If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject our Administration's skewed budget priorities, then Americans for Tax Fairness still helps you do that. Don't believe folks who say our President's budget doesn't cut Medicaid, food stamps, and Social Security disability programs, because his budget does these things, and the fact that neither House of our Congress wants to hold hearings on his budget doesn't matter -- the time to communicate our will to our representatives is always now, and don't think Congress wouldn't pull a bait-and-switch and pass this nefarious budget if we weren't watching, because of course they would. And regarding SSI, don't believe right-wingers when they sling around anecdotes about someone they heard or thought played up their back pain into SSI like that justifies $75 billion in cuts over 10 years. To amend Mark Twain, there are lies, damned lies, and "let me just tell you three stories."
Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Apple to stop enabling China's awful human rights abuses, then Sum of Us still helps you do that. You'll want to get cracking on that one, since their annual shareholder meeting is happening as we speak, and you want to make sure they can see us wielding the Big Stick of Bad PR. Apple has garnered plenty of good PR by standing up for encryption in the United States, but they're helping China spy on activists' phone calls and text messages by refusing to sell (encryption) apps on the App store in China. No doubt they'll argue that China will just "disappear" anyone who downloads such apps, but China can't put everyone in a concentration camp at once, though they'll try. Just as South African anti-apartheid activists instructed us that divestment couldn't make their lives any worse, I bet Chinese human rights activists would prefer having the ability to shield their communications from their government.
And finally, Pennsylvania residents, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your state legislators to pass the anti-gerrymandering bills HB 22 and 23, then Fair Districts PA still helps you do that. HB 22 would amend the Pennsylvania state constitution to permit the creation of an eleven-person redistricting commission to handle the drawing of legislative boundaries; this would take the from the the state legislature, which has proven it can't handle it, such Rorschach-blot districts (excluding sides of streets and single houses, even!) do they draw. HB 23 would attend the nuts and bolts of the creation of the commission, the selection of its members (four voters from each of the two major parties, plus three more unaffiliated voters), and the criteria by which it can redraw legislative districts. If we can pass these bills, we'll be closer to a world in which voters actually pick their representatives, instead of representatives picking their voters.
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