Open Letter To Any Major Celebrity with a Conscience – People’s Lobby

Lobbying by Industry (past 24 years):
Big PhRMA - $5.1 Billion
Remedial Sick Care Insurance Industry - $3.3 Billion
Electric Utilities - $2.8 Billion
Big Tech - $2.8 Billion
Chamber of Commerce - $2.7 Billion
Military Industrial Complex Corporations - $2.5 Billion
Oil and Gas - $2.5 Billion
Remedial Sick Care "healthcare institutions" - $2 Billion
Manufacturing - $2 Billion

These are merely the LEGALLY Reported lobbying expenses (OpenSecrets). Huge sums of Dark money and under the table campaign bribes are also used to boost Congressional and other politician's campaigns to influence legislation and policies.

Note: Other than being a component of "Manufacturing", the war industry doesn't have to compete with the above much since most Congresscritters are already on board with the Forever War.

To Whom It May Concern:

It's rather obvious that working "within the system" hasn't worked (again). This is not surprising given that you congresscritters work in an institution that as you already know has been bought by campaign “contributions” from the Owner/Donor Class using a privatized, rigged system of elections to insure majorities of willing allies. It appears certain that the "normal" channels are not going to bring about any of the existentially necessary changes we so desperately need.

In order to get extremely popular and existentially necessary legislation passed, I'm suggesting that you join with other prominent public figures truly interested in the well-being of the American People and help lead an organizing drive to create a People's Army of Lobbyists to be an ever-present countervailing force for We the People in the Halls of Congress.

This suggestion includes creating a 501(c)4 that can use funds raised to recruit, train, house and pay a living wage and decent benefits for teams of 2-5 constituents from each district to work 4 hour shifts to constantly lobby their “representatives” until they turn the campaign rhetoric that implies that they care about most American's best interests while running for office into the minimum of 279 votes necessary to pass legislation in Congress.

These People's Lobbyists will serve as a constant presence to peacefully educate their Congresspersons in the halls, offices and committee hearing rooms of the Capitol Building during every hour Congresspersons are present.

At the same time, we should organize People's Lobbies at state and local levels using paid staff and volunteers to assert lobbying pressure on their state and local “representatives” to do the People's Business. The local People's Lobbyists will also provide the small number of votes needed to insure that most office holders who refuse to carry out the people's business will lose their re-election bids in their next primary.

This Movement of Movements should begin by choosing the most important, VERY popular legislation pass in Congress and get it signed into law. The People's Agenda attached should serve as a good starting point for organizing and blueprint for our initial list of demands.

The People's Army of Lobbyists could be created and maintained using $27 a year donations from 450,000 to 1 million Americans interested in a decent, more sustainable future with a higher Quality of Life taking the place of the current existentially dangerous slide the current government is on.

That's about 5 cups of Starbuck's coffee per person per year.

https://peoples-lobby.org/

The People's Agenda

1) HR3421/S1655 - National Expanded and Improved Medicare for All. This bill will easily pay for itself by reallocating the nearly $4 Trillion being spent for a remedial sick care for corporate profits system toward financing a system for comprehensive, universal, accessible, Holistic Health Care as a Human Right.

2) HR8005 - Social Security Expansion Act - Preserve funding and expand benefits.

3) College as a Public Good without crippling debt. Remove Student Debt with reparations for less affluent folk who paid off their student loans. REFORM education system including K-12, more classrooms and teachers and broader "Green" curriculum and provide ALL education at little or no cost. "Higher Education" same 'cost' to families and students as K-12.

4) Empower the Working Class! A Living Wage or even better a Universal Basic Income (UBI) NOT tied to a "job". Begin by PASSING a PRO Act on Steroids to empower workers NOW! HR2474 - Protecting the Right to Organize.

5) End the Forever Wars* including the corrupting, toxic, racist failed "Drug War". SLASH the war budgets: Federal, State and Local. They are toxic drains on society and the “economy”. Sharing Societies don't need a police state.

6) A REAL Green New Deal - a massive program of MEANINGFUL infrastructure and systemic changes to prepare for our fossil-fueled Warmed Climate Change future.

7) Tax the rich again - higher marginal rates on the highest incomes, a wealth tax and tax on stock transfers among others. Change the tax code to favor Workers and Worker-Coops over corporations, Wall Street, the polluters, fossil-fueled chemical Big Ag and Big Meat and ultra-rich wealth hoarders.

8) Reform the Food System: Funding and logistic and infrastructure support for urban farms, food co-ops, farmers markets and CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). T ransition our agricultural system to regional and local Regenerative Agriculture with relocalized distribution. End subsidies to fossil-fueled Big Ag. as part of the REAL Green New Deal. In addition, provide training and financing for restoring wetlands and wild-lands to sequester even MORE carbon from the atmosphere.

9) A Department of Peace engaged in domestic and global Restorative Justice to help repair the damage over 75 years of Forever War has caused. This would include leading the way toward ending domestic racist and class based oppression and social control perpetrated by police at the Federal, State and Local levels.

10) HR3755 - Women's Health Protection Act of 2021. Protect the very popular Right to Choose. Reverse SCOTUS' decision in Dodd and other egregious rulings.

11) HR2584 - Judiciary Act of 2021 to Balance the Court from 9 to 13 seats (as was done in 1870s) and fill the new seats with Warren Court Style "Liberal" Justices to protect all of this legislation and future solutions to our real problems. Without this, "conservatives" will control SCOTUS until the 2050s.

12) Free Cuba! End the Illegal Blockade! Free the People of ALL nations to pursue their own path toward a decent, sustainable future. Share the global resources and technologies instead of hoarding them to extort corporate profits.

* FY2024:
(Newly Greedy) Pentagon asks for $848 Billion
Biden budget has $842 Billion
House and Senate jack it up to $886 Billion by inserting massive pork and perks for craven members.
$38 BILLION more than Pentagon asked for!

And of course that DOES NOT INCLUDE Additional hundreds of Billions for the fossil-fuel proxy war in Ukraine, Genocide in Gaza and more unnecessary saber rattling at China - which is all "borrowed money". Total war budgets will exceed $1.5 Trillion in FY2024.

Here's some food for thought:

The ENTIRE NEW DEAL from 1933 to 1938 cost $879 Billion in today's dollars and it put tens of millions to work, enhanced Society, built infrastructure we're STILL using and promoted the arts, created the Social Safety Net we now enjoy the remnants of and saved capitalism from itself (for a while).

**JUST the Pentagon piece of ONE YEAR of the bloated war budgets is almost enough to finance more than FOUR YEARS of a New New Deal.**

Congress Literally DOES NOT CARE What You Think!

In 2014, political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, in a study published in Perspectives on Politics, empirically established how average U.S. citizens are almost completely ignored by U.S. governmental authorities in terms of public policies. Reviewing U.S. public opinions of policy issues, along with examining 1,779 different enacted public policies between 1981 and 2002, Gilens and Page determined that “even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.” They conclude, “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”

https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem

The Democracy Crisis That Is Never Discussed

Corporate media’s democracy-in-crisis discourse almost never mentions the gap between what Americans want and what corrupt elected officials are doing

In 2014, Northwestern and Princeton researchers published a report statistically documenting how lawmakers do not listen or care about what most voters want, and instead mostly care about serving their big donors. Coupled with additional research documenting the discrepancy between donor and voter preferences, they bluntly concluded that the “preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy.”

Seven years later, America is witnessing a very public and explicit illustration of this situation in real time — and Tuesday's off-year election results are the latest confirmation that the country seems pretty ticked off about the situation ahead of the 2022 midterms.

https://www.dailyposter.com/the-democracy-crisis-that-is-never-discussed/