CREDO helps you tell your Senator to oppose President Obama's nomination of Dr. Robert Califf as the new head of the Food and Drug Administration. Even the New York Times describes Dr. Califf as having "deeper ties to the pharmaceutical industry than any F.D.A. commissioner in recent memory," and we need that heading up the FDA like we need banksters in charge of regulating the economy. Seriously, folks who tell you that only big pharma flaks can truly understand all the myriad issues concerning drug safety are like the folks who insist only banksters understand banking well enough to regulate it -- they're either unaware of, or deliberately trying to slip past you, the simple fact that both arguments have obvious conflict of interest problems. You don't put criminals in charge of law enforcement because they "understand" crime, right? But this nomination is, apparently, the result of our President pre-emptively giving in to Republicans, who have a terrible habit of obstructing his nominees even when they're in the minority. We're not their hostages; we're free people, free to demand better.
Meanwhile, we learn that fast food corporation McDonald's has created the "McTeacher's Night," where school teachers serve up burgers, fries, and soda to their young students. It's supposedly to raise money for schools, but (stop me if you've heard this one before!) schools actually make very little money from these "fundraisers," and students get to have their teachers legitimize the junk food McDonald's sells, which sends mixed messages to children at a time when children are already absolutely swamped with TV ads about junk food. Somebody at McDonald's clearly thinks this is the most brilliant idea they ever came up with -- right down to the part where McDonald's takes 80 percent of the proceeds -- and if Scott Walker were still running for President, he'd call this "innovative" private sector thinking. Call me old-fashioned, but I think we should fund our schools properly and get our kids to eat right. Hence Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood helps you tell McDonald's to stop using public school funding issues as a way of pushing their unhealthy products on their kids.
Finally, H.R. 3706/S. 1911, the Reach Every Mother and Child Act of 2015 (often called the "Reach Act" for short), would direct our government to figure out how to provide foreign aid in such a way as to "end preventable maternal, newborn, and child deaths globally within a generation." Though UNICEF tells us that we now see half the preventable child deaths we saw in 1990, we'd all prefer "none," and countries without consistent access to health care and clean water -- or peace! -- could sure use our help in achieving this goal. Indeed, that's really what foreign aid is for: helping people who need it, rather than helping some corporate crony get richer. So why, fundamentally, do we conduct efforts like this? Because people ain't free when they're dead, that's why -- and helping mothers and children survive what they previously might not have survived increases the number of people who can make the world better. So RESULTS helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Reach Act. I just hope that Donald Trump realizes that this effort is going to be his job if he becomes President.
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