Stimulus: Guillotine Outrage
Right now, I am biting my tongue to keep from typing cuss word after cuss word over this monster the Congress is passing. What a time to stick special interest payments into a bill! The pitiful amount they are giving individuals is a corn cob up the butt and nothing more. This bill does not deserve to be labeled as a COVID relief or stimulus bill.
The people get a $600 check to help them since their $1200 check given out 9 months ago has long run out: not even enough to pay for a month’s rent or mortgage payment. But we are supposed to cheer for this bill that has taken 10 x longer to assemble than the 4 trillion given to the rich and corporations months ago.
The bill gives $33 million to start a war with Venezuela, a country we are not at war with, does not want a war with us and sent us foreign aid in the form of low fuel prices at gas stations they owned in the US when the cost was so high many could not afford gas to go to work. They say it is for “democracy programs,” and we all know that means military and other support for the rich in Venezuela who are rebelling against the elected government. But that’s not all. The military, it seems, cannot get by on the $721.5 billion they got for this year so Congress slipped a little more in, $2 billion to be exact, for the space force! Also, under the foreign military assistance program, $1.3 billion is reserved for Egypt. In addition, $453 million is going to the Ukraine and $177 million is going to the Israeli missile program that will be taken from the $500 million “Israeli Cooperative Programs” in this bill. WTF does any of this have to do with COVID?
Now we have a much-needed tax cut for racehorse owners that was also stuck into the bill along with $35 million for sexual abstinence programs. Also, we must prepare for the reincarnation of the Dali Lama. But wait! There is a healthcare provision in this bill. What a surprise! This section of the bill more than doubles the healthcare coverage of members of Congress. Nice of them to think of you.
Speaking of thinking of you, a section giving frontline essential workers and healthcare professionals funding was stripped from the bill while the tax deduction for the three-martini lunch was instituted because we know billionaires have a hard time talking business without martinis and they have a difficult time paying for all those lunches.
The total of what I have listed comes to $4,326,000000 not counting the tax relief for the wealthy which I have no figures for. I’m sure closer scrutiny would reveal more loop hole payments to the already rich. One thing that has no upfront cost was added that might cause a blip in our online travels. They added a felony charge with up to 10 years in prison and a hefty fine for illegally streaming videos. This section of the bill is written so loosely it will criminalize internet behavior and probably result in some of our favorite sites being taken down.
After two big giveaways to the rich and corporations, it is shameful that this bill should not address the people and the people only. No healthcare for many of us. Millions ready to be evicted and sent into the streets. Every other country in the world is providing 75%-100% of wages to wage earners and we are concerned with racehorse owners and corporations that give little back to their communities and making sure our wars continue on schedule. This is an outrage. This is the kind of governance that in 1789, the year of the French Revolution, brought out the guillotines. We should be in the streets surrounding Congress, their homes, where they park their yachts and jets, any place they frequent, screaming our heads off. We should be making these SOBs afraid for their lives. Even if Trump does veto the bill and we wind up with $2,000, that is still way short of what is needed. One thing we all can do is to sign the petition at #forcethevote (link below) so that we may be able to finally get the healthcare that we deserve and is standard in most countries of the world. Call your Democratic Congress representative and tell them you support their vote of no for Nancy Pelosi unless she brings Medicare for all to the floor. We have the leverage to do this and to push it the rest of the way through the Senate and the President right now. We are in a pandemic with people losing healthcare and we will never have this much momentum. In the meantime, get your strike boots on because we also need a general strike just to let the oligarchy know we mean busines!
Force The Vote!