White House Won't Investigate SOPA Supporter

[vansau]

White House Won't Investigate SOPA Supporter

Bad news for everyone who signed the petition demanding Chris Dodd be investigated for bribery charges: The White House isn't going to do it.

A couple of weeks ago, MPAA President Chris Dodd rubbed a lot of folks the wrong way when he made some pretty obvious veiled threats about how Hollywood wouldn't donate money to Obama's re-election fund since the president refused to support the Stop Online Piracy Act. As a result, Dodd found himself the subject of a petition that <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.339636-UPDATE-Petition-Demands-White-House-Investigate-SOPA-Supporter>called for the White House to investigate him on bribery charges because of his statements. The petition reached its required 25,000 signatures rather quickly, meaning the Obama Administration would officially read and respond to it. Well, said response has finally come in, and it's going to leave a lot of people disappointed.

Yesterday, an email was sent out to everyone who signed the petition with the following message:

"Thank you for signing this petition. We appreciate your participation in the We the People platform on Whitehouse.gov. However, consistent with the We the People Terms of Participation and our responses to similar petitions in the past, the White House declines to comment on this petition because it requests a specific law enforcement action."

So, for now, Chris Dodd can breathe a little easier (if he was worried at all, that is). However, it sounds like law enforcement groups could be asked to look into the matter, so this whole case may not be over yet.

Thanks to <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/view/Alorxico>Alorxico for the tip!

Permalink

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Investigation is not a specific law enforcement action.

Arrest is.

If you choose to ignore 25,000+ people, then that's a real vote winner for the Republicans - Apart from Dodd pays them to keep quiet as well. Allegedly.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I must say from an outsiders perspective this is a disappointing response to 25,000+ people asking for the government to look into the possibility of bribery.

 

[DiMono]

Investigation is not a specific law enforcement action.

Arrest is.

If you choose to ignore 25,000+ people, then that's a real vote winner for the Republicans - Apart from Dodd pays them to keep quiet as well. Allegedly.

Investigations are law enforcement actions too. Who do you think carries out the investigations?

I'm not surprised by the response - asking someone to do something they've already stated they won't do is generally doomed to a negative response - but I'm not encouraged either. However, as OP says, it appears the road for further progress has been made clear. Now it just needs to be acted upon.

 

[Sandytimeman]

Did anyone really think that the government would uncover a stream of dirty money going into washington? No way will our government ever do that. We are way too corrupted.

 

[Monkeyman O'Brien]

Saw this coming. Of course they are not going to investigate him for bribery. That means he wont be able to bribe them in the future. Not to mention if they did then that may scare away other potential "donators" so Obama would be shooting himself in the wallet right at election time.

 

[Torrasque]

"Hey, if you get 25k people to ask us to do something, we'll do it!"
*less than 12 hours later*
'K, thats 25k and more! You gonna do it now?'
"Nahhhh"
'What the fuck even?'
"Some technical thing, don't worry about it"
'WELL NO.'

 

[IckleMissMayhem]

"Hey, if you get 25k people to ask us to do something, we'll do it!"
*less than 12 hours later*
'K, thats 25k and more! You gonna do it now?'
"Nahhhh"
'What the fuck even?'
"Some technical thing, don't worry about it"
'WELL NO.'

Getting 25k names on a petition only guarantees the petition will be responded to. Not necessarily that the petitionees will get what they want.

As I said in response to (I think?) vansau's original article about the petition, what exactly did you expect this investigation would uncover? That Dodd is saying, quite fairly and bluntly that he, and probably most of the higher-ups in Hollywood will support the political parties that support bills that (supposedly!) safeguard their industry?

Shock horror!

Spoiler: Honesty time, people:

How many of you would donate money to support a politician/political party that you didn't agree with?

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Investigation is not a specific law enforcement action.

Arrest is.

If you choose to ignore 25,000+ people, then that's a real vote winner for the Republicans - Apart from Dodd pays them to keep quiet as well. Allegedly.

Investigations are law enforcement actions too. Who do you think carries out the investigations?

"Too", not "specific".

I'm rather reminded of the UK expenses scandal.

 

[Malignanttoe]

WE THE PEOPLE.... are ultimately powerless in this country.

Who does the president (or the government as a whole for that matter) work for any way? Doesn't seem to be the American people...

 

[Yureina]

Snip

This article is seriously misleading.

I read this white house reply last night, and I picked up on what it meant immediately. It does not mean they aren't going to check it out. Let me make this clear:

"Thank you for signing this petition. We appreciate your participation in the We the People platform on Whitehouse.gov. However, consistent with the We the People Terms of Participation and our responses to similar petitions in the past, the White House declines to comment on this petition because it requests a specific law enforcement action."

"Declines to comment" is not "declines to act"

And to be honest, it makes perfect sense for them to not comment about this. Why? Well, if I were Chris Dodd and actually did do some bribery, and then the White House made a statement that it was going to start investigating me for bribery, i'd probably run the fuck out of the USA and go somewhere that doesn't extradite to the US.

The White House didn't say they are not going to do it. They just said that they are not going to say anything about what they are going to do, which is the smart move considering this is a potential criminal investigation.

Edit: On another note, this article will be a fun example of seeing how many people actually read the article and the White House reply thoroughly to realize what I have, or if people will just see the title and just jump to a conclusion.

Until this title is changed and the article edited, I hope people read this post before they fly into a rage about this.

Investigation is not a specific law enforcement action.

Arrest is.

If you choose to ignore 25,000+ people, then that's a real vote winner for the Republicans - Apart from Dodd pays them to keep quiet as well. Allegedly.

Dodd is a Democrat, not a Republican. In fact, he actually led the DNC from 1995 to 1997 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_National_Committee#DNC_National_Chairpersons], so this guy is a pretty high-profile Democrat. He was also a senator for 30 years.

Just figured i'd point that out. In regards to the topic, please see my above post. This article is still as misleading as it was when I made that post.

 

[DiMono]

Investigation is not a specific law enforcement action.

Arrest is.

If you choose to ignore 25,000+ people, then that's a real vote winner for the Republicans - Apart from Dodd pays them to keep quiet as well. Allegedly.

Investigations are law enforcement actions too. Who do you think carries out the investigations?

"Too", not "specific".

I'm rather reminded of the UK expenses scandal.

"Investigate this guy." How is that not specific?

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

If they investigate one guy on suspicion of corruption, then it would set the precedent that all politicians would have to be. And they don't want the apple cart to be upset.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Oh please. Like they would have bothered even if they had hard evidence on the guy.
Investigating for bribery on the whim of the people would only cascade into more demands for investigations on other scumbags.

They know that they'd be tying their own noose.
You don't need more than one noose to hang the whole town if you just do it one at a time.
And DC is a very dirty town.

 

[McMullen]

I'm reminded of that cracked article about these petitions.

There never was much of a chance that this would do anything, as Dodd's claim was within the bounds of the law. As I understand it, it's legal for anyone to make campaign contributions, or say they won't make campaign contributions.

Unfortunately, there is nothing to prevent contributions from powerful special interests from overwhelming those of the public. That is the real misfortune here, and the sad fact is that in 2010 (I think) there was a law passed that removed the limits on what special interests could donate. Or maybe it was a Supreme Court decision. Anyway, yeah, my point is that the laws are very far from fair or pro-democracy, and as of last year were still getting farther. Petitions won't change anything.

You want change, you gotta vote. No more of this 10-20% crap. All y'all get out there this fall and vote, because neither your money nor your voice are going to be heard over the special interests, but votes still count, for a couple more years anyway. If you want to save what little representation you have, vote, and vote wisely. Enough of this nihilism crap.

 

[Mortuorum]

Dodd is on record as investigating entering politics once again. Sadly, my state (Connecticut) is apparently populated with idiots and he actually has a chance. We're the same state that has repeatedly re-elected perennial asshat Joe Lieberman for the last 22 years.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

...Fuck the system, sometimes it just doesn't work. Angry comments aside, I guess I have more of an incentive to vote now...

TO quote one Yahtzee Crowshaw, "THERE IS NO MIDDLE FINGER BIG ENOUGH!"

 

[boonryan]

read more carefully, it doesn't say an investigation won't happen, it says the white house refuses to comment

 

[michael87cn]

Oi gevalte , it all boils down to money. Our leader is in place because of money, when that money is threatened ... morals, ethics, responsibilities to the people vanish in an effort to prolong his stay of leadership.

Such a sad system we have, and a sad world we live in that money is all we exist for. It controls everything about us, and those that have it, rule us all.