Happy Tuesday, good Americans! Today's as good a day as any to call your U.S. Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act. The HEROES Act is that rarest of animals, actually good stimulus legislation that would actually help states and localities survive the absence of tax revenues these past few months, and fund our Post Office so it can continue to do the good work it does, and extend enhanced unemployment benefits for the tens of millions of Americans who will very likely still need it after it expires at the end of July, and repeal another odious tax-cut-for-the-rich that was accidentally-yeah-sure passed in the CARES Act, and provide bigger stimulus checks for good Americans making less than six figures than the CARES Act did. Of course Republicans want to include "blanket immunity" from lawsuits for corporations that open up in defiance of state and federal guidelines. If that doesn't get your goat, just say the words "blanket immunity" in the same voice that South African diplomat said "diplomatic immunity" in Lethal Weapon II. Say it over and over again in your head. Then make the call.
Meanwhile, the Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Congressfolk to make June 19 -- popularly known as "Juneteenth" and commemorating the day Union soldiers took over the last Confederate slave state -- a national holiday. Please don't be the whitesplainer who says BUT TEH DELAWAREZ AND TEH KENTUCKIEZ STILLZ HAD TEH SLAVEZ UNTILZ TEH DECEMBURZ!!!!!, because June 19, 1865 was the last day anyone could say maybe slavery's not really going to end in America, and really, who are we to argue with the millions of black folks who have been celebrating Juneteenth for over 150 years? Now, plenty of Americans would oppose the idea of a Juneteenth national holiday out of "patriotism" or something -- why do we always celebrate what America does wrong? they might say. I don't look at it that way, of course -- I look at it as a way of celebrating making a wrong right, which is more an American tradition than pretending you never did anything wrong in the first place. I'd say it's more patriotic, too.
In other news, it ain't just "small business" money this government seems to have aggressively misappropriated lately -- it's also over $100 milllion Congress directed to be spent on "consumables and medical care" for immigrant children held in various detainment centers, but which Customs and Border Protection (or CBP) spent instead on such "consumables and medical care" as all-terrain vehicles and computer upgrades. And I guarantee you the very same people who squealed like pigs about SOLYNDRA!!!! will shrug about this corruption. They might even say IT'Z ONLYZ TEH HUNDREDZ MILLYUNZ!!!!, and it's true that $100 million ain't much in the context of over $4 trillion in federal spending, but for any immigrant who got denied health care and died because someone at CBP spent money intended for their care on a motorcycle, it would be literally everything. Years ago I'd have said that even the most anti-immigrant American would blanch at such a state of affairs, but not now. Hence the Project on Government Oversight helps you tell your Congressfolk to punish CBP for redirecting money meant for immigrant health care.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to stop our government from being able to spy on our internet activity without a warrant, then Demand Progress still helps you do that. The WAR ON TERRURZ!!!!! crowd can carefully attend the three words "without a warrant" before getting their shorts in a bunch -- if our government can convince a judge they've got a better-than-50% chance of getting a conviction if they look at an American citizen's browser history, then they get to look at that history. Trouble is, governments aren't doing the work required to get to that level! Sympathetic folks on the right who try to explain the warrantless spying power they oppose tend to imagine that folks who want that power are merely trying to "do something" about terrorism. I'm not going to say they're wrong -- in fact, I'm sure they're right about at least some individual bureaucrats -- but I'm also going to go after warrantless-spying efforts as if they're just doing it because they enjoy doing evil, because they are doing evil, regardless of their good intentions.
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