Social Security Works helps you tell President-elect Trump to honor his campaign promise not to touch Medicare and Social Security benefits. Mr. Trump likely BS'd his way to a win in Florida with these promises -- you'll note that in 2012, Paul Ryan was on the ticket with Mitt Romney, and they lost Florida -- and some of his advisors have publicly hedged his opposition to Medicare and Social Security cuts. And, of course, nothing prevents Mr. Trump from saying that he had no idea how "insolvent" these programs were (politicians have been predicting their trust funds' imminent demise for over 20 years now, but never mind) and thus has "no choice" but to make "difficult decisions" on these programs. Of course, the reason it's "difficult" to privatize Medicare and Social Security is that the American people oppose doing so, almost uniformly and across the ideological spectrum. No, the only people who want to raid Social Security and Medicare are the politicians who want to deliver all that Social Security and Medicare money to their big donors. Well, we beat them back in 2005, we beat them back in 2011 (what, you thought it was President Obama who beat them back in 2011? No, he enabled them!), and we'll beat them back in 2017 and beyond. If we remember to fight, that is.
Meanwhile, Hillary Lauren, of Boston, MA, has started a petition on Change.org which helps you tell the Michigan state legislature to punish animal cruelty regardless of the animal's protection status. A little background: states largely protect wildlife animals from abuse by people, but they also classify some animals as "nuisance" animals, meaning animals likely to destroy homes, crops, or property. Ms. Lauren says she was prompted to start her petition after watching a Youtube video of a Michigan teenager beating a porcupine to death while his friends watched and laughed, and then recalling a story about boys in New York butchering porcupines, but apparently porcupines are nuisance animals, and the law doesn't extend protections against abuse to them. Well, why not? Civilized people understand the difference between fighting scavengers and being cruel to them for kicks. And this goes well beyond Bill Murray's famous observation that he doesn't trust people who don't like dogs, but completely trusts dogs who don't like people -- if you cannot treat all animals with the dignity they deserve, even as you decide which ones are threats to your safety and livelihood and deal with them appropriately, then how can you consider yourself a civilized human being? Nobody but Donald Trump says being civilized is easy, but then he's so terrible at it you shouldn't listen to him.
Finally, if you've missed previous action alerts helping you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 4456, the RECLAIM Act, which would fund pollution cleanup efforts of old coal mine sites in rural America, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. Funding pollution cleanup efforts would actually create jobs in rural America, and with the "liberal" media (commendably, for once!) suddenly focused on those good Americans left behind by globalization, you'd think this bill would have an easy chance at passing. And with the bill's lead sponsor a Kentucky Republican and the bill's two dozen sponsors almost equally divided between the two major political parties, you'd think it'd have an even easier chance at passing. But here's three reasons we shouldn't count on it passing without our help: 1) nothing should pass without our help, ever; 2) Congress is full of evil people who won't pass bills that actually do good for their constituents; and 3) some folks still have this ideological attachment to the idea that only corporations, and certainly not our government, should create jobs. What to do, then, when corporations won't create jobs, which is their preferred default setting? Remember that people care less who exactly employs them than that they're actually employed, that's what. And, really, let's not have the Big Gummint is Always Evil crowd have all the say about everything, OK?
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