I like the idea behind the Whitehouse petitions site, but am amused/disappointed how terrible most of the current suggestions are. My impression is that the average voter is not that good at critical thinking and pretty badly-informed (although my recent experiences voting lead me to good conversations with people in my voting district whose only immediately visible bad mental-judgement is that they're religious; they spoke foreign languages and knew history and all). Maybe the take-home lesson is that the quality of people on these topics is highly variable.
Top 10 suggestions at this point:
- Mandatory labelling of GMO foods - Shrug
- Outlaw mockery of Yeshua/Mohammad/Musa and other religious figures - Ugh, no
- Remove monuments in the US made of "comfort Women" - Based on some kind of historical revisionism? Foreign astroturfing? No
- Require free access to journal articles for publicly funded research - Sure.
- Let Texas peacefully leave the Union - No. Bad idea, and worse reasons. Based on bad economics too. This is part of a big series of these.
- Support Japan in some island territorial dispute - More foreign astroturfing? Not our job to do politics over this.
- Ban regulation on expensive cigars - Haha. Based on bad science and a folksy story. No
- Support some extra investigation of Polish crash - Conspiracy nuts. No
- Another bit of historical revisionism on comfort women on behalf of pro-japan folk.
- US should take care of Chagossians (?) - Based on claims of an actual historical injustice that I've never heard of. Need to learn more about this.
