The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell our government to enforce the Community Reinvestment Act. With the news that our current Administration would like to declare banks compliant with the CRA even when they lend less to low- and middle-income borrowers -- which sure does seem like our law-and-order President just ignoring the law, doesn't it? -- you would, at the above link, call for our Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (or FDIC) and our Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (or OCC) to ensure that banks give out loans to small businesses and family farms more than big sports stadiums, and to ensure that banks that create "affordable housing" units actually put low- and middle-income folks in those housing units. Such rules would seem self-evident, but apparently they're not self-evident to a President who thinks rules are only for little people and big people should break all the rules they want. Luckily we have built a civilization to constrain such people, and we must constrain them wherever we can.
Meanwhile, Penn PIRG helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to ban pyrethroid use in pesticides until they can be proven safe. For a long time, we thought they were safe, at least for us; scientists have long known that most vertebrates (cats being a conspicuous exception) produce enough enzymes to break down pyrethroids, but that pyrethroids hurt most invertebrates. Trouble is we use so damn much of the stuff now, for so many purposes -- spraying crops, household pest control, repelling mosquitoes, treating lice outbreaks -- that we're finding that it does make us sick, or, at least, folks who get a lot of exposure to it get sicker than the rest of us. And though our bodies absorb pyrethroids very easily, that's less significant if we're absorbing a lot of them, to the point where studies have linked pyrethroids to chronic diseases including diabetes and Parkinson's. So, yeah, it's time for our best-and-brightest to come up with new ways of controlling pests. Hey, civilization requires maintenance.
Finally, the state of Florida has not yet banned "conversion therapy" for gay folks, even though the American Psychological Association (or APA) declared it a harmful, bogus practice over a decade ago. "Conversion therapy" often involves inducing vomiting while showing homoerotic imagery and forced re-enactment of past sexual abuses and "exercises" involving nudity and intimate touching. Oh, and electric shocks! You won't be surprised to learn that the APA also found that it caused guilt, depression, self-hatred, and increased suicidal ideation, and you certainly won't be surprised to learn that it doesn't turn gay folks hetero! America gets a bad rap, I think, for being bigoted toward folks who are different from the mainstream, but most Americans would just as well leave each other alone, except that Our Glorious Elites need to create drama to distract from their thievery. If you want to strike a blow against that drama, then let Change.org help you tell Florida state legislators to ban "conversion therapy" forever.
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