The California Senate plans a vote on AB 2439, which would require corporations to disclose how much money they've paid in taxes, and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment helps you tell the California Senate to pass AB 2439. Forcing such reporting would help the public know who's avoiding paying taxes, who's buying legislation to avoid paying taxes, and which loopholes corporations use to avoid paying taxes. I suppose the bill's opponents will cry oppression and First Amendment rights, but corporations are not people, just like chairs are not people. I also bet the bill's opponents will whine about the burden to small businesses. The small businesses are the ones paying all the taxes! They have nothing to fear from public disclosure.
Meanwhile, Ethiopian journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega criticized his government's detainment of journalists under a sweeping anti-terrorism law -- and found himself convicted of terrorism, awaiting a possible death sentence. Mr. Eskinder has duked it out with his government before, serving a 17-month sentence for treason in 2005 and 2006 before receiving a Presidential pardon, and the Ethiopian government seems to love arresting and tormenting dissidents -- as Amnesty International reports, Ethiopia arrested hundreds of political opponents in 2011, for "crimes" as piddling as applying for demonstration permits, and Mr. Eskinder was only one of two dozen folks convicted of "terrorism" in June. So the Electronic Freedom Foundation helps you advocate for Mr. Eskinder's release.
Finally, Public Citizen helps you tell your local papers to cover the Trans-Pacific Partnership already. Not everyone reads the interwebs, after all; despite all the coverage of the "new" media, most folks still watch the evening news and read the newspapers, and those media have been doing a pretty shabby job covering a "free" "trade" agreement that could offshore our jobs, lower our wages, make our medicine more expensive, and flood our markets with unsafe food. Plus it could let corporations all over the planet run roughshod over a sovereign nation's laws. This is why corporations constantly tell us that "regulations" are bad -- because they're regulations made by our government, by people we elected and whom we expect to do right by us. Corporations don't want us to have any say, lest they actually have to work not to pollute our air and water. It really is as simple as all that.
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