Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, reject the “FAIR” Tax, pass the Billionaire’s Minimum Income Tax, and pass legislation creating a paid family/medical leave system. 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.
Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. This bill would let our government stop states and localities with a history of vote suppression from changing their laws so they can suppress votes even more – which, you may recall, our government could do until our Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. Our Court said it unfairly targeted Southern states, but the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act would explicitly state that our Justice Department could scrutinize any state or locality that suppresses votes. Nobody should vote against this bill, but we still need to get in our Congressfolks’ grills about it.
Both Moms Rising and Daily Kos help tell your Congressfolk to reject any effort to pass the so-called “FAIR” Tax, which would replace all income, corporate, payroll, and Estate taxes with a single, 30% sales tax. That would be like 30% inflation on everything you buy! Care to imagine how big your rent or mortgage would be? And when you remember that payroll taxes fund Social Security and Medicare, you might think paying 30% more for a gallon of milk would be a bad way to fund that. We need to get back to taxing the rich and corporations, not least so they can’t control us anymore, but the “FAIR” Tax only takes us in the opposite direction, toward more misery and chaos. If we speak out, we can kill it in its crib.
Speaking of taxing the rich, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Billionaire’s Minimum Income Tax, which would ensure that the richest Americans pay at least 20% of their wealth every year, and if that seems like a lot, remember that they’re billionaires and they’ll still have a lot left over. You’ve gotten by on a lot less than a billionaire, I guarantee you that, but while the pandemic might have cost you your job, billionaires somehow only got richer! As I’ve said, we need to limit the amount of damage billionaires do to our civilization, and the Billionaire’s Minimum Income Tax will help us start to do that again. But not if we don’t fight for it.
Finally, Care2 helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass legislation granting paid family/medical leave for all Americans. Because only six other countries on Earth don’t have it! Those other countries, by the way, are the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Nauru, Tonga, and Papua New Guinea – yes, even Russia offers paid family/medical leave! We could get this done through budget reconciliation, but we won’t have a chance at that unless we communicate our will to our Reps and Senators in numbers they can’t deny. Don’t let folks tell you it would “cost too much.” You know what costs too much? Workers coming in sick or worried about their sick loved ones because they can’t get a day off!
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