Happy Monday, good peoples! Let's call our Reps and Senators and tell them, once again, to pass a vigorous COVID relief bill. Ignore the pablum from the chattering class about how the Biden plan isn't "bipartisan" enough! As far as I'm concerned, Republicans sacrificed their "right" to "bipartisan" consideration once they spent two months trying to overturn an election and then enabled a coup, and in any case they should listen more closely to their actual constituents, who support a $15/hour minimum wage and $2,000 monthly checks and funding for states and localities more than those who "represent" them want us to think. And if you're anxious about funding the bill, we could tax millionaire income at 91%, tax capital gains and corporate profits over $1 million at 55%, and tax million-dollar estates at 55%. We could also tax billionaire wealth, as Sen. Warren (D-MA) proposed even before billionaires made out like bandits in this pandemic! (Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a wealth tax, regardless of whether it's part of a pandemic package or not.)
While you've got your Senators on the phone, tell them to convict Donald Trump of his impeachment charge, and prevent him from ever running for or holding office in America again. We all saw what happened on TV in real time, but nonetheless I'd like to note that two far-right former Congressfolk have made an excellent case for Mr. Trump's conviction. In a Roll Call op-ed provocatively titled "Republicans, If This Isn't Impeachable, What Is?", former Reps. Barbara Comstock of Virginia and Charles Boustany of Louisiana cite (among other things) the numerous actual threats Mr. Trump, his son, and his supporters made on January 6, plus they directly address the cowardly argument that it'd be "divisive" to convict him: "Some say we must move on. But it is clear that Trump and his mob still aren’t moving on. Trump, his family and supporters continue to threaten political revenge and have shown no remorse for their actions. Angry Trump supporters continue to make dangerous threats." See, it can't just be us who act civilized all the time -- it's a burden all civilized folks must bear.
Hate to make this phone call to your Senators extra long, but go ahead and tell them to end the filibuster, too. I know, I'd also prefer to make the filibuster an actual talking filibuster, and if that's what Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema really have in mind I'll give them all the credit in the world, but I doubt they're that slick, and I've been advocating the talking filibuster for over a decade now, and I know I'm not the only one, and I know all the alleged parliamentary geniuses in Congress can see the problem just as well as I can, and yet they do nothing about it, so we might as well speak the language that they understand. Don't brook any silliness about the "sanctity of the institution." What, exactly, is sacred about the filibuster? Sorry, Russell Kirk acolytes, but just because we've been doing it a certain way forever doesn't make it "sacred." The best the filibuster does for us is make it easy for Democrats to oppose bad bills when they're in the minority. That's not playing to win, though -- that's playing not to lose. And you don't value "the sanctity of the institution" over, you know, justice.
Finally (cue cheers from convention crowd!), No Big Tech helps you tell President Biden to reject putting big tech corporation lobbyists into positions in our government. Folks all over America are done worshiping CEOs, and even the politicians are starting to catch on, yet big tech CEOs still seem to wow politicians with their alleged smarts. But what have these Big Brains at Big Tech have gotten us? Easier ways to consume more art, and what else? Do we have a cure for cancer? No. Do we have a renewable energy grid? No. Do we have research bases on the moon and Mars? No -- though we do have "space tourism" for the wealthy. Do we have a cure for poverty? No -- though we do have big tech CEOs claiming we can retrain coal miners to write code like people can be so easily contorted. Even Tesla's electric cars sure are taking their sweet time coming down to the price a working family can afford. So how we get people in government who know what they're doing?
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