Color of Change helps you tell corporations to stop investing in private prisons. Why? For any number of reasons: private prisons charge by the prisoner, which doesn't exactly motivate them to rehabilitate prisoners and which does motivate them to lobby our governments for longer and harsher sentences. And private prisons also like their profits, which doesn't exactly motivate them to pay people who care for prisoners. (Yes, prisoners deserve to be cared for while they're in prison. Yes, I've had this argument within the last six months. Yes, I'm stunned that we argue this matter, ever, in a civilized society.) And of course private prisons don't exactly help us become a nation that doesn't racially profile black folks. My main objection to the private prison industry, though, is that housing prisoners is our government's job, which means it's our job -- and when have we ever benefited from letting corporations do our job for us?
Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Senate still mulls SB 411, which would open up a massive new loophole in the state's "Good Samaritan Law" so that corporations could take abandoned mine water, sell it to gas drilling corporations for fracking, and enjoy immunity from prosecution. Can you say welfare handout, children? The Good Samaritan Law aimed to get corporations to clean up mine wastewater, but SB 411 would let corporations simply sell that water to frackers, without cleaning it up. And that wastewater would then pollute the water you drink and wash and bathe with, and then you couldn't sue for damages -- even if their wastewater turns your drinking water brown and gelatinous or gives you cancer. Only a legislature that cares for nothing but mammon could do this -- or think that we wouldn't notice what they were doing. Food and Water Watch helps you tell your PA state legislator to reject more handouts for frackers.
Finally, the People's Email Network still helps you tell Congress not to fast-track the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" "free" trade "deal." You know who likes "free" trade deals that subjugate our labor and environmental laws to corporate "investor-state tribunals," who will be able to void laws at will when we try to hold some corporation to account for polluting our air and water? You know who likes "free" trade deals that will allow corporations to shut down internet sites on suspicion of copyright infringement? Almost nobody, that's who. Unfortunately, most of the people who like "free" trade deals in America seem to be serving in Congress at the moment, and these fools seem determined to force Congress to take a simple up-or-down vote on the TPP, without any debate. Why do you suppose they wouldn't want to debate it -- or even let Americans know what's actually in the "agreement"? What could they possibly be afraid of? Here's what they should be afraid of: the shame and humiliation they earn for hurting us.
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