President Trump put a different spin on his infrastructure plan during his State of the Union address, not just by inflating its size (he'd been talking $1 trillion, but said $1.5 trillion), but by de-emphasizing the notion of attracting private investment: "(e)very federal dollar should be leveraged by partnering with state and local governments, and, where appropriate, tapping into private sector investment." But we've known for a while that his infrastructure plan would use corporate welfare tax breaks to "attract" investment, and that it would attract a lot of private investors to "boutique" infrastructure projects, and not, for example, projects like rebuilding the water system in Flint, MI -- since most private investors think there ain't no money in it! Better to bring back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income to directly fund real infrastructure projects that will belong to the public! The Economic Policy Institute helps you tell your Congressfolk to fund real infrastructure projects.
Meanwhile, the International Labor Rights Forum helps you tell Abercrombie & Fitch to keep adhering to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, and thus help the workers who make the clothes A&F customers wear. Apparently they haven't committed to staying with the Accord, even as some 60 other corporations have committed to doing so; you might wonder if they signed on just for the good PR it'd bring them. But we can always remind them of the bad PR they got when 29 workers died in a fire at a factory that made A&F clothing, or the fact that we still had to prod them to do better by the workers who make their clothes. What a shame that some corporate executives seem to think they can get rid of all their umbrellas as soon as it stops raining, particularly when, as conscious consumers and citizens, we can make bad PR rain whenever we like. Maybe they make more money in the short run by exposing garment workers to lethal working conditions, but any amount of money is cold comfort without a clear conscience.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to pass the redistricting reforms embodied in HB 722/SB 22, then Common Cause still helps you do that. Legislators gerrymandering districts to benefit themselves (and not their bosses, i.e., us) remains intensely and justifiably unpopular among the mass of good Americans, but it's much harder to vote the bastards out once they've concentrated their power in a peculiarly-shaped district that doesn't respect county or municipality boundaries, as anyone with common sense would do, but excludes entire sides of streets and individual houses in a quest to continue in power. HB 722/SB 22 would take redistricting out of the legislators' hands and putting it in the hands of a redistricting commission, composed of two legislative leaders from each major party and a fifth member the other four have to agree upon. And thus we'd have a fighting chance.
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