One of the things Congress plans to do when it comes back from recess is repeal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rules protecting good Americans from the kind of abuse that tends to come with prepaid cards. I mean "abuse" by the corporations issuing the cards, not the people using them, and I mean abuse like hiding fees and forcing payroll cards on workers. The CFPB rule also strengthens consumer protections against theft, loss, and unauthorized charges. And yes, Congress wants to take all of these protections away, even though, hey, it's your card and you paid for it. Did you pay for banksters to take more money from you without being up-front about it? In a sane and moral society, doing such an evil thing would be enough to get you labeled objectively pro-financial predator or objectively anti-consumer, and it'd also get your campaign opponent running ads against you for it. We've got a long way to go before we're a sane and moral society again, but let's move that process along a bit by using the tools in the upper-right corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, on your cellphone) and calling our Reps and Senators and demanding that they protect consumers from predatory prepaid cards.
Meanwhile, President Trump has thus far held the line against "free" trade pacts that outsource our jobs and nullify our laws -- but that, like everything else, could change, particularly when you consider that his economic advisors are all further-right versions of the corporatists that plagued the Bush and Obama Administrations, and indeed he's already declared that he won't get rid of the "investor-state tribunals" that afflict NAFTA. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell your Reps and Senators to ensure that any future trade deals we make protect our workers, our laws, and our environment. That last item does get lost in our discussions, but "investor-state tribunals" have the power not only to reverse laws protecting our clean air and our clean water, but to exact tribute from the American taxpayer for having the temerity to have such laws in the first place. But when you get down, remember this: the only thing that has ever stopped a "free" trade agreement is the people's will. No, Donald Trump didn't "stop" the TPP: we stopped the TPP, when just about every member of Our Glorious Elites opposed us, and tried to feed us BS about "free" trade's ill effects. So we can do it again, and again and again if need be.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject H.R. 1180, the so-called Working Families Flexibility Act, which would allow employers to replace overtime pay with comp time, a group of nine organizations (including Jobs with Justice and the Economic Policy Institute) still helps you do that. We discussed why H.R. 1180 was such a bad idea last week -- chiefly, that paying time-and-a-half for overtime gives businesses incentive to hire more workers, and thus create more jobs -- and I also neglected to mention what I know from all my years (never mind how many!) in the workforce, namely that "comp time" promises time off that your boss may never actually give you, and maybe not when you actually need it, either. But the EPI's latest email missive on this matter makes another good point. Did it occur to you that by allowing your overtime to be converted to comp time, which can be paid out in a lump sum at the end of the year if you don't use it, you're giving your employer a sizable interest-free loan for the course of that year? I didn't, either, but I'm glad EPI did. Trust me, corporations don't need a big interest-free loan from you in addition to all the other goodies they get from their near-complete domination of our politics.
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