You've probably heard that the price of an EpiPen -- a drug that has saved the lives of many folks who'd otherwise die from anaphylactic shock -- has increased somewhere between 400 and 600 percent since the drug corporation Mylan acquired it from Merck some nine years ago. You might think Mylan must have made some pretty tremendous improvements to the EpiPen in order to justify that price hike -- especially since inflation has gone up a mere 16 percent during that time! -- but sadly, nothing's changed about the EpiPen but the price, and more and more folks who need it (food allergies being as common as they are) have to choose between that and paying the bills. The "free market" crowd is more than happy to tell us that this is the price we must pay for innovation and safety, but no one should have a monopoly on a life-saving drug, and no one should be allowed to charge extortionate prices for it. Would it be piling on to mention that Mylan's CEO's salary has gone up even more than EpiPen's price has? Both Moms Rising and MoveOn help you tell Mylan to cut the price of the EpiPen to a more reasonable level.
Meanwhile, the Department of the Interior has been hard at work updating standards for oil and gas pollution on public lands -- including methane, which we're going to see a lot more of in the future -- for the first time in 30 years (can you think of any technological developments that have happened over that time?). Hence the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell Interior to mandate the most vigorous oil and gas pollution limits possible. It's bad enough that any oil and gas drilling goes on in public lands, but it we must have it, we need to protect public lands from air and water pollution. And methane, in particular, not only makes our smog problem worse (which then makes our asthma problem worse), but it exacerbates climate change at least 60 times worse than coal pollution does. Oil and gas drillers will pretend that you have to choose between befouling the planet and "cheap energy," but the only choice we need to make is between befouling the planet and CEOs getting filthy rich. And it's funny how when they talk to us, they pretend the methane mitigation industry simply doesn't exist.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject efforts to mess with the Obama Administration's new overtime rules, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. The Obama Administration's rules, as you know, would force employers to pay time-and-a-half for overtime to all workers making less than $47,476; that floor is more than double the current floor of $23,660. Of course, the Obama Administration has already compromised on this matter, since it originally proposed setting the floor closer to $60,000 annually -- but that's not enough for some people, who want to delay implementation of the rules because it's too much too quick. Two problems with that: first, employers had it the way they wanted it for decades, so their complaints now sound like whining. Second, this overtime rule is supposed to shake things up -- the whole concept of time-and-a-half is supposed to induce employers to see the folly of overpaying their current workers and hire more workers instead. It doesn't help our civilization coddle corporations, but hey, we've all got to make sacrifices.
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