Because our Administration only works for bosses and not for people, our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) is as we speak planning to allow debt collectors to harass and abuse customers even more than they do, in part by allowing debt collectors to send an unlimited number of texts and emails without customer consent. If you're sitting back thinking well then they shouldn't have run up the debt in the first place!, please do two things: a) slap yourself, b) contemplate that not getting deathly ill or having massive student debt may be a matter of luck rather than superior intellect, and c) consider that debt collectors often have bad information and thus call people who do not actually owe them any money! Now imagine debt collectors calling every damn day to demand payment on an unowed debt. Empathy: it's not actually that hard! Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your CFPB to scrap its plans to let debt collectors harass and abuse good Ameicans even more than they do now.
Meanwhile, Penn PIRG helps you tell our Food and Drug Administration (or FDA) to implement a new rule limiting the amount of pathogens like E.coli in the water they spray on our food. Sounds fairly commonsensical, doesn't it? Not to this Administration, where they seem to think that delay, delay, delay is the American way. And they're slow-walking these food safety rules a little over a year after an E.coli breakout among Romaine lettuce killed five folks and sickened another 210 across 36 American states. If "five deaths" doesn't sound that impressive to you, please do four things: 1) slap yourself, 2) consider whether anyone should die from a damn salad, 3) imagine it happening to someone you love, and 4) slap yourself again, because even contemplating 2) and 3) isn't enough to expiate your sin. And if you're tempted to think the FDA's delay saves corporations money and regulatory headaches, think about how rising health care costs might mean more than that. And maybe slap yourself again.
Finally, we've managed to get six big banking corporations to stop giving new loans to private prison corporations, and the commitments from JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, SunTrust Bank, BNP Paribas, and Fifth Third Bancorp represent almost three-quarters of the money private banks currently get -- but that still leaves over a quarter of the money! Hence Moms Rising helps you tell PNC, Barclays, and other banking corporations to stop profiting from our Administration's cruelty. And I don't think I have to tell you stories of kids being torn from their parents and sleeping on concrete floors in detention centers in order to persuade you to join this call. All I need to tell you is that imprisoning folks for whatever reason is something we should be doing, as a civilization and as owners of our government. We should not leave it up to some private corporation that cares first and foremost about their bottom line. And once we fully grasp that our own taxpayer money funds cruelty, we'll be better positioned to stop it, as is our right and our duty.
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