Obama's Grass Roots

Grass roots is, of course, a double entendre. I feel certain the Salon writer realized this when he titled the article.

Obama goes back to the grass roots | Salon News

As President Obama walked to the East Room of the White House Thursday morning for what was billed as an 'experimental' online town hall meeting aides passed him a message. The 3.6 million votes cast on the 104 000 questions people had submitted on the government s site had yielded a bit of a surprise The most popular questions in several categories including 'financial stability' and predictably enough 'green jobs' asked not about the economic collapse or about healthcare but about legalizing marijuana. But don t worry the president was told the event s moderator administration economist Jared Bernstein wouldn't be asking any of them.

Democracy in action. The people of the nation are told they get to ask questions and vote for which ones they want the President to address. When the people ask about marijuana legalization, Obama's staff decides he does not have to answer those questions.

But he took a stab at it without being directly asked.

"I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation," Obama said, as Bernstein laughed over in the corner of the room. "And I don't know what this says about the online audience, but I just want -- I don't want people to think that -- this was a fairly popular question; we want to make sure that it was answered. The answer is, no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy."

Of course the people who voted for those questions feel otherwise. And they were the top questions in multiple categories.

I guess if free speech can be vetoed, so can the free market.