The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill passed five years ago -- but federal agencies (including the SEC) still haven't written many of the rules that Dodd-Frank mandated. You'd think after the banksters took a massive dump all over our economy and put millions of people out of work, our government would pursue the matter with more urgency, but they listen too much to the anti-regulatory blather of America's coddled-and-enabled financial class. News flash: the banksters still aren't popular, even if the fury the American people have toward banksters has subsided, and with laws come responsibilities -- responsibilities like writing regulations and enforcing them. Hence Demand Progress helps you tell the SEC to finish the job Dodd-Frank gave them already. SEC Chair Mary Jo White, another one of Barack Obama's post-partisan appointees, may have done the worst job of anyone in his Administration, and that's saying something when this Administration that's had Tom Vilsack and Timothy Geithner in it. But, like all of them, she responds to public pressure -- if we do our jobs.
In the wake of the trophy killing of Cecil the Lion -- who had been coaxed off national park land in Zimbabwe (where he could not be legally killed), and then left to suffer for more than a day and a half by the Minnesota dentist who ultimately killed him -- Sum of Us helps you tell airline corporations to ban the transportation of "trophy" animals from their planes. Dead animal "trophies" wouldn't get very far if airplanes didn't transport them, after all, and that means there'd be less of a market for them. As of yesterday, 10 airlines have answered the call, including British Airways and Delta, but most American airlines haven't done so yet. Perhaps they're afraid of Republican swordfighters who extoll the "free market" above all other things. But trophy killing doesn't fulfill any of the functions of a civilized society -- it doesn't feed people, it doesn't prevent invasive animals from upsetting ecosystems, it doesn't even preserve traditional hunting practices, but just serves to delude cowards into thinking they're courageous, and no "free market" should be obliged to coddle cowards.
Meanwhile, you know that the wage board convened by Gov. Cuomo in New York state recommended a $15/hour minimum wage for New York City's fast-food workers -- but the state Labor Commissioner still needs to approve the recommendation. We've figured that was a done deal, but really, nothing is a done deal until we do it. So Fight for $15 helps you tell the New York state Labor Commissioner why fast-food workers should make at least $15/hour. You can bet the anti-worker forces will be bending the Labor Commissioner's ear, with loser BS about "killing jobs." I call it "loser BS," not just "BS," because the entrepreneur who worries about bottom lines whenever thinking about a minimum wage hike -- instead of all that extra money going into potential customers' pockets because they just got a raise -- is a loser, frankly. And we just witnessed how Gravity Payments' $70,000 minimum wage "forced" them to hire 12 more workers to process the resulting new business and respond to all the emails and social media postings following the announcement. Is it too much to ask that these zombie "job-killing" lies stop getting up after we've put them down?
Comments