As the Afghanistan War enters its 19th (!) year, it's well past time for Congress to investigate the sheer folly of this effort, hence Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to investigate the Afghanistan Papers, which describe how our government has been lying and BSing its way through this war for almost two decades. The Washington Post, as you may recall, obtained the "Afghanistan Papers" through a Freedom of Information Act (or FOIA) request, and published them in early December; the papers expose government officials declaring the war unwinnable in virtually every conceivable sense but plugging on with the disaster anyway, apparently adhering to the belief that the only thing worse than doing wrong is admitting you're wrong. You may wonder why we're bothering to get Congress in on this. Why, because it's their job -- as it has been all these years! -- and we must always tell them to do their job. And saying we-can't-win-but-let's-lie-about-it-rather-than-change-it is one thing in a memo you don't intend to ever see the light of day, but it's another thing entirely under oath, before the people's representatives. At least, it should be -- and we should make it be.
Meanwhile, banks used to evade state interest rate caps by "partnering" with out-of-state banks that don't face interest rate caps, but our Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (or FDIC) cracked down on them during Tha Bush Mobb years, of all times. But guess what? Times are changing back! With an Administration determined to destroy every regulation that might help good Americans suffer a little less, at least two banks -- FinWise (of Utah) and Republic Bank (of Kentucky) -- have restarted the notorious "rent-a-bank" scheme that lets them offer loans with interest as high as 160% to good Americans facing emergencies, thus assuring that they'll be trapped in a pit of debt for years to come. Nice work if you can get it! But, as I've said, this is already illegal, so the Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell our FDIC to crack down on banks gaming the system to trap vulnerable folks in usurious loans. No use telling me "this isn't the job of government," not unless you want me to call you objectively pro-financial predator. We should be using terms like these a lot more; maybe they'll help bring shame back to our civilization.
Finally, if you've been attending the wildfires in Australia, you know climate change ain't no "Chinese hoax," as our President put it long ago, and you know we have a lot of work to do to counter its effects -- mainly, move from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Legislation supporting renewable energy is one way to do that, but it's not the only way -- another way is to get private corporations to divest from fossil fuels. We've told banks to divest from fossil fuels, and they've started to get the message, but we also have to get state pension funds out of fossil fuels, so Daily Kos helps you tell your state governors and legislators to get state pension funds to divest from fossil fuel corporations. Our opponents will tell us that we would be "hurting pensioners" if we did that, but you recognize that as a rhetorical hostage crisis by now, and besides, pension funds are kind of in the driver's seat here -- corporations want their business, after all! Maybe state pension funds should act like they're in charge, then?
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