Happy Wednesday, good folks! Now call your Senators and tell them to pass 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. 51, the Washington, D.C. Admission 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; H.R. 7120, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act; and H.J. Res. 79, which would remove the expiration date from the original Equal Rights Amendment. This week we add H.R. 2214, the NO BAN Act, which finally passed the House last week. Our Senate has no business sitting on bills that fight discrimination and promote voting rights, internet freedom, and working families. And if we tell them enough, they'll learn it one day.
Meanwhile, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (or TCEQ) has proposed rules on regulating plastics so they don't wind up in our water, and surprise, surprise! They're not good enough -- everyone wants to keep Coke bottles out of rivers, but the TCEQ would do nothing about microplastics, which also wind up in our water and too often also wind up in our bloodstream, causing or exacerbating all manner of health problems. The TCEQ apparently did not take health care problems into account; only "environmental" problems, as if environmental problems somehow don't cause health care problems. The TCEQ, like any agency wishing a "smooth" relationship with the corporations it supposedly regulates, would give plastic manufacturing corporations another year to comply with the rules. And if people suffer for it, too bad! They must be sacrificed so that regulators and corporations can get along better! Seriously, government agencies should cultivate an adversarial relationship with the corporations they regulate; maybe then they'll do their job. So Public Citizen helps you tell the TCEQ to regulate plastics in water much more vigorously than they've thus far proposed.
Finally, our Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee -- which helps our Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services put together the Dietary Guidelines for Americans every five years -- has recommended that the Guidelines for 2020-25 advise that we limit added sugars and address how we grow food so we can actually have an agricultural sector in the coming decades. These are absolutely necessary recommendations! And of course there's no guarantee that this Administration will follow them. Word on the street, of course, is that our President -- with advice from former Bush Mobber John "The Crusher" Yoo -- has read our Supreme Court's DACA ruling (which went against him, you recall) as permission to do whatever he wants until someone sues him under the Administrative Procedure Act. And if you responded by saying I thought he was doing that already!, you win a prize, but consider that he now may feel even less constrained by the rules and norms of civilization than he did before, and consider, also, that he loves junk food and he thinks planning for the future (which "not eating sugar today" most certainly is) is for "losers." Hence the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell our government to adhere to the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee's recommendations.
Comments