Happy Monday, good peoples! Now call your Senators and ask them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act; H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act; H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act; H.R. 5, the Equality Act; H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act; H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act; H.R. 535, the PFAS Action Act; H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act; H.R. 986, the Protecting Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions Act; H.R. 1146, the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act; H.R. 1373, the Grand Canyon Centennial Act; H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act; H.R. 2513, the Corporate Transparency Act; H.R. 2722, the SAFE Act; and H.R. 5035, the Television Viewer Protection Act. This week we add H.R. 2474, the PRO Act, which would protect workers' right to organize and which the House passed late last week. Just because the Senate runs on Mitch McConnell time -- which we know from experience is never -- doesn't mean we can't demand (among other things!) better voting rights protections, better health care protections, higher wages for workers, and real internet freedom. So let's get to it.
Meanwhile, Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to ban corporate welfare from localities for Amazon Ring. Law enforcement would like to link up all the Ring doorbells in your neighborhood to form their very own surveillance network; they say it'll just help them watch The Bad Guys, but you know it'll help them watch you, too, and Ring is also, guess what, fairly hackable technology! And if your neighborhood decides to buy up a bunch of Ring doorbells, who pays for that? That's right, you do, with your taxes. Like Amazon needs another damn handout from the taxpayer! They already pay virtually nothing in taxes on all their billions in profits, so funneling our taxpayer money to them so police can spy on us just adds insult to injury. Also, as I've said, the police won't be the only ones spying on you -- Amazon will be spying on you (just ask Alexa, amirite?), and anyone who can hack into a Ring doorbell will be spying on you, too. And again, you'll be paying for all of that! The "free market" my ass.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to protect roadless areas from the pro-pollution urges of this Administration, then the Alaska Wilderness League still helps you do that. Specifically, you'd ask your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2491/S. 1311, the Roadless Area Conservation Act, which would mandate that our government "shall not allow road construction, road reconstruction, or logging in an inventoried roadless area where those activities are prohibited by the Roadless Rule." That's right, we have to pass a law to tell this Administration to follow the law, a task that's going to be even harder now, amirite? Our Administration wants to open up the Tongass National Forest in Alaska to loggers, and they can only do that by weakening the Roadless Rule preventing development. Naturally, the Tongass is home to thousand-year-old trees, and cutting them down for logging corporation profits would, I hope, strike you as not terribly conservative. There's a reason "conservative" and "conservation" have the same root, after all.
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