Social Security Works joins with CREDO Mobilize to help you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 4664/S. 2305, the Social Security and Marriage Equality Act (or SAME Act). What would the SAME Act do? The SAME Act would ensure that legally-married gay folks would be able to pass on their Social Security benefits to their partners, just like partners in straight marriages can do, regardless of where they got married or whether their state of residence recognizes their marriage. I can't wait for the usual suspects to scream ZOMG SPESHUL BENEFITZ FOR TEH GAYZ!!!!!! They're not "special benefits" any more than the right not to get fired for being gay is a "special right." And personal to the "states' rights" crowd: Social Security benefits are a federal benefit, and states should not have the right to interfere with federal law. I swear, some folks only care about "states' rights" when it would give them the power to hurt other people. And, seriously, if states want to secede over things like this, let 'em! Let 'em find out how hard it is to run a country, especially when they don't have all that Big Gummint money flowing in from the Beltway.
Meanwhile, the FDA has proposed the first major updates to its nutrition label regulations in 20 years, and the American Heart Association helps you tell the FDA to give us the most accurate and informative food labels possible. The FDA has proposed foregrounding calorie counts, basing nutrition information on more accurate serving sizes, and noting added sugars, vitamin D, and potassium; I find the "added sugars" part particularly valuable -- some foods (like fruit, milk, and tomato gravy) have sugar in them before anyone adds it in, and most of us aren't going to know how much has been added unless we're told. The FDA does not propose lowering the sodium RDA all that much, but you can ask them to do better at that. Woe betide the fool who claims that making food labels better KILLZ THA JOBZ!!!! -- as if we should allow corporations to kill jobs using any excuse. And woe betide the fool who squeals OBAMA TELLZ THA PEEPULZ WHAT TO EATZ!!!!! Nobody's putting a gun to anyone's head and making them eat more broccoli -- better food labeling just gives you, the consumer, better information as to how to feed yourself and your family.
Finally, you've likely heard that the World Health Organization (or WHO) says we may be entering a "post-antibiotic era" in which the simplest cut could result in a fatal infection. Just like in the good old days! How could this happen? Overprescription of antibiotics just-in-case is one reason, but it's not the most compelling reason -- not when four out of five antibiotics in America go to healthy feed animals, so that these animals can produce more meat and weather lousy living conditions a little better. Jesus Mary and Joseph what on Earth is wrong with just growing feed animals the old-fashioned way? The answer is not "because it's inefficient" or even "because worldwide demand for meat is rising" -- the answer is "because it doesn't redistribute wealth upward to CEOs." The price of giving folks the "freedom" to make astronomical amounts of money is too high for the rest of us to pay -- I don't think too many folks will tell their grandchildren that we killed off most of the human race because we abused antibiotics, but praise the Lord we still have a free market! Hence USPIRG helps you tell the FDA to rein in antibiotic abuse in America.
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