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9/22/17                                                            http://roganslist.blogspot.com/

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Many newspapers, including New York Times and Washington Post require subscriptions, but without one we can see a few articles each month.  We can also check with our local libraries to find out how to get online access through them.

1.      Trump and the Republicans are in such a rush to take health care away from millions of Americans that they are once again trying to pass a bill before it can be fully assessed by the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO will not be able to provide estimates on the effects of the new Trumpcare on the deficit, health insurance coverage or premiums for at least several weeks, and the Republicans want a vote before September 30th (http://www.businessinsider.com/cbo-score-graham-cassidy-bill-coverage-losses-2017-9). Let’s call our senators and tell them it would be irresponsible to vote on this bill before they receive this information. And let’s contact our House members and tell them to support H. Res. 441, which would change the rules of the House to prohibit the consideration of any bill until a CBO cost estimate has been made available.

2.      President Obama spoke at the Gates Foundation on Wednesday and spoke about health care:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/obamas-speech-at-the-gates-foundation-in-three-minutes/2017/09/20/07ccc002-9e2d-11e7-b2a7-bc70b6f98089_video.html?utm_term=.252919c2c912  Let's remind all Republican senators that if they vote for the Graham-Cassidy bill, they can no longer refer to themselves as pro-life.

3.      Only one hearing will be held on the Graham-Cassidy health care bill. It is scheduled for Monday, Sept. 25 at 2pm in 215 Dirksen Senate Office Building.  http://wjla.com/news/nation-world/health-care-industry-groups-line-up-against-graham-cassidy-bill  Any individual or organization wanting to present their views for inclusion in the hearing record should submit a typewritten, single-spaced statement, not exceeding 10 pages in length. Title and date of the hearing, and the full name and address of the individual or organization must appear on the first page of the statement.  We can email the committee here:  GCHcomments@finance.senate.gov or mail our comments (must be received by Oct. 9) here:  Senate Committee on Finance, Attn. Editorial and Document Section, Rm. SD-219, Dirksen Senate Office Bldg., Washington, DC 20510-6200.

4.      Ajit Pai, chairman of the FCC, needs to be reconfirmed by the Senate by the end of the year in order to maintain his current position http://bit.ly/2yqtjSR Pai has spearheaded efforts to do away with net neutrality http://bit.ly/2umR8eN Let's call our senators to make sure that they vote to oppose his re-confirmation. We can also send a letter through the Free Press Action Fund, an organization dedicated to preserving free and open internet: http://act.freepress.net/sign/internet_fire_pai

5.      The Senate will be voting on Trump's nominee for the EPA Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, Bill Wehrum. Wehrum has a history of defending coal and gas industries as an attorney, and led efforts to weaken clean air efforts in his previous role with the EPA http://bit.ly/2wVzSwj Currently, Wehrum is defending industry groups in court, against Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) silica dust rule http://bit.ly/2yfZm6Y Let's call our senators and ask them to oppose Bill Wehrum as Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation. We can also edit and send the National Resource Defense Council's (NRDC) letter to our senators https://act.nrdc.org/letter/af-wehrum-nom-170919

6.      "As Senate Republicans continue their campaign to garner enough votes to pass a last minute repeal of Obamacare, one of the key holdouts, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), just made a telling move. The Maine Senator has teamed up with a Florida Democrat, Senator Bill Nelson, to introduce legislation to stabilize existing ACA insurance markets. On CNN, Collins said that the Graham-Cassidy bill contains “many of the same flaws of the bill we rejected previously and in fact, it has some additional flaws.” As such, political experts are placing her in the “no” column for the upcoming vote."   http://newyorkjournals.com/trumpcare-holdout-senator-collins-just-left-republicans-stunned-bold-move/  Let's send her a thank you tweet for her bipartisanship and her efforts to save healthcare for Americans.  @SenatorCollins  or https://www.collins.senate.gov/contact

7.      After an inane and untruthful reply from Sen. Bill Cassidy, Jimmy Kimmel went at it again in his Wednesday night monologue: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5Hek7Z2b8Let’s let this fuel us to keep reaching our MoC and to contact friends and family in key states like Arizona and Alaska to ask them to make themselves heard. We can also take a moment to thank Kimmel: Mr. Jimmy Kimmel, El Capitan Entertainment Center,6840 Hollywood Blvd, LA, CA 90028

8.      First Lady Melania Trump spoke at the UN on Wednesday:  http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/20/melania-trump-un-lunch-bullying-242920With no apparent sense of irony, she said, “No child should ever feel hungry, stalked, frightened, terrorized, bullied, isolated or afraid, with nowhere to turn… We need to step up, come together, and ensure that our children's future is bright." Let’s remind First Lady Trump that POTUS’s actions against DACA recipients, Muslims, LGTBQ+ people and many other groups do not meet this standard: The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20500

9.      In case we needed more evidence of the political motivations driving the Graham-Cassidy effort to repeal the ACA, we now know who will gain and who will lose under a health care block grant system.  The biggest losses are to those, mostly blue, states that expanded Medicaid, some of them to the tune of $2000+ per person.  And guess who gains? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/19/us/blue-states-lose-republican-health-plan.html We must call our senators and stop this bill in its tracks: 202-224-3121.  There are reports that our phone calls are down!

10.  "A new analysis shared exclusively with the Guardian has found that 80% of nominations for top jobs in the Trump administration have gone to men – putting Donald Trump on track to assemble the most male-dominated federal government in nearly a quarter-century. Without a significant shift, men will outnumber women four-to-one in top positions of the Trump administration. “If you’re not intentional about it [diversity], it won’t happen,” said Don Gips, who served as the White House personnel director for the first six months of Obama’s presidency."  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/21/trump-is-assembling-the-most-male-dominated-government-in-decades Let's ask the White House for diversity:  more women, and people of colorhttps://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

11.  Trump's pick for a federal judgeship in Texas has said gay marriage will lead to bestiality, has advocated for gay conversion therapy and has suggested transgender children are evidence “of Satan’s plan.” Let's check out this Newsweek article about Jeff Mateer then contact our Senators to tell them to oppose this inappropriate nominee.

12.  Wright-Patterson Air Force Base chaplain Captain Sonny Hernandez is asserting that Christians in the U.S. Armed Forces “serve Satan” and are “grossly in error” if they support service members' right to practice other faiths per this Newsweek article.  The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has filed multiple requests that Hernandez be investigated by the Department of Defense's (DoD) inspector general. Let's join them by writing to the DoD inspector general asking for an investigation of this obviously-compromised chaplain. Write to: Glenn A. Fine, Acting Inspector General, Office of the Inspector General, 4800 Mark Center Dr, Alexandria VA 22350-1500.

13.  The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is set to expire on Sept. 30.  A bipartisan bill to continue it has come out of the Senate Finance Committee.  It starts out with federal matching rate of 23% as now directed by the ACA, but with a dwindling rate over the five-year span of the bill. http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/senate-finance-committee-extends-chip-funding-5-years  If the CHIP program is not continued, millions of lives will be at risk:  https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/09/18/failure-to-finalize-childrens-health-insurance-bill-could-leave-millions-at-risk/  Let’s let our senators know that we want this successful program to continue for the sake of our children. The US Climate Alliance, an alliance of 14 state governors committed to upholding the Paris climate accords by instituting state policies to fight global warming, unveiled a study produced by the Rhodium research group saying they were on track to meet their share of the Obama administration’s promise under the accord: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-20/despite-trump-states-still-on-pace-to-reach-paris-climate-goals  We still badly need federal action on climate change, but while the deniers are in power, we should urge our states to join the alliance.  The current members are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington; plus Puerto Rico.  If our state is not yet among these, let’s let our governors know we want them to join.

14.  "Moran, a Plainville Republican, helped sink two unpopular repeal-and-replace bills earlier this summer, though he later voted for repeal-only versions. His office said Wednesday he still was undecided on Senate Republicans’ latest efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare."  http://cjonline.com/news/state-government/2017-09-20/sen-jerry-moran-undecided-latest-push-obamacare-repeal  Let's add one more phone call to our list to KILL THE BILL.  We have another one on the fence, let's bring him over to our side. Contact info:   https://www.moran.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact-info

15.  Whatever other world leaders might have thought, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu loved Trump’s speech before the UN on Tuesday--and especially loved his threats to the Iran agreement.  Not surprisingly, given this cozy relationship, the Israeli-owned defense manufacturer, Elta North America, was just granted somewhere between $3 and $500,000 to produce a prototype for Donald’s border wall:  http://www.newsweek.com/trump-wall-israeli-company-make-prototype-200000-mile-long-mexico-border-wall-664968  We need to tell the White House that we don’t want this wall—and that we certainly don’t want Israeli wall-builders to profit:  https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

16.  Even with the costs of climate change becoming more and more apparent, Trump and the Republicans are focusing on even more giveaways to the oil and gas industry at the expense of our planet. Their 2018 budget plan relies on revenue from opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to new oil and gas drilling (http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/342566-house-budget-could-lead-to-alaska-refuge-drilling). Let’s join the Sierra Club in contacting Congress and demanding they protect ANWR and reject this budget at this link:  https://sierra.secure.force.com/actions/National?actionId=AR0089071

17.  We may be days away from Trump and the Republicans winning a critical victory on the way to taking away our health care (http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/19/politics/graham-cassidy-whip-list-health-care-bill/index.html). But we’ve beaten them before, and we can beat them again. There are a few critical swing votes we absolutely need to win. Let’s use this call tool to reach out to voters represented by those key senators, urge them to voice their opposition to Obamacare repeal, and connect them with senate offices: https://www.trumpcareten.org/calls-to-kill-trumpcare.

18.  From Postcards for America: Senators and Reps have sent a letter to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) urging the agency to consider new rules that would prevent foreign nationals from using online advertising platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, to influence U.S. elections. Following the revelation that Russia purchased Facebook advertisements during the 2016 election to attempt to influence American voters, there has been increasing concern about the lack of transparency in political ads in online advertising platforms.  In the letter they expressed their concern that no guidelines exist for advertising platforms to better prevent foreign nationals from illicitly spending in future U.S. elections.  Apparently, the Republican FEC commissioners will only agree to hold a hearing if they “receive enough substantive written comments.”  Let’s use the guidelines in this doc and provide those necessary written comments:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fCeTUabXYcc6nEZuRkNnlpOhmnDu1jQwGbLGQoVDt9Q/edit  

State Actions

1.      OH: "The Hazel Ginsburg well, an injection well built in the hillside decades ago, was meant to deposit saline and sand underground into porous rock. For the last few years, however, the well has held waste from out-of-state fracking operations done in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other states. It can feel remote here to outsiders. A long hour and a half drive to the airport. Across state lines to West Virginia for a Target. I believe that’s also what drew fracking companies here – fewer people to make a fuss, and the kind of people that others sometimes don’t care about: the poor."  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/21/appalachia-ohio-fracking-wells-toxic  Let your friends and family in Ohio know about this fracking pollution so they can address the issue with state government. This small town wants to stay clean and continue to produce healthy organic foods. 

2.      VA:  Join FLIPPABLE for a Day of Action in Virginia! "We're weeks away from a pivotal election in Virginia, and we need your volunteer spirit more than ever. Please join flippable on October 7th or 8th for a Day of Action to support our inspiring progressive candidates in Virginia. Volunteers will knock on doors, make calls, and support campaigns in five key flippable districts. Sign up to volunteer for our VA Day of Action!  Can't volunteer, but still want to contribute? You might consider donating... https://www.flippable.org/virginia-house/

3.      VA: As reported in the Prince William Times, incumbent Delegate Bob Marshall (R-District 13) refuses to debate Democratic challenger Danica Roem who is transgender.  Marshall says Roem's campaign has referred to him as “Bigot Bob,” an insult he says “disqualifies” the two from face-to-face discourse and suggests Roem is more interested in "hurling insults" than discussing public policy. In the same interview, Marshall doubled down on calling Roem, a transgender woman, "he," asking a reporter: "Why do you call Danica a female? Did Danica's DNA change?" Let's tell Delegate Marshall that we are interested in policy,  not the gender of our candidates, and that we want him to debate Roem.  Write to Delegate Bob Marshall at his district office: P.O. Box 421, Manassas VA 20108 or call:(703) 853-4213 or email: DelBMarshall@house.virginia.gov

4.      UT: The Utah School board has dropped middle school arts and health requirements per this article in the Salt Lake Tribune.  If we are Utahns and want this to change, we need to let Utah State Board of Education (USBE) know.  Write to USBE: PO Box 144200, Salt Lake City, Utah 84114-4200 or call: (801) 538-7500 or email mark.peterson@schools.utah.gov

Other Actions

1.      "Doxing is the violent Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting private or identifiable information about an individual or organization in order to harass and traumatize activists from organizing activity." Hopefully most of us will not need this, but if we are a target of right-wing harassment online, here's a best practices guide to protect ourselves and our personal information: https://medium.com/@EqualityLabs/anti-doxing-guide-for-activists-facing-attacks-from-the-alt-right-ec6c290f543c 

2.      Last March, ProPublica a nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest, was “looking for civically engaged people to help us fact-check what members of Congress are sending to their constituents” regarding the repeal/replacement of the ACA. https://www.propublica.org/getinvolved/help-us-fact-check-members-of-congress-on-the-affordable-care-act  While we are now involved in yet another version of repeal/replace, let’s tell ProPublica what we are hearing now.  Use the link above for a form to use.

Petitions

1.      Let’s join the DCCC, the official campaign arm of the Democrats in the House, in telling Republicans to “stop attacking Obamacare”:  https://action.dccc.org/petition/stop-attacking-obamacare

Marches/events/teleconferences to attend/organize

1.      Organizing For Action (OFA) will be hosting a call this morning, September 22nd, at 11am ET to discuss how we can fight back against the SHARE Act. The SHARE Act (H.R. 3668) would deregulate the sale of firearm silencers, and it has already made its way out of committee https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/hr3668 Let's sign up to join OFA's call and learn how we can help stop this bill from progressing any further https://www.ofa.us/fight-back-against-the-gun-lobby/

 Reading/Watching

1.      "Fake news" may be a real problem, but there are more fundamental issues at play: "many Americans lack fundamental civics knowledge, according to the recent Constitution Day Civics Survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, and therefore cannot understand current events."http://www.newsweek.com/trumps-america-americans-basic-knowledge-understand-current-events-667106 If we are to succeed long-term in building a better society, education must come first.

2.      “Why is Betsy DeVos and Bill Gates Afraid of this Grandmother?” --  https://www.facebook.com/networkforpubliced/videos/1572760702785702/



Rogan’s List is a participant in and strategic part ner of the Action Alliance,
a loosely-federated group of organizations that, in the wake of the
2016 election, are sharing daily or weekly calls to action.
Other member sites are listed here: https://www.actionalliance.co/  --scroll down and click through and you'll find many more opportunities to make a difference.
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Rogan’s List is also part of RISE Stronger’s United States of Resistance










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