Whitehouse.gov petitions: What the people really want


Earlier this month Whitehouse.gov (the official site of the White House) launched “We the People”:

“Welcome to We the People on WhiteHouse.gov. This tool provides you with a new way to petition the Obama Administration to take action on a range of important issues facing our country. If a petition gets enough support, White House staff will review it, ensure it’s sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response.”

Any petition created within the first 30 days, that reaches at least 5,000 signatures, will receive an “official response”. This has incredible potential. It gives the Internet hivemind a way to bring what they actually care about to discussion. Guess what the people want?

  1. 34,223+ “Legalize and Regulate Marijuana in a Manner Similar to Alcohol.
  2. 20,375+ “Abolish the TSA, and use its monstrous budget to fund more sophisticated, less intrusive counter-terrorism intelligence.
  3. 16,930+ “Call an Investigation into Allegations of Prosecutorial & Judicial Misconduct in the Case of Sholom Rubashkin
  4. 12,763+ “Edit the Pledge of Allegiance to remove the phrase “Under God”.
  5. 10,594+ “Allow Industrial Hemp to be Grown in the U.S. Once Again
  6. 10,381+ “Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents
  7. 10,178+ “Legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana.
  8. 9,586+ “Stop Interfering With State Marijuana Legalization Efforts
  9. 8,689+ “End the destructive, wasteful and counterproductive “War on Drugs
  10. 8,537 + “Remove “In God We Trust” from currency.
  11. 8,400+ “Restore democracy by ending corporate personhood.
  12. 7,998+ “Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

I don’t see any hate petitions, or faith petitions, nothing commercially motivated. These are generally issues that I care about and ones that don’t always receive the most coverage. Even if the corporate media shies away from an issue, tools like this bring them back up. If these petitions get the attention they genuinely deserve, then it could be a huge step forward for our country. In reality, our government isn’t ignorant to these things; someone has an agenda that involves marijuana being illegal and the TSA making travel inconvenient and degrading.

We don’t know what the “official response” will look like, but right now these petitions are educating people and creating a valuable sense of urgency.

Sign up, contribute, and spread the word.