Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Prohibiting Anti-Competitive Mergers Act, lower insulin prices, pass the Agriculture Right to Repair Act, invest in renewable energy, pass the No Facial Recognition at the IRS Act, and schedule a vote on the MORE Act. 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.
Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 7101/S. 3847, the Prohibiting Anti-Competitive Mergers Act. We could wait for our Federal Trade Commission and/or our Department of Justice to deliver on their (admittedly heartening) antitrust promises -- or we could pass the Prohibiting Anti-Competitive Mergers Act and tell them what to do, like automatically block mergers worth over $5 billion and reverse mergers that result in more than 50% market share. Again, our FTC and DOJ have made the right noises in these areas -- I can't recall another FTC that's said it would reverse merges, as this one has done. Still, we're much better off ensuring results than counting on results -- not least because Congress will have a hard time reversing results.
MoveOn helps you tell your Congressfolk to lower the price of insulin. Given that aspiring galaxy brains like Kyrsten Sinema have too much say in matters like these, we need to be as clear as possible -- insulin is a life-saving drug, and making life-saving drugs so expensive that people can't get them, or die trying to ration them, is cruel and inhumane, and civilized people will not accept it, nor will we accept the excuses politicians recite when the popular will pins their backs to the wall. This Congress just passed a major postal service reform bill and a major arbitration fairness bill, so we know this Congress can do things. Personal to those who say if you're afraid you can't afford insulin, don't get diabetes: what about folks born with it? Also, we sane people outnumber you.
Penn PIRG helps you tell your Senators to pass S. 3549, the Agriculture Right to Repair Act. When your tractor breaks, you want to fix it; you do not want to hear that you have to take your tractor to an "authorized repair service" two hours away, nor do you want to hear that that'll cost more money for no damn good reason, nor do you want to hear any BS about "trade secrets." The Agriculture Right to Repair Act will force agricultural equipment manufacturing corporations to make any tool or information available to a farmer who needs to fix their equipment, plus it'll force said corporations to let farmers disable "security functions" in order to fix their equipment, all under "fair and reasonable" terms. This ain't a whole lot to ask, but we've asked for it for a while; now Congress needs to deliver.
The League of Conservation Voters helps you tell your Congressfolk to invest in renewable energy now. Gas prices have shot up in the wake of Russia's war on Ukraine -- though we don't rely on Russian oil that much, of course -- and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has lately reported that climate change is basically outrunning us, so we've got both short-term and long-term reasons to step up our renewable energy game. And what of Joe Manchin's complaint that we shouldn't do electric cars because we'd rely too much on China for batteries? Even if that's true, it's not that important when you consider that a) you could charge your electric car at your house and b) nothing matters if Earth's too hot to live on. Oh, and c) you can make car batteries in America if you don't insist on paying all your employees in dung pellets.
Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 3668, the No Facial Recognition at the IRS Act. You recall that our IRS was going to make us use facial recognition tech just to get to our tax data? And that people rose up and told our IRS no way? And our IRS then suspended its contract with its facial recognition vendor and said they wouldn't make you use it? What if they wait until no one's watching and then contract with another facial recognition corporation and start this crap all over again? S. 3668 would simply prevent our IRS from using any biometric data for administrative purposes, plus it would force them to delete all the biometric data they've already collected. We made enough of a stink about this that we might get this bill passed -- but only if we keep speaking out.
Finally, Progress America helps you tell House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to bring H.R. 3617, the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement (or MORE) Act, up for a floor vote. The bill would essentially legalize pot by removing it from Schedule I, plus it would reinvest in communities ravaged by the "war on drugs" and expunge pot convictions. What's the hangup? Oh, House Democratic leadership's afraid Republicans will scorch them for being "soft on crime." Newsflash: Republicans always whine about crime, regardless of how things are actually going. If they whine about the MORE Act, you tell the voters they literally "defunded the police" by voting against the American Rescue Plan Act. Easy! And, apparently, too hard for galaxy brain Democrats.
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