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The White House Is Temporarily Shutting Down Its Petition Website (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: We The People, the petition section of the White House's website, is shutting down for a promised January relaunch. First launched in 2011 under then-President Obama, We The People pledged to provide a White House response to any petition which garnered 100,000 or more signatures within 30 days. The 200+ petitions that have received an official response have largely been unremarkable, leading to revelations like the White House's official beer recipe or condemnations (in word only) of groups like the Westboro Baptist Church. In short, the site has functioned as a PR tool for fostering good will -- one that the Trump administration has reportedly considered killing since April and now appears to be sluggishly getting around to putting in the ground.
"To improve this site's performance, the platform is currently down for maintenance and will return in late January," the site now reads. "All existing petitions and associated signatures have been preserved and will be available when the site is relaunched. Following the site's relaunch, petitions that have reached the required number of signatures will begin receiving responses." Further reading: The New York Times
"To improve this site's performance, the platform is currently down for maintenance and will return in late January," the site now reads. "All existing petitions and associated signatures have been preserved and will be available when the site is relaunched. Following the site's relaunch, petitions that have reached the required number of signatures will begin receiving responses." Further reading: The New York Times
Considering that the Trump administration has responded to exactly zero petitions (the Obama admin at least responded to petitions even if the responses were sometimes dismissive), and given everything else this administration has done, I'm not sure how likely it should be that the system will be back when they say it will.
Obama never once took one of these things seriously, and whenever they got enough "signatures" for a guaranteed response, it was some boilerplate slap in the face.
But that was never brought up during his campaign because Slashdot was not purchased to push Obama-bashing propaganda.
What about all the money being put on the US credit card? That will eventually have to be paid back.
Before assuming you'll be screwed over by the tax plan, I suggest using the nytimes' calculator to see what your tax changes will be. As it stands, virtually no poor or middle class citizens will see a tax increase. https://www.nytimes.com/intera... (I myself will see a few thousand dollar decrease in taxes)
As has been very widely reported the tax bill is front loaded with expiring sweeteners for the Middle Class that expire after some years, while the tax cuts for corporations and the rich do not ever expire.
This is more than a bit like "introductory interest rates" on loans or credit cards that jump up after a period of time.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
The last thing Trump or his administration wants is transparency or actually having to interface in any meaningful way with the peasantry, er, I mean average citizens. At most I'd expect if it came back in a different form, they'd insist on 'approving' any petitions before actually being posted for people to sign (read as: censorship). Either way this is just another typical dick move from Trump, wanting to erase anything that Obama had anything to do with.
It's just going to be a page with a poorly-rendered ASCII art of an extended middle finger, under which will be text encouraging you to scream your complaints directly at the finger. A future version will feature an upgrade, adding a "record" button, allowing you to record your petition in your own words. After doing so, when you let go of the button, (or stop holding your cursor on it,) a javascript popup will proclaim that your petition has been received.
But it won't be. The button won't actually DO anything but convince people something's being done.
Actually, this is very similar to how the old petition functionality worked, but with greater transparency regarding the office's feelings about public opinion. The new website will be "www.gofuckyourself.gov"
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
So it's better to pretend it matters when it really doesn't, than to indicate directly it doesn't matter...
Ask me how I know you're a liberal, and incidentally should not trust anything you say.
Case in point, Musk, who clearly kept his cash by funding Tesla, and SpaceX, and Boring Company, and whatever other businesses he's funded/invested in/etc... those nasty rich people like Musk sure do like to hoard their money, creating all those nasty jobs and everything... we wouldn't want more of that, no sirree.
Also, it's an Obama initiative, of course Trump is going to kill it. If Obama had set up a facility that cured cancer, Trump would shut it down just because it came from Obama.
Trump has spent almost $100 million in 11 months just to go golfing at his own golf courses. Don't pretend you care about what things cost when your party is passing a law that will add $1.7trillion to the debt.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Even Trump's claim is that it's just "more than $1m". One single million. For comparison, that's the low estimate for the cost of security for Melania Trump staying in New York City for a single week, or three days if it's the President himself visiting the Big Apple. It's also well under the cost for a single trip for the President to go golfing as his own Mar-a-Lago resort.
Somehow, I don't think cost was the driving factor in this decision.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
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