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pumpkin news

Halloween Humor: Should Death Be Considered a Pre-Existing Condition?

At Public Citizen, we’re not afraid to answer the really scary questions, whether they come from journalists, political leaders, our opponents or our supporters. But there are some questions continue to haunt us, especially on Halloween. We’ll leave it to you to decide whether these questions are tricks or treats.

  • It’s an age old debate: tricks or treats. Will you stand up for the right to trick in your neighborhood?
  • Is giving free candy to children socialism?
  • Does it seem wrong to foreclose on houses that are haunted by ghosts?
  • Vampires vs. werewolves. Why can’t both sides get along?
  • Is it time to abolish candy corn?
  • Is Halloween giving witches a bad name?
  • Last night, an unnamed assailant toilet-papered the White House. What is your reaction?
  • Is it right to let our children dress up as princes and princesses? What message are we sending about monarchy?
  • Is it realistic to ask zombies to become vegetarians to fight climate change?
  • Count Dracula is now hundreds of years old, yet he’s still collecting Social Security checks every month. Does that seem fair to you?
  • What do you say to pumpkins who are sick of being carved? Don’t they have rights too?
  • Some people say that ghosts are the solution to climate change since they don’t pollute. What is your reaction?
  • Some states won’t allow dead people to vote without a valid ID. Is that discrimination?
  • President Trump never severed his business ties to Big Garlic, and vampires are outraged. What do you think?
  • Some ghosts are saying that calls for greater transparency amounts to hate speech. Are they right to be upset?
  • Some people are saying democracy is for people? But what about monsters? Don’t they deserve democracy too?
  • Vampires are saying that blood banks on Wall Street have grown too big to fail. Should we break them up?
  • If giving up dark money meant you also had to give up dark chocolate, would you do it?
  • Do you support Mediscare for all?
  • Can Hell really afford universal Hell-th care?
  • Should death be considered a pre-existing condition?
  • Hell is building a wall to keep Donald Trump out. Should Purgatory pay for it?
  • Is your personal data safer with the Devil or Mark Zuckerberg?
  • Which costume is scarier on the Halloween before an election: James Comey or Vladimir Putin?
  • In your opinion, was the Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. a trick or a treat?
  • Who would be scarier to bump into in a graveyard late at night: Nosferatu or Ted Cruz?
  • Trolls: adorable or deplorable?
  • White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she’ll be handing out Whoppers this Halloween. Should we believe her?

Happy Halloween from your friends at Public Citizen!

netblock

Expect a Loud and Angry Backlash When the FCC Repeals Net Neutrality

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Don’t say you didn’t see it coming.

Today the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to cast a party-line vote repealing its net neutrality regulations. The agency is risking a major public and media backlash by so brazenly siding with big corporate interests like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon against the wishes of Main Street American internet users.

The principle behind net neutrality is simple and has overwhelming public support: The internet should be open and free. The FCC’s net neutrality rules, finalized in 2015, prohibited internet service providers (ISP) like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from speeding up, slowing down or blocking any content, applications or websites you want to use.

Net neutrality is a great example of how regulations protect and benefit regular Americans – and Americans get it. A poll conducted by the University of Maryland released today found that 83 percent of voters want to keep the FCC’s net neutrality rules – including 75 percent of Republicans, 89 percent of Democrats and 86 percent of Independents.

Without net neutrality, cable and phone companies will be allowed to carve up the internet into fast and slow lanes. ISPs will be able to slow down their competitors’ content, block political opinions they disagree with and force consumers to pay extra to access large parts of the internet. This is what Republican commissioners on the FCC are voting for – and consumers hate it.

That’s why in 2015, millions of ordinary Americans who care about the internet urged the FCC to adopt net neutrality rules in the first place, and this year, millions more submitted comments asking the agency to keep the rules in place. In addition, more than 500 small businesses, more than 160 public interest groups and more than 30 press freedom and civil liberties groups have signed on to letters backing net neutrality.

In the past few months, thousands of activists have attended rallies and demonstrations in defense of net neutrality. And today, dozens of Democratic lawmakers and at least one Republican called on the FCC to delay today’s vote.

But none of this appears to matter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who is determined to do away with the rules. Pai, his allies in the Trump administration and the ISPs pushing for repeal are asking for a backlash. Evidently they’ve already forgotten what happened in April, the last time they defied public opinion.

Earlier this spring, at the behest of the same ISPs that are pushing to repeal net neutrality, President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress repealed the FCC’s recently finalized broadband privacy protections – regulations that would have prevented ISPs from tracking your online behavior and selling that information without your permission and that would have beefed up online data security requirements.

The broadband privacy protections had the same level of public support as net neutrality rules. A Huffington Post/YouGov poll conducted in March found that 83 percent of Americans backed tougher broadband privacy measures and with good reason. This year’s massive data breaches at Equifax, Yahoo, Uber and dozens of other companies have more than demonstrated the need for such requirements.

But instead of simply letting the rules take effect, broadband privacy protections were repealed using the Congressional Review Act (CRA): a process that allows Congress to strike down recently issued public protections by majority vote in both chambers with limited debate, no possibility of a filibuster and the president’s signature. At least a dozen other rules were wiped out using the CRA process, but none of them provoked the level of outrage that repeal of the broadband privacy protections triggered.

The swift backlash took the form of wall-to-wall coverage on the late night talk shows; a tsunami of editorials, opinion columns and letters to the editor in national and local newspapers as well as online publications; billboards across the country targeting Republican lawmakers who voted for repeal; angry constituents hounding Republicans in both chambers of Congress in town halls and on their phone lines; and vows from the left, right and center to vote Republicans out of office for siding with the big telecoms against Main Street Americans.

The outrage was bipartisan and spanned the ideological spectrum. Even far right outlets like Breitbart had nothing but contempt for those who gutted broadband privacy protections. Regular Americans who don’t pay any attention at all to politics were paying attention to this – and were furious at the lawmakers who voted the wrong way. Shockingly, the creator of the popular and crass card game Cards Against Humanity even pledged to buy and publish the browsing history of members of Congress who voted to strip online privacy protections.

Republicans in Congress were so frightened by the intensity of the backlash that they started working on and co-sponsoring legislation to undo the damage caused by their vote. At least 17 state legislatures introduced similar legislation to establish their own broadband privacy protections. Most embarrassingly, the White House legislative affairs director was forced to concede that repealing broadband privacy protections would do nothing to create jobs, contrary to administration talking points.

Repealing broadband privacy protections may have satisfied the demands of the Republican Party’s big corporate donors, but it quickly became public relations catastrophe. Now, it appears that Republicans at the FCC are about to do it all over again – repealing net neutrality as payback to those same corporate donors.

What we’ve learned this year is that Americans are passionate about our online freedom, privacy and security – and the regulations that ensure it. Take them away and there will be hell to pay.

Don’t say you didn’t see it coming.

Photo courtesy of Backbone Campaign/CC BY 2.0

How Congress Is Using Super Powers In A Not-So-Super Way

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress used an obscure law called the Congressional Review Act to repeal 14 public protections finalized under President Barack Obama.

A holdover from Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, the CRA allows Congress – by majority vote in both chambers, with limited debate, no possibility of a filibuster and the president’s signature – to overturn recently issued regulations.

Public health, safety, consumer and environmental protections that took years of resource-intensive analysis, comment and review were wiped out in a matter of days or even hours. In the first five months of 2017, Republicans repealed broadband privacy protections, the stream protection rule, women’s health care protections, the fair pay and safe workplaces executive order and more. Dozens more rules might have been wiped out but for the CRA’s built-in expiration date: May 11 was the last day Republicans could use the law to strike down Obama-era rules.

While they can still use the CRA to repeal new rules finalized during the Trump administration – such as the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s arbitration rule protecting consumers’ right to take abusive financial companies to court – they can’t use the CRA’s expedited procedures to go after older regulations at a whim. The law simply doesn’t allow it.

Never short on creative legal theories or fact-free flights of fancy, some Republicans in Congress have convinced themselves that they can use the CRA in a completely novel way – a way never imagined by those who voted for the CRA – or really by anyone – until now. This imaginatively novel legal theory posits that the CRA can be used to repeal older regulations that were never submitted to Congress.

Exactly how many rules weren’t submitted to Congress – and are potentially eligible to be overturned on this basis? No one is entirely sure, but it’s probably not very many. Nobody has ever looked at this question before for a very simple reason: No one in their right mind thinks that the CRA can be used in this way.

The sheer absurdity of this theory isn’t enough to stop Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives from holding a hearing about it. On Thursday, Sept. 28 at 9:30 a.m. ET, Republicans in the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing in which they plan to share their fantastical new vision for the CRA with the world.

At Public Citizen, we’re quite excited to hear about some of the CRA’s miraculous new abilities imagined by Republicans, such as its x-ray vision and its ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound! It’s already faster than a speeding bullet, so why shouldn’t it also be able to turn back time and erase parts of our history? Who knows what things we’ve all taken for granted might suddenly disappear now that “Super-CRA” is on the case!

Here are the top ten things Republicans in Congress are sure to repeal using the awesome powers of the new and improved CRA:

10 – SOLAR PANELS

Most Republicans in Congress don’t believe in climate change and don’t think clean energy is necessary. Besides, who needs the power of the sun when you have the awesome power of the CRA?!

9 – FACT CHECKERS

Reality has a well-known liberal bias. The Super-CRA will fix that.

8 – “HAPPY HOLIDAYS!”

What D-Day was to World War II, the CRA will be to the “War on Christmas.”

7 – LATTES

Lattes have become a symbol of wealthy and out-of-touch urban elites. The new Super-CRA will help Republicans finally get rid of them.

6 – RENAISSANCE FAIRS

Renaissance Fairs hit a little too close to home for some Republicans. They’re a reminder of all that the Renaissance period represents: new ideas, new forms of art and cultural expression, science and humanistic values. Renaissance Fairs don’t stand a chance against the CRA.

5 – GRAMMAR

The right’s Internet trolls and commenters have never been fond of proper punctuation or spelling. So Republicans have decided that grammar must go.

4 – HOLLYWOOD

Republicans have never liked Hollywood. Maybe it’s the celebrities. Maybe it’s the liberals. Maybe it’s the sunshine and clear air. Whatever their reasons, the Super-CRA will make Hollywood go away.

3 – MUSICALS

Musicals have crossed the line, say Republicans. Even with the CRA’s expedited procedures, we’re not sure if they have the votes they need to repeal this one. We hear that U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) loves Phantom of the Opera.

2 – THE 1960s

The 1960s holds the #2 spot on the GOP’s must-repeal list for all the reasons you think. The CRA will wipe this decade from history and replace it with another decade. Republicans have yet to reach consensus on a replacement decade. It just better not be a decade that has lattes, Renaissance fairs or musicals.

And the number one thing Republicans want to repeal using the Super-CRA is….

TED CRUZ

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julyapprop3

This Independence Day, Americans Deserve Freedom From Riders

It’s a time honored American tradition. Every July Fourth, friends and families gather together for hot dogs and beer, flags and fireworks. But imagine if you went to an Independence Day gathering where things are a little … off.

The hot dogs are only half cooked and about a third their normal length, and essential condiments like ketchup, mustard and relish are nowhere to be found. Even the buns are absent. Also mysteriously missing are about two dozen stars on all the American flags. Later, you learn that the manufacturer decided to pad his profits instead of paying for white stitching – and that your host thinks guests should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and take personal responsibility for their own hot dogs and condiments.

Now imagine there are also some unexpected additions to the festivities. For starters, the Independence Day parade has several floats dedicated to Russian, Iranian and North Korean national pride; the coolers are packed with sake instead of beer to celebrate your host’s recent trip to Japan; and then you find out that the fireworks are laced with radioactive uranium – and are exploding dangerously close to the on-looking crowds.

This bizarre and disturbing Independence Day celebration is roughly analogous to what’s happening to the federal budget, currently being drafted in Congress. Lawmakers are proposing deep cuts to essential government services on ideological grounds and insisting on adding harmful and inappropriate riders that don’t belong in a budget bill. Really basic things that need to be included are missing, and other things that shouldn’t be included at all have hitched a ride.

This was illustrated most clearly in the draft financial services and general government appropriations bill, which passed out of subcommittee just before the beginning of the holiday weekend. The legislation – which is supposed to fund watchdog agencies such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – was packed with special favors for corporate interests.

Some of the riders attached to this legislation would prohibit the IRS from creating a clear definition of “political activity” to allow nonprofits to engage in the democratic process; stop the SEC from requiring publicly traded corporations to disclose secret political spending to investors; end the CFPB’s political independence; continue to allow forced arbitration clauses in consumer contracts, which let corporations to rip off consumers with impunity; and force agencies to put big bank profits ahead of consumers – and there are many more.

Shockingly, this is just one of the 24 appropriations bills with similarly absurd provisions and funding cuts. In case it isn’t obvious, this is a right-wing wish list, not a plan for funding our government and taking care of our country. What’s really going on is that must-pass budget legislation has been hijacked by corporations and ideological extremists to serve their own interests at the expense of workers, consumer and families. It’s unpatriotic and profound betrayal of the American people.

Just as July Fourth is supposed to be about our nation’s independence, the appropriations process is supposed to be about our nation’s priorities. Lawmakers who sing the praises of the American people during the holiday but sell us out when they return to Washington have the wrong ones.

This Independence Day, we should to be able to celebrate free from poison pill policy riders that don’t belong and don’t serve the American people.