First things first: Eclectablog reports that the Michigan legislature is trying to ram through three-count-'em-three vote suppression bills during their lame duck session. The state House Elections Committee quickly passed all three bills last week, and now the entire Michigan House could vote on them any day. HB 6066 would make people who don't have Voter ID fill out a provisional ballot, and then makes a voter jump through bureaucratic hoops to get their vote counted. HB 6067 and HB 6068 permit the state to conduct records checks on behalf of poor voters, but good luck with that if you were born out of state, because the bills won't mandate that the state assist poor voters with more expensive out-of-state record checks. These bills aren't about "securing the vote" from phantom vote fraud artists; they create fraud, simple and plain, by restricting poor folks' access to the polls. And since, in America, being poor frequently also means being a person of color -- a fact I'm sure is not lost on the Michigan legislature -- these bills are also racist bills. You can contact members of the Michigan House here and members of the Michigan Senate here. Don't worry that you're not a constituent -- this could happen in your state any day now, and a soon-to-be-reinvigorated 5-4 right-wing Supreme Court majority surely won't rescue you.
Meanwhile, if you thought Donald Trump was going to protect Medicare from the privatize-everything-and-make-it-suck crowd, guess again: his nomination of Georgia House Rep. Tom Price as the next Department of Health and Human Services Secretary pretty much says it all, as Mr. Price has salivated over the prospect of destroying Medicare perhaps since he was in the crib. Mr. Trump just couldn't find anyone else to take over HHS? Were none of the nation's 254 Republican Governors available? This is why you don't "give him a chance" -- he's already telling you what he wants to do. But it doesn't matter what he wants: it matters what we want, and thus Social Security Works and CREDO help you tell Congress and the President-elect that "no one voted to destroy Medicare" and that they should expand, not destroy, programs like Medicare and Social Security. If you're still not convinced that Donald Trump will destroy Medicare, remember that he said during the campaign that he didn't want to cut Medicare benefits. He could easily let Congress turn Medicare into a voucher program -- with our government cutting checks to seniors so they can buy more expensive private health care -- and say I kept my promise: we're giving you the same benefits!
Finally, the good residents of Flint, MI still don't have consistent access to clean water after their "emergency manager" caused all that lead pollution -- but a mere two hours' drive away, Nestlé plans to siphon off 100 million gallons of groundwater annually so they can sell it, all for the promise of creating some 20 jobs. How many times must I tell these pimps! Never give away what belongs to the public for the promise of a few jobs, when you could embark on a real job creation program not by giving away more goodies to corporations, but by closing all the tax loopholes they enjoy now so they'll choose to create jobs as an alternative to having all their profits taxed! And certainly never give away clean water, when clean water is the foundation of all good health care in America! Nestlé, by the way, will pay about $200 a year to (almost literally!) suck at the public teat, so the government of Michigan can't even claim they're getting a massive amount of money to spend for the public good. So Sum of Us helps you tell the Michigan Department of Environmental Protection to protect clean public water and block the Nestlé deal. Would it be piling on to mention that a Nestlé spokeshack happens to be married to Gov. Snyder's former Chief of Staff? No, it would not.
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