Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act, end our military support for the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen, and pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Whistleblower Program Improvement Act, and the Social Security 2100 Act, and tell your Senators to confirm President Biden's two FCC nominees. 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.
Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act. 20 damn years old, the PATRIOT Act is, and what has it done? Nothing, except make us less free. How do I know? Because we already had tools to prevent 9.11; Tha Bush Mobb just failed to do it, and when someone fails to use the tools they've got, you don't just give them more tools. Particularly tools that let our government spy on us without a warrant and without probable cause, in defiance of our Constitution! And those who say the PATRIOT Act has stopped terrorist attacks won't name them, because of "national security." You can say you did anything but can't prove it because of "national security"! It's stupid, and we need to stop it.
Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to end our military involvement in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen. President Biden's taken a few steps in this direction, but not enough, and previous bills didn't get a vote, hence we resort to the "attach amendment to defense authorization bill" method, since Congress has to pass a defense authorization bill. And this bill relates to defense, so brook no IRRELEVANTZ AMENDMENTZ!!!! arguments from haters. That amendment Rep. Russell (E-OK) tried to attach to the 2016 defense bill, which would have established a "religious" "conscience" exception so any employer can discriminate against anyone who might give them gay cooties? That's an irrelevant amendment, right there. Make sure you spell out the difference. Haters don't care, but other, more reasonable folks will.
Both Left Action and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. Also, Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. And Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to dump the filibuster in order to get them passed, since a Republican filibuster is literally all that stands between these bills and their passage. I'm old enough to remember when Voting Rights Act reauthorization sailed through Congress with almost no opposition -- actually, so are you, since it was 2006! Now, no Republicans will support the fight against gerrymandering, dark money, and other forms of vote suppression, while only one (Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) will support the fight to put some teeth back into the Voting Rights Act. Luckily, America has us to fight these battles, so let's fight them.
The National Whistleblower Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4107/S. 2055, the IRS Whistleblower Program Improvement Act. Currently the dysfunction of the whole IRS whistleblower process is so bad that it takes our IRS a decade to process individual cases, and on quite a few occasions whistleblowers have died before that could happen. The IRS Whistleblower Program Improvement Act would give whistleblowers more protections under the law and make sure they get paid more quickly -- there's nothing wrong with getting paid for the corruption you dime out, particularly since you stand a good chance of being unemployable after you blow the whistle. And you want the IRS Whistleblower program to work, because you want to bring tax cheats to justice. Tax cheats hurt everyone, after all.
Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5723, the Social Security 2100 Act. The Social Security 2100 Act would increase benefits for seniors and better fund Social Security's trust fund. It would increase benefits by, well, paying out more, but also by calculating inflation in a way that reflects seniors' real lives (i.e., by conceding that seniors face enough fixed costs that they can't just switch to a cheaper option whenever they feel like it). And it would better fund the trust fund by imposing the payroll tax to income over $400,000. Don't brook all the hand-wringing of "moderates" who want a "grand bargain" that increases revenue but cuts benefits. We deserve better than that, and the Social Security 2100 Act would do better.
Finally, Battle for the Net helps you tell your Senators to confirm President Biden's two FCC nominees. It's about time he nominated them, because our FCC has a lot of important work to do, especially since the internet has been more essential to our civilization during this pandemic than ever before (and more than we'd like, I would think). I hate to have to say it, but we're actually lucky that Democrats hold the Senate, because a McConnell Senate wouldn't even hold hearings on these nominees right now. That leads me to my next worry: that a Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema would try to burnish their "independent" credentials by stymying a critical Biden nominee! Paranoid? Perhaps. But that's why we communicate our will, though -- to forestall at least some of the ridiculous dramas that hurt good Americans and injure our civilization.
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