I've avoided passing along "please pass COVID relief now" action alerts, since settling for any COVID relief just about guarantees bad COVID relief -- like Mitch McConnell's "skinny"-ish "relief" proposal, which again includes three-martini lunch tax breaks and blanket immunity for corporations that let you get sick from COVID. And I wouldn't propose getting something done now so we can "go big" once Joe Biden takes over, either, because "going big" will be much harder if either Democratic candidate in the two Georgia Senate runoffs lose in January. But there's a simple solution to all the drama and chaos -- just call your Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act! The HEROES Act would fund COVID testing and tracing, fund states and localities (and a lot of the struggling ones are in red states now, right, Mr. McConnell?), and a bigger, better stimulus check for Americans who need it. So don't game out their "negotiations" -- just demand they negotiate with us.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania residents, take note: over 50 Republican state legislators have demanded that Pennsylvania's U.S. House Reps and Senators challenge that state's Electoral Votes later on this month. Why? Because (according to their complaint) Gov. Wolf and Secretary of State Boockvar "undermin(ed) the many protections provided under" the election reform law the state passed in 2019. But read their complaint and you will find that a) they don't say Messrs. Wolf or Boockvar broke the law; b) our state Supreme Court has already rejected at least one of their grievances; c) a government going above-and-beyond to resolve "deficient" ballots is quite a thing to complain about; and d) resolving these legislators' grievances the way they'd want would change only a few thousand votes, and last I looked conservatism was most pointedly not about applying extreme solutions to relatively small problems. So call your Reps and Senators and tell them to reject this desperate attempt to overturn the will of the people of the Commonwealth.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the incoming Biden Administration to reverse all of our soon-to-be-ex-President's attacks on our Social Security, then Social Security Works still helps you do that. You would specifically ask for the Biden Administration to a) fire all recent political appointees to the Social Security Administration and b) undo all of this Administration's rule changes and proposals that would take Social Security benefits away from us -- like making recipients re-establish their eligibility for Social Security Disability benefits every six months, which isn't "fighting corruption" but simple harassment. And don't put too much stock into stories about someone faking a disability to get benefits. Even before you verify such stories, you must ask: do individual stories mean we deny everyone the benefits they need to survive? As a civilized person -- hell, as a mature person! -- you would answer no, it does not.
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