Nearly six years after the Supreme Court ruled (in Citizens United v. FEC) that corporations have "the rights of personhood" and thus the right to make campaign donations with very few limits, what has President Obama done, besides urge Congress to fix it? Nothing. And he can issue an Executive Order mandating that all federal contractors disclose their campaign donations (which they're by definition using our money to do!), and he can tell the SEC to protect shareholders by forcing all publicly-traded corporations to do the same. Neither of these would be unprecedented -- Republicans have already thrown hissy fits over the much milder executive orders Mr. Obama has issued, and you may recall that in 2014 the FCC was trying to find some way, any way, to pretend they were issuing strong net neutrality rules without actually issuing strong net neutrality rules, until President Obama told America exactly what he preferred the FCC to do. So a broad coalition of good-government groups help you tell President Obama to fight big money in political campaigns for-real for-real. (The Peace Team, formerly the People's E-mail Network, helps you do the same.)
Meanwhile, the EPA is still taking public comments about its proposed methane emissions standards, and the Sierra Club helps you tell the EPA to issue the strongest methane regulations possible. Methane is, sadly, a ubiquitous by-product of fracking, and when folks tell you that fracking won't contribute as much to climate change as, say, coal production will, they're leaving out the fact that methane is actually a considerably more efficient deliverer of carbon emissions into our air than coal production, and an entire industry (the methane mitigation industry) has now arisen to contain the leakage of methane from fracking operations. Some would call that "job creation," but at the point one says that, one could call any disaster a "job-creation opportunity" at that point, and that would justify doing anything. The whole point of being civilized is that you choose to do some things and not others, and that the mass of knowledge and experience that civilization offers can guide you into choosing well. But justifying any old disaster as an "opportunity"? That's cynical, and therefore evil.
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