Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to get back to work and vote to end President Obama's war in Iraq and Syria. Your Congressfolk are all on vacation running for re-election working in their home districts right now, and usually that's where I'd want them to stay, but Congress has abdicated its Constitutional duty to declare war on Iraq and Syria -- which action must proceed any action Mr. Obama undertakes against ISIS terrorists in those nations -- and quite frankly, if Congress simply allows Mr. Obama to do whatever he likes to whichever nation he likes, then the terrorists have won. The next time President Walker or President other-Bush decides he's going to find a whole bunch of "terrorists" somewhere and mow them down for the greater benefit of his crony corporate pals, Congress will have rendered itself powerless to do anything about it. And involving the nations of the region in negotiations will neutralize ISIS far more effectively than the blunt force of air strikes.
Meanwhile, the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell Mr. Obama and his EPA to regulate the methane emissions from oil and gas drilling operations. Methane, as you probably know, is a far-too-common by-product of such drilling (particularly gas drilling), and methane actually traps heat in the atmosphere 80 times better than simple carbon dioxide does. Mr. Obama has promised that the EPA will act on methane emissions, but as with so many other things, the time to act isn't tomorrow, but now. Oil and gas drillers will fight it, of course -- they'll trot out the zombie lie that TEH REGULASHUNZ KILLZ TEH JOBZ!!!!! when there's actually an entire industry now with the sole purpose of restricting methane emissions from existing gas drilling operations. Think the methane mitigation sector might be hiring some folks when new methane regulations go into effect? I think they just might! Or, God forbid, gas drilling corporations might decide to stop cutting corners when they build their gas wells in the first place -- which will also create jobs.
Finally, USPIRG helps you tell Congress to investigate the "culture" at the New York Federal Reserve. As you know, former Fed examiner Carmen Segarra taped 46 hours of her conversations with co-workers at the New York Fed, and the tapes (as described by NPR's This American Life and ProPublica) suggest that the New York Fed had too "deferential" a relationship with banksters like Goldman Sachs, which does not bode well for our hopes that our government can stop the banksters from taking a dump all over our economy again. And if the New York Fed can't adhere to its mission, then we have an especially big problem, because the New York Fed regulates all the Wall Street banks, and that's where the 2008 economic meltdown started (regardless of any rubbish you've heard that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both almost completely divested of subprime mortgages by 2005, started it). Given how angry people still are at the banksters and for damn good reason, Congress might actually hold hearings. Still, we should make as much noise about this as we can.
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