You may have noticed that the House Republicans have actively tried to defund and defang the nascent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation passed last year. Probably the House Republicans don't like Mr. Obama's appointment of Elizabeth Warren to get the agency started, since Ms. Warren stands a chance of actually getting things done. Probably, also, the House Republicans don't like any sort of legislation that might prevent their corporate paymasters from making more money. Either way, they're awfully tone-deaf. If any House Republicans are reading, I'll explain it in simple terms: people hate the banks. Because they destroyed the economy. And when I say "people" I mean "including many, if not most, Tea Partiers." USPIRG helps you demand that your Reps reject any effort to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Meanwhile, Mr. Obama once said he wouldn't push Bush Mobb-negotiated "free" trade agreements with Korea, Colombia, and Panama unless significant changes were made to each, but now he says he will. Sigh. For those of you keeping score at home, the Korea deal would subvert American laws so that South Korean corporations can benefit, Colombia murders more union workers than any other country on Earth, and Panama helps corporations and rich folk hide their tax money so our government can't get to it. Got all that? It gets worse: Mr. Obama is negotiating another trade agreement with nine Pacific nations, including Vietnam and Malaysia, and I don't think that's going to be any good, either. Oh, look, yet another area where liberals and Tea Partiers agree! Public Citizen helps you demand that your Reps stand against these "deals."
Finally, the first anniversary of the spillageddon in the Gulf just passed, gas has been shooting up to $4 a gallon or more, and oil companies announced that they made tens of billions of dollars in profits in the first quarter of 2011 -- and now some Republican Reps have been making noises about maybe cutting oil subsidies. I say "maybe" because hopeful liberal organizations have, I think, been overstating Republican opposition to oil subsidies -- the phrase Republicans use isn't "we should end oil subsidies," but "ending oil subsidies is on the table," which sounds like a clever way of saying they can blame someone else when it doesn't get done. But it doesn't matter what they want! It matters what we want! Both CREDO and Public Citizen help you tell your Congressfolk to end big oil subsidies already.