So the Congressional Budget Office (or CBO) scored the Republicans' Obamacare repeal effort and found that it would add up to 24 million to the ranks of the uninsured over the next decade, and likely add 14 million to the uninsured just next year -- but also that it would cut nearly $34 billion from the national deficit annually. Media outlets act like the report makes Obamacare repeal harder, but House Republicans love posturing about reducing the deficit, so it should be easier, if anything. But if we want to insure more Americans and cut the deficit, we should expand Medicare to include everyone: a 300 million-plus pool would have serious bargaining power to keep prices down, and we could fund it (among other ways!) by having employers pay our government instead of private health insurance corporations -- and they'd pay our government less. So use the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to support single-payer, Medicare-for-all health insurance in America.
Meanwhile, H.J.Res. 36/S.J.Res. 11, the "resolution of disapproval" that would repeal the Bureau of Land Management's rules slashing methane emissions from fossil fuel-drilling operations on public lands, still hasn't made it to President Trump's desk. Why not? Probably because it's hard to message trying to help gas and oil drillers pollute the air more. Of course, the resolution's supporters won't put it like that -- they'll say they're cutting job-killing regulations or they're standing up to big government or some such. Of course, regulations don't cut jobs, but create jobs for the people who help corporations comply with them, and when they say they're "standing up to big government," just remember that government is you, so ultimately they're saying they're standing up to you. And they're so courageous about it that they won't even put it like that! So the Environmental Defense Fund helps you call your Senators and tell them to reject the pro-pollution, anti-climate "resolution of disapproval" aimed at killing good methane regulations.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to support SB 22, the anti-gerrymandering, fair redistricting bill, then MoveOn helps you do that. Currently the state legislature draws the state and Congressional districts, but the very first sentence of the MoveOn petition puts the problem with that quite succinctly: "(w)hen a politician wins an election, he or she is allowed to draw their own districts as a tactic to ensure their own re-election." If that doesn't smell like corruption to you, then I'm pretty sure you're noseblind. SB 22 would take redistricting power out of the legislature and give it to a specially-created five-member commission, consisting of the Majority and Minority Leaders in the House and Senate, plus one non-office holding Chairperson selected by the first four members. At the very least, you'll have gridlock -- and if you do wind up with gridlock, the state Supreme Court will get to break it according to established law and precedent, which more resembles how a civilized society would operate than our current system does.
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