You've been hearing for weeks now that our Congressfolk are "negotiating" a COVID stimulus bill, that some want to include stimulus checks and some don't, that some want to get it done before the end of 2020 and some don't, but, really, all they have to do to get good Americans the relief we deserve is pass H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act, so go ahead and call your Senators and tell them to do that. The HEROES Act would fund COVID testing and tracing, states and localities suffering from lost tax revenues, and our Post Office, plus it would repeal that notorious tax-cut-for-the-rich they snuck into the CARES Act and would cut working Americans another stimulus check (a bigger one than the CARES Act did). Really, if you want your Senators to pass the HEROES Act, best thing to do is to say the HEROES Act will cut us bigger checks than anything you're proposing now. And don't get caught up in thinking we have to do something now, because that's how they get you to settle for less than you deserve. You deserve the HEROES Act -- at the very least!
Meanwhile, Pfizer's new COVID vaccine stands to make them a crap-ton of money, but a big reason for that is it's damn expensive -- it sold 100 million doses (which would inoculate 50 million people) to our government at $20/dose, and maybe that doesn't sound like a lot, but let's see what it charges retail, and remember that in a lot of the world, folks don't make $20 a day, and they do have other things to buy besides a COVID vaccine. Like, you know, food and shelter. Astra-Zeneca, which is a bit behind Pfizer and Moderna in putting a decent COVID vaccine together, has already pledged to sell its vaccine in lower-income nations at a massive discount. You'd think Pfizer would do the same, having just raked in $2 billion from our government and more from others, but apparently not, hence Sum of Us helps you tell Pfizer to (guess what) put people over profits and supply their vaccine to lower-income countries for less money. It's really for all of us -- if richer nations get everyone vaccinated but poorer nations don't, then we haven't really beaten COVID, have we?
Finally, the big banks say they won't fund oil or gas drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, but our Office of the Comptroller of the Currency aims to put a stop to that: they've proposed a rule that would force banks to fund customers (like fossil fuel drilling corporations) solely on the basis of those customer's "individual risk," and not some "categorical exclusion," like, you know, whether the project will promote pollution. Some folks have called banks' refusal to fund fossil fuel drilling "discrimination," and others have even compared it to redlining. Compare, if you can, "refusing to fund a big fossil fuel project" with "not letting black folks move into your neighborhood." You can't. Our politicians love "free" markets right up to the point it stops working to their liking -- or, more precisely, their big donors' liking. And they also think good folks wielding the Big Stick of Bad PR is "terrorism." Hence Environmental Action helps you tell our Office of the Comptroller to reject this wrong-headed plan to force banks to fund fossil fuel projects.
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