The White House is briefly shutting down the "We The People" petition website, but promises that all existing petitions will be reinstated on the new, less costly site:
The White House has said it will be shutting down its website for petitions from midnight on Tuesday until a new one is set up in late January. The "We The People" site was set up by the Obama administration in 2011. It promised a response to all petitions drawing more than 100,000 signatures but the Trump administration has not responded to any since January.
The White House said its new platform would save taxpayers more than $1m (£746,500) a year. The total budget of the White House for 2018 is $55m and its information technology budget for the year is $4.94m.
A White House official told the Associated Press news agency that the administration would "respond to public concerns next year" and that all existing petitions would be reinstated then.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday December 20 2017, @01:23PM (4 children)
No, the Trump admin hasn't taken the petitions seriously. But then, neither did the Obama administration.
The petition site has one purpose, and only one: It gives people a place to vent. Many people feel a need to do something, so they enter their opinion on this site, and then go quietly on their way. They've done something, so they can go back to being good little sheep.
What would be much more interesting would be a site that could force governmental action. Get x-million signatures, and Congress must officially and publicly debate the issue. Get y-million, together with draft legislation, and the legislation must be voted on.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 20 2017, @02:36PM
That would be like how the UK rolls:
https://petition.parliament.uk/help [parliament.uk]
Long list of caveats attached, but you can still get your petition debated by Parliament with only 100k signatures.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday December 20 2017, @03:30PM (1 child)
Seriously naive.
The single purpose is to gather names of troublemaker citizens to be rounded up at some unspecified future date, and to be monitored in the immediate present. The government is taking names.
Trump is making a list and checking it twice.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by captain_nifty on Wednesday December 20 2017, @07:56PM
This was my thought as well.
When it first opened, and it wasn't yet a total farce, I went on to vote and was immediately met with the need to identify myself. This seemed like a really bad idea to me and I went no further. Given the tepid level of responses, (i.e. here's a response from the head of the agency currently screwing you, saying everything is legal and A okay), I've never felt the need to voice my opinion in this useless manner again.
The holocaust should have taught us the inherent problems of really effective data collection, sadly we didn't learn that lesson.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21 2017, @02:23AM
Ummm, yeah. Whatever. I'm sure they would do it, but they would first have to check with their high-rolling campaign donors to find out what their talking points would need to be during the debate.
Cynical? Moi?