Speakeasy forum: They're taking their ball and going home

and how should the government react? Do stores change their policies when customers stop liking their products and services?

All the article says is that citizens from 21 states have expressed a desire to secede. So you're right in asking how many. It could be just 21 people. To me, it's sounds like a slow news day story. IOW, there's no story at all. My question would be, should there be a significant number of people unhappy with the choice of the president, what should the elected do about it? Perhaps they just shouldn't worry about them?...unless their numbers are greater than 47%?

more readily than they'll draw one up. I'll sign a petition to get something on the ballot even if I'm not in favor of what the intended outcome is. We've a right to have our voices heard, aren't we?...and we let others have theirs, don't we? We shouldn't be suppressing people just because they have opinions we don't share.

No, I wouldn't say that signing a petition infers support for its objective. There can be issues that, IMO, just need to be brought out into the open so they can be discussed and put to rest one way or the other. I have signed petitions that I know I'd not vote in favor of just for that reason. Does that make sense to you? Why should important issues lay around waiting for politicians to kick them around and decide whether the time is politically right when their constituents are clamoring for decisions? That's one reason citizens can draw up petitions and get them on the ballot. We can override our political leaders if enough of us care to. As to being "unfriended", that's some social media term. I don't participate in those unless you consider SE as being a social network. In that case, just about everyone here gets unfriended almost daily.

I'm referring to petitions that allow something to be voted upon. Citizens can petition the government to get something on the ballot. Signing a petition may or may not mean support for the measure being proposed. Signing a petition expresses one's willingness to see it on the ballot. It's not a "contract" to vote in favor of it. Bye now.

No matter what the 'cause' might be, if the petition is specifically geared to get something on a ballot, and it happens to be the only type of petition being circulated, most people will sign it whether they are for or against that cause just to get it on the ballot so they can vote for or against.

is usually the one that goes around here......>>The other petition type...the real one...is the ballot petition. You will often see these after some law has been passed which is unpopular with a group of citizens. They will go door to door collecting signatures in an effort to place the issue on the ballot so the voters can decide directly. The same can be done preemptively if some issue is going before local government officials but some group wants the voters to decide directly. They, by law, can petition for direct vote in a lot of cases. >>>

Occasionally, depending upon how it's worded, it will be passed around by some group that wants something to get on the ballot. Whether you agree with what their cause is or not, it's the only petition going around and if the end result is that, with enough signatures on the petition, it gets onto the ballot, then I'm okay with signing it because I will have a vote either way once I'm in the booth.

I agree that I prefer the direct vote rather than having a board of supervisors deciding issues for me and others that I don't agree with. Unfortunately, most decision making is done by 5 people 'for the good of all' and unless you go to the board meetings on a regular basis, you never find out until it's too late and already passed into local law what they had planned to do.......and even if you do find out ahead of time, the board also has the ability to not allow it to get to a ballot citizen vote.

The other petition type...the real one...is the ballot petition.

I guess the petition IN THIS THREAD is NOT THE REAL ONE then?

I've been talking about the petition to secede and you've been talking about a petition to put something on the ballot.

Strange that you haven't mentioned "Initiative/Ballot Petition" until now.

I think you're pedaling your bicycle backwards.

Should someone tell those with the Petition to Secede...it's not a real petition?

Did I say that?

Let me ask you this. Let's say there was some controversial matter in your part of the world that needed a decision. Lets say that you were not in favor of a proposed plan but there was a movement to put it to a vote. Would you do whatever you could to block the process of letting the people decide by voting? Do we make decisions based just one what we want for our self and to heck with what anyone else wants? I'd say that thinking is rather selfish but there's certainly a lot of that going around.

There IS a difference between "blocking" and "helping"

Let ME ask YOU this.

Why would you encourage/help them by signing THEIR petition?

Do we make decisions based just on what we want for our self and to heck with what anyone else wants?

That's the way it would look if you voted against what another person wanted.

I'm voting against what you want because it's better for you...Don't bother thanking me.

AND it is different "up here" we don't cut our own throats. by signing petitions for something we don't believe in.

"It means they're sore losers and they are behaving like children."

A typical Canadian outlook, not surprising considering their history, but one that most Americans wouldn't agree with when they considered our history, founding fathers, the Declaration of Independence, and resulting new nation.

I can understand why the majority of states might like to carve off the original 13 colonies and let them go their own way, since that's a lot of people in a small space thinking they know better what should be done in all the rest of the large space of this country, more than those who actually live there. It would free up the oil states, the coal states, the mining states, and some states that have such a large amount of their area as federal lands would gain that for their own purposes. In a way the other states have been too controlled by the eastern states, and not necessarily to their choices or resources.

They left merry old England and headed west.

that was their intent

my state is one of them.

Obviously, people are getting dumber all the time.

the fact that inherited conditions are often treatable now and more carrying them have offspring I think accounts for some if not a large part of the increases in some diseases and conditions.

Does that mean we shouldn't save someone having an severe allergic reaction to peanuts? of course not? should we sterlize? again of course not.

The nut allergy was just the first common one that popped into mind. Many congential defects now are treatable if no completely correctable so the genes gets passed on. Since these conditions occur in families sometimes with no previous history, there must be a combination of probably recessive genes involved so the ones displaying the illness are not the only carriers.

Are we physically weaking the human race with better medical care? There is the opposite, very real benefit. As the article mentioned, a few hundred years ago there would be no Stephen Hawkings.

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