Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to tax big oil windfall profits and billionaire income, and pass campaign finance disclosure legislation. 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.
More Perfect Union helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a windfall profits tax on big oil corporations. There’s a news hook, of course: both Exxon Mobil and Chevron announced record profits for the 2nd quarter of 2022, which just so happens to coincide with that period over the last few months where we've all had to pay for gas in gold doubloons. It's because of the war in Ukraine, they said, but horsedoodle – they raised prices because they could, and what were we going to do about it? Stop driving to work and to the grocery store? No, we were not. But if we pass a windfall profits tax on big oil corporations, they’ll never be able to hold us hostage this way again. And that alone would be worth it.
Patriotic Millionaires helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 8558, the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax Act,which would (as its title suggests) ensure that every household worth more than $100 million pays 20% of all their income every year, be it salary or unrealized investments. That’s 20,000 households, so don’t brook any stupidity about how this tax would “affect small businesses” or “affect working families,” because it won’t. Some folks don’t want to tax the wealthy as hard as we should because they think they’re going to be in the club someday! But remember that naked self-interest is a stupid reason to do almost anything.
Finally, the Daily Kos Democracy Project helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 443, the DISCLOSE Act, which would crack down on foreign contributions to American political campaigns, and would also require organizations (including corporations, labor unions, and political action committees) to disclose the names and addresses of folks who donate over $10,000 to that organization. If “the inclusion of the information would subject the person to serious threats, harassment, or reprisals,” the organization could keep that info secret. But I would presume “serious” reprisals would not include a finger-wagging lecture from a neighbor or a mean post on a public social media page.
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