Long story short: tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to reject a fake gerrymandering reform bill, tell our EPA to enact the most vigorous methane emissions regulations possible and start monitoring factory farm pollution, tell President Biden to keep his promise to outlaw certain landmines and close Guantánamo Bay, and tell our USDA to stop oil trains from rumbling through Utah. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
Pennsylvania residents, take note: Fair Districts PA informs us that the recently-introduced HB 2207 only pretends to create a citizens' commission for redistricting, in that it give the political parties far too much power over its composition and direction and would actually amend our state constitution to let one party have complete control over the process. They'll call that the voters' will, when gerrymandering Rorschach-blot districts that excise sides of streets and individual houses is the perfect way to subvert the voters' will! They got some cojones, these clowns, but that's all they got. You can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're on a cellphone) to find your state legislator's phone number so you can tell them to reject this bill -- unless it includes the Samuelson amendment that would at least give good Pennsylvanians a real independent citizens commission, which would negate all the bill's horrors.
Penn Environment helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to enact the most vigorous methane emission rules possible. Best to get to stepping, though, since their deadline for comments is Friday. Methane packs a bigger climate change punch than coal, and when big corporations let it leak from their oil or gas drilling facilities, they're not just moving the coastlines uncomfortably closer to you, they're wasting perfectly good energy -- and if they're drilling on public lands, they're also cheating you, the taxpayer, out of royalties. In short, nobody likes methane leaks -- except the big gas and oil corporations that don't want to do their part to keep our planet livable because it means the CEO can't gild the plumbing in his 19th vacation home. And they shouldn't get their way about that.
US PIRG helps you tell our EPA to start monitoring factory farm pollution. Which cause the most water pollution in America, and which our EPA pledged to start monitoring 17 years ago; what's the holdup? The holdup, I suspect, is that big ag corporations get even more deference from our government than all the other big corporations to which our government defers -- all these big corporations have to do is dangle the spectre of high food prices and they get whatever they like. Well, we're not hostages in America -- we're free people. And asking our EPA to start monitoring (not even stopping!) factory farm pollution is not so damn much to ask. Rivers of hog poop have a lot of methane in them, too, and too much hog poop makes people sick. Don't people count for anything?
Win Without War helps you tell President Biden to re-ban anti-personnel landmines. Donald Trump lifted this ban during his deleterious four years as President, and President Biden promised he'd undo it, but he hasn't, yet, and it's not like he hasn't had the time -- a stroke of a pen is all it'll take. Put five beers into Donald Trump and I'm sure he'll tell you other countries get to do it so we should too, but the whole point of America is to be the best possible example to other countries. It's like none of these folks in politics remember that -- or, more likely, they think they don't have to earn it anymore. But we must always earn America. And landmines have been known to blow people's legs off 50 years after the war's over, so let's not let cruelty be the example we set for the rest of the world.
Amnesty International helps you tell President Biden to close Guantánamo Bay already. Again, he promised to do this, and it's not like he can't get something done if he puts his mind to it -- like, you know, our withdrawal from Afghanistan, which he should have done a lot better but at least he did it; get us out of this now 20-years-going-on humiliation and he might actually start stacking up some accomplishments. Guantánamo still has almost 40 detainees, held without charge or trial, and if they'd really done something so bad you'd think our government could charge them with something. That tells you they didn't do a damn thing! Someone already stands ready to say if even one terrorist was there it was all worth it, but they'd never say that if they were detained at Guantánamo for years on end. So we can blow them off.
Finally, Environmental Action helps you tell our U.S. Department of Agriculture (or USDA) to revoke permits for an oil railway running through the Ashley National Forest in Utah. Jesus Mary and Joseph what is it about Utah that makes big corporations want to screw with it? Utah has some of the most beautiful country in the world! And this railway won't even dig out the minerals that big corporations often covet in Utah -- but it will ruin wildlife habitat and wetlands there, and for what? If we don't move past oil -- which is more than possible in a world where solar and wind now cost less in some places than fossil fuels -- then we're not going to have a planet left. Why, even those jerks at Fox News who spend all their time laughing at people who want more solar and wind won't have a place to go.
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