America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, helpfully reminds us that voting-by-mail actually has a lot of problems, and that these problems mostly afflict (you guessed it!) poor folks and folks of color. In some states, you need to have a witness co-sign your ballot; in three states you have get a notary to sign it, which costs money, you know? In a lot of states, you also need to mail a copy of your ID with your vote, and we all know how state ID processes tend to deprive poor folks and folks of color of their right to vote. That's before we get to whether or not your ballot ever gets to you, since if you're poor, you tend to move around more, or what happens if you mark an "X" instead of filling in the box entirely and the machine can't read it! Mr. Palast makes a number of good suggestions -- barring witness signatures, barring signature challenges in the absence of a stolen ballot accusation, mailing every voter a ballot -- for a good voting-by-mail bill at the end of his post, so you can call your Reps and Senators and demand that of them.
Of course, we can't make voting-by-mail work for us if we don't have a U.S. Postal Service! Our USPS might run out of money by the end of September, a mere five weeks before Election Day, and it's almost like our President planned it that way! He didn't, of course -- he prefers to let his incompetence create crises that he then exploits for his own glorification, just like George W. Bush used to do, even if Mr. Bush was more civilized about all of that. But we have other reasons to want our Post Office to continue doing its job, mainly that it actually does a very good job despite all of the crippling blows Congress has dealt it over the years, and our Post Office delivers those medicines and medical supplies that must travel through the mail better than all the other options. What, you think UPS will drop your medicine at your door on the cheap? You think FedEx will charge 55 cents to mail your ballot? Privatization doesn't mean "better service," it means "you pay more money." So the Center for American Progress helps you tell our President to drop his opposition to fully-funding our Post Office.
Meanwhile, you've no doubt heard about how the pandemic "relief" bill gives more relief to some folks than it does to others, as in an average of $1.7 million of "relief" to folks who own "pass-through corporations," a corporate welfare handout so big that our Joint Committee on Taxation estimates it'll cost us $90 billion this year. And that would be enough to, just as a for-example, fund tuition-free college at state universities and community colleges for an entire year, let alone get us more ventilators, more masks, and more COVID-19 tests. Gosh, remember when Republicans excoriated Democrats for demanding that their "pet projects," like securing the vote during a pandemic, be included in the pandemic relief bill? We should have known, just from the fact of that complaint, that the finished bill would be larded down actual Republican pet projects benefiting their rich donors. Hence Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal this nefarious tax break.
Finally, National Nurses United helps you tell our President to finally start using the authority granted to him by the Defense Production Act to force big corporations to start making the personal protective equipment our health care workers need to keep us well during this pandemic. You know his excuse for not doing it, right? That it would be TEH BIG GUMMINT OPPRESSINGZ TEH PEEPULZ!!!! Yeah, he really said that -- even used the phrase "black helicopters" in saying it. This, from the Administration that has demanded the power to indefinitely detain people while the pandemic keeps our courts from operating! Yeah, that's not Black Helicopter Land; only making corporations do what they should do in times of trouble is Black Helicopter Land. Ronald Reagan used to say that a government that can do anything for you can do anything to you, but the long game he began as President has now resulted in a government that can do anything to you but can't do anything for you! And we do pay taxes, so we deserve to get good services in return. This President pretends not to get that, but he ain't the damn boss of us.
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