If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject this Administration's plan to cut folks four- or five-digit checks in exchange for having them defer collecting Social Security for a few more years when they're older, then Social Security Works still helps you do that. Of course, after one Administration spokeshack said that proposal was all but DOA, Larry Kudlow-who's-wrong-about-everything promptly said it was actually very much alive, so don't believe the hype coming from our Administration; rather, believe in your ability to make your representatives do what's right. It's not enough just to say this is like the Marco Rubio proposal to take from future Social Security benefits to fund paid family leave now -- we also have to confront the fact that we don't know what the future holds for us -- maintaining your health now gives you a better chance at a peaceful future, but it doesn't guarantee it -- and therefore we don't know if we're just going to be able to push off retirement a few more years when we're in our late '60s. Best to fight for the program you've worked for, paid into, and deserve to enjoy in your golden years.
Meanwhile, Penn PIRG helps you tell our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or whatever it calls itself these days to crack down on debt collector harassment. Yes, debt collectors are still harassing good Americans with demands for payment as if the fact that almost a quarter of good Americans don't have enough work right now simply doesn't exist. But then, pretending that facts simply don't exist is becoming a survival strategy for big corporations! I mean, debt collectors have never been popular (and it is a tough job), but since the 2008 bankster meltdown big corporate lenders have rivaled them in unpopularity! And if you're still saying if you didn't want the debt collection calls you shouldn't have taken on the debt please do four things: 1) slap yourself, 2) contemplate how many houses and cars and college degrees you bought with cash, 3) contemplate more fully that folks take on debt so they can better their futures, and 4) attend the word "harassment" in the first sentence. Being reminded that a bill is due is one thing, but getting phone calls every two hours is another thing entirely.
Finally, stop me if you've heard this one before, but our Administration has decided to ignore its scientists, who recommended stricter regulations against soot pollution, and keep soot pollutions standards exactly where they are. Well, they may not be our Administration's scientists anymore, since EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler replaced the panel working on soot standards with a more industry-friendly panel, so that they could "find" that coal and oil and wood just don't put that many pollutants in our air! Is it a victory that our Administration didn't propose weakening them? Nah, you know what they say: if you're standing still, you're losing ground, particularly when Harvard scientists have lately found that soot pollution increases your risk of death from the coronavirus, which conclusion is hardly a great leap from figuring that any air pollution makes breathing harder, and thus makes diseases that hinder your breathing more deadly. Hence Penn Environment helps you tell our EPA to better protect the health of good Americans by strengthening soot standards, as our EPA's own scientists recommended.
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