At the risk of being accused of "using the pandemic as an opportunity to pass my wish list" -- an accusation I usually hear from people actually using the pandemic as an opportunity to pass their wish list! -- I think you should call your Reps and Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1384/S. 1129, the Medicare for All Act. We all can see that the "free market" didn't make enough masks and didn't make enough ventilators -- and we all can see that the "free market" would never have made enough masks and ventilators to withstand a pandemic because there's no money in saving people from the coronavirus; the people who die, after all, are no longer a "burden on the system." That's not me talking; that's every health care CEO after his sixth beer talking. I would also tell your Congressfolk that Sen. Warren's plan to fund Medicare-for-All -- she would convert what corporations are already paying private insurers into a kind of fee that would fund Medicare-for-All -- is the best one. You know, for when they ask HOW WILLZ TEH LIBRULZ PAYZ FOR TEH THINGZ!!!!!
I'm going to put a lot of repeat action alerts at the end today, because this is going to be a busy week, but I want to highlight this one, in which Daily Kos helps you tell your state governments to allow voting-by-mail for the 2020 election. We've told Congress to do it, but getting Congress to do something good for their-bosses-the-people is like pulling teeth, so now we tell state governments to do it -- and they might be more responsive, even in red states, being as they're more likely to run into their constituents than federal-level politicians are. I say "even in red states" because Republicans are saying the same damn thing -- our President suggested to Fox and Friends last week that if too many Americans vote, Republicans won't win any elections, and the Georgia House Speaker echoed those "concerns" shortly afterward. You know what I say to that? It's bootstrap time! If you're afraid no one will vote for you, stop your whining and try persuading them!
Meanwhile, Avaaz helps you call for a global ceasefire as the pandemic rages. I know some idiot will say, again, "you're just using the pandemic to pass your own pet initiatives," but I would a) challenge them to produce the last time I called for a global ceasefire (spoiler alert: never) and b) I would remind them that wars just make pandemics worse -- wars create more destruction and more refugees, and wars take health care workers away from fighting the pandemic, either by killing them or putting them on the front lines where they're just fixing up troops well enough so they can go be cannon fodder again. And, seriously, can we name a war that's worth fighting right now? That war on Yemen, for example, might make Saudi Arabia's government feel safer, but really it does nothing but put good Yemenis on the brink of famine and kill the Houthis who are some of the best fighters of al-Qaeda on Earth. The Syrian civil war has been going on for almost a decade now, and to what end? Too often it seems like everyone's moved on from war except the politicians, so we should bring them to heel.
Finally, as I've said, I've got a lot of action alerts for this week (and it's only Monday!), so I'm going to summarize the ones I've talked about before. The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Congressfolk to contain coronavirus in our nation's concentration camps, since, you know, immigrants and refugees are people, too, even if our President says they're not. Also, the Union for Concerned Scientists helps you tell our President to start using the Defense Production Act to manufacture masks and ventilators already; he still hasn't done it, because GUMMINT BAD!!!!, but such ideology really should wither before the spectre of death. And Penn PIRG helps you tell your state Attorney General to investigate Amazon for price-gouging of medical supplies; they've said they're cracking down on it, but you know they also benefit financially from it, so you'd like to see some action. Last but not least, People for the American Way helps you tell our SEC to investigate any Senator who may have benefited financially from selling their own stock in advance of the pandemic. These ain't big asks, frankly -- and we'll keep asking until they do our will.
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