House Republicans pass Obamacare repeal bill, 217-213. When the "liberal" media types start clucking approvingly about what a "dealmaker" Donald Trump has just become, just remember that the House Republican leadership had to make this bill significantly more harmful to working families to get it passed. Remember, also, that when Mr. Trump tells you the bill does-so protect folks with pre-existing conditions, you're much better off assuming he's lying rather than assuming he just doesn't know.
President Trump issues Executive Order allowing churches to do more electioneering from the pulpit and offering more "unspecified 'regulatory relief'" for folks who don't want to cover contraception. It's not as bad as it could have been, but a pile of dung the flies have found isn't that much different from a pile of dung the flies haven't found yet. Anyway, let's see how many days this order survives before a federal judge slaps it down.
Earlier this week, the House also managed to pass H.R. 1180, the so-called Working Families Flexibility Act, on a near-party line vote. Of course the NBC report, in its zeal to cast this issue as a battle between Democrats and Republicans, fails to remind us of a few things: that the whole reason we have overtime pay is to force corporations to hire enough workers rather than work the few they've got to death, that having comp time doesn't guarantee you'll ever get to use it (and certainly not that when you need it!), and that letting your boss hold onto your overtime pay for an entire calendar year is rather like giving your boss a sizable interest-free loan. In short, the bill advertises flexibility for your boss, not for you.
National Resources Defense Council report finds that close to 10 percent of all Americans got their drinking water from systems that had been cited for health-based violations (not merely reporting violations) of federal law. Of course, Mr. Trump doesn't care, since this doesn't affect him or his rich friends -- and his fellow Republicans will just tell you to move somewhere where the water's clean! But people have a right to clean water wherever they are. And no, right-wingers, this is not a "right without responsibility," because we pay water bills.
Finally, that Roosevelt Institute study linking campaign contributions to pro-Wall Street legislation also found that campaign contributions could buy votes on net neutrality -- but it's generally cheaper to get a pro-net neutrality vote than an anti-net neutrality vote. Whereas a single $1,000 contribution from a relatively pro-net neutrality corporation like Google increases a Congressperson's chance of voting in their direction by 26 percent, a single $1,000 contribution from an anti-net neutrality corporation (like an ISP) only increased that Congressperson's chance of voting in their direction by 2.4 percent. Which suggests that opposing internet freedom is so stupid and unpopular it takes a lot more corporate campaign cash to move the needle!
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