First things first. Asahi-Schweppes (you may know Schweppes' tonic water and bitter lemon sodas from your grandparents' liquor cabinet) is pumping a few hundred thousand liters of groundwater from the town of Stanley in Australia, and then selling it as, well, "better" than what comes out of your taps, I guess. Thing is, Stanley has nut and fruit orchards which provide the town's 370 residents with a livelihood, and those orchards need groundwater to keep going. (Oh, and people already pay taxes so they can drink clean water, too.) The good folks of Stanley seem to have exhausted all their legal options; now it's up to us to wield the Big Stick of Bad PR against Asahi for picking on a town of not even 400 people thinking they won't be able to stand up for themselves. So Sum of Us helps you tell Asahi to stop taking Stanley's water from them. Over 95,000 good folks have signed this petition, at this writing; I bet those 370 Stanley residents don't feel so alone now.
Meanwhile, Penn PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the FAIR Fees amendment to the FAA reauthorization bill. You just love being hit with unexpected airline fees for changing flights or checking bags, right? Of course you don't; nobody does, but if the FAIR Fees amendment passes, our Department of Transportation (or DOT) would have the authority to tamp down high airline fees. I guess right-wingers will squeal BIG GUMMINT!!!! at the thought of our DOT actually making sure these fees have something to do with the "services" airlines supposedly provide in exchange, but I'd just respond you like big airlines better? The three biggest airlines collected over $16 billion in fees in 2016 alone -- and none of us are getting across the country in five hours by train or automobile, so what do we call that? A hostage situation, that's what. And whenever predatory corporations take us hostage, we have to get our government to stop them.
Finally, the White Coat Waste Project has begun a petition on Change.org which helps you tell our government to retire and release lab animals at the end of federally-funded animal experiments. You don't have to oppose animal experimentation to see that letting them go to good homes is a much, much better idea than simply killing them off, which is what otherwise happens to those animals at the end of experiments. If you fear that the animals would never adapt to a life outside of being imprisoned in a cage, then I would urge you to have a little more faith in a living thing's resilience. And if you'd rather just kill them off so we can spend less taxpayer money, then I would urge you to a) slap yourself and b) contemplate more fully the idea that civilization should take some effort on our part to maintain, and maybe it should even cost more money than barbarism. You may also want to contemplate the fact that rich folks sure could be paying more in taxes.
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