Word on the street is that Mr. Trump has abandoned the tax cut plan he pushed during the election -- a tax plan that would have delivered yet another windfall to his rich friends, cut the poorest Americans' taxes a little, and actually hiked taxes for some middle-class folk unlucky enough to find themselves in a different bracket. But now he's pushing another tax cut plan, one that would eliminate FICA payroll taxes, and he'd like to sell that as a "middle-class tax cut," since FICA taxes only affect the first $127,200 of income. And if that number sounds familiar to you, you probably already know the catch: FICA taxes fund Social Security. Gosh, it's like he watched the third season of House of Cards and didn't realize it was a cautionary tale. If you repeal the taxes that fund Social Security, guess what happens? You don't get to collect Social Security when you retire. Because the money is gone. Taxes pay for things, after all, and FICA taxes pay for the retirement you worked for, fought for, earned, and deserve. Tools are in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or on the bottom, if you're using a cellphone) so you can call your Reps and Senators and tell them to reject any "tax cut plan" that would cripple our Social Security.
Meanwhile, a few months back we learned that "harvesting pregnant horse blood" was an actual thing that pharmaceutical corporations (mostly in Europe) do, in order to get a magical hormone that regulates a pig's reproductive cycle, and therefore regulates meat production (and thus, I presume, profits) at factory farms. Apparently our activism against this disgusting practice has helped cause at least one pharmaceutical corporation (Merck, Sharpe, and Dohme, which is what Merck & Co. calls itself outside the United States) to announce that it would refrain from using the worst blood farms, but only for its European products, oddly, so Sum of Us helps you tell MSD to do better at getting itself out of the horse blood trade. And Sum of Us also helps you tell the German pharmaceutical corporation IDT Biologika to cut ties with horse blood farms. It's not just the prospect of draining animals of their blood that should give you the willies -- it's also the fact that blood farms tend to drain them until they die, and also induce abortions in the course of their work, since I guess it takes too long for a horse to grow up to the point where they can drain its blood, too.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to submit a public comment telling the Department of Labor to keep the Obama-era rule requiring retirement advisors to put their customers' interests before their own, then the Economic Policy Institute still helps you do that. President Trump is all about getting rid of regulations, you know -- because getting rid of regulations that some banksters find annoying is much more important than keeping regulations that help everyone! -- but Mr. Trump still must follow the rules, and if he's that desperate to get rid of a rule that should be common sense for financial advisors but isn't because financial advisors have proven themselves to be too greedy to police themselves, he still has to take public comments on getting rid of it. And I bet your comment will be better than any of our opponents' comments! I mean, our opponents are actually going on record saying the rule would make too many financial advisors suffer, and even put a few out of business. Hmm, selfish financial advisors being unable to make as much money as they'd like -- isn't that how it's supposed to work?
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