The reactionary U.S. Chamber of Commerce has endorsed the Trans-Pacific "Partnership," as the National Association of Manufacturers did earlier this week -- yet Sen. McConnell says he still thinks it's unlikely Congress will bring this notorious "free" trade deal up before Election Day. Whom to believe? It doesn't matter, because our will and our duty is the same, so both CREDO and Friends of the Earth help you tell your Congressfolk to reject the Trans-Pacific "Partnership." Why? Because it will ship more of our jobs overseas and allow corporations to nullify more of our laws than even previous "free" trade agreements have done -- why, the WTO essentially nullified our country-of-origin meat labeling laws earlier this year. Why else? Because even its defenders can't defend it -- they suggest that you're against "trade" if you oppose it, like we're completely stupid, and they acknowledge that past "free" trade deals have done badly and promise to listen to you for-real for-real if you just let them pass this one. Their immorality is matched only by their stupidity. We've held them off this long; we can't let them win now.
Meanwhile, the Sierra Club helps you tell the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to do a better job protecting the residents of La Belle, PA from coal ash. What's going on here? The FirstEnergy corporation must close its Little Blue Run coal ash disposal site, the largest in America, because it's over 40 years old and thus unlined (lining wasn't required back then) and has thus polluted the groundwater there. FirstEnergy already has another coal ash disposal site near La Belle, some 90 miles away -- but the good citizens of La Belle are already sick, as it were, of the effects of the current coal ash site, which include cancer and kidney failure. You have to wonder, as at least one environmental lawyer has wondered, why the coal ash is unsafe in Little Blue Run but no biggie in La Belle. And you might suspect that the state simply thinks La Belle and its people are too far gone anyway, so letting FirstEnergy ship its filth upriver is no biggie. And you might not like that, if you still think America is the land where no one ever gives up or gives in.
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