Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to extend the Child Tax Credit expansion, oversee FBI investigations more closely, pass the Energy Security and Independence Act and the Protecting Our Democracy Act, support ending Title 42, and reject the SMART Copyright 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.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell your Congressfolk to revive the Child Tax Credit expansion that put $250 and $300 checks in the bank accounts of working families. Because that will help people struggling with inflation! Don't believe the Manchinean hype that "expanding the Child Tax Credit caused the inflation in the first place." For one thing, if that were true, inflation would have gone down by now, since the CTC expansion expired almost four months ago. For another, corporate greed causes most of the inflation we're experiencing! Corporate pre-tax profits went up 25% in 2021; recall that inflation was about 7% for the entire year. It's cruel to "get tough" on folks who need help making ends meet, and not to get tough on the powerful people who cause all the problems.
The Center for Rights and Dissent helps you tell your Congressfolk to conduct more stringent oversight of FBI "sensitive investigative matters" -- i.e., investigations of political organizations, religious organizations, public officials, or the media. We learned last month that our FBI allowed more than two errors per investigation on average in 2019, errors that contravened our FBI's own rules about these investigations and included such basic failures as failing to get proper authorization to even start an investigation. Law enforcement officers must answer to the law, and if not to the law, then certainly to internal procedures; we can't let them cut corners, because good Americans get hurt when they do. Sure, it's a "political organization" today, but tomorrow it could be you or I.
Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 7439/S. 4013, the Energy Security and Independence Act, which would amend the Defense Production Act of 1950 so that it would cover energy production in America. Donald Trump will tell you that'd be "black helicopter territory" if our government stepped in and made big corporations produce renewable energy so we wouldn't have to rely on foreign countries so much, but no, it's not "black helicopter territory" for our government to actually insure that we rely on ourselves for our energy needs. And if big corporate CEOs think losing a few million dollars off their annual salaries constitutes "government oppression," I'd like to introduce them to some Russian anti-war protestors who could explain to them what oppression is really like.
Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 5314, the Protecting Our Democracy Act, which our House passed late last year. That also means contacting Senate Majority Leader Schumer (here's his contact info) and telling him to schedule that vote in the first place! No excuses about this one or that one maybe not voting for it! Hold their feet to the fire! The Protecting Our Democracy Act would prevent Presidential abuses of power like those perpetrated by Mr. Trump during his four notorious years in office, specifically targeting a President's ability to profit from his office and abuse his pardoning power, both of which Mr. Trump surely did. I guess this bill's opponents will yammer on about all that being in the past, ignoring the fact that the past teaches a great deal about what to avoid in the future. Hmm, that sounds almost conservative.
NETWORK, the National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, helps you tell your Congressfolk to support ending the Title 42 "health care-related" immigrant expulsion policy. President Biden (finally!) announced that he's ending this cruel policy, one former President Trump supposedly enacted to keep COVID out even though Mr. Trump's most devoted supporters then proved they can keep a pandemic going all by their damn selves. But quite a few Democrats have spoken out against this announcement in recent days -- they smell blood, might it be their own? -- but don't believe the hype that Joe Biden's not giving us tools to deal with the influx of immigrants. Those tools are laws and courts; they take a long time to work their will because they serve justice, not the need for second-rate politicians to "look tough."
Finally, No Censorship Filter helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject S. 3880, the so-called SMART Copyright Act. The SMART Copyright Act would basically force every internet entity that handles content to install automated filters aiming to catch copyright infringement, but if there's something worse than an overzealous human censor, it's an algorithmic censor that can't be reasoned with, let alone tell the difference between actual infringement and fair use! Seriously, too many politicians think machines can just do anything, when the tech bros feeding them that nonsense just don't want to hire people and pay them and give them health insurance and vacation time and paid family/sick leave and the like. And these tech bros laugh at the politicians they con! We won't be laughing if this bill passes, though.
Comments