PennPIRG helps you tell your House Reps to reject the so-called Financial CHOICE Act, which would (among other things!) cripple the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's ability to protect citizens from predatory lending. And where does a big chunk of predatory lending occur today? Why, in student loans, of course, since over 40 million Americans have them (and that's about one out of every eight of us). Earlier this year the CFPB sued the notorious Navient, America's biggest student loan servicer, for "systematically and illegally failing borrowers at every state of repayment," which sure does sound harsh. But the Financial CHOICE Act would hurt the CFPB's ability to go after bad actors, and thus leave more and more Americans open to getting ripped off. And here you thought conservatism was about cracking down on ripoff artists! I mean, that's what law and order is all about, right? Sadly, the reactionaries who call themselves "conservative" think any law restricting anything a corporation might do is itself evil. Let's not let them have all the say about everything.
Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 2119/S. 928, the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act, so that "conversion therapists" can't try to "convert" gay folks. The Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act would empower the Federal Trade Commission (or FTC) to go after "conversion therapy" practitioners under its mandate to prosecute "unfair or deceptive trade practices." And given that scientists don't consider homosexuality to be a disorder anymore, and don't consider it something anyone can reasonably change, you'd be hard-pressed to call "conversion therapy" anything but deceptive. And, ah, we've gone over what "conversion therapy" entails, right? Among other things, it entails "exercises" full of nudity and inappropriate touching, "role play" full of violence, and the actual re-enactment of past sexual abuses, because who doesn't just love going through that again? Don't brook any silliness from your Congressfolk claiming they can't support the bill because "they're not scientists," because you don't need a doctorate in psychology to know what a snake oil salesman looks like.
Finally, as you know, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at knocking down a bunch of National Monuments. And as you may know, the Department of the Interior has separated the commenting processes for one recently-designated monumen (Bears Ears) and for the entire national monument "review" process in general. I expect this matter to die in court, as a lot of Mr. Trump's best-laid plans seem to do, but in the meantime, duty is duty, so American Rivers helps you tell our Department of Interior to, in American Rivers's words, stop "selling off our monuments." That is what the Trump Administration intends to do, after all -- sell off our public lands to fossil fuel drillers -- and though they're less subtle about their aim than any other President we've experienced or could imagine, that's of no great comfort if he succeeds. For Mr. Trump and his votaries, everything on Earth, including the water we drink and the air we breathe, ain't worth nothin' unless it can be converted to money. But to paraphrase a famous philosopher: if money is all you want, then money is all you'll get.
Comments