You've heard that Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine looks like it might be a winner? Well, Public Citizen reminds us of a few things -- chiefly, that it's not "Moderna's vaccine," since it received close to $2.5 billion in taxpayer money, i.e., our money. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell our President-elect to make this COVID-19 vaccine, if proven safe and effective, available to all Americans, and also to ramp up manufacturing so that vaccine "rationing" doesn't occur. After all, it ain't like COVID is going to pass you by if you don't have access to the vaccine, is it? I know some people will call such a move "socialism," but those people call everything "socialism," so I'm not concerned about that. And if we taxpayers provided a significant amount of funding for a vaccine, don't we get a significant amount of say in what happens afterward? And yes, I know we could say that about most drugs developed in America, where big pharma socialized the cost but privatizes the profit.
Meanwhile, did you know that debt collectors can now come after you on Facebook or Twitter? That's thanks to one of this Administration's worst alphabet agencies, our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB), which did decent work under Director Richard Cordray but not so much since a President who hates all regulations that might actually help people came to power. Hence our CFPB has loosened restrictions on how much debt collectors can harass you, plus our CFPB apparently doesn't care if these debt collectors harass good Americans who don't actually owe them anything! And, as I mentioned, now debt collectors can message you on your social media accounts. Hence Consumer Reports helps you tell our CFPB to rescind regulations allowing debt collectors to hound you more often. Remember: our CFPB doesn't even care if you really owe anyone anything -- they're happy to let debt collectors waste your valuable time even if they're dead wrong. You'd think an actual conservative would be up in arms about that.
Finally, you may have heard that South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham -- who once upon a time was the very first Senator to condemn the abuses at Abu Ghraib, I kid you not -- has continued his long slide into corruption by actually suggesting to Georgia's Secretary of State that maybe he should throw out some mail-in ballots. Mr. Graham has apparently talked to other state officials about similar matters, though his recollections of such conversations are, as they say, evolving. Hence Daily Kos helps you tell Sen. Graham to resign immediately. No, I don't expect him to have such a Damascus moment any time soon, particularly after just winning re-election by 10 points against a guy who raised over $100 million to run against him, but duty is duty, and what should we demand of him after hearing that he's tried to influence the outcome of a Presidential election in his preferred direction after all the votes have all been counted? Should we sit back and take it? Of course we shouldn't.
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