Because we're all about solutions, Kevin Zeese has written "the 99%'s Deficit Proposal," presumably to guide the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction during its death throes. The 99% proposal is a whopper -- it would tax financial speculation, it would the rich at a higher (though, frustratingly, unstated) rate, it would tax capital gains income as income, it would tax offshore profits as domestic profits, it would cut military spending, it would allow Medicare to negotiate its own damn drug prices, it would write down underwater mortgages to their current value, it would extend Medicare to all Americans, and it would lift the payroll tax cap for Social Security, among other things. What on Earth is wrong with any of that? I mean, of course, besides the fact that none of it allows bankster CEOs to gild their plumbing. Occupy Washington, D.C. helps you support the 99%'s proposal.
Meanwhile, the government of Syria continues to oppress its population, having killed over 3,500 good Syrians since March, when (perhaps not coincidentally) anti-government protests began. And it's about to get much worse, as four Western technology corporations are helping the government of Syria find internet users. That's right, kids -- you upload a video of Syrian thugs beating up your fellows, and then they find you, knock on your door, and kill you. This is worse, even, than the internet kill switch the Mubarak regime employed (and which Joe Lieberman hopes to bring to America). I understand how tyrants and thugs sleep at night -- they all imagine they're the oppressed, and their people are their oppressors. But how do technology executives sleep at night, knowing they're aiding and abetting murder? Anyway, since we're all about helping people be their best selves, change.org helps you demand that Western technology corporations stop helping Syria kill its people. Because there is-so such a thing as bad PR.
Finally, closer to home, the Delaware River Basin Commission has cancelled today's meeting, during which they would have voted on their plan to let corporations frack in the Delaware River Basin, from which 15 million good Americans get their drinking water. That's no doubt due to public pressure from good folks like you -- over 40,000 of you who wrote or called the Commission, the President, and the Governors of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. So congratulate yourselves, and then you may tell the EPA to issue strong regulations that would limit air pollution from oil/gas drilling. And, if you live in Pennsylvania, you may tell your state legislators to oppose the bad gas drilling "reform" bills, HB 1950 and SB 1100, which permit counties to set very low impact fees but don't permit counties to enact strong environmental safeguards against gas drilling. That's not only hypocritical, it's not even conservative.
Comments