Long story short: tell John Deere to treat its workers right, tell our EPA to regulate PFAS chemicals as vigorously as possible, tell our FCC to expand broadband access, tell our government to break up Facebook already, tell our President to end the notorious Title 42 deportation policy, and tell our U.S. Postal Service to expand its pilot program offering postal banking. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.
More Perfect Union helps you tell big farm manufacturing corporation John Deere to treat its workers better. Ten thousand heartland workers are striking as we speak, and when your right-wing neighbor tells you that the UAW negotiated a contract with John Deere on their behalf, tell them it must have been a pretty crappy contract if over 80 percent of the workers voted it down. Remind him, also, that John Deere's CEO gave himself a 160% raise in 2020 and ask him when the last time he got a raise that big. And no, CEOs don't deserve that kind of raise because they "take risks" -- like the "risk" they'll only get tens of millions to go away if they crash and burn the company? And certainly not for "good performance," for that's only possible with workers. Who deserve better.
Penn PIRG helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to enact the most vigorous PFAS rules possible. They don't call PFAS "forever chemicals" for nothing -- they're in virtually everything, they never break down, they get into your body, and they cause all sorts of health problems. Our EPA will take public comments on exactly how to regulate PFAS, and of course the big plastic corporations will fill their ears with well-spoken nonsense, so we've got to get in our EPA's ears right quick. And don't brook any silliness from your right-wing uncle about how "this is a job for Congress," not when a) Congress has already authorized the EPA to regulate pollutants through legislation and b) Republicans in Congress will block any legislation that does actual good for the American people.
Civic Shout helps you tell our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) to expand Americans' access to broadband. How can a federal agency do that? Again, "with the authority Congress has already invested in it via law" is the short answer to the sniveling of right-wingers, but to get to brass tacks, our FCC could expand the Emergency Broadband Benefit to folks making 200% of the federal poverty line; currently that number is 135% (it's not 100%, as Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has reminded us, is that the federal poverty line has always been laughably low). Our FCC could also reinstate the net neutrality order from 2016, and thus reclassify broadband as a telecommunication service rather than an information service. We've all learned how much of our lives we need to conduct over the internet, so leaving low-income folks out is a recipe for disaster.
Daily Kos helps you tell President Biden to end the cruel Title 42 immigration policy that supposedly turns back immigrants because they're a pandemic risk, but you know that's absolute rubbish if you've witnessed all these Americans reboot the pandemic in recent months! Dr. Fauci has said much the same thing lately -- that immigrants are obviously not causing the spike in cases since the beginning of July -- and yes, I'll take the word of the trained epidemiologist about that over the guy who drives a Hummer with a blacked-out American flag on the back and wears "Fuck Your Feelings" T-shirts to the Home Depot, no matter how much "research" he's "done." You just wish Democrats would stop embracing right-wing policy prescriptions. It sure doesn't get them any right-wing votes!
Demand Progress helps you tell our government to break up Facebook already. Even if Facebook weren't going out of its way to help Nazi wannabes find each other, even if it did nothing to stop Donald Trump's lyin'-ass lies, even if it did nothing about Instagram's toxic effect on young girls, even if it weren't complicit in the genocide of Myanmar's Muslim population, one would still want to ask why Facebook needs to own WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. Because that right there is evidence that Facebook is a monopoly we need to break up. Today's judges tend to ask whether the monopoly raises prices for consumers and nothing else, but this blind mammon-worship is yet another feature of the Reagan Revolution that we need to obliterate if we want to remain civilized people. We can start this work by breaking up Facebook.
Finally, Black Lives Matter helps you tell our U.S. Postal Service to expand its pilot postal banking program beyond the four states in which it's currently operating. While Postmaster General DeJoy thinks the way to Postal Service solvency is through making good Americans pay more for worse service, folks who are less evil know that allowing our Postal Service to offer the basic banking services it offered up until the late '60s, in areas of America where banksters don't like to go because they can't make stupid money there, is a far better way to help our Postal Service get on a better financial footing. Getting rid of the absurd pre-fund-benefits-85-years-in-advance mandate would do even more, of course, but Jesus Mary and Joseph is it so much to ask that good ideas succeed in America?
Comments