The deadline for net neutrality comments to the FCC is tomorrow; and this page helps you leave a comment with the FCC via John Oliver's website, gofccyourself.com. (Battle for the Net still helps you leave your comment with both the FCC and Congress.) The FCC's Open Internet Order, as you know, forces ISPs to treat all internet traffic with equal importance -- it forbids them from slowing down or censoring websites your ISP doesn't like for whatever reason, and it forbids them from making other websites pay for the privilege of loading faster. And that is what enables innovation and freedom on the internet -- think what the Iraq War would have been like without anti-war bloggers, whom ISPs would certainly have relegated to the "slow lane" while letting corporate pro-war propaganda ride the fast lane. If the FCC votes to get rid of their net neutrality rules, then ISPs will be able to block you from websites, make your favorite websites load more slowly, and redirect you to junk news websites before you see the website you want to see -- among other things! So if that doesn't sound like the internet you want, then tell the FCC with a quickness.
Meanwhile, the great state of California is thisclose to passing a criminal justice reform bill that could end the money bail system for criminal suspects, and Color of Change helps you tell California state legislators to go ahead and end the money bail system. Money bail has been a feature of our system for so long that it seems like part of the landscape, something you just put up with if you've ever been arrested for, say, Driving While Black. But the main problem with money bail is simply this: it allows the state to detain people without proving they merits detainment (i.e., because they're a threat to flee). By setting a bail threshold above their ability to pay -- a thing that's easier and easier to do as the rich claim more and more of the wealth in our society -- states can deprive folks of their freedom without having a good reason to do so. Brook no hysteria about ZOMG TEH CRIMINULZ WILLZ RUN WILDZ ON TEH STREETZ!!!! Crime's going down, even if "liberal" media sensationalism about crime isn't. And, like payday lenders, money bail traps people in a cycle of debt from which they may not emerge.
Finally, the EPA has proposed banning three fairly dangerous chemicals used at many workplaces -- methylene chloride (or dichloromethane, or DCM), N-methylpyrrolidone (or NMP), and trichloroethylene (or TCE). You find the first two in paint strippers, the first of which is carcinogenic and lethal in confined spaces, the second of which (often used instead of the first) is merely neurotoxic and causes kidney and liver damage. The third is a degreaser used in dry cleaning services and electronics assembly, and it can cause cancer and birth defects. Of course, industries get more say than people now that Donald Trump is President, and what are they saying? They're saying that warning labels and protective gear will be enough -- though they hate our government telling people they have to wear protective gear, too, and seriously, warning labels? As in, if you use this thing you have to use to do your job, you might get sick? That would be to laugh, if I found such things amusing. So the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell the EPA to follow through and ban these poisons.
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