The House has released its tax "reform" plan, which would, as expected, cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%, eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, and eliminate the Estate Tax; the plan would also limit mortgage interest deductions on new homes and deductions for state and local taxes, and moving from seven to four income tax brackets will cause some middle-class families to pay more in taxes. On the plus side, the House plan would expand the standard deduction, expand the child tax credit (but for only five years), and would keep the 39.6% tax bracket on millionaire income, but let's not give them too much credit -- better to use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page to call your Reps and Senators and say no to a tax plan that (still!) benefits rich folks more than working families and would explode the deficit in such a way as to prompt Medicaid and Medicare cuts further down the line. Why, it's almost like that's the whole idea.
Meanwhile, the President of Tanzania said back in June that pregnant school girls shouldn't be allowed back into school because they'll make sex more attractive to other girls. But sex is about as attractive to everyone as it's ever been and hardly needs the sight of pregnant girls in schools as an advertisement for it. And I find it hard to imagine that the sight of a pregnant teenager makes other girls go oooh I want to be like that! -- in my experience, it makes girls whisper in shameful tones about the pregnant girl's promiscuity, and I don't imagine Tanzanian girls do less of that. The President's statement didn't necessarily have the force of law, but since then schools in Tanzania have been expelling pregnant girls, so they must know the President's got their back. Thus Change.org helps you tell the Tanzanian President to let pregnant girls finish school, so they can have more of a chance at a better future, and thus more of a chance at providing for their families.
Finally, Public Citizen, Common Cause, and Demand Progress all help you tell the Federal Elections Commission (or FEC) to require that online ads disclose the entity that has paid for them, just as print and TV ads must do. You've no doubt heard of all the ads Russian entities bought on social media platforms during the 2016 election, but if you've been getting most of your news from the internet over the years, you already know where the big money's going to go. And while the Supreme Court has decided corporations are "people" with "free speech rights" and can thus spend more or less what they like on political campaigning, the Supreme Court has also expressly blessed disclosure as a remedy. Also, a Marist poll says that nearly 80 percent of Americans want this kind of disclosure on their social media political ads; as Newt Gingrich says, if more than 70 percent of Americans want something, they should get it. (Though I wonder what half-assed deflection he'd employ if he were questioned about this!)
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