If you've missed previous opportunities to tell our EPA to reject its own attempt to loosen coal ash regulations, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. You'll want to get moving, though, because the deadline for public comments is tomorrow, January 31. Our EPA wants to allow coal corporations to put off closing unlined coal ash ponds, even though the state of Illinois alone has 90 leaking coal ash ponds, and even though coal ash a) contains lead, arsenic, and carcinogens and b) will leak into local water tables. (Since, you know, they're unlined.) Again our Administration pretends that a corporation's "right" to save a little bit of money (or, more precisely, a corporation's "right" to deliver a little more money to executives so they can gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation home) is more important than our actual right not to drink poisoned water. They care only about bosses redistributing more income upward to themselves, but money doesn't last forever. Clean water does -- if we take care of it.
Meanwhile, after TMZ leaked the news of Kobe Bryant's death in a helicopter crash before his wife, Vanessa, and their three surviving children could find out about his death from local authorities, a Change.org petition helps you tell Fox to cancel TMZ. I think everyone would agree that, no matter how famous they are, folks should get tragic news from their local authorities before they get it from the TV, let alone TMZ, which has been a notorious purveyor of uncivilized sensationalism for almost 15 years now. To be perfectly frank, I'd favor oblivion for them even if they had managed to display a moment's sensitivity on what I would imagine would be the worst day of Vanessa Bryant's life. And please don't entertain the notion that they're "better" at journalism because they got the "scoop" first -- do "scoops" about celebrities serve a purpose in our civilization other than titillation and arousal? If they don't, then they're not journalism, period, end of.
Finally, H.R. 273, the Presidential Tax Transparency Act of 2019, would require all major party Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates, as well as the President and Vice President themselves, to disclose 10 years of tax returns. This has been a big deal, as our current President was the first major party candidate not to disclose his tax returns since Richard Nixon, and several investigations into his conduct have tried to get his tax returns in order to see exactly how compromised he is; he says the issue is closed since he won, but of course that's not how democracy works: the issue is closed when we say it's closed, not him. So Americans for Tax Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to hold Presidential candidates accountable by passing the Presidential Tax Transparency Act. (Don't confuse H.R. 273 with H.R. 162, also titled the Presidential Tax Transparency Act, which would require only the President and Vice President to disclose their tax returns.)
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