The climate change pact with China is getting all the ink this week -- which is something of a relief, I suppose, because the Trans-Pacific "Partnership," yet another "free" trade agreement which will destroy American jobs and subjugate American laws to the whim of "investor-state tribunals," was certainly on the President's agenda. It is truly amazing how few Americans support "free" trade -- indeed, it often seems like the only Americans who support these job-destroying, corporation-enriching deals are the people who happen to be in Congress. But our opposition works, though it may not seem like it does: Congress did pass a pair of Bush Mobb-era "free" trade deals in 2011, but our opposition stalled those agreements for many years, and also helped cause the expiration of Presidential "fast-tracking" authority. Naturally, Congress wants to bring "fast-track" back; but Firedoglake, the Campaign for America's Future and Public Citizen all help you tell your Congressfolk to reject "fast-track" "free" trade authority, as well as "free" trade deals that make people poorer and corporations richer.
Meanwhile, Change.org helps you tell Gap, Inc. to stop letting Old Navy charge exorbitant prices for plus-size women's clothing. But wait, you may well be saying: don't they charge more for plus-size clothing because it uses more fabric? Setting aside, for a moment, the unlikelihood that the cost of fabric routinely justifies a 50% price increase: Old Navy's prices for plus-size men's clothing is exactly the same. So the lesson Gap teaches us, I suppose, is that women's clothing requires uniquely special fabric -- clearly, very womany fabric -- that's extremely rare and difficult to manufacture. Or, conceivably, they're trying to teach us that plus-sized men are more culturally acceptable than plus-sized women. No, wait: what they're really telling us is that plus-sized women don't shop at Old Navy, which must seem highly unlikely to anyone who has ever seen a woman outside of magazines and porn films. Whatever the case, surely we can shame them into doing the right thing.
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