Happy Wednesday, good folks! Now call your Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act; H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act; H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act; H.R. 5, the Equality Act; H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act; H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act; H.R. 397, the Butch Lewis Act; H.R. 535, the PFAS Action Act; H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act; H.R. 986, the Protecting Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions Act; H.R. 1146, the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act; H.R. 1373, the Grand Canyon Centennial Act; H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act; H.R. 2474, the PRO Act; H.R. 2513, the Corporate Transparency Act; H.R. 2722, the SAFE Act; H.R. 5035, the Television Viewer Protection Act; and H.J. Res. 79, which would remove the expiration date from the original Equal Rights Amendment. No we must not give up on all of these good works, which would protect voting rights, fight discrimination, make our internet free again, ensure minimum wage workers can better make ends meet, and help protect protections for pre-existing conditions -- among many other things! So don't let them tell you only one thing at a time matters! That's what they want you to think so you forget to fight for all the things that matter!
Meanwhile, an alleged nonprofit called the New England Ratepayers Association (or NERA) has filed a petition with our Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (or FERC) that could destroy the practice of "net metering," by which home solar users sell their unused power back to their local utility. Specifically, NERA claims that our federal government, not the states, should regulate net metering, because net metering is somehow by definition a "wholesale sale" (even if users get retail prices for their unused power, apparently) and only our federal government gets to regulate wholesale sales. That will baffle anyone acquainted with the defintion of the word "wholesale," to wit: "being sold in large quantities to be retailed by others." Solar users do sell their unused power literally "to be retailed by others" (since the power goes to the utility corporation), but the idea that solar users sell "in large quantities" is laughably absurd. Clearly NERA is counting on this Administration, which hates renewable energy with a passion bordering on the murderous, to destroy solar power for them. So Penn Environment helps you tell our FERC to reject NERA's desperate petition asserting that net metering is a "wholesale sale."
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunties to tell your Congressfolk to make Washington, D.C. our 51st state, then the Daily Kos Liberation League still helps you do that. I didn't think of this, but the Daily Kos Liberation League points out that our President deployed federal soldiers in D.C. neighborhoods to round up a few hundred peaceful protestors; when you consider, also, that our President displayed disgusting indifference in teargassing protestors out of his way so he could do a photo op at a church, you, too, might consider that making D.C. a state, which would have a Governor, might provide a useful check against future Presidential obnoxiousness. All the other arguments against D.C. statehood, in a word, suck -- D.C. can't be "too small" if it has more people than three actual American states, and if you're worried that they'll just elect two more Democrats to the Senate, then be a Republican who earns their vote. Sheesh, it's not that damn hard, and Republicans don't need any more welfare from our laws than they already get.
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