America observed Martin Luther King, Jr. Day earlier this week -- and so both CREDO and the Sierra Club help you demand that our government pass H.R. 2867/S. 1659, the Voting Rights Advancement Act. The Supreme Court, as you know, invalidated Sec. 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in their 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision; Sec. 4(b) listed several mostly Southern states and municipalities that needed to pre-clear any changes to their voting laws, given their past history in suppressing voting rights, but the Supreme Court found the formula outdated -- and also said Congress could pass a new formula for determining which states or municipalities would need pre-clearance that speaks to current conditions. The Voting Rights Advancement Act would require pre-clearance in states and municipalities that have violated voters' rights 15 or more times within the past 25 years -- which could, theoretically, be any state or municipality, thus answering the Court's stated concern that the law was now unfair to the South. It won't answer other right-wingers' objections, though, because haters gonna hate.
Meanwhile, President Obama declared a federal state of emergency in Flint, MI, where, thanks to the Michigan state government's incompetence and venality, the drinking water now contains so much lead that much of it can actually be classified as toxic waste. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder wanted Flint declared a disaster area, but federal law only permits natural disasters to receive such a declaration, and this disaster is as man-made as they get. Was Mr. Snyder counting on getting that "disaster area" declaration when his "Emergency Manager" decided to "save money" by drawing Flint's water from the highly-polluted Flint River, and to mitigate the river's pollution by using chemicals that corroded the lead in Flint's water pipes? I put "save money" in quotation marks because the state won't save any money now that they've hurt so many of their citizens -- do these morons ever count the cost of all the lawsuits they have to fight and lose when they screw up? Anyway, CREDO helps you demand that our federal Justice Department thoroughly investigate the role of the Snyder Administration in this mess.
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