First up this week, of course, is the Senate's health care "reform" bill. The Senate's deliberation process, such as it is, has been so secret that even Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) has said she can't answer her constituents' questions about it because she literally hasn't seen any language from it -- and, of course, so secret that there'll be no committee hearings on it, and perhaps not even a copy of the bill for the public to read. Of course, from what we have heard about it, it'd merely hand out hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the rich and cut more hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid -- supposedly the only "disagreement" among "moderate" Republican Senators is in how fast they'd make those cuts. Oh, and their other ideas are pretty crappy, too -- just try and explain the difference between the Obamacare mandate and "auto-enrollment." Go ahead and call your Senators and tell them to reject their secret health care bill, and if you've got a Democratic Senator, then Indivisible helps you remind them that they've got tools to fight this thing.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Jeff Sessions may be hot to stamp out the spread of marijuana, everywhere (remember how he said back in the day that he thought the Klan were OK until he learned they were pot-smokers?), but H.R. 2920/S. 1374, the CARERS Act, would end federal prohibition of marijuana (which, frankly, has never belonged on Schedule I with really dangerous drugs like heroin) and thus protect the 30 states that have legalized medical marijuana. Yep, Mr. Sessions wants to go after that, even, having already asked Congress to fund efforts to prosecute medical marijuana providers and patients. The CARERS Act would also loosen some of the restrictions around marijuana research, which would, at least, cut down on the number of people who reflexively shout YOUZ CANTZ PROVEZ TEH POTZ HAZ ANYZ BENEFITZ!!!! You can't shut down all the haters, of course, but you can contain them. So Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Congressfolk to support sane drug policy by supporting the CARERS Act.
Finally, CREDO helps you tell the EPA to reject the proposed Pebble Mine project in southwestern Alaska. Wait -- you thought that was over and done with? Well, the change in Administrations has brought a change in the EPA's heart, if it can be said to have one anymore, as the EPA has "settled" a lawsuit with Pebble Mine's owners. If you've come to regard "settlement" as a dirty word thanks to Obama-era settlements with banksters, well, this one's even worse -- all the EPA got out of it was an end of lawsuits that might well have failed anyway, and now Pebble Mine's owners get to reapply for permits to mine for gold and copper in an area with a thriving salmon industry, one that provides about half the world's sockeye. Guess what happens to them if Pebble Mine ever becomes operational? They're all going to choke to death in polluted water, and the jobs they support will disappear along with them. Still, new permits require new public comments, which the Trump Administration doesn't care about, but is still legally required to solicit -- until such time as he declares martial law, I suppose.
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