Since many Republicans seem anxious to move on to tax "reform," use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) to call your Congressfolk and tell them to oppose the Republican tax "reform" "plan." As always, they'd give the biggest share of their tax cuts to the very rich -- and that's true of both their income and corporate tax cuts, since if corporations get to keep more of their profits, who do you think they're going to give it to? Their rich executives, of course. And if Congress repeals the Estate Tax, which doesn't affect estates under $5 million, who benefits from that? The very rich, again. No use telling me TEH RICHEZ CREATEZ TEH JOBZ!!!!!, not only because corporate executives never create a job if they can get away with it, but because higher taxes on the rich and on corporations create jobs -- when corporations have no incentive to hoard money or pay their executives outlandish sums, they'll hire more workers to make more stuff and call that an expense. I mean, that's how it worked in the country I grew up in -- you know, that place teabaggers keep wishing we could go back to?
Meanwhile, Jordan's Parliament may consider, as soon as today, repealing a law forcing rape victims to marry their rapists in order to "protect family honor." One wonders why the rapist doesn't bring dishonor on his own family through his action, or, you know, upon himself. (I presume we don't need to gender-equivocate about this matter as it occurs in Jordan or the seven other nations that still have such laws on their books.) But this is not a matter that should be left up to "cultural relativism" -- if a woman gets raped and then gets forced to marry the man who raped her, that's abominable simple and plain, not least because it takes away her freedom to be who she wants to be. And if the victim is a minor, who could not legally consent to sexual relations at all in America? That's even worse. So don't feel like a scold or a snob for telling people how to be civilized if they need to hear it. And of course some Jordanian lawmakers want to keep the law, because, I guess, change is hard and we can't just ignore tradition. But, ah, yeah, we can, in fact, ignore "tradition" that places a family's "honor" ahead of a woman's freedom and a civilization's justice. So Avaaz helps you tell the Jordanian Parliament to get rid of their pro-rape law.
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