Congress might actually let a "clean" coal tax credit expire this year, after at least two studies find that "clean" coal plants actually pollute more. Now, remember how Congress works: they leave all the unpopular corporate welfare, er, research and development tax incentives for the end of the year, so that they can rubber-stamp them under the "pressure" of finishing their work for the year. It's a cowardly gambit, but we can make that gambit toxic, if we all call our Reps and Senators and tell them we don't want to give "clean" coal our hard-earned taxpayer money if all it does is cause more pollution. They'd prefer not to say it, but it's true: the "tax credits" they hand out to big corporations is your money, money we could spend in ten thousand better ways. And no, they don't need "incentives" to develop new products. Here's the incentive: they get to deduct research and development from their revenues as expenses -- hence the more actual research and development they do, the less they pay in taxes to begin with! So let's not put up with this particular species of Congressional gaslighting any longer.
Meanwhile, President Biden has sent the names of three USPS Board of Governors nominees to our Senate, so Progress America helps you tell your Senators to confirm these nominees post-haste. One is a former deputy Postmaster General; another used to be general counsel of the American Postal Workers Union, and a third is currently CEO of the National Vote at Home Institute, and the quicker our Senate gets them in, the quicker they can fire current Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and help get our Post Office running well again. In a related note, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to reintroduce and pass the Postal Banking Act, which would allow our Post Offices to offer basic banking services again, like they did from 1911 until 1967. Post Offices can not only raise money this way, but they can do a lot of good in communities where banks won't go but loansharks and payday lenders will. Combine these two actions with the USPS Fairness Act -- which would lift the retiree benefits pre-payment mandate Congress absolutely designed to cripple our Post Office -- and we should get the Post Office we deserve as Americans.
In other news, the Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell big insurance corporation Liberty Mutual to divest from Arctic drilling and tar sands projects. Maybe getting them to divest from Arctic drilling won't be such a big lift -- as you'll recall, the lease sale from early January had rather fewer bidders than anyone expected! -- but Liberty Mutual may need more convincing that tar sands oil production is not some kind of "clean" energy solution, or even an "alternative" one. Oil corporations will transport tar sands oil on pipelines that will spill and will pollute the water we drink and bathe in, and if big corporations and our government won't get with the program, why should big insurers bail them out? Hate to pile on, but tar sands oil is also thick as molasses, and often you need lighter oil to properly refine it. This just sounds more and more like a boondoggle. Might as well get with solar and wind, which'll be around approximately forever -- and if Liberty Mutual won't get on board, we can wield the Big Stick of Bad PR against them until they do.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Biden to nominate an internet freedom champion as our 5th FCC Commissioner and tell our Senate to confirm said individual, then Free Press still helps you do that. We ain't getting neutrality back with a 2-2 vote, and we ain't fighting media consolidation or expanding broadband into rural and urban areas or assisting working families with broadband costs or ensuring everyone can go to school during a pandemic with 2-2 votes, either. And "internet freedom champion" is an important part of this formula, too -- we don't need yet another big telecom lobbyist on the FCC. Yeah, former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler was a big telecom lobbyist once upon a time, and he worked out better than expected, but that's only because we held his feet to the fire every single day of his tenure. We did the same to Ajit Pai, and he spent four years mostly ignoring us. So we need someone in there who understands how communications policy affects ordinary Americans like us. It ain't so damn much to ask, frankly. But we won't get it unless we all speak out, and make our will unmistakably plain.
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