Happy Monday, good peoples! Now call your Senators again 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. 397, the Butch Lewis 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. 2474, the PRO Act; H.R. 2513, the Corporate Transparency Act; H.R. 2722, the SAFE Act; H.R. 5035, the Television Viewer Protection Act; and H.J. Res. 79, which would remove the expiration date from the original Equal Rights Amendment. At least one observer has said that our House passed all these bills so they could give the impression they "did something," without having actually done anything. But if we pressure our Senators to pass these bills, and then pressure our President to sign them, then we've done something, which is the whole point of a democracy.
Meanwhile, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Reps and Senators and demand that they repeal the millionaire tax break Congress slipped into the CARES Act. How does this tax-cut-for-the-rich work? It allows hedge fund managers and real estate speculators -- and why not just describe both occupations as "speculators? -- to avoid taxation by shifting their present-day losses to prior years, which would enable them to refile those years' tax returns and get a big refund check -- and by big, I mean an average of $1.6 million. So how does that $1200 stimulus check look to you now? Repealing the tax break would save at least $170 billion annually, and, perhaps more importantly, would send the message that speculators are not the most important people in America. Maybe people who, you know, actually make good products and provide good services are more important than the folks who make our economy into their version of Draft Kings. They've been saying for years that speculators do really important work, but if you've attended bankster behavior over the years, you know the most important thing they do is teach us how not to be.
Finally, the Economic Policy Institute helps you tell our Congressfolk to protect our farm workers during this pandemic. That means fair wages, paid sick leave, paid family leave, and better worker safety protections, among other things, and don't be the one who says they're just a bunch of illegals anyway, so who cares? People are people regardless of the status of their green card, particularly during a pandemic, which is the moment a great nation rises up and proves its greatness, amirite? And you don't prove your greatness by hair-splitting over whom you help. Besides which, as I keep saying, letting farm workers unionize under the National Labor Relations Act would solve all of these problems -- they could better get the wage and safety protections they deserve, and big corporations couldn't drive wages down by bringing foreign workers in. A lot of our problems have very easy solutions -- if our politicians would but solve them! Of course they don't solve them because their big donors have told them not to. That's why we have to make them solve them.
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