trouble stopping. The withdrawal from pot is the 'munchies' that you get when it's wearing off. That is easily treated with cookie therapy.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Gitmo is open because the Republicans made it impossible to transfer the detainees out. Obama isn't a dictator. He can't just make things happen by declaration.
Obama did weaken the Patriot Act, though not as much as many would like.
Wars are multiplying? The one in Iraq is ending, the one in Libya didn't require any American troops in harm's way. How exactly is that multiplication? At worst it's staying flat, and if you're honest, you'll admit that our military commitments have been reduced since he took office.
The economy is way better than it was when he took office, you just suffer from a very short memory (along with most Americans). Here's a reminder: when Obama took office, we were hemorrhaging around half a million jobs a month. Now the number of jobs is rising each month, albeit slowly.
And that's it? That's all you got for him failing "on so many bold promises already"?
What about the promised and delivered credit card reform that prevents "universal defaults", short notice due date changes, and several other abuses?
The promised and delivered closing of the Medicare doughnut hole?
The end to "pre-existing conditions"?
The new START treaty?
Ending Don't Ask Don't Tell?
The expansion of AmeriCorps?
The surge in Afghanistan?
Finally completing the CAT-5 levies in NOLA?
Passing the promised Ledbetter Act?
Allowing stem cell research to continue?
Letting Cuban Americans visit their family in Cuba?
Killing Osama freakin' bin Laden?
Look, if you don't like him, fine. If you don't agree with his policies, fine. But don't lie about what he's accomplished. For those of us who actually listened to him campaign instead of simply imagining what he might do, he's been an outstanding success, even in the face of opposition that goes well beyond what any president should have to deal with.
How about legalizing it so we can stop spending billions of dollars on cannabis enforcement, generate millions (possibly billions) in taxes on its sales, and at the same time cut off American gangs and Central and South American drug cartels at the knees by taking away control of one of their biggest products?
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
He gets no credit for winding down Iraq. He and his administration in fact lobbied hard to keep the troops there longer, but the Iraqi govt forced the US to honor the Bush deal/promise for an end of 2011 deadline.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/u-s-troop-withdrawal-motivated-by-iraqi-insistence-not-u-s-choice-20111021?print=true
It's not really about the medical issues, it's about freedom and choice. Society has had to learn to live with the costs of tobacco and alcohol - which are higher - because people get really tetchy if you make those against the law; they start breaking that law right and left and giving money to murderous gangsters. (Yes it happened with tobacco, too - when Canada jacked up the taxes until it was worth breaking the law to smuggle smokes in from the states. In no time, there was gunplay between those doing the smuggling over stealing each other's loads, and the usual turf rights. We had to ratchet down the taxes again.)
It's not about "wanting to get high" - people who don't touch the stuff support legalization. Some, from a more abstract reverence for individual freedom. Others, because of the high costs: It's about 20 million arrests. It's about $16 billion per year. (That's at all three gov't levels). It's enough to pay for 25,000 of those "lavish" teacher retirement funds. Every year.
The waste of $16B may sound small these days as the USA tosses hundreds of billions at banks and more at defense expenditures. But it works out to $150/household/year in the US - and since only half pay taxes, it costs $300 per tax-paying household. To put people in jail that, if they grew and sold tobacco, would be called "upstanding taxpaying citizens". Still think that's "nonsense"?
Your logic, as is current drug policy, is foolishness. Your contention is this substance is harmful, therefore it should be illegal. Your contention is people should be arrested, processed through our courts, and jailed and/or imprisoned. Over a plant. What makes this foolish, is your assumption that making something illegal makes it unavailable. In fact, the opposite is true. The only thing prohibition policy does is creates a black market. That's it. Black market profiteers don't fear getting their 7-11 shut down, so they have no incentive to follow the prohibition law. You can only control availability when it is legal, but regulated. Like tobacco. Prohibition, making something illegal, merely determines who profits from the substance.
But what's worse, is your ignorance behind the statement this issue is not worthy of the President's time. Make no mistake, drug prohibition is one of the most significant social justice issues of our generation. Over 50,000 Mexican citizens have been murdered in the last 5 years. We only lost 3,000 on 9/11 in America. Over 750,000 Americans are arrested every year for possession of a plant. Over $1 Trillion dollars has been wasted over the last 40 years on the failed war on drugs, which is really a war on its own citizens.
Just because a substance is not healthy, does not mean it should be criminalized. In fact, as we learned in the 20's, the consequences of prohibition are far more disastrous.
Bottom line, the CSA (Controlled Substances Act), or at least the criminalizing prohibition pieces, must be repealed, just as the 18th Amendment was repealed.
“Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes.”
— Abraham Lincoln
People who willingly break the law are the problem. Especially when they do it for petty selfish reasons.
People who blindly accept that legal/illegal and right/wrong are isometric, that there is no unjust law, and that the argument is settled because the government said so are a far larger problem. Especially when they do it for petty, selfish reasons.
Ignoring some of the more blatant forms of stupid in that response, I'll just point out that while it's possible to traffic in bootleg cigarettes, enough people find it easier to just pay taxes on the legal version that they generate in excess of 16 billion dollars in tax revenue per year. Source: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=403
If you hit even a small fraction of that, it would still be a pretty significant amount of revenue for cash-strapped state governments.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie