Big-picture focus

The Obama White House has a petitions website allowing citizens to post demands, pledging an answer for those getting 25,000 or more signatures within 30 days. It’s an empty gesture allowing the administration to pretend to care what citizens think while continuing to push policies that polling shows the public opposes (see Obamacare).

Sensibly, the public has responded to this phony outreach with phony requests. A petition to build a Stars Wars-style Death Star easily cleared the 25,000-signer threshold. Paul Shawcross, an administration adviser on science and space, actually responded with a memo turning down the Death Star project. Shawcross is paid $162,702 annually.

In the meantime, Obama has yet to provide a serious deficit-reduction plan. That sums up the Obama administration in a nutshell: Paying six-figure salaries to make joke responses to prank requests, but doing nothing to address the country’s serious problems.