Both houses of Congress have passed anti-robocall bills, and now they must conference out a bill to send to our President, and you know how House/Senate conferences can be a good place to pull all the teeth from good legislation, so Consumer Reports helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the strongest possible anti-robocall bill. The ideal bill would give good Americans free call-blocking tools and anti-spoofing technology, force all robocallers to get your permission before even calling you, and get tough with those who'd violate either of these tenets. Yes, there's a time to get tough and a time to go easy; usually the emptiest wagons of our law-and-order discourse get tough and easy at all the wrong times, but I can assure you that getting tough on robocallers would be getting it right. None of us want people we don't know calling us, particularly if they're just trying to separate us from our money.
Meanwhile, H.R. 3760/S. 2112, the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act, would fix a major injustice inflicted upon domestic workers: their near-total exclusion from the protection of federal labor laws. Domestic workers often can't get overtime pay, can't get workers' comp, and can't get justice when their employer harasses them; would you put up with that if it were you, or someone you loved? No use protesting that my boss treats me/my loved one fine, so I don't need the law, because laws are for everyone, and if something happened to you or your loved one, you might find our your boss is a fair-weather friend, and then you'll need the protection of the law. Would it be piling on to mention that most domestic workers are folks of color? No, it would not be piling on. Hence Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to support working families by passing the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act.
In other news, H.R. 1146, the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act, may come up for a vote in the House this week -- at which point I guess we'll be adding it to our weekly list of good House bills that Mob Boss Mitch won't allow the Senate to vote on, but it's still very much worth it to call your House Rep and tell them to support the bill, as the Alaska Wilderness League helps you do. Drilling anywhere in the Arctic is a dicey proposition, as it's much harder to clean up a spill in frigid waters than it is in more temperate waters and oil corporations don't even want to do that, right, BP? But drilling in the Arctic also interferes with a) a thriving salmon industry and b) a Native American population that deserves our protection from corporate greed. Sadly, we also must consider that this President can't be trusted to develop a region with any other aim in mind than to enrich his cronies. So let's stand against him and his venality yet again.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our FBI to stop targeting folks who protest fascism, cruel immigration policy, and racist policing, then Free Press still helps you do that. Right-wing politicians from our President on down have the gall to think these are the folks who threaten our nation, while all these white supremacist murderers swing their penises in our faces! Of course, these white supremacists generally support right-wing politicians from our President on down, but our FBI is supposed to be above all that, and if, historically, they haven't been, that's no reason to demand better of them, since, really, they work for us. And I'll brook no silliness about how they're our "first defense" against trouble and thus we should let them do what they want. Civilized people set boundaries, tell these "defenders" when they've gone too far, and take steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. That's not too much to ask of us.
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