It begins again: Senate Republicans have apparently read the mandate handed down by the voters in November to read "let's repeal the Estate Tax!" You'd be tempted to say "they never learn," but of course learning has nothing to do with it: Mob Boss Mitch knows that if you placate every whiny desire of wealthy donors, you'll get more campaign money from them, and thus you'll keep getting elected. To what end? So you can finally get hemp farming legalized after 34 years in the Senate? Not likely -- the only end Estate Tax repeal really serves is the end of democracy. Seriously, you have a better chance of one day paying the Estate Tax if you actually support a robust Estate Tax on estates over $1 million. 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 Senators and tell them to reject Estate Tax repeal.
Meanwhile, virtually everyone in America wants to see fewer antibiotics in farming, but of course our Administration knows better than everyone else, as our EPA has recently approved a plan to expand spraying of antibiotics on Floridian citrus trees. Sick trees, healthy trees, how can we tell from up here? One more time: using antibiotics on plants and animals that aren't sick gives bacteria a better shot at adapting to them, and thus renders antibiotics useless a whole lot faster. Who will be sitting around the campfire in a hundred years saying the next cut any of us get could kill us, but at least our government was able to con good Floridians into delivering their electoral votes to the Republican Presidential nominee in 2020? The answer, of course, is "no one." Particularly if we let Penn PIRG help us tell our EPA to help preserve good Americans' health by rejecting its planned expansion of antibiotic spraying.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to reject the nomination of William Barr as Attorney General, then the National Women's Law Center still helps you do that. Why? Let us count the reasons: his work helping George H.W. Bush pardon half a dozen participants in the Iran-Contra scandal before Mr. Bush himself could be hauled into court, his belief that Presidents ought to be able to do pretty much what they like without very much constraint from the legislative or judicial branches, his apparent hostility to our Special Counsel's continuing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election (and Administration culpability therein), his persistence in believing the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act are unconstitutional years after our Supreme Court unanimously ruled that they are -- did I miss anything? Oh, right: he's a fellow who thinks incarceration solves every problem.
Comments