You know our President has tried to delay the collection of the employee-side payroll taxes that pay for Social Security, and you know he's said out loud that he wants to permanently repeal that tax, thus depriving Social Security of its funding -- but you may not know that Social Security Chief Actuary Stephen Goss has said that Social Security would be out of money by 2023 if we made this payroll tax cut permanent! Which means Mr. Goss will be getting a lot of death threats this week from our President's votaries. But this is one Social Security-will-be-out-of-money prediction you can count on, because, well, when you zero out a revenue source that pays for a program, you won't be able to pay for that program anymore. Cue the Arthur Laffer Clown Car, claiming that zeroing out revenues increases revenues! Of course, we shouldn't let the greediest and stupidest among us make all the decisions in America -- which is what happens when we keep silent. Hence Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any legislation that would permanently end the Social Security payroll tax. We earned Social Security, dammit.
Meanwhile, another day, another Administration attempt to gut the Endangered Species Act by rewriting the rules so that it's a lot harder to protect endangered species from oblivion. I shouldn't have to say why that's a good thing, right? I mean, when a species is gone, it ain't coming back -- just like the fuel we dig up from the ground will one day be gone, and then where will we be? Not reproducing species from fossils in amber, that's for sure! Seriously, this is a world where we have renewable sources of energy, like solar, wind, and geothermal, and we could make these our main sources of energy if Our Glorious Elites would just get with the program, but instead our Administration proposes to redefine "habitat" downward to make endangered species virtually homeless, and thus subject them to the mercy of our madness for development! Hence Wild Earth Guardians helps you tell our U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to withdraw its proposed rule changes that would hamper our ability to protect endangered species under the law.
In other news, H.R. 7956/S. 4473, the Critical Medical Infrastructure Right-to-Repair Act, would compel corporations that make critical hospital equipment (think ventilators!) to release the information that would allow third-party repair techs at hospitals to fix them. And just to head off industry propaganda, our FDA found in 2018 that third-party technicians are just as good as manufacturer-authorized techs in fixing medical equipment. You'd think our FDA might have said the opposite, so that executives in the medical equipment field could continue to restrict "proprietary" information, but they did not. And while I don't believe in trade secrets über alles, we're not even talking about releasing trade secrets that could lead competitors to reverse-engineer products -- we're talking about releasing spare parts, service diagrams, and diagnostic software that could help save lives. Hence US PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to make fixing machines and saving lives easier by passing the Critical Medical Infrastructure Right-to-Repair Act.
Finally, Samsung, of all corporations, is mulling investing in the proposed Vung Ang 2 coal plant, even though its builders would put it in the same fishing village that saw its livelihood wiped out by the notorious Formosa steel plant spill of 2016! And things ain't much better four years later, which you would figure, knowing that the Formosa disaster contaminated 20 miles of coastline with cyanide. A couple of big corporations have already pulled out of Vung Ang 2, and Samsung has already changed its mind about investing in the proposed Adani Carmichael coal plant that would further befoul the Great Barrier Reef, so we know the Big Stick of Bad PR can sway them. But only if we wield it! Hence Sum of Us helps you tell Samsung to pull out of the proposed Vung Ang 2 coal plant. If Samsung winds up staying with Vung Ang 2, I would have to at least wonder if they pulled out of Adani Carmichael because that plant might have affected the air and water of mostly white people, whereas Vung Ang 2 would affect the air and water of mostly non-white people. I mean, I like to think the best, even of big corporations, but too often they make that hard.
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