We've heard rather little about war with Iran this week -- but that doesn't mean we won't! Particularly since our President killed Gen. Soleimani in the middle of an impeachment, and that impeachment ain't going away just yet. Hence Win Without War helps you call your Senators and tell them to reject war with Iran. To think, if Jimmy Carter had simply bombed the crap out of Iran in 1980 he might have won a second term! But if our President is thinking the same thing, he's forgetting that 40 years have passed, and several wars-fought-under-false-pretenses have passed, and thus we're all a little skittish about fighting another one of those. And if you're thinking that maybe killing Gen. Soleimani really did prevent a war, note well that the whole "he was going to hit four U.S. embassies" rationale is, well, based on fairly flimsy evidence-if-we-can-call-it-that, with at least one Administration official saying people were wondering if our President had made it all up. And that's why we restrain Presidential power, as our Constitution commands us to do.
Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee (or IOC) has lately banned political protests during the Games; protest might include kneeling, raising of fists, or wearing of armbands or signs. You may recall that track stars John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their fists in support of the civil rights movement while getting medals in 1968; yes, "The Star-Spangled Banner" was playing, and if you think Messrs. Carlos and Smith "disrespected our country" in doing so, I'd say you were a bit sensitive. Surely your love of country can survive your being told you're not doing quite enough to fight racism, can't it? Hence Color of Change helps you tell the IOC to rescind its ban on political protest during the Olympics. Would I thus allow a white athlete to make one of those obnoxious white-power symbols during our national anthem? Of course I would! And let's see how many pals he'd have afterward, both among his fellow athletes and his corporate sponsors! Probably less of both than Colin Kaepernick, whose True to 7 shoe is doing quite well as we speak even though NFL teams with far worse quarterbacks won't sign him.
In other news, H.R. 5565, the Safety Hazard Recall Efficiency Information Act, or SHARE Information Act, would amend the Consumer Product Safety Act so that corporations couldn't mark information about their product defects "confidential"; yes, our laws actually allow them to do that, even though a lot of good Americans might benefit from information about, oh, just to pick an example out of thin air, the dangers presented by inclined baby sleepers linked to at least three dozen infant deaths over the last decade. The bill would also stiffen penalties for violating the Consumer Product Safety Act; what a shame that right-wingers never call that "law and order," though it's a perfectly valid application of the phrase. You can meet those right-wingers who complain that the SHARE Information Act would impose "more bureaucracy" on poor beleaguered corporations with the words "law and order" -- or the words "dead babies," if you like. But first, Penn PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to promote product safety by passing the SHARE Information Act.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) to reject its own rule that would curtail shareholder power at big corporations, then Public Citizen still helps you do that. The SEC would require shareholders to own ten times more stock before you could even introduce a shareholder resolution; as usual, one must ask what is the SEC afraid of? They must be afraid of Boeing not being able to build unsafe airplanes like the 737 MAX -- because shareholder resolutions did try to call attention to Boeing executive coziness with federal regulators, and under the new rules, you sure would see a lot fewer of those. Boeing has taken a lot of PR hits, and deservedly so, over its problems with the 737 MAX, but making it harder for shareholders to prevent their corporations from making grave errors like the 737 MAX sure seems like the wrong lesson to learn. Of course our President seems to live for learning the wrong lessons. That doesn't mean we can't teach him the right ones.
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