Doug gives an excellent account of such petitions. (I'm presuming it was an
internet petition).

But a petition on which each signature represents a five-minute to one-hour
conversation between the circulator and the signer is something else again.
Such petitions can be powerful _even_ when they are never submitted. But
that is a long topic I can't develop here.

Carrol

P.S. Mirabeau (I don't know whether father or son) once said: When ten men
get together 10,000 tremble." Quoted from memory and I don't know the
context.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:pen-l-
> [email protected]] On Behalf Of Doug Henwood
> Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2013 8:57 PM
> To: Progressive Economics
> Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Mark Weisbrot: Why Paul Krugman should be President
> Obama's pick for US treasury secretary
> 
> 
> On Jan 6, 2013, at 2:58 PM, Robert Naiman <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> 
> > "Inside game"? I just initiated a petition signed by 100,000 people.
> > When was the last time you did that?
> 
> Congrats. You've caused 100,000 people to waste about 30 seconds of their
> time. Add that up, and I think you've got a month of wasted human hours.
> 
> What is the point of these things? They convince no one. They make not the
> least bit of impression on political discourse. They trick naifs into
thinking
> they're doing something useful with their life. There's no way Obama would
> consider Krugman for even a nanosecond. Politics aside, Obama's a guy
> who's got to sell a shitload of bonds every business day. What do you
think
> Krugman would do for the sales effort?
> 
> Doug
> _______________________________________________
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> https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l


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