Long story short: tell President Biden to enact vigorous anti-monopoly regulations, tell PA state legislators to reject another election "fraudit," and tell your Congressfolk to outlaw government use of private militaries, enact paid family/medical leave, expand Medicare coverage, and build out broadband. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
President Biden, as you may know, issued an Executive Order late last week requiring Executive branch agencies to fight corporate monopolies a lot harder than our government has done for the last 40 years, but, as you know, the devil is always in the details, so Public Citizen helps you tell Biden Administration agencies to enact the most vigorous anti-monopoly regulations possible. Good anti-monopoly regulations wouldn't just mean cheaper hearing aids, though that's no small thing; it could also mean an end to early termination fees that keep you from choosing a different internet provider, an end to cellphone corporations "locking out" independent computer repair stores, and an end to "non-compete agreements" that keep workers in one place forever -- not to mention an end to big pharma price-gouging and big telecom mergers. We should fight for these things, and we should remember that the big corporations and the corrupt politicians who fight against them are evil.
Pennsylvania residents, take note: Common Cause helps you tell your state legislators you don't want them to conduct a "fraudit" of the 2020 election like Arizona's doing. Like Arizona, Pennsylvania has already conducted multiple audits of the 2020 election's accuracy, so let's oppose any one Senator's efforts to waste taxpayer money just to do a "fraudit" that might tell sore losers what they want to hear. And don't believe the argument that "people have questions about this election," because they don't. What some people have are the same lies Donald Trump has been feeding them for over eight months, which other Republicans have repeated and amplified. And I'm tired of right-wing rage making all the decisions around here.
Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to ban any state or federal government use of private military. The news hook, of course, is South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who really must be completely unworried about re-election, using a Tennessee gazillionaire donation to fund a state National Guard adventure at our Southern border over 1300 miles away. Needless to say, this is a bad idea, regardless of how you might feel about immigration -- an army answerable only to a gazillionaire, rather than the American people who pay the taxes to fund said army? I wish I could say it was unprecedented; the use of mercenaries is as old as the hills, and you likely remember how many Blackwater mercenaries, who were paid much better than our soldiers, operated in Iraq. So this is a cancer we need to cut out.
Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to put paid leave in the American Jobs Plan. Yeah, I know what President Biden and 20 Senators negotiated, but they're supposed to negotiate with us, not each other. And things like paid family/medical leave, investing in child care programs, and making the Child Tax Credit expansion permanent are actually pretty popular -- a lot more popular than Republicans saying no to everything or insisting on investing in "real" infrastructure or thinking we're going to pay for it with more smoke and mirrors. Seriously, nobody would run through a wall for any of that, which is why Republicans constantly try to enrage and distract people with whining about transgender folks and critical race theory. If we make our voices heard above the din, then the din will lose. It's that simple.
Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare in the American Jobs Plan. Again: who cares what the politicians want? Lowering the Medicare age to 60 would be a good first step in lowering that age to zero, as we must eventually do, and expanding Medicare to include vision/dental/hearing is also the right thing to do. And you know expanding Medicare coverage also creates jobs. After all, who's going to be providing all that extra care? Robots? At the risk of piling on, the poverty rate of seniors before Medicare was a lot higher than it is now; what a shame that too many seniors continue to vote for the right-wing politicians who would take all of that away from them.
Finally, Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to include the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act in the American Jobs Plan. You recall how much time you had to spend on the internet just to do work this past year? And how much time your kids had to spend on the internet just to go to school this past year? And do you find, every time you get your cable bill, that you're paying more and more for less and less? That's why we need the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act -- it would not only help build out the high-speed broadband we all need more and more, it would help small communities create their own broadband systems that would compete with the big telecoms who constantly overcharge you and give you lousy service. Ask the good folks of Chattanooga, TN how much better off they are with that city's municipal broadband network, and you'd be even more eager to imagine a world without Verizon and Comcast dictating terms to you.
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