Win Without War helps you tell our Food and Drug Administration (or FDA) and our U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (or USPTO) to ensure that any medicines we develop to fight and defeat COVID-19 be free and available to anyone around the world who wants it. Don't believe the hype that corporations have a right to make whatever money they want off live-saving medicines! If we believe that, then we believe money is more important than human life, and I won't stand for that, not in my America. Don't even believe the hype that corporations deserve to make money because they spend so much money in research and development, because a) money spent in research and development is an expense, which they don't pay taxes on and b) they spend a lot of taxpayer money in research and development, too, which means they can submit to our will considerably more than they do. Too many politicians think power is all about socializing the risk and privatizing the profits; I long to live in an America where its people punish politicians who think like that. We used to do that, so we can do it again.
Meanwhile, our President actually took over 300 acres of land from the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe's reservation in Massachusetts, because the Mashpee decided to build a casino, and our President didn't want their casino to interfere with the nearby casinos in which some of his cronies had a vested interest! Folks, this is why you don't elect a "businessman" as President! This is why you don't let public servants have any "business interests" at all! (We're going to return to that latter notion in the next paragraph, by the way.) The Mashpee, for their part, have responded to this news: "We the People of the First Light have lived here since before there was a Secretary of the Interior, since before there was a State of Massachusetts, since before the Pilgrims arrived 400 years ago...This administration has come and it will go. But we will be here, always." Amen to that! Color of Change helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop our President's money-grubbing by passing H.R. 312, the Support the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass legislation preventing any members of Congress from trading any stock at all, then Public Citizen still helps you do that. In the wake of Sen. Burr selling over $1.7 million in stock before the stock market crashed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we should recognize the value of having public servants who won't be hamstrung by their own private interests. And if the politicians think that's too much to ask, then they should quit and let better people have a turn! Seriously, Sen. Burr (and Sen. Loeffler, and Sen. Inhofe, and Sen. Feinstein) can surely find other work, work where they won't be tempted to sell out their constituents, who are their bosses. They tell me if I insist on such purity from people then there won't be anyone left to serve in Congress. That's a cynical attitude, of course, and cynicism is evil. But if we don't insist on such purity we won't get any purity at all. And we deserve a crapload more purity from our politicians than we're getting.
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