Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to break up big tech corporations. The House Judiciary Committee is holding hearings on this matter as we speak, so now's as good a time as any to communicate your will. I'm sure some folks out there think this world would be a whole lot bleaker without same-day shipping from Amazon and instant answers to almost any question from Google and the ability to connect with almost anyone on Facebook, but fact is Amazon's crushing of small businesses, Google's on-again, off-again collaboration with the totalitarian government of China, and Facebook's apparent inability to protect your private data (to name just three problems with big tech corporations!) all make this a bleaker world. Besides which, do you really believe the boons big tech have given us simply wouldn't exist without big tech monopolies? Small businesses invented virtually everything of consequence on the internet, then big corporations gobbled them up and acted like we could never live without them. But we can certainly dream better than that.
Meanwhile, a Russian corporation wants to put giant billboards in space. No, really: it wants to launch a bunch of satellites that'll display logos of prominent products three miles above the Earth. Thing is, you can't just "change the channel" if you don't like it (an argument I've long found wanting anyway) -- you look up, and it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it. What, are proponents of this plan really going to say just don't look up at the sky? But then, people say all kinds of stupid crap these days without any apparent self-editing. Let's head off such embarrassment by allowing Penn Environment to help us tell our Congressfolk to outlaw "space billboards." No use retorting that if some other country is going to do it, then why shouldn't we? That's not what being a civilized person is all about -- sometimes, it's about being civilized even when you know you're going to lose, because future generations might learn from you. So let's have them learn the right things, OK?
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to give working families a raise by passing H.R. 582/S. 150, the Raise the Wage Act, then CREDO still helps you do that. The Raise the Wage Act would raise the minimum wage in America from $7.25/hour to $15/hour over the next five years, and it would eventually bring minimum wages for tipped and disabled workers into parity with the minimum wage for the rest of us. You won't be surprised to learn that Republicans oppose the bill, given that so few of them know (or remember) what it's like to work three jobs because you have to, but you might be surprised to learn -- oh, forget it, you won't actually be surprised to learn that some corporatist Democrats also oppose the minimum wage. But states and municipalities have been hiking the minimum wage -- without ill effects -- at the behest of their voters for many years now, so it seems, as it too often does, like a lot of politicians are behind the times. But that's why we're here: to bring our representatives up to speed.
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