The FCC has formally published its nefarious net neutrality rule in the Federal Register as of February 22, which means Congress has 60 days from that date to pass a "resolution of disapproval" that would overturn it, so you can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) to call your Reps and Senators and ask them to support such a resolution. (I still don't have a bill number for it.) You should have an easy time arguing the point with your Senators: the FCC net neutrality repeal rule opens the floodgates for internet service providing corporations to block websites they don't like, to slow down websites they don't like, and generally inhibit your freedom to go where you want to go on the internet, rather than be herded into junk news ghettoes as ISPs would undoubtedly prefer. For all that, we're having trouble getting a 51st Senate vote in favor. So you may make the difference.
Meanwhile, People for the American Way helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2261, the Secure Elections Act. S. 2261 -- an actually-bipartisan bill with a motley crew of six sponsors, from James Lankford to Martin Heinrich -- would give states the financial support they need to update their voting machines so that they're safe from hackers, which is a big deal, not merely because we deserve secure elections, but because some 40 states have electronic voting machines that don't provide voters a whole lot of security. Attend Sec. 5(d), and you'll see that S. 2261 also essentially mandates paper ballots for federal elections; it doesn't do so for state and local elections, which you may rightly criticize -- and/or use against your Tea Party uncle when he says S. 2261 means TEH GUBMINT TAKEZ OVERZ!!!!! In the meantime, I'm not letting the perfect murder the good any more than I let the venal and foolish murder the good -- though, in my experience, the latter task takes up far more of my time.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to stop trying to destroy the Endangered Species Act, then the Environmental Defense Fund still helps you do that. Why do Congressfolk try to destroy the Endangered Species Act? Because it happens to prevent some of their biggest donors from drilling for oil and gas wherever they like. But do oil and gas drilling corporations get all the say around here? Should we blithely sacrifice animal species forever so that corporate CEOs can make more money? And do we not have better ways to wean ourselves off foreign oil, like solar and wind power? Despite the obvious answers to these questions, too many Congressfolk want to automatically anoint state and local data as the "best available science," and they'd also like to hamstring species rehabilitation efforts with "economic impact" statements that only consider the "impact" to oil and gas drillers. So let's get to it.
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