You've heard of NAFTA and CAFTA? Well, meet TAFTA, the Trans-Atlantic "Free" Trade Agreement. They might as well call it SHAFTYA, since that's all these "free" trade deals do. TAFTA is yet another pact negotiated behind closed doors because no reasonable person would ever stand for it, yet another "free" trade deal that would outsource good American jobs to foreigners powerless to organize for more than slave wages, yet another "free" trade deal that would subjugate American laws (and thus American environmental, labor, and financial protections) to the whims of "investor-state tribunals." There ain't nothing law-and-order about any of that; hell, there ain't nothing American about any of that. You like being safe from contaminated food? Some corporation will be able to ensure you never eat safe food again, by simply arguing that our nation's laws "hurt" said corporation and suing our nation for redress in some extralegal court stacked in favor of the plutocrat and against the citizen. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject nefarious "free" trade deals that poop all over our freedoms.
Meanwhile, at least two major development projects threaten one of our greatest national treasures, the Grand Canyon. Both would actually build stores, hotels, and entertainment within the Canyon, and both would, of course, also siphon off water from the already-challenged Colorado River. The putative brain behind one of the projects claims that the Park Services provide nothing more than a "drive-by wilderness experience" for Americans visiting the Canyon, which I'm going to go out on a limb and say is precisely the opposite of the experience of any American who has ever visited the spot. People who worship money will say just any old thing to get more of it, won't they? And they'll desecrate any temple to get more of it, too. (The Grand Canyon happens to be holy ground for the Hopi, Zuni, and Navajo nations, not that worshipers of mammon will ever care.) The good news? We've helped stop uranium miners from getting their grubby hands on the Grand Canyon, so we should be able to beat back developers, too. Hence American Rivers helps you tell our government to reject these short-sighted and offensive development projects within the Grand Canyon.
Finally, Public Citizen helps you tell our federal Department of the Interior to establish a Citizens Advisory Council to help oversee Gulf of Mexico offshore drilling. Some benighted souls would call such a Council another layer of bureaucracy, as if "bureaucracy" is a dirty word, but those same souls often call anything that actually helps people a "bureaucracy," particularly a "bureau" that might have ordinary citizens on it, ones who actually know something about preventing spills, planning effective responses, and overseeing the oil industry. And not only is deepwater oil drilling very, very dangerous, you shouldn't believe the big oil drilling corporations when they say they've fixed all the things that went wrong in the 2010 Spillageddon in the Gulf, because you know what? You can't fix greed. Greed caused BP to cut the corners it cut that caused the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and greed will cause the next spill, and the one after that, and the one after that. Will we ever rid the world of greed? Perhaps not. But does that mean we should ever tolerate greed? Hell no!
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