H.R. 2844/S. 1631, the Keep Our Pension Promises Act, would take away the ability of pension trustees to force potentially debilitating benefit cuts -- an ability they only just gained in last year's disgusting "cromnibus" spending bill -- and the Pension Rights Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to support it, and thus keep pensions as strong as those who provided them promised they would be. I have no patience for folks who squeal ZOMG TEH PENSHUNZ AREZ UNDERFUNDEDZ BY TEH TRILLYUNZ!!!! They employ scare numbers -- if someone tells you pensions are "underfunded" by $2 trillion, for example, they're not telling you that that's $2 trillion over 40 years, and they're not telling you that America has over 300 state and local pension plans. Do all that division and the number suddenly isn't so scary! And they're also not telling you that these projections depend on the economy not growing at all, which is pretty much against everyone's self-interest. And let's not get started on the massive fees state and local pensions are paying to hedge fund managers for thoroughly mediocre advice. As Paul Craig Roberts said many years ago, pensions are about all that's left for our elites to steal. So let's fight to keep them.
Meanwhile, S. 1599, the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act, would, as its title suggests, protect workers from retaliation if they report antitrust law violations, whether they report such criminal acts internally or to our government. The bill (a Chuck Grassley/Patrick Leahy production) would also let workers file antitrust whistleblower claims with the Department of Labor, plus it would let them get a jury trial, like we all deserve no matter what corporatists or "forced arbitration" apologists think is "better for the economy." And the bill would also guarantee certain rights to the whistleblower, such as the rights to reinstatement, attorneys' fees, damages, and back pay. Barack Obama may not agree, but folks who blow the whistle on corporate or governmental wrongdoing are extremely courageous, knowing, as they do, that their employer or their government can turn their lives upside down, to the point where they're destitute and their families are pretty sure none of it was worth it. So the National Whistleblowers Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to support S. 1599, and thus support good citizens risking a lifetime of trouble to do the right, honorable, and lawful thing.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to permanently authorize and fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund, CREDO still helps you do that. The LWCF, 50 years young now, expires in September, but some Congressfolk have lately been acting like they got a mandate from the electorate in November to gut it. Of course, the only mandate that matters to these Congressfolk is the one that comes from their corporate paymasters -- the mandate that mining and drilling corporations need more land to mine and drill in, and some CEO's 29th vacation home needs its plumbing gilded, the public be damned. Clean water, clean air, wildlife protection, big game hunting, fishing, camping, caving -- all useless to Republicans in their quest to service their big donors. Of course Republicans don't say that, because then they'd lose the argument -- they say that states should buy up private land for such uses, not our federal government. Rep. Bishop (R-UT) even says that when our federal government buys land under the LWCF, it takes revenue from states and localities (well, specifically, from children, nice hostage-taking there!). Like those states and localities aren't falling all over themselves to give up those revenues to induce corporations to do business there!
Comments