Howdy y’all!

3 DECEMBER: Congress is back in session, so it is time to begin doing all of the calling to all of your Members of Congress. Remember, only call your Members of Congress, not someone else’s Member of Congress. It does much more harm and does absolutely no good. Social media those folks instead.

This time we’re calling our Members of Congress to get the the bipartisan $908 billion #COVID19 relief bill passed. It is absolutely imperative that this Congress act now to help Americans who have needlessly suffered for far too long from the pandemic — it didn’t have to be this way — the rampant deaths — it didn’t have to be this way — and from the financial hardship of it all — it didn’t have to be this way. Congress has been having its little tug-of-war over which benefits to include and who to help. A thumbnail sketch: Repubes, give all the moneys to the corporations; and Dems, help real live everyday Americans pay their bills, but you knew that, didn’t you?

UPDATED: Now with a tweet you can send to Mitch McConnell!

Call Your MoC About

• Sorting Out the #COVID19 Relief Bill Mess (posted on 20 December 2020)
• Tweet Mitch McConnell about the Bipartisan #COVID19 Relief Bill — UPDATED (Posted on 10 December 2020 — UPDATED on 19 December 2020)
• Call Your MoC about a #COVID19 Relief Bill (posted on 2 December 2020 — UPDATED 3 December 2020)
• Protect Our Democracy: Contact the Michigan State Legislative Leaders (posted on 20 November 2020)
• Contact the Administrator of GSA and Tell Her to Begin the Transition (posted on 11 November 2020)
• #RBG’s SCOTUS Replacement (posted on 22 September 2020)
• The Post Office Monkey Shines of the Trump Regime (posted on 15 August 2020)
• The Coronavirus Relief Package (posted on 20 July 2020)
• Stopping the Federal Police Agencies in Portland (posted on 19 July 2020)
• The HEROES Act (posted on 10 July 2020)

Mea Culpa

I love the Call Your MoC series. I love the idea of calling your MoC every week and keeping a running list of legislation that you are concerned about. It is part of being a responsible member of the electorate and participating in our democracy. It is one of the big pieces of the Great Civics Lesson that we are all enduring.

Here’s the but: it takes up too much space! I figured I could highlight five pieces of legislation every week and devote my Sundays to writing them up (more about that later). At first, I tried including them all in one post, but that produced a huge humongous very long post that discouraged people from reading it.

Then, I started making each of the targeted pieces of legislation their own individual blog post. It made nice bite-sized posts that could be quickly and easily read, but it also turned one post into five. So, the blog turned into a weekly fest of two non-legislative posts and five Call Your MoC posts. It looked like a legislation blog and not a snarky, sarcasticky, profaney blog.

Eventually, the Call Your MoC posts would cycle off of the front page and be lost behind the dreaded older posts button. So, I tried a text box in the right-hand column annotating and linking to the Call Your MoC posts, but that got so long that it pushed the post pimping boxes so far down the page that people rarely saw them or used them.

What’s a Noble Peace Prize for Blogging winning blogger to do? Well, I’m trying a page called Call Your MoC in which I do two things: (1) I link to individual pages for all of the individual pieces of legislation that I’m highlighting where you can find summaries of the legislation and scripts for calling your MoC and (2) the usual tips, other things you can do, contact information links, and link to Indivisible that you found in all of the Call Your MoC blog posts.

I’ll post a post now and again pointing readers to the Call Your MoC page, but if you’re like me and think a weekly call to your MoC is not too much to ask for from an informed involved electorate, then you’ll bookmark and check back frequently.

Let me know how it goes in the comments!