President Obama has issued an Executive Order removing the box that asks if you have a criminal record from applications for federal employment, and good for him, but this order doesn't address the millions of Americans who work for federal contractors, so the ACLU helps you tell the President to "ban the box" for federal contractors' workers as well. To do this, Mr. Obama needs not run for permission to Great and Awesome Real American Super-President Mitch McConnell or the Boy Wonder, Paul Ryan. So what's the problem with the "box," you ask? First off, criminals who get out of jail have already repaid their debt to society, so it's not fair to make them keep paying that debt by having them check a box that has a better-than-even chance of landing their job application in the proverbial circular file. Second off, if removing that box gives them a better shot at landing a job (and it does!), then it also gives them a better shot at truly rehabilitating and contributing to society -- and not landing back in jail. Often the merciful thing to do also turns out to be the smart thing to do.
Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the U.S. Forest Service to keep Nestlé from drawing water from the San Bernardino National Forest, then CREDO still helps you do that. The Forest Service will need some more convincing -- they've proposed extending Nestlé's contract in the San Bernardino National Forest for five more years, although the original permit expired in 1988 and hadn't been evaluated by our government in the meantime. Perhaps they figured the world didn't end in the meantime, so bygones! But something has happened in the meantime, something that should enter into the Forest Service's decision-making -- a massive drought has afflicted Western states for several years now, suggesting it's maybe not such a good idea to let a private corporation siphon off water that belongs to the people, just so that corporation can sell it as bottled water. We must always remind our public servants of two things: one, that they're supposed to serve the public, and two, they're not supposed to sell off our resources to their cronies.
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