Long story short: tell our FTC and DOJ to crack down on mergers, tell your Senators to confirm Alvaro Bedoya to our FTC, tell HHS Secretary Becerra to reduce Medicare premiums, tell Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection to better protect good Pennsylvanians from PFAS chemicals, tell CBS to stop hiring Trump Administration trolls as "news analysts," and tell the Washington Post to stop giving all its oxygen in the education debate to right-wing trolls. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will, and 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 Senators' phone numbers, where appropriate.
The American Economic Liberties Project helps you tell our Federal Trade Commission and our Department of Justice to draw up merger guidelines that will actually encourage competition in America again. With Lina Khan as FTC Chair and Jonathan Kanter overseeing antitrust law at DOJ, our government has actually shown a fervor for doing exactly that, and though our FTC doesn't have a fifth Commissioner installed yet (which see next paragraph), the Administrative Procedure Act doesn't permit our government to simply ignore the popular will when it asks for it on matters like this, or else it'll have to answer in federal court, which, as you probably recall, was how most of Donald Trump's regulatory changes died. And if we make it harder for corporations to merge their way into monopolies, we'll bring inflation down. That's worth doing, right? (Matt Stoller, as usual, provides essential background.)
In a related note! You'll want to call your Senators and tell them to confirm Alvaro Bedoya as the FTC's fifth Commissioner; you can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page to find your Senator's contact info, and you can find Senate Majority Leader Schumer's contact info here, so that you can remind him to schedule a vote on Mr. Bedoya, whose expertise in privacy and technology certainly would help our FTC, since expertise in these issues is, well, lacking in our government generally. Don't believe the hype that Mr. Bedoya has "divisive views," because his views (on protecting kids' online privacy, for example) only divide Our Glorious Elites -- who sincerely believe that no concern of any good American should keep them from making as much money for doing as little work as possible -- from the rest of us.
Both Social Security Works and Drug Prices Are Too High help you tell HHS Secretary Becerra to lower Medicare premiums. Why? Well, specifically because our Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (or CMS) raised Medicare Part B premiums last year, in anticipation of having to cover the exorbitantly expensive and notoriously unproven Alzheimer's drug Aduhelm, which would have cost $56,000 per patient per year. Now, thanks largely to your activism, our CMS has decided it'll only cover Aduhelm for Medicare recipients in clinical trials, but since it's not going to be paying out all that money, it ought to bring premium prices back down. It's only fair! And it was never fair to make everyone pay for a drug our CMS committed to without making sure it even works.
Pennsylvania residents, take note: Penn Environment helps you tell our state Department of Environmental Protection (or DEP) to enact more vigorous rules protecting the public from PFAS exposure. PFAS chemicals, as you probably recall, are those "forever chemicals" found in all kinds of products which hardly break down once and now pollute our drinking water. You'll find the gnarled hand of PFAS in a lot of cancers, hormone disruption, immune suppression, and kidney disease; our DEP is doing something, at least, but has excluded a few PFAS chemicals from their rule, meaning it doesn't do enough to keep good Pennsylvanians healthy. That's why we're here, though, and remember: if they just flat-out ignore us and only do what big chemical corporations want them to do, we can go after them in court.
Social Security Works helps you tell CBS not to give cush "analyst" jobs to right-wingers who deserve shame and shunning from the rest of America. Still angry that Tha Bush Mobbers got any work after the humiliations they inflicted on America between 2000 and 2008, but still want to see actual conservatives on TV? Well, former Trump Chief of Staff/man who wears glasses so people punch him in the face Mick Mulvaney ain't it. I would never call that man a conservative; I'd call him a reactionary, or a corporatist, or, I'll admit, a few worse things. And note well that CBS didn't even mention which Administration he'd served under the first time they put him on the air! That means they know they're doing wrong. Which makes our duty to fight their wrongdoing even more urgent.
Finally, FAIR helps you tell the Washington Post to stop letting right-wing bigots have all the say about everything in their articles about education. The title of their April 5 article didn't promise a whole lot to begin with -- "Teachers Who Mention Sexuality Are 'Grooming' Kids, Conservatives Say," and I still think anyone accused of "grooming" who isn't actually grooming should sue. Then, 13 paragraphs later, you finally hear an opposing point of view. I guess the Post will respond "well, we were reporting on what conservatives said," which a) they're not conservatives, they're reactionaries! and b) why not focus on what regular folks say -- including gay and trans kids! -- rather than right-wing trolls who pollute every pond they wade in?
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