Harrass an Official Today!
Online petitions are not useful. Since only actual signatures can be counted for use in legislation, they have the effect of making people feel like they've actually done something, while they're in fact wasting their efforts.So if you signed the petition below, take two minutes and write to the appropriate authority, be it the White House (via Dick "Go £µ©λ yourself" Cheney, the Office of the Prime Minister, or whoever. These people can in fact change things.
Maybe then they can persuade Israel to "stop this shit", to quote a certain authority.
Better yet, e-mail Ehud Olmert himself right here!
I just did.
posted by Metro @ 7:42 am
5 Comments:
I am feeling silly now forwarding the online petition to all my friends! Anyway, it gave me a good feeling of doing something useful. :))
Ahmad:
Please don't think I was criticizing. At the very least you now know that over thirty thousand other human beings agree with you. That's a lot of people, even out here on the net.
Maybe it's enough to get something done.
Hang in there!
Thanks. How kind. How well I recall the one about gay marriage...
Actual signatures of non-lawmakers do not count at all in legislation, any more than online signatures do. Or any less.
The Snopes piece you linked to misses presupposes that A) the petition is badly worded B) that it will never be sent to anyone who can make a difference and C) that people believe that signing petitions makes lawmakers legally obligated to take some course of action. All of these assumptions are, in this case, false.
The media has already gotten ahold of this petition and as in the case of Emerson they are using it to show how the "man on the street" feels, vs the men in power. That's not an insignificant gain.
Fair enough. Perhaps I was mistaken. I sincerely hope so.
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