Long story short: tell "moderate" Democrats to abandon their plan to scuttle the reconciliation bill, tell your House Reps to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations in said bill, let Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, and pass the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, tell state mapmakers not to gerrymander legislative districts, and tell our USPS Board of Governors to fire Postmaster General DeJoy already. 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.
First things first. Nine "moderate" House Democrats have threatened to vote down the reconciliation budget bill if our House doesn't pass the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" first. Know why? Their letter contains the five emptiest paragraphs you will ever read, and if they really believe the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" is a "once-in-a-century" thing, that is to laugh. And doing it their way, of course, puts the much better reconciliation budget bill at risk, almost like that's the whole idea. If any of these nine House Reps "represent" you, you can call them and tell them this ain't the hill they want to die on. And no, we shouldn't be "cautious" because we'll need most of those nine Reps to pass the reconciliation bill, or for Democrats to keep the majority in 2022. Democrats don't lose elections in spite of such "caution"; they lose elections because of it.
Peripherally-related to the above goal, you can call your own House Reps and tell them to jack up taxes on the rich and on corporations to pay for the budget reconciliation bill. Such taxes could include: a 55% corporate tax rate on profits over $1 million just like we had in the 1950s, a 91% tax bracket on income over $1 million just like we also had in the 1950s, treating capital gains and dividends as regular income like we did until George W. Bush, a financial transaction tax of 1% like we had until the late 1960s -- beginning to see a pattern? These taxes didn't "cripple economies," but helped build the greatest middle class in world history, so they're not "impossible" so much as they're proven. Too many of these "moderate" Democrats claim tax hikes like these are too "radical" -- how something we used to do all the time could be "radical" is anyone's guess -- and they won't abandon their cowardice until enough of their constituents (i.e., us) get in their grills.
Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to lower drug prices by letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices. Medicare is the biggest buyer of drugs in America by far, after all, so if we let Medicare negotiate drug prices, we'll all have better drug prices. And even the right-wing Mercatus Center instructs us that Medicare drug price negotiation can save the taxpayer over $80 billion annually, which makes that a pay-for. We really can make this world a place where we don't reflexively cast morality and pragmatism as enemies! And no, Medicare drug price negotiation isn't BIG GUMMINT CONTROLZ TEH DRUGZ YOUZ GETZ!!!!!! Big pharma corporations control what drugs you can get by charging $900 a month for insulin, or $350 for a single dose of EpiPen. Fight the real enemy!
The Project on Government Oversight helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3907/S. 2052, the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act. As its name suggest, the bill would prevent our federal and state governments from using facial recognition technology on their citizens, unless future Congressional legislation specifically authorizes it; facial recognition technology sucks, as any number of Black folks wrongly accused of crimes could tell you, so governments certainly shouldn't be using it. If the bill becomes law, then anyone wronged by a government entity breaking the law could sue that government entity; accountability is important, after all. The bill doesn't prevent local governments from using the technology, but would prevent them from getting government grants unless and until they do so. You don't want to be put in jail because you barely look like someone else, right? Then you want to get this bill passed.
Common Cause helps you tell state mapmakers not to gerrymander districts for the benefit of incumbents and/or political parties. As you know, the census data mapmakers will use to redraw districts came out last week, so that process will begin soon, and historically that process has benefited politicians, not regular Americans. Take Wisconsin, where Republican state legislative candidates typically get fewer votes than their Democratic counterparts, but somehow win almost two-thirds of the state's lower house! How does that happen? It happens when mapmakers draw Rorschach-blot-shaped districts that exclude sides of streets and even individual houses. It's the biggest reason our representatives give us nothing but the back of their hand, and we have to stop it. We begin to stop it by putting them on notice, and by making gerrymandering toxic to them, for once.
Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell our USPS Board of Governors to fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy already. It ain't just his naked attempt to deliver the 2020 election to his Personal Lord and Savior Donald Trump, nor is it his determination to make our Postal Service run badly -- it's also the corruption! A week and a half ago we learned that our USPS awarded a $120 million contract to the corporation he used to run, XPO Logistics, which still pays the DeJoy family over $2 million annually by renting office space. But wait, there's more! Last week we learned that Mr. DeJoy spent a few hundred Gs on bonds from Brookfield Asset Management, and guess who's a managing partner at Brookfield? Why, USPS Governor Ron Bloom, of course! I'm old enough to remember when even the appearance of evil could cause people to resign; how about we bring those days back?
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