Long story short: tell big pharma CEOs you know their excuses for overcharging us for drugs is utter balderdash, tell Bayer to develop a healthy alternative to Roundup, tell school administrators to stop using racist e-proctoring software, tell our Interior Department to reject an Alaska drilling project, tell the International Swimming Federation to lift its ban on larger swim caps, and tell big banks to pull funding for the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.
Public Citizen helps you tell big pharma CEOs that you know their research-and-development argument for high drug prices is rubbish. There is some value to telling them you're onto their game, after all. Typically, big pharma CEOs tell us they need to charge an arm and a leg, so to speak, for their drugs because that funds research and development of new drugs, but that's a lie! The fact that these same drugs cost a lot less in Canada and Europe should be the first clue, but we now know, thanks to Rep. Carolyn Maloney's office, that big pharma corporations spend a lot more money on stock buybacks and dividends than they do on research and development, and that's before we consider how much they spend on advertising and campaign donations. Why, that's before we consider taxpayer funding! If we want real health care in America, we have to go after big pharma's lies. In my experience, most Americans stand ready to do that.
Penn PIRG helps you tell Bayer to develop a safer alternative to its glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup. Bayer is actually considering doing this as we speak, so bad has been their publicity over its assimilation of the notorious Monsanto and Monsanto's notorious Roundup product, so let's give them a push. And don't worry that we won't be able to eat if we make Bayer do the right thing. This is America, the can-do country; do we really believe that we can't mass-produce food and avoid giving cancer to our people? If we believe that, we make ourselves hostages to evil, and if we do that, we might as well hang it up as a civilization. I won't let us hang it up as a civilization as long as I'm here, and I suspect many people feel the same way. But we have to make our will known.
Ban E-proctoring helps you tell school administrators across America to stop using "eProctoring" software like HonorLock and Proctorio. I bet you already know why! They can't tell black faces apart any better than other facial recognition software, or your Trumphole uncle, can. And yet schools still try to use them! And they're not just racist -- they're also prone to find more cheaters than really exist, by marking virtually any eye movement as "suspicious." Plus these e-proctoring programs collect way, way more data than they really need to do their job (why, it's almost like selling personal data is the whole idea!). Schools would be better off hiring more people to directly monitor more students. Worried where the money would come from? Well, three gazillionaires are trying to go into space as we speak; maybe it could come from one of them?
Environmental Action helps you tell our Interior Department to reject the Trump-era Willow oil drilling project in Alaska's North Slope. President Biden recently declared a moratorium on gas and oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but since former President Trump approved the project, the Biden Administration has actually defended it against lawsuits, and you know a future President Trump or President Cotton or President Cruz, wouldn't return the favor! You may not have known that oil drilling projects that far north rely on the stability of permafrost to anchor their equipment. But now that the permafrost is melting at record rates (ah, that would be due to climate change), oil drilling corporations are actually trying to install massive "chillers" to stabilize the ground! They'd be much better off investing in renewables.
Change.org helps you tell the International Swimming Federation to lift its absurd ban on large swim caps. As anyone who's done any competitive swimming will tell you, the large swim cap -- mostly worn by black folks, how about that -- does not confer a competitive advantage when swimming. What would confer a competitive advantage? Shaving your head, that's what! So the notion that a larger cap would benefit a swimmer by containing dreadlocks, weaves, Afros, or just plain lush hair is absurd on its face, so to speak. It's enough to make you think it's just plain racist, a notion the Federation hasn't helped dispel, by claiming the cap doesn't follow "the natural form of the head." Yeah, they said "natural"! Sigh.
Finally, Public Citizen helps you tell big banks to stop funding the notorious Enbridge Line 3 pipeline. You know the reasons: the tar sands oil it would carry is uniquely dirty, Line 3 would run through several sacred indigenous sites, Enbridge is yet another big fossil fuel corporation that has a lot of pipeline breaches, and of course it runs over the drinking water millions of Americans use. So why tell the big banks to stop funding it? Well, we've told President Biden to stop the project, and since he's indicated that he'll let the project proceed, we'll want to cut off the project at one of its other legs. I mean, if nobody gives Enbridge any money, it can't very well build the pipeline, can it?
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