Word on the street is that the House may vote next week on two excellent ideas: defunding any future Presidential attempt to wage war on Iran, and repealing the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force (or AUMF). The whole point of breaking off from King George III was most decidedly not to defer to a President who makes King George III look like the very model of sanity, so Win Without War helps you tell your House Reps to restrain our President's attempts to start war with Iran. In a related note, the Project on Government Oversight informs us that over 50 members of Congress and/or their spouses own, on average, somewhere between $45,000 and $110,000 each in defense corporation stock, and you can smell the conflict of interest there, right? As in what incentive do our Congressfolk have to stop us from fighting stupid wars if they stand to make money from them. So the Project on Government Oversight helps you tell your Congressfolk to divest from "all investments tied to their Congressional responsibilities." They'll say that's hard, but so's anything worth doing, so don't brook any whining from your Congressfolk.
Meanwhile, our Department of Agriculture has announced that they intend to roll back literally the only achievement of the Obama USDA -- the nutritional standards that replace junk food with more fruits and vegetables in school lunches. House Republicans have been trying to gut these standards for years, armed with dramatic anecdotes about kids throwing out apples, because what else can you do when you are objectively pro-childhood obesity? Am I being too harsh? On these clowns? Our USDA's maneuvering has nothing to do with "reducing burdensome regulations" and everything to do with catering to big food manufacturing corporations who want our kids hooked on their burgers and fries. It might also have to do with a President who really thinks fast food is the best food -- or, more broadly, a President who thinks long-term thinking is for losers. So Change.org helps you tell our USDA to protect kids' health by reversing course on its school lunch rollbacks.
In other news, you know that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (or HIPAA) protects your private info when you go to the doctor or to a hospital, but what about the information you're giving to health-tracking apps on your phone? The corporations that collect that info can do whatever they like with that data, including selling it, and I don't think you signed up for that! And if you're not particularly worried about your heart-rate-while-jogging getting sold to someone who might try to sell you new running shoes, consider that apps tracking menstrual cycles actually reveal a lot more information that you would think -- like, how often you have sex, how often you have sex without using birth control, even how many miscarriages you have. And then imagine some data broker compiling that info on you into a profile that could affect your ability to get insurance (or get it at a good price)! Smells like dystopia, doesn't it? So Consumer Reports helps you tell health-tracking app corporations to protect your privacy.
Comments