You've heard that Senate Republicans want to pass a half-trillion dollar "skinny" COVID-19 relief bill this week? Well, who cares what they want? They should be doing what we want! So let's call them and tell them to pass H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act. Our House passed the HEROES Act five months ago, and that bill would (among other good works) fund COVID-19 testing and tracing, fund struggling states and localities, fund enhanced unemployment benefits, and issue another round of stimulus checks to good Americans. The Senate Republican bill, of course, would fund rather less-enhanced unemployment benefits and refill the so-called Paycheck Protection Program, which should call the Corporate Welfare Slush Fund given how little it's helped small businesses (its reason for being!) and how much it's helped certain entities pretend they employ people only to spend our money on things like yachts, strippers, and Gucci jewelry. Seriously, Senators, it's well past time to stop pretending to do right by working families and actually do right by working families.
Meanwhile, a private security corporation named Atlas Aegis is actually trying to get military veterans to "guard" Minnesota polling places, which I must presume means they want to "guard" voting booths from voters and their democracy cooties. Of course, even though the consent decree keeping the political parties from "monitoring" polling places expired before the 2018 elections, our state governments, working on their citizens' behalf, still get more say about what you can do at a polling place than any group of wannabe Proud Boys. Minnesota's Attorney General, to his credit, has already told Atlas Aegis to cut out this scheme, but wouldn't it be better if we all said something about it? After all, a politician's statement, no matter how agreeable, really means nothing without the people's backing. Hence Win Without War helps you tell your state government to enforce its laws and keep private security forces away from our polling places. After all, if folks wear official-looking (and military-looking) uniforms around our polling places, some voters will be confused -- and intimidated. And that's evil.
In other news, we're having a lot of trouble getting our Senate to pass, well, any good legislation, but in particular our Senate has not taken up H.R. 535, the PFAS Action Act, which would limit our exposure to the toxic "forever chemical" PFAS, which is, like, everywhere. So it might be time to go pressure some private corporations to rely less on PFAS chemicals. Would that the Big Stick of Bad PR affected our elected officials the way it affects big corporations! Anyway, Penn PIRG helps you tell big fast food chain corporation McDonald's to stop using PFAS chemicals in their packaging. Because when folks throw away a million Big Mac containers a day, that's a lot of PFAS that can leech into our water, or get into our air if it's incinerated. Don't suffer the fools who complain that Big Macs will cost 80 bazillion dollars if we make them use better packaging, or that the already-suffering McDonald's workers will suffer more. Making your workers suffer, after all, is a choice. And where's that American can-do spirit that says McDonald's can find a way to use food packaging that doesn't pollute our air and water?
Finally, as many big banks divest from fossil fuel development projects, TD Bank still shovels billions of dollars into them, including the notoriously foul tar sands pipelines. But we were just talking about the Big Stick of Bad PR, right? So Sum of Us helps you tell TD Bank to stop investing in polluting fossil fuel projects. It's really well past time for the big banks to fund renewable energy projects, and don't suffer the fool who says that stuff doesn't make any money or that stuff isn't reliable, and not just because our taxpayer money subsidizes fossil fuel development. Think about it: if you were going to design an energy source from scratch, why would you design one that churns the ground and pumps filth into our air and water? You would design systems that cause the least amount of trouble, wouldn't you? And when you consider that renewable energy sources cause far less pollution and earth-churning than fossil fuels, wouldn't they seem more reliable? The only reason fossil fuels are "reliable" is we've chosen to do things that way. Why can't we choose better once we learn better?
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