Dear John,

This week I filled my car with gas that cost more than five dollars a gallon. My car is a Mini Cooper that I bought years ago, partly because it wasn't a gas-guzzler. But now it's guzzling dollars. Of course, when I consider what's happening in Ukraine, I don't complain. It's a small sacrifice.

But for millions of working Americans, it's not a small sacrifice. And guess who's making no sacrifice at all—in fact, reaping a giant windfall from this crisis? That's right, Big Oil.

They're jacking up prices, raking in record profits, and instead of absorbing the high cost of oil, investing the profits in renewable energy research, or increasing oil production (something I don't recommend), they are showering their stockholders and executives with cash.

So what can be done? Hit Big Oil with a windfall profits tax and use the money to help Americans who are facing sticker shock. The European Union is advising its members to enact a windfall profits tax to prevent war profiteering, and legislation was just introduced in Congress to do the same here in the U.S.

This isn't just something we should do. It's something we must do. We're at a perilous moment. And? If we don't act soon to provide some relief to the American people, Republicans will fill the void with their own misguided solutions: lax environmental regulations and more climate-wrecking fossil fuel production.

We must launch a massive campaign to alert the American people about Big Oil's price-gouging—and about how we can stand up to Putin without putting the bulk of the burden on poor Americans. Will you chip in to support our work?

The Biden administration is doing the right thing by ramping up economic sanctions on Russia. But punishing Putin doesn't have to mean punishing Americans, especially lower-income earners, along with him.

So as Biden rightly tightens the economic screws on Putin, Inequality Media Civic Action is using our creative team to educate the public about all the ways we can minimize collateral damage to lower-income Americans and use the crisis to move our country towards a more humane future.

The windfall tax on oil companies is just one way to mitigate harm happening to everyday Americans. We can also extend the Child Tax Credit to help low-income Americans who are feeling the crunch.

We can invest in renewable energy rather than the fossil fuels that give Putin so much power over Europe and the world. That means rejecting calls from the oil companies and Republicans to build liquid-natural-gas export terminals, new pipelines, and other dirty infrastructure—and subsidizing solar panels, electric cars, and other green energy instead.

And we must stand up to the military industrial complex, which diverts resources from critical domestic spending—like free pre-K and community college—and only makes World War III more, not less, likely.

Sadly, Republicans and the oil industry are using Putin's Ukraine invasion as an excuse to push all the wrong solutions.

Inequality Media Civic Action is fighting back with our explainer videos and other social media content to educate the public otherwise, and it's starting to catch on. President Biden even warned oil companies against price-gouging in a recent speech at the White House.

But the right wing has a built-in megaphone with Fox News and myriad other right-wing outlets. That's why our team is laser-focused on testing messages with key audiences and pushing them to an audience that rivals Tucker Carlson's.

Will you chip in to counter the right-wing messaging machine and educate Americans about how we can use Putin's war to move society in a more humane direction?

Thanks for helping us spread the truth,

Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action