Y'know, I just spent the last $100 of my COVID panic handouts...Friday afternoon. On Sunday a person for whom I was supposed to have been doing an odd job, in the real world, backed out due to unexplained illness. Having denied that person had COVID last year, and having had acute complications develop, the person now has this year's version of COVID. (Fully vaccinated? I didn't ask.) On Monday person reported that per temperature hadn't shot up and person hadn't collapsed, but person had gone to the hospital and been ordered into quarantine for two weeks. Open-air markets are still decimated, a lot of people are still afraid to reopen their stores and restaurants or shop in the ones that are open, now a good friend and client is ill, and I just spent one of my last two one-dollar bills till payday to come in and...well, actually, receiving job-related e-mail was the idea. I certainly didn't spend a dollar just to buy an oversized cup of pre-chilled Coca-Cola. But what can you do, when the only places where phones or computers connect to anything, whatever network you or your friends have paid for, are still downtown restaurants. Sitting in a downtown restaurant and not even sipping a drink is sooo tacky.
So tacky that as I sat down, waiting for somebody to finish sipping per drink and checking for phone messages, that person felt moved to show Niceness by buying me a drink (naturally choosing a flavor that I'd be likely to drink if I'd had no access to any other liquid for 48 hours) and a sandwich (but it was too early in the morning to hold on to the sandwich for the cats). Icky. I could so easily have been sick on the floor. Attention people who want to be "nice" or "kind": Before spending your money on any unsolicited purchase for someone you don't know well, ASK the person what person can use. Do not buy sandwiches for celiacs. Do not buy beer for alcoholics, do not buy milkshakes for lactose-intolerant people, do not buy meat for vegans; in short, do not buy food for other people until you know what they want, and if it's not on the one-dollar menu, y'know, ce sont les breaks. If you're so timid you can't get the words "Excuse me, please, may I buy you a drink?" out of your mouth, you could just put some cash on the table and run. Though I wouldn't have parked the laptop on the table if I hadn't intended to buy my own drink, as soon as the person finished what person was doing and left the table from which I watch for my ride home.
Another wonderful virus panic day in the Fightin' Ninth District. Well calculated for this e-mail from U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith, R-VA-9 (further comments below):
"
Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Biden Administration was considering paying $450,000 each to illegal immigrants affected by the Trump Administration’s zero-tolerance policy. Families could receive close to $1 million, and the total cost to taxpayers could total more than $1 billion. On November 3, President Biden said of the payments, “That’s not gonna happen.”
The next day, his staff said he was “perfectly comfortable” with the payments.
I believe American taxpayers should not be on the hook for such outrageous sums to individuals who broke our immigration laws. That’s why I cosponsored a resolution from Congresswoman Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) condemning these payouts.
Additionally, I joined colleagues in sending letters to Biden Administration officials urging them to halt the policy.
I will continue to advocate for the rule of law and oppose hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars going to payouts for illegal immigrants.
"
Now: Legitimate, law-abiding, natural-born citizens of these United States are still feeling penniless and desperate. I'm one; I know some others. And what we want, dear Members of Congress one and all, is not another round of handout checks. We. Want. Paid. Jobs. Never mind about "career tracks" and such twentieth-century notions, but we do want to get paid for what we're able to do, while we're able to do it.
I officially achieved "senior citizenship" a while ago, and though I'll take any discounts any clever storekeepers care to offer on their massively overpriced merchandise, I am now in a position to say this, now that it affects me rather than the parents of anyone I know. (Now that very very few people I know have parents, and if we do this proposal would not affect them.) I say we need to save Social Security now. The way to save it is to save it for those who are no longer able to get up and walk to a store, or office, or restaurant, or the Friday Market, or around the streets picking up cans. Save the pensions for those who truly are disabled. Get the rest of us back to work on whatever one-year-or-however-long-we-have gigs we can still do, paying taxes.
We do not want to be officially pronounced "useless needers." We do not want to be overseen by people who floundered through at the bottoms of easy classes. We do not want to trade our homes, where we remember where things are, for miserable little flats in vermin-filled slum buildings. We do not want a thread nor a shoelatchet from the Welfare State. All we want is to go on earning our livings in peace.
And let the immigrants know, please and thank you, that however much we may like them as people, even welcome them as visitors, there is no room for more permanent immigrants in our economy. Such jobs as are available need to be done by people who were born here. If you were born somewhere else and you have a dream, go home and make your own native country great.
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