Trumpians say "it's time for good people to stop paying for bad people" in our federal budget. But they're not talking about taxpayers paying for welfare handouts for banksters and big pharma and nuclear power plants; they're talking about things like food stamps, as if only "bad people" (and not, say, children or seniors) use them. Trouble, of course, is that we now live in a society where (as Neal Gabler instructed us a year ago) nearly half of us would have big trouble scaring up $400 if we had an emergency, so the next time you cross the street against the light, you could be utterly broken financially as well as physically, and then you might need food stamps to make ends meet. Would that automatically make you a "bad person"? Of course it wouldn't -- and if we funded food stamps like civilized human beings, we could be there for each other, and not incidentally, for ourselves, since trouble doesn't discriminate. So Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject Mr. Trump's proposed food stamp cut.
Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1776/S. 771, the Improving Access to Affordable Prescription Drugs Act, then Sum of Us still helps you do that. Want yet another measure of the sickness, immorality, and decadence of our society? Then consider how easily the notorious "Pharma Bro" could hike the price of the life-saving medicine Daraprim by over 5000 percent and then act all surprised anyone thought that was uncouth. Consider also how Mylan could hike the price of an EpiPen -- something you might need to deploy within 10 seconds to save someone's life! -- by over 400 percent. Consider how often cable news punditoids talk about us having to live with high drug prices as the price of research and development, without noting that research and development are expenses and thus don't get taxed as corporate profits! So if you're as sick and tired as I am of all the rhetorical hostage-taking, then the Improving Access to Affordable Prescription Drugs Act is for you.
Finally, supporters of H.R. 305/S. 26, the Presidential Tax Transparency Act, are now circulating a "discharge petition," which would require the bill to get a full vote before the House if more than half its members (218 of 435) sign it. Then House Speaker Paul Ryan wouldn't be able to deploy his usual excuse for refusing to consider a bill (that doing so would step on the tootsies of his precious little Committee Chairpersons!). The bill would, as its title suggests, force Presidential candidates to release their tax returns, as Mr. Trump famously refused to do during the campaign (and now he says he won so it doesn't matter nyah-nyah-nyah). It used to be tradition for Presidential candidates to do this, but Mr. Trump killed the tradition, so now it's gotta be law. And though the bill couldn't force a sitting President to release his tax returns, guess who's already declared his candidacy for re-election in 2020? Sign for Good helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Presidential Tax Transparency Act.
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