Today's as good a day as any to call your Senators and demand they pass H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act. Tolerate none of this "skinny" stimulus bill crap from Republicans! All they would do is funnel our money down the gullets of their corporate cronies like they did with the CARES Act. Yeah, you got $1,200 from that (didn't you?), but that doesn't balance out big corporations like Ruth's Chris Steak House disguising themselves as "small businesses" to feed at the taxpayer trough. What would America get along with a bigger stimulus check from the HEROES Act? Funding for COVID-19 testing and tracing, funding for enhanced unemployment benefits, funding for states and localities, and funding for our Post Office, among other good works. What would Republicans want? Bigger tax breaks for three-martini lunches and blanket immunity for corporations from lawsuits when they expose good Americans to COVID. I wish I were making that up. Their priorities really are horsedoodle -- which is why we get up in their grills with our priorities.
Meanwhile, perhaps after reviewing last month's election results, the General Motors corporation has withdrawn its support for our soon-to-be-ex-President's proposal that would weaken EPA fuel efficiency standards, so now the Sierra Club helps you tell big car manufacturing corporations Toyota and Fiat-Chrysler to abandon their support for weakened standards as well. Cleaner cars mean what, good Americans? They mean cleaner air, obviously, but they also mean lower gas bills, as cars go further on a gallon of gas. Weakening those standards might mean cheaper cars -- and it might not! -- but whatever you save on car-buying day you'll give up over the years as it belches out more filth into our air. But shouldn't we get a choice? I can already hear right-wingers say. Silly right-wingers! With weaker standards you won't have a choice -- big corporations tweak their fuel efficiency now and then, but if we really want to save our planet, we're have to make them do more.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 7848/S. 4360, the Counselors Not Criminalization Act, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. Long story short, the bill would help get police officers out of schools and help get counselors, nurses, and social workers back in. You don't need to remember viral videos of cops bodyslamming students to support this bill -- you need only know that school districts that hire more counselors, nursers, and social workers see better attendance, higher grades, and fewer disciplinary incidents. Putting police officers in schools does not, in fact, "scare kids straight," as we would know if we took a minute to remember what we were like as students. World was our oyster back then, and nobody was going to tell us what to do! Seriously, I've said it before and I'll say it again: we must stop acting like "more cops" is the solution to every problem. Certainly "more people trained to deal with children" is the solution to problems children have.
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