Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and invest in child care, tell our FDA to rescind its approval of a controversial Alzheimer's drug, write a letter-to-the-editor supporting renewable energy investment, tell your Congressfolk to shun Exxon lobbyists, and tell Google to get rid of racist podcasts. 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.
Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to enact at least $4 trillion over the next decade in tax hikes on the rich. Republicans keep pretending that the point of all these the-rich-don't-pay-taxes stories is TEH IRS IZ TEH EVILZ!!!!, rather than, you know, the rich don't pay enough in taxes. And then they throw up their hands and say "nothing can be done!" when you press them on Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk paying zero dollars for entire calendar years and 55 big corporations paying nothing in 2020. You know what, though? Something can be done -- you can change the law, and then you can enforce the law. What else do we ask of our government, after all?
Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to invest in child care. Republicans say that's not "real infrastructure," but what builds a civilization, other than people? They brag about how much more money households have made since Reagan without mentioning that households were one-income households before Reagan and generally two-income households thereafter, and in two-income households, who's doing the child care? Grandma can't do everything, after all, and deserves a break, quite frankly! Investing $700 billion over the next decade in affordable child care every American can get without paying an arm and a leg is investing in the infrastructure of our civilization, no matter how pedantic Republicans want to be about it. And investing in child care also means investing in jobs, done by people. So let's do it.
Public Citizen still helps you tell our FDA to revoke its suspicious approval of the putative Alzheimer's drug, aducanumab. Our FDA has narrowed its recommendations for prescribing aducanumab, after a long and sustained public outcry (of which you may have been a part!) over all the suspicious activity surrounding aducanumab's approval, but that ain't good enough: the drug caused 40% -- 40%! -- of test subjects to get brain bleeding and swelling, and our FDA's own independent advisors urged them not to approve it. Plus, it'll cost over $50,000 annually per patient, which will surely test Medicare's ability to provide other drugs to seniors, since it may not be able to afford them. So, yeah, let's stop this.
Environment America helps you write a letter to the editor of your local paper supporting more investment in renewable energy. I surely don't need to say why by now! But, OK: renewable energy uses the sunlight that's already falling and the wind that's already blowing, pollutes less, and contributes less to climate change, plus it encourages more self-reliance, rather than reliance on electric utilities. That's right, more self-reliance! This is why you occasionally see Tea Party groups jump on the renewable energy bandwagon -- and it's why right-wing opposition to renewable energy so frequently devolves into absurdity. Having your own power source, one that helps conserve the planet -- you see what I did there, I trust.
In a peripherally-related note, 350.org helps you tell your Congressfolk to pledge never to meet with Exxon lobbyists again. You'll know the news hook, of course: Exxon lobbyists got caught on tape bragging about how they've stymied efforts to include climate change-related initiatives in the American Jobs Plan. Yikes, who the hell brags about that? You brag about your kid hitting three home runs in a baseball game, not about slowing down progress so you can make more money. Of course, journalists in 2015 found that Exxon had spent close to 40 years knowing climate change was coming and lying about it so they wouldn't have to change. That's another hell of a thing to take to the Pearly Gates. And that's why our Congressfolk should shun them.
Finally, ParentsTogetherAction helps you tell Google Podcasts to get rid of all the Nazi wannabes, conspiracy theorists, and other nutjobs. Kids listen to this stuff, after all! You have a responsibility not to let your podcasts tell kids to kill the Jews! And the specious "free speech" argument should be losing by now. Do Nazi wannabes have a right to free speech? Of course they do! But they do not have a "right" to have their speech broadcast. In a sane, moral, and decent society, Nazi wannabes would have to fight like dogs to get heard; in our sick, immoral, and decadent society, which cares only about drama, they don't. Let's make Google help us work for the former and against the latter.
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