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White House Pulls Down TSA Petition
Jeremiah Cornelius writes with a note that on Thursday of this week "The Electronic Privacy Information Center posted a brief and detailed notice about the removal of a petition regarding security screenings by the TSA at US airports and other locations. 'At approximately 11:30 am EDT, the White House removed a petition about the TSA airport screening procedures from the White House 'We the People' website. About 22,500 of the 25,000 signatures necessary for a response from the Administration were obtained when the White House unexpectedly cut short the time period for the petition. The site also went down for 'maintenance' following an article in Wired that sought support for the campaign."
So much for open government and responsiveness. Yes, but only if we ask for what they want to give us.
Given that online petitions are notoriously ineffective, I wonder why they'd bother. Let the thing get to 25,000, and issue a generic, mostly content-free response about balancing safety and the War on Terror with civil liberties and whatever. I doubt it'd be particularly politically damaging either way, since this is one issue where the Obama administration is more or less in line with the GOP opposition, which created the TSA in the first place, and whose law-and-order branch still strongly supports it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
They were going to give a non-answer answer anyway. This is just an attempt to avoid any coverage of the issue.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
The reddit crowd already went over this one in detail... it wasn't pulled down...the petitions have a limited amount of time, and there was a standard maintenance window near the time this particular petition ended. So no big conspiracy...just normal network maintenance...
TFS and TFA state that the "White House unexpectedly cut short the time period for the petition", and indeed, the petition's page now says "The petition you are trying to access has expired, because it failed to meet the signature threshold."
It would be nice if EPIC provided information on (i) how long a petition normally gets before it expires, and (ii) how old this petition was when it was abruptly terminated. We know that it had garnered 22500 out of the 25000 signatures required, but how much time was taken away by the early termination of the petition?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
We need a petition for the petition!
That petition will get pulled early too. Look it's doesn't matter how many petitions you stand up. Basically the folks that have the authority and power to control the people, will. Common folk are only here to support the rich and powerful by way of their taxes. Nothing else matters. You're either part of the good-old-boy network, or you're nobody. It's always been this way; for every country; for every regime; for every global power, since time began.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/court_orders_ts.html Nothing to see here.
We need a petition for the petition!
That petition will get pulled early too. Look it's doesn't matter how many petitions you stand up. Basically the folks that have the authority and power to control the people, will. Common folk are only here to support the rich and powerful by way of their taxes. Nothing else matters. You're either part of the good-old-boy network, or you're nobody. It's always been this way; for every country; for every regime; for every global power, since time began.
Yes and every once in a while a revolution comes along that burns the old ways and chops heads or worse.
Has the "We The People" website had one iota of influence on ANY issue?
I suspect the whole purpose was to get some good touchy-feely-see-I-care press for launching the site, not to actually do anything substantive but pat people on the head and continue to do whatever the hell they want anyway.
Yes and every once in a while a revolution comes along that burns the old ways and chops heads or worse.
But somehow fails to effect any change at all.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Incidentally, the top tax bracket in that period was 80-90%. The rich could still live like kings, but they didn't have billions (or the contemporary equivalent) to buy politicians.
Income disparity is a self-reinforcing problem. If you let the rich have too much of the pie, that gives them the power to take even more.
It would certainly effect change for Obama. For the country as a whole? Not so much. In fact, none at all. The track that the US - and much of the Western world - is currently on, will continue. There is so much momentum because of a mind-set. The mind-set of the corporate world. The mind set of the children brought up in a land of plenty, who have never experienced real war, or real hardship, or real famine. The mind set of corruption and lobbying. The mind-set of being fascinated with destruction and war machines and technology. You can vote out every single politician and nothing will change at all, because the politicans are merely a reflection of the society as a whole. They are the symptom, not the disease.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So I have a choice of allowing someone to fuck me over and try their best to enslave me while pretending to let me have a say in the matter, or creating an environment where they leave, take their money and jobs, but leave behind the capital and resources that the remaining citizens can attempt to use to actually achieve success? I say let them go. There are piles of people with skill and drive that can still succeed and bring up many with them that currently have to wade through a stacked deck.
I dont think that the jobs are only here because the rich that are skimming the economy into ruin are just being polite as long as we let them get away with anything they feel like doing.
If the Obidiot were to be thrown out of office come the November election, it would effect some change.
True, but if he was replaced by Rmoney, it would be change for the worse.
If all 435 sitting idiots in the House of representatives were thrown out come the November election, it would effect some change. If all 33 idiot senators in the Senate up for reelection were thrown out come the November election, it would effect some change.
True, but if they were replaced by others from the usual crowd of suspects, it would not be significant change. And part of the problem is that while a lot of people (including me) think that Congress is idiots, those same people (including me) often think their own particular Rep is an exception.
Repeat until the elected idiots finally realize that their employ is to serve the interests of the people (those who vote them into office) rather than the corporate elites.
This will only work if we can keep the corporate elites' money out of politics. Limiting who can put money in (e.g. only persons qualified to vote) would help, as would limiting the amount they can put in (e.g. a max of $5000 per person per election for all aggregated electoral/issues advertising contributions), but there are those "corporations have rights" and "money is speech" things to overcome.
"If you take too much from the rich, they will leave, and they'll take their jobs with them."
Then good riddance. They can frisking leave. Hope they enjoy paying for a private army in south america or where ever they move to. Because if what you say is true they wont be going to Europe where the rich are taxed heavily.
and honestly we don't need their jobs. Eliminate the rich and their "jobs" and the economy will recover faster. because small business men will jump in to fill the void. treating the employees better, creating a far superior product, and overall doing a far better job at it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance.
In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
-- Harry Lime
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
A remote-control flying taxidermied cat
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
... and what did that produce?
500 years of democracy and peace.
I see that some people agree with your unsupported assertions - why else would your comment be modded up?
You seem to be confused about the concept of marginal tax rates. Nobody is claiming that people paid 90% of their total income in taxes. There were more deductions at that time, however, people certainly didn't pay less taxes then than they do today. In 1960, the top marginal rate was 91%, and the rich did indeed pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes
Income inequality was also much less at that time.
You appear to have a reading comprehension fail. The claim was that the lower incomes of the rich led to their having less influence over politics because they had less to spend on it.
Ah, yes, the Gilded Age. A time of robber barons, union busting, company stores, and political corruption. There was certainly high growth during this period due to industrialization, but a period of personal liberty? What are you smoking? Assuming you weren't black, a woman, or a native American, and assuming you approved of child labor and sweat shops, you basically had the "liberty" to exploit your fellow man during this period - if you had the money, resources, or political power to do so. It was certainly closer to the libertarian paradise in that the government did little to protect the common man from exploitation, but these liberties tend to be quite one sided, and to the benefit of those with power.
You've got it all wrong. People are actually inherently good, and their altruistic motives are mostly hardwired.
And just what proof of this do you present? Because I present, for my case of man being inherently flawed and evil unless taught not to be and enforced with laws and social codes, the entire history of the human race. You're essentially using Rousseau's "noble savage" argument, that man, until corrupted by civilization, is inherently good. But it fell out of favor because common sense triumphed, and we re-discovered that, shockingly, savages tend to be... savage.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I'm afraid I just found out that the whole point of the people's power, which allegedly started with the French Revolution, was to fool us, the people, in thinking that finally we would be in control.
While on the other hand it was just a puppet revolution setup by the banks to get rid of their bad-debt risks with lending huge sums of warfare money to kings and queens where the inheritor of the same would deny responsibility for paying back those debts. With governments you don't have this problem because then it's the whole country which is liable for the debt, and countries don't change that often.
So the whole french revolution was nothing more than a good PR, suckering 'the people' in taking over responsibility of their countries' loans.
While keeping those in control who already were...
(I think the current 'debt crisis' proves my point.)
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
What we need most is a way to fire our delegates.
Local politicians subject to recall tend to behave better while in office.
If we're really their bosses, why shouldn't we be able to hand them a pink slip?