If you missed previous alerts telling Clear Channel to take down its "voter fraud is a felony" billboards popping up only in communities of color in Ohio and Wisconsin, then Sum of Us helps you do that. Clear Channel has responded to the controversy more or less as you'd expect -- by implying they're not responsible for a billboard's content. Liars! They wouldn't have been "responsible" for billboards comparing WalMart to Godzilla in 2005, or billboards telling Rep. Gerlach (R-PA) to return Tom DeLay money in 2006, either, but they wouldn't run those. And they ran Heartland Institute billboards comparing climate change "believers" to the Unabomber and Charles Manson, and wouldn't run billboards satirizing them. I say we -- as consumers, as citizens, as Americans -- can shame Clear Channel into taking down harmful billboards, and that includes the voter fraud billboards, since they're not up in white neighborhoods who vote Republican.
Meanwhile, CREDO still helps you demand that Pennsylvania state legislators pass a moratorium on fracking. Think they will? Republicans dominate both houses of the legislature and the Senate has no filibuster, but they sure took their time passing that nefarious fracking bill earlier this year, and one of their number successfully snuck a moratorium on gas drilling in Montgomery and Bucks counties back in June, so it's fairly obvious they know fracking will destroy our drinking water, even if they haven't seen the brackish stuff that catches on fire, turns gelatinous if left out in the kitchen too long, and packs a carcinogenic punch. The problem is, as always, getting the politicians, no matter their stripe, to act on it. But the more public pressure we bring, the harder we'll be to ignore. That's true even though Pennsylvania inspects less than 1 in 10 fracking wells, thanks to the state's WE'RE BROKE!!!!! budget cuts.
UPDATE. Clear Channel takes down "voter fraud" billboards. Clear Channel says "it decided the billboards violate its policy against anonymous political ads," but you don't have to believe that: believe that all the bad PR compelled them to act. You'd think they'd learn by now.
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